SYNOPSIS: In “Anniversary,” a new thriller now playing in theatres, Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler play Ellen and Paul, a liberal Georgetown University academic and chef celebrating twenty-five years of marriage. When Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), their son Josh’s (Dylan O’Brien) new girlfriend, writes a political screed titled “The Change: The New Social Contract,” its success sows the seeds of discontent within the family and the country.
CAST: Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Madeline Brewer, Zoey Deutch, Phoebe Dynevor, Mckenna Grace, Daryl McCormack, and Dylan O’Brien. Directed by Jan Komasa.
REVIEW: One of the least subtle films of the year, “Anniversary” dives headfirst into a maelstrom of ideological extremism, buried secrets and societal polarization.
Featuring a large ensemble cast of veterans and newcomers, “Anniversary” begins at a lavish 25th anniversary celebration for Ellen and Paul (Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler). Son Josh’s (Dylan O’Brien) date is Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), a former student of Ellen’s, kicked out of school after Ellen denounced her radical views. She’s now the author of “The Change: The New Social Contract,” a political diatribe supporting the implication of a “no-party” system that aims to “put the ‘united’ back in these states of America.”
As the book becomes a national best-seller Ellen can’t hide her disapproval with its ideas of a singular, unified national belief system. “The book is a weapon,” she says amid her growing concerns for the fate of democracy as a spawning movement known as The Change, endorse pledging an oath to an alternate American flag.
Liz’s newfound popularity during the rise of The Change—“The greatest movement in the history of this nation.”—reveals fractures in Ellen and Paul’s family and in the country. “Everything around us is changing,” says daughter Birdie (Mckenna Grace). “Fear went mainstream.
A study of radicalism, “Anniversary” delivers its message with the force of a knee to the groin. Director Jan Komasa, working from a screenplay by Lori Rosene-Gambino, keeps the telling of the cautionary tale taut, creating a pressure-cooker of tension and menace.
The ideological conflict between the family—the “Non-Changers”—and The Change escalates quickly, but Komasa smartly keeps the focus on the individuals and the radical transformations in their lives. “You have obliterated us,” Ellen says to Liz. “What more do you want?”
O’Brien is chilling as he navigates Josh’s transformation from failed writer to intimidating demagogue. A contentious scene between Josh and Paul allows O’Brien and Chandler to explore the boundaries of the polarization that has gripped the family in a powerful fashion.
That edgy conflict drips with ice, but it is the helplessness Ellen and Paul, once a couple living their best lives, feels as their existence is completely upended by The Change that resonates. “You need to decide,” a census taker tells them, “whether you’re with us for against us.”
“Anniversary” is a provocative, timely drama that swings for the fences, and while the portrait it paints of extremism is vivid, and in many ways uncompromising, it is the personal toll of the characters that unnerves.
SYNOPSIS: In “Lesbian Space Princess,” an irreverent animated sci-fi comedy musical for adults now playing in theatres, the introverted Princess Shaira (Shabana Azeez) leaves her sheltered life on planet Clitopolis behind to travel through space in search of her ex-girlfriend, Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel). After she is kidnapped by Straight White Maliens.
CAST: Shabana Azeez, Bernie Van Tiel, Gemma Chua-Tran, Richard Roxburgh, Kween Kong, and comedy troupe Aunty Donna, Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane. Directed by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese.
REVIEW: A mix of raunchy humor and heartfelt moments, “Lesbian Space Princess” is a delightfully campy sci fi adventure.
At the film’s start Princess Shaira (Shabana Azeez), daughter of Planet Clitopolis’s two lesbian queens, is devastated. Kiki, her girlfriend of two weeks dumped her, and now, has been kidnapped by the villainous the Straight White Maliens. These rectangular-shaped alien incels took Kiki in hopes of luring Princess Shaira and her mystical double-sided axe, the labrys, which they plan on stealing to power their “chick magnet.”
As Shaira traverses the Gaylaxy in search of her ex, she encounters drag queen Blades (Kween Kong), saves former gay-pop idol Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran) from an abandoned moon crystal mine and learns to embrace self-love over the affections of others. “ I went through all this,” Shaira says, “and why? Cuz I wanted Kiki to love me? Now I see my biggest problem is that I didn’t even love myself. We deserve to love ourselves without a chick magnet.”
