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The Legend of Boggy Creek. Cannibal Holocaust. Man Bites Dog. These are the usual suspects whenever someone brings up the origins of modern-day found footage. However, it was a long road full of cinematic experiments before these films would give rise to the movie that popularized the genre – The Blair Witch Project. After all, before Myrick and Sanchez’s film, most proto-found-footage productions were more interested in emulating documentaries and news footage than recreating amateur recordings that just happened to capture something creepy.

I say “most” because there is one notable exception. An infamous film so dedicated to its DIY presentation that many viewers were originally unaware that it was meant to be a film at all. Naturally, I’m referring to Dean Alioto’s iconic UFO Abduction (also known as The McPherson Tape), a misunderstood classic that I believe started all the familiar tropes of contemporary found footage over...

Nostalgia is a funny thing. From the unexpected resurgence of vinyl to modern-day flip phones, it’s pretty clear that the technical limitations of the past can often inspire the stylish trends of the future. One of my favorite examples of this is the ongoing analog horror craze, as I find it fascinating how many of the genre’s major creators appear to have been born after the decline of VHS tapes and eerie PSAs.

It’s almost like there’s a subconscious understanding that some stories are best told through fuzzy visuals and heavily compressed audio, which is why I appreciate flicks like Anthony Cousins’s Found Footage throwback Frogman, a cryptozoology-inspired scary movie that dares to incorporate lo-fi aesthetics into its storytelling during a time when most studios encourage filmmakers to make their projects look as generically slick and polished as possible. And if you also enjoyed Frogman...

Not many horror films truly scare me these days. But alien horror? Even the ones substandard to most send me into a fear frenzy. That’s why I’m taking a deep dive into the sub-genre.

Welcome to Aliens Scare Me. A look into alien horror films on a case by case basis.

This month we check out 2014’s Vicious Brothers (Grave Encounters) film, Extraterrestrial.

What It’s About

A group of friends head out into the country for the weekend to stay at a cabin in the woods (because that always goes so well) in an area recently dealing with mysterious circumstances such as missing persons and cattle mutilation. While drunk and arguing, they witness a UFO crash nearby. Upon investigating, they notice footprints leading right back to their cabin. The group, a Sheriff (Gil Bellows) looking for his missing wife, and a pot growing, tin foil hat wearing...

Stars: Braydan Wade, Jacob, Ricky Umberger, Austin Greene, Alex Ahmer, Dennis Frazier, Thomas Burke, James Herbert, Justin Snyder, Blair Umberger, Jacob Waeyaert | Written and Directed by Ricky Umberger

Project Eerie, the new film from Ricky Umberger the maker of The Fear Footage and its sequels The Fear Footage 2: Curse of the Tape and The Fear Footage: 3Am opens, like many found footage films, with a brief message telling us where the footage we’re about to see came from. In this case, what we are about to see was originally livestreamed on social media. And that viewer discretion is advised.

What we see does look like a typical livestream as a couple of bored idiots, Jesse (Braydan Wade) and his brother Jacob (Jacob) drive around smashing pumpkins and getting high before having the brilliant idea to sneak into an abandoned government facility. Once inside, security seems to be non-existent,...

For this month’s installment of “TV Terrors” we revisit the found footage remake Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, which aired in 1998 on the Upn Network.

Found footage in its early days was a rare novelty that often astounded and confounded audiences. The overseas had bits like “Ghost Watch” while the States had television movies like Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. The latter is an early example of found footage, coming along just before The Blair Witch Project, making it a notable entry in the genre.

A remake of Dean Alioto’s 1989 low budget The McPherson Tape, Alien Abduction aired on January 20, 1998 and became something of an urban legend. Not only was it aired without much preamble on a network known mainly for comedies, but allegedly the movie caused a stir among audiences that assumed that we were watching actual accounts of a family confronting aliens in a rural countryside.

“No One Will Save You,” the tale of a young woman (Kaitlyn Dever) battling extraterrestrial foes, just premiered on Hulu. In many ways it’s the ultimate scary alien invasion movie, throwing in menacing extraterrestrial intruders, abductions, ominously hovering UFOs and even a creepy “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” motif with gooey creatures nestled in your throat. It’s very scary and very good – so good, in fact, that you’ll probably have a hankering for more creepy stories of alien visitation.

To that end, here are five more scary-as-hell alien movies to watch after you finish “No One Will Save You” – and where you can watch them right now.

Amazon Prime Video

“The Vast of Night”

This is one of the more recent alien invasion movies and the one that “No One Will Save You” might remind you of, at least on the fringes. “The Vast of Night,” which...

