Latest news with #horror
BreakingNews.ie
27 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- BreakingNews.ie
28 Years Later review: Another relentless apocalyptic horror from Danny Boyle
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have produced another horror masterpiece with 28 Years Later , the third instalment in the '28 Days' universe. The director and writer were not heavily involved in the followup, '28 Weeks Later', but they make a triumphant return in the new film. It is partly shot on iPhones, something introduced by Boyle with 28 Days later, and this contributes to the frantic and anxiety-inducing pace of the film as our new protagonisted go up against the infected. Advertisement This includes new additions to the creatures that were produced about the rage virus, including the terrifying 'alphas' who are able to effortlessly rip people's heads off. While the film is full of the action we saw in its two predecessors, Boyle and Garland manage to include a commentary on British society. With the rest of the world operating as normal as the 21st century rages on, Britain is quarantined to keep the infected from reaching the rest of the world, with navies patrolling its waters. In a remote island, survivors life a primitive but peaceful and safe existence, accessible to the foreboding 'mainland' only by a causeway only accessible when the tide recedes. Advertisement With Britain stuck in the past, it's hard to avoid the intended Brexit parable. This is only accentuated by Boyle's use of black and white World War footage, and a haunting score which includes 1903 poem " Boots " by Rudyard Kipling , recited by American actor Taylor Holmes. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) brings his 12-year-old son Spike (Alfie Williams) to the mainland to get his first kills in an almost ritualistic expedition, against the advice of the communiy's elders who warn that Spike is far too young. Ralph Fiennes in 28 Years Later. The horrors they encounter leave a mark on father and son, but Spike is determined to return to seek a cure for his seriously ill mother Islan ( Jodie Comer ). This is where we once again enconter Dr Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes). A key character in the first film, Dr Kelson steals the show once again. His descent into madness, looking like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse now, isn't quite what it seems, despite the temple of skulls he has amassed. The ending sets things up nicely for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is due for release in January 2026.
CNN
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Is ‘Jaws' what made us all fear sharks?
We hardly see the cartilaginous villain of 'Jaws' before it tears through a skinny-dipper, a dog, a little boy and an overconfident fisherman. It takes nearly two hours to finally watch the great white shark leap out of the water to swallow the gruff veteran Quint. Until then, we only really catch its dorsal fin before victims are ripped under the waves as the water around them turns the color of ketchup. 'Jaws' is credited with inventing the summer blockbuster. It inspired decades of creature features and suspenseful flicks. It kickstarted a whole subgenre of shark-centric horror (with diminishing returns). It also inflamed our fear of sharks as man-eating monsters, said Jennifer Martin, an environmental historian who teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 'I'm struggling to think of a parallel example of a film that so powerfully shaped our understanding of another creature,' she said. 'They were killing machines. They were not really creatures. They weren't playing an ecological role.' Fifty years on, 'Jaws' preys on our existing fears of the oceanic unknown. The film even briefly influenced the popularity of shark-killing tournaments after its release, Martin said. But it also enticed marine biologists and researchers to better understand the deranged shark at its center. Real white sharks are not as large as the demonic fish in 'Jaws,' nor do they hunt humans for bloodsport. But they are certainly intimidating, and they do occasionally bite the odd swimmer, sometimes fatally. 'Being bitten by a wild animal, and in particular one that lives in the ocean, was frightening for us already,' said Gregory Skomal, a marine biologist who has spent decades studying white sharks. 'That's really what I think 'Jaws' did — it put the fear in our face.' When 'Jaws' premiered to an invigorated public in June 1975, most of the research on sharks focused on preventing shark attacks, Skomal said. 'We knew it was big, it could swim fast and we knew it bit people,' he said. 'So those aspects of the film are fairly accurate, just exaggerated.' White sharks like the toothy menace of 'Jaws' already had a reputation for violence by the time the film premiered, Skomal said: There had been recorded attacks on fishermen and scuba divers in Australia and surfers in California. But sharks didn't evolve to feed on humans, Skomal said: They've existed for at least 400 million years — they predate dinosaurs by several hundred million. Sharks only encountered people in their waters in the last few thousand years, since we started exploring by sea. Though there's some disagreement, most shark researchers believe shark attacks are a case of mistaken identity: A shark may confuse a person for prey. They typically take a bite, realize their mistake and move on, Skomal said. Not so in 'Jaws.' The film's shark dispatches his victims with purpose, munching on some body parts while leaving a head or arm as a warning to any who dare swim in his waters. 