Like an extended episode of “South Park” “Lesbian Space Princess” is fast paced, vibrant and packed with madcap humor and situations, but after the laughs it’s the film’s surprisingly sweet edge that lingers.
We can all imagine the fear that comes along with being chased by a werewolf. Or waking up to find Dracula staring down at you. They are living, breathing (or in Drac’s case, dead and not so breathing, but you get the idea) embodiments of evil. But how about inanimate objects? Have you ever been terrified of a lamp? Or creeped out by a tire?
In this weekend’s The Possession, a Dybbuk Box purchased at a yard sale brings misfortune to everyone who comes in contact with it.
It’s not the first time that the movies have imbued an inert object with evil powers.
There have been loads of haunted houses in the movies. In most of them, however, the house is merely a vessel for a spirit or some unseen entity that makes its presence know by making the walls bleed or randomly slamming doors. Rarer is the house that is actually evil.
Stephen King wrote about a house that eats people in the third installment of his Dark Tower series. On screen Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg visualized the idea in the appropriately titled Monster House.
In this animated movie three teens figure out the house across the street is a man-eating monster.
By the time they got around to the fourth installment of the most famous haunted house series, the Amityville Horror, filmmakers had to figure out a new plotline apart from the tired “new owners move in to the house, get freaked out leave,” storyline. In The Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes, a cursed lamp causes all sorts of trouble when it is shipped from the evil Long Island house to a Californian mansion.
Much weirder is Rubber, the story of a killer tire — yes, you read that right — with psychokinetic powers — think Carrie with treads — who terrorizes the American southwest. It’s an absurdist tract on how and why we watch movies, what entertainment is and the movie business, among other things. But frankly, mostly it’s about a tire rolling around the desert and while there is something kind of hypnotic about watching the tire on its murderous journey — think Natural Born Killers but round and rubbery — that doesn’t mean Rubber is a good movie.
Finally, think bed bugs are bad? How about a hungry bed? The title of this one sums it up: Death Bed: The Bed that Eats.
Final Destination 5 is a chronicle of carnage in which a group of good looking young people die in the most terrible ways imaginable, usually preceded by the tell tale line, “Something’s wrong!”
For example, a gymnast earns a 9.5 from the Splatterville judge and star Jacqueline MacInnes Wood succumbs to laser surgery gone horribly wrong. It’s the kind of movie which makes audiences shout, “No, you didn’t!” and “Awwwwwwwwwwwww! I can never un-see that!” usually while laughing and having a gruesome good time.
This week I asked Wood why people would pay money to go see her movie.
“We’re all twisted,” she said. “That’s the answer.”
Others have different ideas. In his excellent book Shock Value author Jason Zinoman suggests that one of the pleasures of getting scared at the movies is “that it focuses the mind.” He uses the example of a baby being born. “Try to imagine the shock of one world running into another,” he writes. “Nothing is familiar and the slightest detail registers as shockingly new. Think of the futility of trying to process what is going on. No wonder they scream.
“Overwhelming terror,” he continues, “may be the closest we ever get to the feeling of being born.”
Whether it’s as deep seeded as that or not, there is no denying that terror is a primal feeling. Its part of our DNA but, counter intuitively, it isn’t horrible when experienced at the movies. As Eduardo Andrade and Joel B. Cohen said in a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, “the most pleasant moments of a particular event may also be the most fearful.”
A Saturday matinee screening of Paranormal Activity was the first and only time I ever heard anyone actually scream in a theatre. I don’t mean a quiet whimper followed by an embarrassed laugh or a frightened little squeal. No, I mean a full-on, open throated howl of terror. But the woman didn’t run from the theatre. She stayed and enjoyed the rest of the film, so she must have liked the cathartic release of tension the scream gave her.
Alfred Hitchcock, knew how to scare the wits out of people. The shower scene in Psycho, for example, is a benchmark in cinematic fear. If he had any doubts about the effectiveness of that sequence they must have been put to bed when he received an angry letter from a father whose daughter stopped bathing after seeing the bathtub murder scene in Les Diaboliques and then, more distressingly, refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitch’s response to the concerned dad? “Send her to the dry cleaners.”