Among the new releases this week is Brian Duffield’s No One Will Save You, a home invasion with an alien twist starring Kaitlyn Dever and debuting on Hulu on September 22. With it comes the realization of how scarcely populated the sci-fi horror subgenre gets regarding the iconic Gray aliens. These quintessential aliens have emerged recently in the news, but their cinematic counterparts are rarer. That’s a shame, considering how effectively they induce terror, as evidenced by M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs (on Max).

This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to the quieter alien invasions. These sci-fi horror films revolve around the Grays and similar extraterrestrials that are more content to invade and toy with their prey quietly.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Fire in the Sky – Max

This film mostly plays out as a...

Alongside viral outbreaks and murderous revenants, horror games love pitting us against threats from beyond the stars.

If you have even a passing interest in the genre, then you’re bound to have dealt with a few alien hordes in your time, as we just can’t seem to get enough of these terrifying close encounters. In the past twelve months alone, we’ve fought extra-terrestrial beasties in The Callisto Protocol, Signalis, Scorn, and of course, the exemplary Dead Space remake.

And while those titles certainly had their differences and idiosyncrasies, one thing remained consistent across the board. Taking to heart that old adage: “In space, no one can hear you scream”; they all put a fair bit of distance between you (as the player) and the reassuring comforts of Planet Earth.

Whether they were sentencing you to life in a maximum-security prison orbiting Jupiter, getting you to respond to...

Catching up on they've watched and read lately, Corpse Club co-hosts Derek Anderson and Jonathan James discuss Robert Eggers' The Northman, Lucio Fulci's The Beyond, Stuart Gordon's Dagon, Dean Alioto's The McPherson Tape, Junji Ito's Dissolving Classroom, and Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers on this episode of Daily Dead's official podcast!

You can listen to the new episode of Corpse Club right now on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, TuneIn, YouTube, Pandora, and SoundCloud!

Looking for more scary good Corpse Club content? Be sure to check out our Corpse Club website and memberships. Not only can you view past episodes, but you can also sign up to be an official Corpse Club member to enjoy a wide range of rewards, including a shirt and pin that are to die for, access to bonus content, and the ability to suggest an episode topic!

Missed out on our previous episodes?...

At their core, found footage movies attempt to adopt a verisimilitude of their own making, whether it's actually trying to make people believe it's real or not. They're inherently built upon the foundation that what we're about to see is the result of something bad that's happened to the people behind the camera, and we're the sickos watching it all unfold. "Cannibal Holocaust" and "The McPherson Tape" act as the genesis of this long-lasting subgenre, and are ultimately found footage in its purest form, but it's "The Blair Witch Project" that popularized the subgenre to the mainstream. Better yet, it helped that these films existed in an era...

The post Paranormal Activity's Alternate Endings Change Everything appeared first on /Film.

Exclusive: Police officer turned video game writer and technical director Morley Nelson is currently in production in Minnesota on Uncontained, a horror-thriller that he is directing from his original screenplay.

Uncontained takes place deep in the wintery forests of North America and centers on a Homeland Security agent desperately trying to conceal her son’s variant infection from the government. When the local militia take interest, she must rely on the special skills of a stranger with secrets of his own.

Courtney Blythe Turk (Assassination Nation) and Chris Goodson (The Thing About Pam) are producing, with Byung Sa (A Shot Through the Wall) exec producing. Nelson and Turk are starring alongside Peter O’Meara, Hayley LeBlanc and Brett Zimmerman.

Nelson, O’Meara, Zimmerman and Turk are represented by Roar; LeBlanc...

The tropes of an alien abduction — the UFO chasing the car, missing time, strange experiments, grey-skinned beings with large eyes — emerged primarily from two alleged experiences, the Betty and Barney Hill case in 1961, and Travis Walton’s in 1975. Beyond having an enormous influence on pop culture, these are the most famous so-called close encounters of the fourth kind.

They are also the most well-documented cases, according to UFO expert and former FBI special agent, Ben Hansen. And in two new discovery+ “Shock Docs,” Alien Abduction: Betty and Barney Hill and Alien Abduction: Travis Walton — debuting Feb. 18 on the streaming platform — Hansen walks audiences through the stories, and offers up new evidence that he believes corroborates the abductees’ claims. Likewise serving as consulting producer on the Shock Docs, Hansen, who is also currently filming the second season of UFO Witness for discovery+, joined Den of Geek’s paranormal pop culture...

