The big horror-adjacent release of the month was… well, I’m assuming it was Ghostbusters: Afterlife, although I have to admit that I’ve heard almost nothing in terms of buzz about this film. Compared to the opinion-dividing 2016 Ghostbusters, which sparked a microcosmic culture war, few people seem interested in Afterlife. i wonder if this had something to do with the trailer, which (perhaps as a response to the notoriously awful trailer to the previous film) contained absolutely no humour whatsoever. I’m planning to see Afterlife, but it’s below House of Gucci and Eternals on my list.
Meanwhile, the Resident Evil films were rebooted with Welcome to Raccoon City. Critical reception has been poor — but then, the same can be said of the series as a whole.
Another revival of horrors past came in the form of an announcement that Hammer Films would team with Network Distributing to form Hammer Studios. Tim Beddows, managing director of Network, called the partnership “a really exciting opportunity to merge Hammer’s amazing library with Network’s infrastructure” that will involve not only restoring the Hammer back catalogue, but also “the development of new productions from the Hammer canon.”
Finally, while pulling together the draft for this post, I became aware of an utterly chilling example of real-life horror. A North Korean man has been sentenced to death for selling contraband copies of Squid Game, as reported at Radio Free Asia:
North Korea has sentenced to death a man who smuggled and sold copies of the Netflix series “Squid Game” after authorities caught seven high school students watching the Korean-language global hit show, sources in the country told RFA.
The smuggler is said to have brought a copy of Squid Game into North Korea back from China and sold USB flash drives containing the series. Sources said his sentence would be carried out by firing squad.
A student who bought a drive received a life sentence, while six others who watched the show have been sentenced to five years hard labor, and teachers and school administrators have been fired and face banishment to work in remote mines or themselves, the sources said.
Doris V. Sutherland 