'That's one of the reasons the film is so powerful,' Martin said. 'None of us want to look like food.' In the decades before 'Jaws,' white sharks weren't considered to be among the ocean's most fearsome predators. In the early 20th century, many sharks were thought of as 'garbage eaters,' Martin said: Coastal cities dumped their garbage in the ocean, and clever sharks learned to anticipate the barges' arrival. Sharks, city dwellers thought, were 'not very beautiful, not very commercially important,' Martin said. 'An animal that's in an in-between space — sort of a pest, sort of dangerous.' After some misbegotten attempts to fish sharks commercially, humans started to invade the waters where sharks hung out, and sharks graduated from pest to predator. With the popularization of maritime activities like scuba diving and surfing in the mid-20th century, people were spending more time underwater, which meant they were more likely to bump into a shark, Martin said. 'There were so many more humans in there,' said Gavin Naylor, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History. 'It was just a matter of time before people got nobbled.' Previously, shark tales were mostly traded between fishermen who encountered them on the high seas. Now, with more people exploring 'shark-infested waters,' run-ins with sharks were getting picked up by local newspapers. A particularly scary documentary, 1971's 'Blue Water, White Death,' which featured a tense confrontation with aggressive white sharks, also helped shape our view of sharks as creatures to be feared, Skomal said — but 'Jaws' cemented it. The glee with which Amity Island's fishermen hunt would-be killer sharks wasn't totally fictional, either. Shark fishing tourneys already existed in the US prior to the success of 'Jaws,' but the film brought new publicity to the competitions and the sport of hunting 'trophy sharks,' Martin said. 'The killing of these animals became sanctioned, approved of, as a result of the film,' Martin said. Peter Benchley, who wrote the 1974 novel upon which the film was based, expressed some regret that some audiences viewed sharks as man-eating monsters because of 'Jaws,' a work of pure, pulpy fiction. ''Jaws,' the movie particularly, sparked a spurt of macho madness,' he told southwest Florida's News-Press in 2005. 'People were running around saying, 'Hey, let's slaughter sharks.'' Benchley later spent many years steeped in shark advocacy. Most contemporary audiences left 'Jaws' cheering for Chief Brody after he successfully exploded the monstrous shark (and overcame his fear of the open ocean, to boot!). But even scaredy cats couldn't deny that big old shark was fascinating. 'They are charismatic,' Martin said. 'They command our attention through their size, the way their bodies are shaped, their morphology, their behavior. But the big part of it is their ability to turn us into food. We don't like to be reminded of it, but we are food in an ecosystem.' Our morbid fascination with white sharks' ability to kill us drove the success of 'Jaws' and, eventually, decades of 'Shark Week,' Discovery's annual TV marathon that always features programs about fatal run-ins with sharks. (Discovery and CNN share a parent company.) 'We're drawn to things that could potentially hurt us,' Skomal said. 'And sharks have that unique history of being an animal, to this day, that can still harm us. The probability is extremely rare, but it's an animal that's shrouded in the ocean environment. We're land animals.' In the intervening years between the advent of shark fishing tournaments and our present, when dozens of nonprofits exist solely to serve shark conservation efforts, researchers have gotten to know the creatures beyond their enormous teeth. 'The negative perception of sharks at the time — which was tapped into and exacerbated by 'Jaws' — I think has definitely changed into fascination, respect, a desire to conserve, a desire to interact with and protect,' Skomal said. Now that we better understand their role in our underwater ecosystems — at the top of the food chain, they maintain balance by keeping the species below them in check — we can better appreciate white sharks (while maintaining a healthy dose of caution in waters they occupy), Martin said. Appreciation for sharks is especially important since several sharks species' populations have been on the decline, largely due to overfishing — sharks are often accidentally caught and killed. So it's perfectly wonderful to love sharks and want to protect them, said Naylor — just don't get too comfortable around them. 'Sharks are becoming the new cuddly whales,' he said. 'They're not. They are predaceous fishes that are efficient. They don't target people, but in certain conditions when water is murky, they make mistakes.' Need reminding of the potential dangers sharks can pose? Just watch 'Jaws.'