The late ‘80s saw the release of writer/director/producer Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape, a lo-fi found footage precursor centered around an alien abduction during a family’s birthday celebration. A decade later, Alioto helmed a larger-budgeted and expanded remake for Upn, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County, shifting the setting to Thanksgiving. The holiday set found-footage nightmare […]...

Exclusive: Bryce and Jackie Zabel’s Stellar Productions is teaming with fledgling La production and management firm Alta Global Media on TV series Captured, based on the landmark 1961 alien abduction case of Betty and Barney Hill.

The project will chart the story of the interracial couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who said they were captured by a UFO on the night of September 19, 1961. The story of the black postal clerk and white social worker who claimed to have met extraterrestrials became a media sensation, and culminated in a 1975 made-for-tv film starring James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons.

The project was previously set up by Zabel (Atlantis: The Lost Empire) with Gotham Group as a film but now has new life with Steven Adams (A Huey P. Newton Story) and Theo Dumont’s Alta, which launched earlier this year with clients including Pedro Alonso (Money Heist), Gary Dourdan (CSI), Tamara Tunie...

Good news, Netflix’s very funny looking original animated show BoJack Horseman featuring the voices of Will Arnett, Aaron Paul and Alison Brie will appear on Netflix on Friday 22nd August just in time to binge watch over the bank holiday weekend.

From what I have seen so far it looks promising but then so did Hemlock Grove. Expect a full report next week. In related news, Netflix have announced a whole slate of stand-up comedy exclusive to its service after the success of the recent Aziz Ansari special. So the likes of Chelsea Handler, Jim Jefferies, Bill Cosby, Bill Burr and Chelsea Peretti will be adding stand up shows to streaming between now and December. I have only heard of a couple of these acts but there again one of the best things to do with an hour to spare is browse Netflix for its plentiful supply of stand-up...

Each Monday we present you with the most up-to-date list of the top 10 indie movies in the iTunes store, combining rentals and purchases. Oscar winners "12 Years a Slave" and "Dallas Buyers Club" continue to dominate, while newcomers "Philomena" and "The Unknown Known" hit the list this week, in addition to "Alien Abduction." "Afternoon Delight" returned to the list this week in the top spot as a 99 cents "Movie of the Week."  The top 10 indies in iTunes are listed below (number represents North American gross, where applicable): 1. Afternoon Delight (Film Arcade, $174,496) 2. 12 Years a Slave (Fox Searchlight, $56,502,100) 3. Dallas Buyers Club (Focus Features, $27,243,200) 4. The Unknown Known (Radius-twc, $64,900) 5. Philomena (Weinstein Company, $37,470,800) 6. August: Osage County (Weinstein Company, $37,687,332) 7. Alien Abduction (IFC Midnight, N/A) 8. Mistaken for...

Oh, you’re making a low budget horror film? Cool, good luck with that. No, honest, that’s me being sincere. I just mean that there are a lot of indie horror flicks these days, like three or more dropping every week, and, you know, most of them just aren’t very good. But hey, it’s the exceptions that make it all worthwhile. At least you’re not doing a found foota–oh. You are. Well that’s, I mean, there are some good found footage movies. IFC Midnight just released the very creepy and fresh The Den last month, so there’s always hope. And anyway at least you’re not planning on playing it off as being based on a true sto–oh. I see. Well that works sometimes too, so you’re still fine. Hell, if nothing else at least you have the mystery angle in your favor since the audience won’t...

At this point I think it’s safe to say that I am the king of found footage movies. Oh yeah, you heard that right, we got another one for you. Alien Abduction treads into little seen territory when it comes to the genre, branching out into (you guessed it) the alien subgenre of horror. The…

The post Review: Found Footage Alien Abduction Breaks No New Ground appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Created a few years back by designer Lasse Klein, the “Alien Abduction Lamp” has become quite a cult favorite among collectors, and for good reason: not only is it just about the coolest UFO gadget out there, it's also a quality art piece. The alien craft is constructed primarily from metal, with a perspex “tractor beam” capturing an unfortunate bovine victim from its astro-turf base. The ship's antenna doubles as the on/off switch, and when activated the lamp gives off a steady, pulsing glow... and we're going to assume the tiny crew won't move up from cattle and try to probe you in your sleep instead. The original 2009 run of two thousand pieces (which includes the artist's laser-engraved signature on the bottom of the UFO and a certificate poster) is a bit hard to come by these days, but it's currently available from Australian gadget site The Funky Company.

The dudes behind recently released thriller The Invoking are hard at work on an alien abduction flick called The Device, which is housed under the quickly growing indie banner Ruthless Pictures. Read on for all the extraterrestrial details!