The director was always quick with a line, but when it got down to the business of terrifying audiences he summed up the appeal of the scary movie in one brief sentence: “People like to be scared when they feel safe.”
Without Night of the Living Dead movies like 28 Days Later, Shawn of the Dead or even Zombie Strippers wouldn’t exist. In 1968 the story of story of people trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse trying to survive an attack by reanimated ghouls dragged a bloody new horror genre into the marketplace. For better (see Re-Animator) and for worse (see Zombie Nightmare) the movie Rex Reed called “a classic” has spawned four decades of brain eating and head explosions, but according to the film’s co-author John Russo the origin of the idea was anything but sinister.
“Sometime in the winter of 1966 George Romero and I were having lunch with Richard Ricci,” says Russo, then a co-partner with Romero and Russell Streiner (who has the film’s most famous line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!”) in The Latent Image, a commercial television production house. “George and I were complaining about the fickleness of our commercial clients who, when they had not too much money to spend, would come to us for a good, creative job on their spots and sales films, and would promise to come back to us next time, when they would have more money to spend. But when they got more money they’d run away to the supposed glitz and glamour of New York or Hollywood. Richard said, ‘So why don’t you do something about it?’ I thought about it and said, ‘We oughtta be able to make something better than the crap we see on Chiller Theater.’
“George right away got excited, slammed the table with his big hand, sending bottles and glasses flying, and yelled, ‘We’re gonna make a movie!’”
The two batted around several ideas. One, titled Monster Flick, was a horror comedy about teenage aliens, while another focused on flesh eating aliens. “But we quickly discovered that we could not afford all the necessary special effects,” he says, so the writing continued.
“We’d go to work late at night in separate offices, at separate typewriters,” says Russo. “I said right away that our story should start in a cemetery because folks found cemeteries spooky. I was working on a script that started in a cemetery and involved aliens coming to earth in search of human flesh. But George took a break at Christmas time and came back with half of a story that started in a cemetery, and was in essence what became the first half of Night of the Living Dead. There were all the proper twists and turns and a lot of excitement, but George never said who the attackers were or why they were attacking.
“I said, ‘I like this, George, but who are these attackers? You never say.’ And he said he didn’t know. So I said, ‘It seems to me they could be dead people. But why are they attacking? What are they after?’ Again, he said he didn’t know. So I said, ‘Why don’t we use my flesheating idea?’ And he agreed.
“So that’s how the modern flesheating zombies were born!”
The film, titled Night of the Flesheaters, was shot on a shoe string budget—Bosco Chocolate Syrup and pig’s intestines subbed for real blood and guts—in rural Pennsylvania between June and December 1967. Once finished, Russo and Romero had a hard time selling the movie because of its unflinching violence and gory special effects. The pair stuck to their guns, however, denying distributor after distributor who demanded cuts or a happy ending. Finally they found a company who would show the film uncensored but there was still a problem.
“There was already a movie called Flesheaters, and their attorney threatened us, so we had to come up with a different title,” says Russo. “George Romero decided on Night of Anubis, after the Egyptian god of the dead. This was a weak title, and when Continental Pictures got ready to distribute we changed it to Night of the Living Dead.”
The movie premiered on October 1, 1968 earning a rave from Roger Ebert and that other mark of success for a horror film, condemnation from fundamentalist Christian groups.
These days it doesn’t take a lot of braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains to see the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The ghoulish story is considered a classic, has spawned comedies like the box office hit Zombieland and serious television shows like The Walking Dead and was even selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
“We were absolutely dedicated toward making a movie that was true to its premise and the motivations of its characters, from start to finish,” says Russo, adding, “[the movie] struck a primal chord in everybody, perhaps because of the atavistic memory of our species as easy prey for wild beasts, which we were for most of human history. We all carry the deep-seated fear of being devoured.”
Two far flung events inspired director Tobe Hooper to write The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the down-and-dirty 1974 indie film that spawned sequels, prequels and last year’s splashy 3D remake–the imaginatively titled Texas Chainsaw 3D.