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
What drove a daughter, 36, to kill her parents and then hide their bodies in the family home for FOUR years - as her sister says: 'I understand why she did it, but I never want to see her again'
There is little to distinguish the Seventies three-storey property that stands on a corner of Pump Hill, in the Essex commuter village of Great Baddow. The metal shutters that, until recently, covered the entrance and garage, have been removed and the fake daffodils and stone hedgehog that once stood by the door have gone. A few weeks ago, house clearers arrived, emptying both home and garden. Yet, net curtains still hang limply at the windows where a small silver star - an overlooked Christmas decoration maybe - remains stuck to an upstairs pane of glass. It's the only enduring reminder of the family - and the horror - that once filled this home. Two of the most recent occupants are dead and the third, Virginia McCullough, is currently residing within the secure confines of HMP Downview, in Surrey. The crimes the bleached blonde, 37-year-old aspiring artist hid here - in her childhood home - are appalling and terrifying in equal measure, not simply because of what she did, but because they stand as ultimate proof that you really do never know what goes on behind closed doors. The truth about just what did go on here was revealed in September 2023, when the bodies of McCullough's parents, John and Lois, were found inside the property. They had been murdered and entombed – Lois, 71, in an upstairs wardrobe, sealed with tape and barricaded with breeze blocks and John, 70, in a makeshift mausoleum made from more blocks (Virginia bought 40 of them, along with sand and cement, at B&Q), in the downstairs study. She had, it transpired, been living with their bodies for four years, during which time she ploughed through tens of thousands of pounds of their savings, while tricking everyone into believing her parents were still alive, before their concerned GP finally raised the alarm. The extraordinary moment of her arrest was captured in police bodycam footage, released by Essex Police, after McCullough was jailed for life for murder - a crime she admitted - last October. The video, viewed hundreds of thousands of time online, is as chilling as it is macabre. 'Is there anything in the property that we should know about?' asks one officer, as McCullough is handcuffed in the hallway. 'Yes, there is,' she replies, calmly and chirpily. 'Shall I take you to it?' Her matter-of-fact manner never changes. 'Cheer up, at least you've caught the bad guy,' she quips. The Daily Mail has visited Great Baddow, where we spoke to neighbours and residents who remember 'Ginny', as she was known. We also spoke to her elder sister, Louise Hopkins - the only one of her four siblings to comment publicly on the tragedy - who provided a disturbing insight into a deeply troubled family, the full facts about whom may never be known. Of her parents, she said: 'They did their best, but things were bad from the beginning. They both had issues and they did not get the help they needed.' 'When one went down the other might be up. If they were both down then all hell broke loose. 'I grew up in that environment trying to read what was going to happen.' Louise, now a 49-year-old mother-of-three and a life coach living in Cambridgeshire, said she'd broken contact with her parents in 2018, a year before they were killed. While she did not want to go into detail about her childhood, Louise said: 'My mother, when she was young, got involved with an American cult. She was on her own in London and the cult got hold of her. She brought that home. 'You never knew [what] you were going to get. 'I left the family for that reason. My sister did what she did for the same reason.' Now, McCullough has spoken again, this time in a series of letters written from behind bars to the makers of a Paramount documentary, Confessions of a Parent Killer. McCullough's words are every bit as unnerving as her reaction when police knocked on her door that day. 'I knew I would be arrested one day and should be,' she writes. 'I knew I should be punished, which is why I did not try and run or leave. 