From the Press Release

Ruthless Pictures is in pre-production on the psychological thriller The Device, set to start filming at the end of March 2014. Written by Jeremy Berg and John Portanova, the film will be directed by Jeremy Berg and produced by Matt Medisch, the team behind the critically acclaimed thriller The Invoking, available now on DVD.

Exec produced by Jesse Baget under his Ruthless Pictures banner, The Device follows Abby and Rebecca Powell, who haven’t seen each other since a traumatic event in their youth ripped them apart. Reunited for the first time in over a decade, the sisters take a trip to spread their mother’s ashes at a secluded lake.

Welcome to the latest installment of the Nerdly poster round-up, where we bring you up to speed on some of the best movie posters to have hit the interwebs in recent weeks. In this edition we have posters for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Stagefright, Oculus, The Mule, The Double, Alien Abduction, Dark House, Sparks, In the Blood, 13 Sins, Sabotage and many, many more – its a bumper crop of new posters this time round!

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Transformers: Age of Extinction

Stagefright

Oculus

The Mule

The Double

Alien Abduction

Dark House

Sparks

In the Blood

10 Rules for Sleeping Around

13 Sins

War of the Worlds: Goliath

The Den

App

Sabotage

Open Windows

A Million Ways to Die in the West

Dark Reflection...

Stars: Taylor Bateman, Steve Berg, Michael Black, Erin Cahill, Carol Call, Kyle Davis, Jon Gries, Nash Lucas, Matthew Rocheleau | Written by Adam Ohler | Directed by Devin McGinn

When Skinwalkers arrived to review, I was confused. I remember Skinwalkers being a fairly good movie about werewolves, where this was not it. Doing a bit of research (looked on IMDb) I discovered that this is in fact Skinwalker Ranch a “based on true events” found footage/documentary style tale of alien abduction. That confusion over I was intrigued to see where this one would go.

In an event that “shocked the paranormal community around the world” a ten year old boy goes missing while playing baseball on his father’s ranch. Years after, his father still lives there searching for signs of his son. When a scientific team arrive to investigate the disappearance and strange events that take place on the ranch,...

Formerly titled Project Blue Book, Matty Beckerman's found footage alien invasion flick has been renamed Alien Abduction and is set for release from IFC Midnight on April 4th. Details and the first teaser trailer await, earthlings!

Written by Robert Lewis, the film stars Katherine Sigismund, Corey Eid, Riley Polanski, Jillian Clare, Jeff Bowser, and Peter Holden.

Synopsis

A terrifying sci-fi story inspired by dramatic found footage, Alien Abduction preys on our fear of the unknown as we follow an average American family who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

While driving to a campsite in the Brown Mountains of North Carolina, the Morris family's Gps malfunctions, and they are lead to a remote tunnel surrounded by abandoned vehicles. The father, Peter Morris, is abducted, leaving his traumatized wife and children to flee and seek refuge in a nearby cabin. There they are horrified to learn...

As we’ve seen here in the first few weeks of 2014, the landscape of the horror genre is absolutely flooded with found footage movies, and we primarily have two movies to thank/blame for that; The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

While 1999’s Blair Witch Project is often credited as the first horror movie made in the Pov found footage style, such a claim is actually quite untrue. Though Blair Witch is no doubt the movie that popularized the style, and Paranormal Activity the one that re-invented it and brought it into a new decade, there were actually a handful of found footage films that came out well before the horrifying tale of the witch in the woods.

Here are seven of those handheld horror movies, which all predate The Blair Witch Project!

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) - Theatrical Trailer

Cannibal Holocaust – 1980

What’s the very first found footage movie ever made?...

Following up on my previous article, “Watch 15 Great Horror Short Films,” which received a very positive response, I’ve researched and collected 13 more superb horror short films. As with the first article, I limited the choices to stand-alone live-action horror short films not produced for an anthology film and the selections were narrowed down by availability.

In further keeping with the criteria of the first article, animated horror short films and horror-comedy short films were excluded from consideration as both of these categories would make good subjects for their own individual articles. Sorry, Brutal Relax and Fist of Jesus fans.

It should also be noted that a number of highly regarded horror shorts readers might clamor to see in an article like this such as Ryan Haysom’s Yellow continue their long festival runs and have not been posted for online viewing and were therefore not considered for this piece.