In November 1957 police raided the home of Plainfield, Wisconsin farmer Ed Gein, uncovering some gruesome evidence that would lead to charges of murder and body snatching. After two trials he spent the rest of his life in a mental facility, but his story would go on to inspire three memorable movie characters–Norman Bates from Psycho, Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs and one other that would serve as the basis for six films.
Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface in Texas Chain Saw Massacre, says Hooper and co-writer Kim Henkel based the character of the hooded chainsaw killer on Gein.
“When they set out to write this movie,” he said, “they decided to have a family of killers who had some of the characteristics of Gein: the skin masks, the furniture made from bones, the possibility of cannibalism.”
Hooper adds the story was also partially inspired by “the massacres and atrocities in the Vietnam War” and a display of chainsaws in the hardware section of a crowded Montgomery Ward’s department store.
“The idea popped,” he remembered. “I said, ‘Ooh, I know how I could get out of this place fast — if I just start one of these things up and make that sound.’”
That nerve jangling noise–the revving of a chainsaw–has been the soundtrack of terror ever since. The original is an atmospheric gem, a white-knuckle movie that made Leatherface the first icon of modern horror.
The apron-wearing cannibal has appeared in five more films–most of which don’t veer too far from the original plot line of unsuspecting kids falling prey to a family of demented, cannibalistic inbreds. There’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2, directed by Tobe Hooper and starring Dennis Hopper, Leatherface: TCM III, TCM: The Next Generation (starring the then unknown Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, TCM: The Beginning and the new 3D version.
Leatherface’s scares don’t always happen on screen, however. At the Kingsway Theatre in Toronto the flick inspired audience participation when someone dressed in a butcher’s outfit ran down the aisle brandishing a real, revving chainsaw.
A: A Quiet Place: Imagine living in complete silence. Never raising your voice over the level of a faint whisper. No music. No heavy footsteps. You can’t even sneeze. Silence. Then imagine your life depends on staying completely noiseless. That’s the situation for the Abbott family—and the rest of the world—in the effective thriller A Quiet Place. Uncluttered and low key, it’s a unique and unsettling horror film.
B: Black Christmas: Without this groundbreaking 1974 Canadian horror film there might never have been a Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers. Between them the gruesome threesome has sliced and diced their way through at least two dozen movies, but the mayhem they imposed on promiscuous college girls and studly teens owes much to one film made in Toronto, a movie Film Threat magazine calls “the first modern slasher movie.”
C: Candyman (2021): Candyman is a movie that succeeds on two levels, as a comment on the echoes of historical racism that can be heard today and as a horror film that’ll scare the pants off of you. A study of trauma in the Black community, “Candyman” expands the scope of the original to suggest that the Candyman isn’t singular. In the 2021 film William says, “Candyman’s the whole damn hive,” representing all Black men who have been lost to race-based violence.
D: The Descent: The Descent is scary. Run home to your Momma scary. Scream like a little girl scary. Close your eyes and think of something else scary. “Hold me, I’m scared” scary. There are gory moments, but it isn’t the blood and guts that terrifies. It is the hopeless situation, the unrelenting air of menace that really plays on the viewer’s fears.
E: The Exorcist: This one so traumatized audiences with shots of the possessed Regan MacNeil’s 360-degree head spinning that in the U.K. the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade were on-call at screenings to tend to fainters. Star Linda Blair says she wasn’t traumatized by the film but admits there has been one long lasting side effect. “You wouldn’t believe how often people ask me to make my head spin around,” she says.
F: Freaks: Set in the world of a funfair sideshow, it features a cast primarily made up of actual carnival performers—like Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman and Prince Randian a.k.a. the Human Torso—to tell the story of a beautiful trapeze artist who agrees to marry a deformed sideshow performer for his money. As a young man, director Tod Browning (who also helmed Dracula) had been a member of a travelling circus and that experience brought such a horrifying realism to the story that one woman threatened to sue MGM, claiming the film had caused her to suffer a miscarriage.
G: Ginger Snaps: From 2000, and directed by John Fawcett, this is a great reinvention of the werewolf myth that mixes and matches a werewolf tale with a coming-of-age story.
