When we think of the big horror franchises, Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street come to mind. But for audiences coming of age in the 1990s, you may need to add Scream to that list. Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, and Skeet Ulrich are back again in the unlucky town of Woodsboro, where the serial killers behind the long “ghostface” mask first made their mark on the town 25 years ago. Another movie delayed by the pandemic, this new Scream delivers goofy slasher horror fun with all the right beats, proving once and for all this franchise is here to stay. Scream is now in theaters and available on streaming platforms including Paramount+ and Amazon Prime.
It’s one of those head-scratching things. Previews for horror movies in October for movies not arriving until around Valentine’s Day. And it happens every year. Valentine’s Day is a big time for horror, and two movies heading your way next year look like you’ll want to see them if not in the theater at least streaming once they arrive on home video. Also, this weekend is DC Fandome, an online streaming event like Disney’s annual D23 fan event (which arrives next month). If you’ve wondered where DC Comics movies have been, they’ve evidently been waiting for next year–even before the pandemic they’ve been lagging behind the Marvel movies. DC rolled out several teasers this weekend, many highlighting concept art as they make their way to their final stages of production. Each of the new movies has promise, and you’ll want to compare them to our single Marvel preview below.
Below check out trailers for two 2022 horror movies, a Marvel series coming soon, and five movies starring characters from the pages of DC Comics, beginning next year.
Writer/director S. Craig Zahler’s 2015 film release Bone Tomahawk starts as a classic Western about life on the frontier–living at home, visiting the local saloon, working in the local Sheriff’s office. It quickly becomes a genre-bending damsel in distress/ “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” picture and much more. Several other genre elements are woven together to create a solid, serious drama that is equal parts suspense thriller and gritty, meaty Western that rises above most efforts to make a classic Western in the past 45 years, if you forgive it for one scene that dips into gruesome, in-your-face horror. Put Bone Tomahawk up there with Silverado. It’s a far better Western than even the much celebrated Unforgiven.
Bone Tomahawk follows four men as they pursue the mysterious captors of a local frontier doctor–a woman (played by Lili Simmons)–and the criminal she was operating on (played by David Arquette) and the on-hand sheriff’s deputy (played by Evan Jonigkeit). It’s a simple story, yet it couldn’t be more unique in its execution. In possibly Kurt Russell’s finest bit of reserved, serious acting ever on film, he plays Sheriff Hunt. Made of the same mettle as Gary Cooper in High Noon and John Wayne in The Searchers, he is relentless in his pursuit. Patrick Wilson is equally relentless as the husband of the missing doctor. His leg has been wounded from a fall and so he must forge ahead limping along throughout the film as he sleuths out what is really going on. Think of him as a mix of Gary Cooper in Sergeant York and Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. Lost’s Matthew Fox is the slick but honorable, impeccably dressed gentleman barfly, who once had a thing for the doctor, and volunteers to help find her. The posse is rounded out by the now crotchety character actor from film and TV, Richard Jenkins. He’s droll and provides a different flavor of humor along the way.
Zahler isn’t afraid to let the movie flow at its own pace, and allow the viewer to soak up the scenery, the Western tropes, the camaraderie of the team as they eat and sleep and take their horses forward through the long desert way. It’s an 1890s Assault on Precinct 13, only like High Plains Drifter the nature of the mystery is hidden from us for so long that the anticipation warrants calling this out as a top-notch suspense thriller. Who stole the townsfolk and are they still alive? And what is that strange music we hear in the wind before bodies start falling? Like TheGhost and the Darkness, you want to run away from what is out there waiting for you–this feels like a ghost story, maybe even every frontier family’s personal nightmare come to life.