Special Mention: Sightseers

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Written by Steve Oram and Alice Lowe

UK, 2012

This bloody, satirical road trip comedy is by no means as great as Terrence Mallick’s Badlands, but it is truly unique, strange, disquieting, and uncomfortably funny. Ben Wheatley is one of the most exciting genre filmmakers working in the industry today and has a talent for coaxing naturalistic, improvisational performances from his actors. Here, Wheatley is working for the first time from someone else’s script. Sightseers was written by TV acting and writing duo Alice Lowe and Steve Oram, with input from Wheatley’s longtime collaborator Amy Jump. In Sightseers, they achieve the relatively rare feat of striking the right balance between sharply observed characterization and jet-black humour. Sightseers was pitched as an unsold TV pilot, which was rejected by every UK broadcaster for being too dark. It isn’t quite horror, but...

Following on from the relative success of found-footage horror flick V/H/S earlier this year, comes the sequel – once more bringing together a collection of filmmakers to each to present their own horror vignette. Following an almost identical formula, V/H/S 2 is harmless, enjoyable fun – yet, much like first, it pushes no boundaries and lacks distinctly in ingenuity and innovation. Oh, and it’s not very scary either.

When private investigators (Laurence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott) go on the hunt for a missing student (L.C. Holt), they find themselves at his derelict flat, where a collection of disturbing VHS tapes lie, waiting to be watched. As part of their ongoing investigation, the pair decide to watch the cassettes, much to their evident displeasure. Amongst the harrowing, sinister videos, we have Adam Wingard’s ‘Phase I Clinical Trials’, whereby a man (played by Wingard himself) is given a new...

Chicago – Another week of Blu-ray, DVD, and streaming options for you to peruse courtesy of HollywoodChicago.com’s “What to Watch.” Every week, we gather a select few of the most recent Blu-ray & DVD releases, toss in at least one On Demand option we’ve seen, and present them in a checklist order for you to knock out through Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, or good, old-fashioned Blu-ray (yes, that sounds funny to me too). This week’s is the strongest yet by far. Everything in here is worth a look, all the way down to #9. This is just the order you should watch ‘em in more than anything else.

The Bling Ring

Photo credit: Lionsgate

“The Bling Ring”

I argued with a few people who saw Sofia Coppola’s wildly entertaining dissection of celebutante youth culture as too shallow and my counter is that most of those people don’t know...

*Updated* V/H/S/2 will be released this September and it has been revealed that you’ll be able to order a special Blu-ray, DVD, and VHS combo. Magnet Releasing is currently offering the special bundle together on Amazon as a pre-order. The movie will be available on September 24th and is selling for $34.99. We’ve included a look at the cover artwork below.

“Searching for a missing student, two private investigators break into his abandoned house and find another collection of mysterious VHS tapes. In viewing the horrific contents of each cassette, they realize there may be terrifying motives behind the student’s disappearance.”

V/H/S/2 features segments directed by Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Edúardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Huw Evans, and Jason Eisener. The cast includes Adam Wingard, Lawrence Levine, L.C Holt, Kelsy Abbott, and Hannah Hughes. Check out the following links to catch...

Opening weekend did not see that many high profile world premieres, but there were enough sleeper hits to keep you “first” geeks satiated. That being said, there was still plenty of screenings for films most of us were itching with HIGHves to see on the big screen; so don’t fret, Fantasia’s got your back like that.

V/H/S 2 (USA, Canada, 2013)

Huge expectations for the sequel to last year’s bizarre mish-mash that was V/H/S. Part anthology, part meta-film about the relationship between extreme footage and its effect on the viewer, V/H/S 2 brings Brad Miska’s et al. strange analogue vision to a more mainstream audience, despite being heavy on the stuff that the good people of Fantasia’s audience were there for: jiggly tits, gag inducing effects and freaky shit hitting the fan. All three did their dirty work but surprisingly enough, I...

Today’s film is the 2006 short Discrimination of the Dead. The film stars Boyd Sharpe, Jill Morgan, and Ravi Taneja, and is written by Angus Swantee, who also co-directs alongside Jason Eisener. Eisener rose to prominence in the grindhouse movie circuit with his 2011 feature film debut Hobo With a Shotgun, which he directed and came up with the story for, before contributing Y is for Youngbuck to the horror anthology The ABCs of Death. The new horror anthology V/H/S 2, in which Eisener wrote and directed the segment Slumber Party Alien Abduction, opens in limited release in American theatres this weekend.

****

The post Saturday Shorts: “Discrimination of the Dead”, co-directed and edited by Jason Eisener appeared first on Sound On Sight.