H: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person: Atmospheric and gothic though it may be, the movie is actually a tender-hearted story that uses the undead to celebrate life. It breathes some of the same fetid air as What We Do In The Shadows, Let the Right One In and Only Lovers Left Alive in its creation of a vampire world that intersects with our own. Quebec filmmaker Ariane Louis-Seize builds a world for reluctant vampire Sasha to inhabit that feels familiar, like our reality, only filtered through a Tim Burton lens.
I: It Follows: It Follows is a hybrid of genres. It’s a scary film through and through, but it’s the dual horror of teenage boredom and ennui coupled with a strange and terrifying supernatural virus that is transmitted sexually. Coming of age and body/mind horror steeped together in an unholy mix and it is an effective brew.
J: Jennifer’s Body: A bloody story about demonic transference and a cheerleading succubus who feeds on the intestines of teenage boys, Jennifer’s Body breathes the same air as the great Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps. Both are inventive takes on established horror mythology—in Ginger’s case it was the werewolf legend here it is demonic possession—and both feature humor and lots of blood and guts.
K: Killer Klowns from Outer Space: Killer Klowns from Outer Space will scare the heck out of coulrophobics. The alien Klowns are beautifully realized creations, reminiscent of the outrageous puppets form the British television satire Spitting Image. Beneath large painted-on grins are rows of yellowed sharp teeth, topped off with beady jaundiced eyes, oversized ears and wildly colored hair. Every feature is madly exaggerated until you have a living caricature of a clown—something funny, but weird and scary at the same time. That feeling is the film’s greatest asset. The creative minds behind Killer Klowns, the Chiodo Brothers—Charles, Edward and Stephen—manage to strike a balance between camp and seriousness by playing it straight. The situation is bizarre and some of the dialogue is downright cheesy, but the actors never wink at the camera. Hamming it up would have made Killer Klowns just another jokey sci-fi take-off, a self-conscious look at a genre that is easy to poke fun at.
L: Late Night with the Devil: Late Night with the Devil is a Faustian show biz satire about the price of success, that contains enough genuinely disturbing images and ideas to become a found footage favorite. The film’s production value and attention to detail makes it seem like we’re watching a suppressed tape of an actual broadcast, like “War of the Worlds,” only real. The skillful filmmaking builds up the tension to an exciting and eye-popping payoff.
M: Monster Squad: A 1987 teenage horror comedy that owes a big nod to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein with a side order of The Goonies thrown in for good measure.
N: Night of the Living Dead: The movie premiered on October 1,1968 earning a rave from Roger Ebert and that other mark of success for a horror film, condemnation from fundamentalist Christian groups. These days it doesn’t take a lot of braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains to see the legacy of Night of the Living Dead. The ghoulish story is considered a classic, has spawned comedies like the box office hit Zombieland and serious television shows like The Walking Dead and was even selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry as a film deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
O: Orphan: There are a couple of lines necessary for the success of every Creepy Kid movie. Chief among them: “I have a surprise for you, Mommy!” Why is the line so successful? Because the surprise is never good. A close second is the old, “I don’t think Mommy likes me very much” gag. These lines work because of the juxtaposition of innocence against a malevolent backdrop. In other words, evil children are scary. As Orphan’s resident creepy kid, Isabelle Fuhrman is particularly good, just other-worldly looking enough to be freaky but able to turn on the charm when she needs to. She is a stern mistress who I could see inspiring a drinking game. How about a shot of Jäger every time she gives someone the creepy kid stink eye? You’d be on your butt before the forty-minute mark.
P: Psycho: If Alfred Hitchcock had any doubts about the effectiveness of the shower sequence in Psycho they must have been put to bed when he received an angry letter from the father whose daughter stopped bathing after seeing the bathtub murder scene in Les Diaboliques and then, more distressingly, refused to shower after seeing Psycho. Hitch’s response to the concerned dad? “Send her to the dry cleaners.”