'I was relieved in a huge way that the deception was over... so I told the police plenty of information to help the investigation and was trying to make things easier for them.' As a mea culpa it is eerily self-centred and dispassionate. But in truth, everything about the murders of John and Lois McCullough is strange. The murders will be analysed in a compelling new Daily Mail podcast called Trial+, to be released next week. So who were John and Lois McCullough? And what drove their youngest daughter to murder them? The couple were in their 30s by the time they married in Doncaster, in 1975 and had Louise, the first of five daughters. Over the next seven years, they had three more girls, before moving south, to Essex, where Ginny was born in 1987. John was a management consultant, turned business studies lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University - and also a heavy drinker. Lois, meanwhile, once worked as a secretary, but battled with anxiety, agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. By the time of their deaths, only their youngest daughter Ginny - an aspiring artist - remained at the family home. Yet none of her sisters appeared to have made contact with the authorities when their parents disappeared in June 2019. We now know that McCullough, masquerading as her mother, texted the rest of the family, asking them to stay away, while neighbours were told the pensioners had moved to the seaside. It's McCullough herself, who tries to explain her actions, in 60-pages of disturbing, and neatly penned prose, sent to documentary producer, Charlie Wakefield - who was at school with her - before sentence. Her account, while to be treated with caution (she was labelled a 'compulsive liar' by family in court) nevertheless paints a picture of a deeply unhappy childhood. 'I knew as a child that I should not have been a part of that family,' she writes. 'My parents were too strict and cold.' She goes on to document being smacked for minor misdemeanours, and battling the humiliation of bed-wetting. 'At home my drinks were limited to three cups a day to try to prevent me wetting the bed,' she says. 'But when I was ten, I was still not dry at night. My dad took me to the chemist to get Huggies pull-ups and said, very loudly to embarrass me, 'You can carry them as they are yours'.' She describes being dirty and unkempt at school, being called 'Ginny Germs' by classmates and branded 'stupid' and 'useless' by her parents after a poor school report. As for her parents' problems, she says she was the 'buffer between my dad's drinking and mother's mental health'.' 'A number of months before the end, my mother was getting more and more emotionally cruel, telling me I was worthless and there was growing toxicity from my dad's drinking. 'Nighttime was my only respite, and even then I would cry and feel hopeless. 'I felt emotionally desperate and trapped. I got to a point where there was nothing that I wanted more than a normal quiet life at almost any cost.' We, of course, now know what that cost was. Det Supt Rob Kirby, of Essex Police, described McCullough, as an 'intelligent and adept manipulator' who perpetrated fraud and betrayal on a 'monumental' scale. Years before she killed them, she'd gained control of her parents' finances, and frittered away thousands on shopping and online gambling, which she covered up by telling them they'd been victims of fraud. By June 17, 2019, she was £60,000 in debt, so that night she enacted a plan she had been hatching for months - a plan she describes in harrowing details in her letters. She poisoned her parents' drink with a cocktail of prescription drugs. The following morning, she found her father dead in his bed. But, as she says in her letters, her mother, who slept separately from her husband, was still alive. 'One worked and one did not,' she writes, chillingly matter-of-fact. 'I'd given less drugs to my mother. 'I quietly went into the doorway and found her. As it turned out, she was in a deep sleep. I pulled the door back closed again and went to get gloves, a knife and a hammer. 'I went back in, and she was facing away from me. I hesitated, and then I carried out the act.' The act was appalling; McCullough hit her mother in the head with the hammer and stabbed her eight times with a knife. Defensive injuries contradict McCullough's account of her mother being in a deep sleep: the elderly woman had fought for her life. That same day, McCullough purchased sleeping bags, into which she placed her parents' bodies, wrapping them in layer upon layer of plastic and then constructing the makeshift tombs in which they would eventually be found. The next day, she posed as her mother to apply for a new credit card and PIN, which she would go on to use to buy clothes and jewellery. The subterfuge that followed was swift. That afternoon, she sent a text message from her mother's phone