7 New Movies That Sound Totally Bonkers (In A Good Way)
Our brains can only store so much information about upcoming movies. Right now, most of us are probably thinking about Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, Cats, The Irishman, Cats, the Jumanji seq- shit, we're thinking about Cats again. Since we're practically drowning in entertainment these days, from time to time, we like to single out some of the movies we're excited about that don't contain celebrities belting show tunes in skintight costumes (we're fairly sure). Such as ...
You Don't Nomi -- Basically Room 237, But For Showgirls
As we've mentioned before, Showgirls may secretly be a work of genius. You know, one of those works of genius where Jessie from Saved By The Bell grinds against Agent Cooper. The movie has been somewhat reevaluated lately, and the best example of this may be the upcoming essay film You Don't Nomi. Pairing clips with critical commentary in the same style as Room 237 (the 2013 movie featuring crazy theories about The Shining), You Don't Nomi aims to "explore the complicated afterlife of 1995's biggest film flop."
Will this documentary help change the way we think about Showgirls? Quite possibly. On Rotten Tomatoes, You Don't Nomi already has a far higher rating than its subject. Of course, Showgirls wasn't the only giant flop of 1995, so perhaps we'll soon get a documentary defending Cutthroat Island? Or Waterworld? Come to think of it, Showgirls may have been the only non-aquatic blockbuster bomb that year. Unless you count that awkward swimming pool scene.
Related: 15 Bad Movies That Would Be Great With Just One Change
Free Guy -- Ryan Reynolds Realizes He's An NPC
Here's something for anyone who's ever felt pangs of guilt after mowing down a sidewalk full of pedestrians in a Grand Theft Auto game. Free Guy stars Ryan Reynolds as a bank teller who realizes that he's a non-player character in an open-world action video game. Think of it like The Truman Show, if Jim Carrey was in constant danger of being murdered by some thug controlled by a 15-year-old kid.
The movie is directed by Shawn Levy, who explored the similarly high-concept premise of "What if museums weren't super boring?" in the Night At The Museum series. In addition to Reynolds, the cast will include Taika Waititi, Jodie Comer from Killing Eve, and Joe Keery from Stranger Things and all those articles about how the show screwed up his hair. Exploring the complex world of what life is like for video game characters certainly sounds promising. Or, you know, you could stay home and watch old episodes of Reboot instead. Your call.
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The Wretched Is Rear Window, But With A Witch
There have been countless variations on Alfred Hitchcock's iconic Rear Window over the years. The story of a nosy housebound photographer suspecting his neighbor of murder has been parodied by The Simpsons, has been referenced in pretty much every Brian DePalma movie, and obviously inspired Disturbia, starring Shia Lebeouf (clearly the Jimmy Stewart of 2007). Perhaps a little too inspired, leading to a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement. But no one has thought of blending that familiar setup with the supernatural ... until now. The new horror movie The Wretched finds a teenager summering with his newly divorced dad. Presumably as a distraction from having to think of how his dad is probably on Tinder now, he spies on their neighbors and notices something evil.
The young "hipster" couple who live next door suddenly don't have their baby, and insist that they never had a baby, which is either disturbing or a huge continuity error. It turns out that the answer to all this mysteriousness involves a "thousand-year-old witch"! Which sounds great! Maybe Hitchcock just forgot witches were a thing he totally could put in his movie.
Vivarium -- Jesse Eisenberg Gets Trapped In A Creepy Housing Development
For a lot of us, the prospect of actually buying a home is essentially science fiction, so it makes sense that a young couple's search for a house has become a creepy, Twilight Zone-esque movie. Vivarium stars Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots as a couple who "get trapped in a strange housing development" after being abandoned by a suspicious realtor. Soon they're stuck, and can't seem to escape this madness ... so at least Eisenberg gets a taste of how we felt watching those damn Now You See Me movies.
Vivarium is directed by Lorcan Finnegan, who previously made a horror movie called Without Name (or there was some kind of glitch on IMDb when we looked it up). Between the intriguing premise and the talented cast, we're excited about this existential nightmare distracting us from the regular day-to-day existential nightmare we live in.
Related: 6 Of The Greatest Movies Ever (Sucked Before Reshoots)
Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon -- A Superpowered Fantasy From The Director Of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
We don't know a ton about Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon yet. Apparently it's a "fantasy-adventure" about "a girl with unusual and dangerous powers who escapes from a mental asylum and tries to make it on her own in New Orleans." What has us excited is the talent. It stars Kate Hudson, Craig Robinson, and Jun Jong-Seo from the critically acclaimed Burning.
Most promisingly, this is the new film from Ana Lily Amirpour, who directed the offbeat vampire movie A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night and The Bad Batch, about a cannibal-filled post-apocalyptic wasteland. And after this, she's set to helm a "female-led Cliffhanger reboot" starring whoever is the 2020 female equivalent of Sylvester Stallone.
Color Out Of Space -- Nicolas Cage Meets H.P. Lovecraft
Putting Nicolas Cage in an H.P. Lovecraft story seems like the peanut butter and chocolate of cinematic insanity. It's kind of surprising that it hasn't happened already. Thankfully, this fever dream came together for the upcoming Color Out Of Space. It also co-stars Tommy Chong, so ready your fan theories about how it all takes place inside his pot-addled brain. The movie finds Cage raising alpacas on a rural farm (classic Cage), when his family is threatened by an alien presence with the lighting scheme of a Prince concert.
And again, your anchor for this cosmic horror is the dude from Face/Off. The movie is directed by Richard Stanley, famous for the cyberpunk thriller Hardware and not directing The Island Of Dr. Moreau. Stanley's experience with that ill-fated project was memorably chronicled in a recent documentary. Stanley hadn't made a fiction feature in the more than 20 years since then. His big return has been playing the festival circuit to mostly mixed reviews, but it still seems worth getting excited about. At least until the next weird movie Cage bashes out to pay off his collection of castles and dinosaur skulls.
Scream Queen -- A Documentary About The Gay "Subtext" In A Nightmare On Elm Street 2
You don't have to tell us that A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge has blatant gay themes; we've been talking about that since 2009. In fact, screenwriter David Chaskin once called Cracked's ranking of Freddy's Revenge as the #1 Most Unintentionally Gay Horror Movie a "badge of honor." So we're primed for Scream Queen, a new documentary about actor Mark Patton, his complicated relationship with the movie, and how he deals with his "legacy as cinema's first male 'scream queen.'"
Scream Queen doesn't just cover the movie, but also provides broader context about the AIDS crisis and homophobia in the '80s, and ultimately seems to detail Patton's personal journey as a gay man in Hollywood. Not unlike Showgirls, perhaps A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 warrants reexamination for quietly shoehorning gay themes into a horror blockbuster in 1980s America. And, of course, for that dance scene.
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