Q: Q: The Winged Serpent: In a career filled with gonzo movies, exploitation director Larry Cohen outdid himself with his big monster opus Q: The Winged Serpent. The story of a petty thief, played by Law & Order’s Michael Moriarty, who comes across the nest of winged, reptilian Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. “It couldn’t have been an egg,” he says. “There are no eggs that big!” His discovery unwittingly unleashes “the fantastic flying forces of a lost age” on New York City. It’s called Quetzalcoatl, the trailer tells us,” but just call it Q because that’s all you’ll have time to say before it tears you apart.” Shot in just 18 days, this is a creature feature unlike any other. The cut rate special effects reveal its bottom-of the-barrel-budget, but fun performances from Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carradine and Richard Roundtree and Cohen ‘s energetic work breathe life into the film, about which critic Colin Greenland noted, “It is not often that a film is enjoyable as a monster movie, a character study and a satire, but Q: The Winged Serpent scores on every one.”
R: Ready or Not: This film is a bloody satire with sly commentary about the lengths the 1% will do to keep their cash. The surprisingly nasty third act gives “Ready or Not” the feel of a future cult classic, a crowd-pleaser with some laughs and a giddily gory climax.
S: Sleepaway Camp: This gory slasher flick is most notable for a wild twist ending that has been called a “jaw-dropping, tape-rewinding, pause-and-stare-and-call-your-friends-over-to-stare” moment. Ignore the sequels, although the number two’s title Unhappy Campers is pretty great.
T: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: An atmospheric gem, a white-knuckle movie that made Leatherface the first icon of modern horror. It’s an unforgettable movie. An atmospheric gem that, combined with other transgressive films like “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Last House on the Left,” initiated a modern age of horror in the 1970s.
U: Us: Inspired by an episode of the Eisenhower-era Twilight Zone series called “Mirror Image,” Us is a gory take on class structure, on the chasm between rich and poor, between those with power and advantages and those without. It’s an outlandish story but the powerful message resonates loudly.
V: Viva La Muerte (Long Live Death): Risky and upsetting viewing, but in the avant-garde descriptions is a beautifully crafted — although completely gonzo — portrait of a young person in mental anguish.
W: The Witch: The Witch is the kind of horror film that is not content to simply say “Boo!” There are few, if any, jump scares in the film. Instead, it’s the kind of puritanical folk tale that slowly burrows itself into your brain, leaving you queasy and uneasy. It won’t be for everyone, and certainly not for casual horror fans. There’s no Freddys or Jasons in sight, just pure terror.
X: X: X is a throwback to the horror of Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, but with a sensibility that simultaneously feels like a tribute and an update.
Y: You’re Next: Disturbing, violent and without any redeeming social value, this home invasion survivalist film, doesn’t offer anything new in terms of motive for the killing, but the ruthless efficiency with which the killing is done is chilling. Morals or feelings need not apply. So even though there isn’t a lot of blood—it is mostly implied—the film still packs a grisly punch.
Z: Zombieland: Making a horror comedy is tricky business. Do it right and you get a classic like “Sean of the Dead,” a movie whose body count is offset by just the right amount of laughs. Do it wrong and you’ll wind up with “Repossessed,” a movie that is neither funny nor scary, just dull. “Zombieland” director Ruben Fleischer understands that horror comedies are neither fish nor fowl—they are both. For every decapitation you must have a giggle and Zombieland delivers on both counts.
I appear on “CTV News at 11:30” with anchor Natalie Johnson to talk about the weekend’s best movies, on streaming and in theatres. We have a look at the Broadway drama “Blue Moon,” the psychological drama “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” and the Netflix dramedy “Nobody Wants This.”
On a special Halloween edition of The Richard Crouse Show I’ll have a look at a list of Canadian horror films that are scarier than the Frankenstein Burger King on Clifton Hill. I’ll tell you about a 3D archaeologist, a werewolf movie that reinvents the genre, the first slasher flick, a vocal virus, Canuck zombies and much more.
SYNOPSIS: In “Anniversary,” a new thriller now playing in theatres, Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler play Ellen and Paul, a liberal Georgetown University academic and chef celebrating twenty-five years of marriage. When Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), their son Josh’s (Dylan O’Brien) new girlfriend, writes a political screed titled “The Change: The New Social Contract,” its success sows the seeds of discontent within the family and the country.
