Deader

The case studies keep coming in the week's ongoing discussion. If you're arriving via Google and not following along, the gist is that the excellent new wave of European and particularly French horror is having its talent snatched up immediately and brought to the States, and usually jumped in with a horror remake or sequel.

Exhibit J: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, whose Inside (À l'Intérieur) opened in France in June after a strong showing at Cannes. Starring Béatrice Dalle and Alysson Paradis, reputedly gory and scary, it's made the festival rounds to great acclaim, but won't see a theatrical release here, instead hitting DVD in early March.

Would have liked to see it a bit sooner, not only because of the good word but to fit in with a current moment of pregnancy-anxiety films: both Jason Reitman's interestingly cast Juno and Cristian Mungiu's Romanian drama Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days should both be hitting scattered critical top ten lists in the next few weeks. Four Months will see a limited release in about six weeks; Juno opened yesterday in limited release and has good word-of-mouth potential - the timing's good, with Michael Cera showing up again in theatres just as Superbad hits DVD.

If anyone's paying attention to the zeitgeist, it couldn't hurt to rush post-production on that mysterious It's Alive remake, which was supposedly shot nearly a year ago. Poster art surfaced, but as it indicates a February 2007 release date, it might not be bankable.

Bustillo and Maury get a higher-profile start than, say, Eric Valette's work on the One Missed Call remake. They'll be handling Hellraiser, a relaunch of the longstanding horror series, which kicked off in 1987 with an interesting start and, by most accounts, made it about one more worthwhile film into the series before devolving into straight-to-video work with #5: Hellraiser: Inferno, on the way to a well-padded eight installments featuring subtitles such as Deader and Hellseeker.

The series has stagnated, to say the least. The latest entry, 2005's Hellraiser: Hellworld, features Doug Bradley's iconic Pinhead character showing up to inflict otherworldly torments on a bunch of computer hackers. Speaking of showing up, hey, Lance Henriksen, thanks. In any case, when your two-decade horror franchise is taking thematic hints from Fear Dot Com, it's time to call it a day. Alternately, reboots are the order of the day, so look for Hellraiser in 2009. Bustillo and Maury are calling their approach different and new: Bustillo offers familiar, famous last words: "It will not be a remake."