DREAD X: THEY’RE INSIDE’s John-Paul Panelli And Schuyler Brumley’s Top 10 F*cked Up Family Dramas
This coming Tuesday sees the release of our found footage DREAD horror/thriller film They’re Inside, the debut feature of writer/director John-Paul Panelli. It’s a fierce indie title that we’re thrilled to have on our roster and we’re so excited for all of you to get the chance to give it a watch!
As many of you know, we have a column on Dread Central called Dread X, which is where we have experts in the horror industry pick a Top 10 list topic of their choosing and delve into what they love about their theme! Today, we bring you a new Dread X from the minds of the upcoming Dread title They’re Inside, writer/director John-Paul Panelli and producer Schuyler Brumley!
For their theme, the duo decided that we needed to know a bit about some families and the twisted, macabre shit that some have gone through. We all know about the Voorhees mother-son oddness and the strange dietary needs of the Sawyers, so let’s hear about some other families and their horrific ways.
Make sure to pick up your copy of They’re Inside!
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
There isn’t a writer/director today who can pull off the tone and style that Lanthimos can. The dry, direct, and emotionless dialogue is brilliant. He takes a girl-meets-boy story and crafts a hauntingly original drama… one where we never questioned the rules he set out in this world. Oh, and Colin Farrell’s finest performance on screen.
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lynn Ramsay’s breakout film is unbelievably heartbreaking. By showing the ending at the beginning, it enhances the horror instead of releasing the pressure valve. Narratively, it’s like seeing the aftermath of a train crash and then rewinding to watch each nut and bolt pop out of place for two hours… it shouldn’t work but it does flawlessly.
Possession
Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani deliver visceral performances to be revered for decades in Żuławski’s film. Madness, demonic possession, sexual rage… all unmatched. Not to mention one of the craziest sex scenes ever to be filmed, with a creature from Academy Award Winner Carlo Rambaldi.
Tale of Two Sisters
This nightmare-inducing, skin-crawling, watch through your fingers Asian horror film is a staple for us in the genre. Kim Jee-woon knows what’s inherently scary, and does it with effortless ease. Leave the jump scares to the amateurs, he draws out the suspension piece by piece and builds to each unnerving scare with purposeful precision.
Babadook
Raising children as a single mother is difficult… Jennifer Kent knew exactly how to use horror to illustrate that fact. Paranoia, frustration, and fear all paint a very poignant picture of grief. Her use of space makes clear that loss constantly haunts just at the edge of our periphery.
Force Majeure
Östlund takes a simple premise, sets it in the French Alps, and executes it with cinematic mastery. He lets scenes play out in wides, adding all the more to the chemistry between the cast, but also to the realism of the story. Everyone wants to believe they’d make the right decision when tragedy strikes (or when we think it does) and Östlund shows that hubris in poetic clarity.
Curse of the Cat People
Simone Simon gives one of our favorite eerie performances and to see how they brought her character back after the ending of Cat People was a delight. It’s hard to have a sequel so vastly different from the original but Curse does just that to great effect.
The Witch
No one probably thought Eggers could pull off this folklore horror with accurate dialogue from the era. Duly so for a subject that has been done to death for years, yet he did so with the skill of a seasoned director. Adding in Black Phillip, we have our generation’s iconic Bruce and we’re all the better for it.
Coraline
This movie isn’t SCARY but it is unsettling in a way that stays in your mind long after your first view. Henry Sellick is the master at kid-friendly spooks and pairing him with Neil Gaiman was a masterstroke for Laika. For those of you who might think, “that’s not a fucked-up family movie,” try having a mother figure spend her eternal life trying to rip your eyes out and replace it with buttons and tell us it wasn’t fucked up.
Oldboy
Pushing the boundaries for Park Chan-wook is his signature and he punishes the audience never more than in the 2nd installment of his Vengeance trilogy. Shocking, disturbing, and devastating… the ending hits you in the core of your being. One of the best “one-shot” takes in cinema, coupled with eating a live octopus, Oldboy is in its own category of horror.
“When two sisters go to an isolated cabin in the woods to film a passion project, family secrets start to get in the way… as do masked strangers filming a passion project of their own.“
The directorial debut of John-Paul Panelli, who wrote the film alongside Schuyler Brumley, They’re Inside stars Karli Hall, Amanda Kathleen Ward, Jake Ferree, Sascha Ghafoor, Chelsea d. Miller, Alex Rinehart, and Matthew Peschio. The film was produced by Derek Dennis Herbert and Andrew Barcello, who were the team behind our DREAD documentary To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story.
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