I don’t know about you, but I am so onboard with the gimmick—I say that with all due respect—of the V/H/S movies, though I think that might be where some people are immediately put off by them. The found footage genre is limiting and is way past the limit of being milked to death but the best thing to take away from an anthology horror series such as this is the way it can showcase emerging talents and play around with the tropes of the fledgling voyeuristic genre, and that’s exactly what the original V/H/S did so well and what V/H/S 2 does even better. Through a quartet of individual segments and one wraparound section, V/H/S 2 manages to slightly shift its focus to a more sci-fi angle while still retaining the intense horror elements that make the series one...

The fuzzy screen of hissing static noise – a benign magnetic videotape imprinted with the occasional time code becomes a source of evil in V/H/S 2, the outstanding follow-up to last year’s anthology that manages to outdo the original of terms of creativity and intensity. Like the first, it has no stars or big-scale special effects, but it’s an extraordinarily efficient horror film, a celebration of rock-bottom production values—and more proof of how it doesn’t take bells and whistles to scare us. Those who didn’t care for the first (a love-it-or-hate-it affair) may find this one more of the same, but it’s leaner than the original (four stories this time instead of five) with more humor and less nudity. Each segment is written/produced/directed by different filmmakers who take a fractured, mixed-media approach to their respective stories, all of which are strong.

V...

Warning: There are technically no spoilers that haven’t been shown to you in trailers already within this review. However, if you wish to remain completely in the dark as to what each segment of V/H/S/2 is about, please abstain from reading until after you’ve seen the film. Otherwise, have at it.

When I finished V/H/S for the first time, I expected to log-on to my corner of the internet, and see my friends and colleagues sharing my excitement for the experience. What I found instead, was that I appeared to be in the minority. Everybody had something negative to say about the movie, save for James Harris(Jimmy Terror). I was surprised by this. We don’t get many quality anthology films these days, and I really feel like that’s what V/H/S brought to the table. Sure, some of the segments were nonsensical,...

One of the highlights of V/H/S/2 for this writer had to be Jason Eisener’s “Alien Abduction Slumber Party,” which follows a group of pre-teens who must fight off malicious aliens who aren’t looking for any sleepover buddies- just victims.

Dread Central recently chatted with Eisener (Hobo with a Shotgun) about his segment (which was shot from the Pov of his pooch), and we’ve got the highlights right here. Read on for our exclusive interview with Eisener, and look for V/H/S/2 (review)in limited theaters this July (the sequel is currently available everywhere on VOD).

Dread Central: Great to chat with you again, Jason. I loved the energy in “Alien Abduction Slumber Party”- it absolutely feels like it has your filmmaking sensibilities all over it. What inspired you to go the alien route for this?

Jason Eisener: I went with aliens because...

Yesterday we bought you the first piece of unique artwork taken from found footage sequel 'V/H/S/2' which each feature a different segment included in the movie which is now available On Demand and on iTunes. Two more pieces have arrived since - first up we have Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto's bloody entry 'Safe Haven'. Along with this follow up poster Fearnet have revealed the third piece of exclusive 'V/H/S/2' artwork revolving around Jason Eisener's segment 'Slumber Party Alien Abduction'. So looks like we're just missing Eduardo Sanchez ('The Blair Witch Project') and Gregg Hale's zombie segment 'A Ride in the Park' now which will no doubt pop up any time now. Check out the new artwork below....

With horror anthology VHS 2 now available on VOD in the Us distributors Magnet Releasing have been teasing audiences with poster art devoted to individual short films included in the project. Things got rolling with posters for Adam Wingard's Clinical Trials Phase 1 and Gareth Evans / Timo Tjahjanto collaborative effort Safe Haven, and now FearNet have debuted a new poster for Jason Eisener's Slumber Party Alien Abduction by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles artist Sheldon Vella. Check them all out below!VHS 2 will hit the big screen in limited release July 12th....

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

A substantial improvement in both concept and execution over its predecessor, V/H/S/2 is one of horror’s best recent anthologies, even if its fealty to – or perhaps inability to avoid — genre cliches undermines its overall impact. Creating a uniquely eclectic series of found-footage vignettes, its seven directors surpass the imagination and intensity of those in the original V/H/S, reiterating the format’s importance as both a showcase for interstitial creativity between feature-length projects and a testing ground for future ones.

I’m not sure if it’s in spite or because of his gifts as screenwriter of such distinctive projects as A Horrible Way To Die and the upcoming You’re Next that he was assigned the responsibility of creating both films’ wraparound stories, but Simon Barrett takes one for the team as not just the writer this time, but the director as well of the...

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Are you familiar with the three B’s? Don’t fret if you aren’t; honest mistake. Most wouldn’t know what they stood for unless they had a penchant for skin-crawling content or a passionate knowledge of all things horror and science-fiction related. Don Dohler was an archetypal filmmaker for the sacred formula of B’s as he committed his life to creating and producing such movies as Nightbeast, Fiend and who can forget Alien Factor 2: The Alien Rampage? While such a coagulated patrimony might be brushed aside by most, his influence and honest prescription for a horror film’s health has been everlasting. And those three little B’s? Blood, boobs and beasts. Such an ideal has been adopted by countless films and now, V/H/S/2 continues the trend with wreckless abandon. . . And it’s all the better for it.

Last year,...

Reviewed by Matt Boiselle, MoreHorror.com

I had almost lost complete faith in the entire found-footage collective until last years release of V/H/S - it had seemed as if there really wasn't anything more that could be done in order to impress an audience outside of nauseating the multitudes with stomach-churning camera work, and inane plot points that were completely devoid of scares. I'm fairly positive that the combination of a solid plot with multiple stories a la Creepshow, is what made the first V/H/S such a cult hit amongst horror fans, and the latest installment is sure to make even the pickiest zealot jump for joy after watching this one.

**Warning, Possible Spoilers below**

As we open V/H/S 2, we follow the camera work of 2 private investigators that are on the trail of a missing college student, so like any decent slimy back-alley P.

Stars: Kelsy Abbott, Hannah Al Rashid, Fachry Albar | Written and Directed by Simon Barrett, Jason Eisener, Gareth Evans, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sánchez, Timo Tjahjanto, Adam Wingard

The horror anthology has received a fair bit of new blood lately with two high-profile effort V/H/S and The ABCs of Death both arriving on a huge wave of hype in horror circles but ended up raining a shower of disappointing poop over us instead. Both indulged in the worst of what this genre’s filmmakers seem to think fans want, splashes of misogyny, gore purely for gore’s sake and the same old story repeated ad infinitum with the same old scares played the same old ways. The insanely quick turnaround of V/H/S 2 (or as its original brilliant title had it, S-v/H/S) was cause for concern but with filmmakers more exciting than those involved in the first instalment,...

Creating a new, unique take on the found footage horror subgenre has become increasingly difficult in recent years. For every successful and clever Paranormal Activity, there’s an equally unimaginative counterpart, like The Devil Inside. Sequels in the genre, such as the Paranormal Activity follow-ups, in particular haven’t fared as well with critics and audiences, as the storylines and visuals seem to become repetitive and uninspired. But the new horror thriller, V/H/S/2, has actually earned higher praise than its predecessor, last year’s horror film V/H/S, in part to its cunning visuals and more cohesive storyline.

V/H/S/2 follows two private investigators as they break into a missing college student’s abandoned house, after being hired by his concerned mother. But instead of finding him, they instead find his large collection of mysterious VHS tapes. While viewing the contents of four of the videos,...

Viva la película de terror antología!

Is that right? After five years of Spanish throughout high school, I still just went to Google Translate for that shit. But anyway, for those who don’t understand my (probably gibberish) Spanish, it (most likely doesn’t) means “Long live the horror anthology!” Why am I so excited? Well, partially because I didn’t think this craze would actually stay strong in today’s horror world, and partially because V/H/S/2 proves the concept is only producing better and better content. V/H/S and The ABCs Of Death tested the waters, wetted viewers whistles, but V/H/S/2 took the concept to extremely more brutal places knowing the market for over-the-top horror is salivating over original content these days – something I pray the newly announced sequel to The ABCs Of Death tackles even more ferociously.

I was elated to see that...

The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival has come to an end, and it's time for Part 1 of our wrap-up of the horror films we took in this year with a look at V/H/S/2, Frankenstein's Army, Big Bad Wolves, and a trio of short films.

Once again I stalked the streets of New York City seeking a little red door in the middle of normal looking homes that would take me to the Tribeca Film Festival press lounge. Within were my partner in low-level future crimes, Heather Buckley, free coffee, and for some reason Magnum Ice Cream Bars. Yes, Tribeca. Make the journos fatter. That will certainly help us walk across town from one film to another. Genius. Pass in hand, I attempted to hit as many of the horror offerings on this year’s schedule as possible, and here's round one of my conclusions (in most instances you'll find links...

Horror fans rejoiced at the prospect of V/H/S, a horror anthology film directed by several up-and-coming indie genre directors, centered around a band of criminals watching VHS recordings of terrible happenings. Even before V/H/S was released, the wheels already began to turn on the film’s sequel, V/H/S/2, which is currently playing at the Tribeca Film Festival. Much like it’s predecessor, V/H/S/2 is comprised of a framing device and four short films (compared to the original film’s five). Simon Barrett (A Horrible Way to Die, You’re Next), directed the film’s framing device, “Tape 49,” about a private investigator and his assistant breaking into a house and going through all those terrifying VHS tapes. Barrett also wrote the segment directed by Adam Wingard (A Horrible Way to Die, You’re Next), ”Phase 1 Clinical Trials,” in which Wingard starred as a rich boy whose bionic eye makes him...

V/H/S 2

USA, 2013

Directed by Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, Eduardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, Timo Tjahjanto, Gareth Huw Evans, and Jason Eisener

The horror anthology V/H/S deserves credit for figuring out a good way to present mediocre found-footage ideas. When watching a bad found-footage horror film the main problem is that it goes on too long and can’t keep its gimmick fresh, but if many of those films were cut to short-film length, their shortcomings would be well camouflaged. So it goes with the sequel V/H/S 2: there are some good ideas, and some awful ones, and the best thing that can be said about the bad ideas is that they don’t hang around.

Like its predecessor, V/H/S 2 is shaped around a framing story. This time, the framing story involves two private investigators searching for a missing person. Turns out this particular...

Number 2 follows the same formula as the first, giving us a handful of found footage shorts, four stand-alone's and one wrap-around. There's one less entry this time around, and that turns out to be the first smart choice, since the overlong running time of the first film was one more reason to hate it. This time out we have variations on The Eye (Adam Wingard's Clinical Trials), Shaun of the Dead (Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sanchez's A Ride in the Park), The Wicker Man (Gareth Evans' and Timo Tjahjanto's Safe Haven), and Close Encounters (Jason Eisener's Alien Abduction Slumber Party). And while the usual rules of anthology films are very much in effect here, the only real crap entry is Simon Barrett's wraparound Tape 49, which retains the frat-boy, trash-can aesthetic of the first film and gets dumber as it unfolds. The rest of the entries are...

• Don't say we didn't warn you, oh soulless one. [BuzzFeed]

• The Ex-Files: "Dark Skies," Terrorism and the End of Alien Abduction Movies. Who needs little green men when you've got real-life horrors? [Film.com]

• A true villain played by Luke Evans makes "Fast Six" (yeah, we're calling it that, so what?) the most James Bond-y "Fast & Furious" movie yet. [Heavy]

• Hell, let's make character posters for every movie! "A Place Beyond the Pines" gets the comic book movie treatment. [Hypable]

• In case you still haven't had enough of Oscars reaction GIFs, here are 25 of the best all in one place. [Complex]

• "Ghostbusters III" might end up being an animated film. Maybe Bill Murray will agree to at least record voiceover (for a billion dollars). [ScreenCrush]

• Well, we made it. Here's a look back on the best and worst of February's entertainment offerings. [BuzzSugar]

• Rachel McAdams and Michael Sheen call it quits. Did we even know they were together?...

"The Weekend Rent" offers quick-hit suggestions of what to watch at home to get psyched for new releases in theaters, on Fridays. We can't tell you exactly what the sci-fi horror film Dark Skies, now playing in theaters, is about because the movie was not screened for critics and details are sparse. Judging from the posters and trailer (and, well, the title), it appears to be about a couple trying to protect their family from an alien threat that preys on children. Then again, it could be a drama about meteorologists, but we somehow doubt it. Alien abduction has been depicted on-screen many times in the past with wildly varying degrees of success. Here are the best and the worst movies with extraterrestrial kidnappers. The Best Communion: This 1989 film based on...

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Alien abduction, the supposedly true phenomena wherein everyday citizens are stolen from their beds, experimented on, and returned, is a truly frightening idea – one whose super-scary possibilities have only really been explored in a handful of movies ("Communion," with Christopher Walken, most famously; the ingeniously structured "Fire In The Sky" most effectively). The ultimate alien abduction movie, something that could do for peaceful nighttime slumbers what "Jaws" did for a day at the beach, has yet to be produced and "Dark Skies," a new sci-fi horror thingee that grafts the alien abduction theme onto what is essentially a loose remake of "Poltergeist," certainly attempts such a feat. And it is pretty scary. Unfortunately, all its hard work is undone by a bewilderingly goofy ending that is roughly the cinematic equivalent of an unwanted anal probe. Just as "Poltergeist" was rooted in the suburban landscape of...