to one of her sisters. It read: 'Your dad and I are at the seaside in Walton this week. Mum x'. Later that night, there was another message: 'Good night. Mum. X' Over the ensuing months and years, McCullough sent numerous messages pretending to be her mother. She made phone calls to her siblings and to the GP, and to her father's pension provider. There were birthday cards, and postcards to neighbours filled with anecdotes about their life by the sea. Meanwhile, she plundered their bank accounts and pension payments, spending almost £150,000. To those on the outside - neighbours, shopkeepers, the postman - McCullough - with her peroxide hair and two-tone fingernails - was viewed either as an annoyance or an eccentric. She would stand outside for long periods sweeping away six or seven leaves, she would arrive unannounced at neighbours's homes with gifts – steak, doughnuts, or a takeaway. McCullough's own written account of that time, living with her terrible secret, is extraordinary, to say the least. 'I spent the first six months mostly indoors. I did not sleep upstairs, but in the lounge, on the couch,' she wrote. 'Having my parents in the house but without any mental abuse or drinking, I admit, in a strange way, was a silent comfort. 'I was just living normally and quietly... but it's all I wanted at the time I committed the crime.' She claims, to have only spent money on 'every day' things, insisting her gifts were because she was 'addicted' to the smile it would put on people's faces. Those the Mail have spoken to revealed there may be kernels of truth in what she says. 'Ginny did what she did, but deep down she was trying to prove she was not a bad person,' says one villager. 'She was trying to endear herself to people by giving them presents, so much so that she became a bloody nuisance. She went overboard. It was too much.' In Great Baddow, there remain very mixed emotions about the killer who lived among them. One friend says: 'When you boil it down, what Ginny did, you cannot condone. You do not go around killing people, least of all your parents, but you can understand why. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions. 'Something had to give. Maybe if she could have got the support from her family when she was growing up, maybe this whole wretched thing would not have happened.' Life in prison, however, seems to suit McCullough, and she says she's happier than she ever was on the outside. And she continues to profess her remorse. In her letters to the documentary makers, she writes: 'Not only do I think I deserved life without parole, but felt that even that was not punishment enough to ease my guilt or remorse, even mildly. 'I have made so many mistakes in my life through deception, secrecy and self-sabotage. The worst of all is the crime that I killed my parents.' Certainly McCullough's siblings and uncle would agree. At Chelmsford Crown Court, Richard Butcher, Lois's brother, who lives in India, said he had been manipulated into thinking his sister was alive and that the truth was still incomprehensible. 'Virginia is very dangerous. Her ability to kill her parents undermines my faith in humanity,' he said. Meanwhile, her other siblings released a statement, in which they said: 'Mum and Dad always enjoyed the time they spent with us. Family was their pride and joy. 'Our family has been left devastated and heartbroken at the deaths of our parents who were taken from us so cruelly.' Only McCullough's sister, Louise - who didn't attend court, nor even her parents' funerals - can begin to understand. She says of her youngest sibling: 'I think I know why she did it. I forgive her but I feel nothing for her. I do not want to see her. I will never see her.' Confessions of a Parent Killer is on Paramount+ now For more on this case, listen to a special interview with retired detective Paul Maleary, available now on the Mail's award-winning podcast The Trial+. To subscribe go to
National Post
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- National Post
Film review: Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later is three sequels in one
Things come in threes. 28 Years Later is the third film in the long-running series, following director Danny Boyle's audacious original from 2002, 28 Days Later — it gave us fast zombies! — and mostly ignoring 2007's 28 Weeks Later. Article content It's also the first of a series of three new films, to be followed early next year by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and then (if the box office gods allow) by a third chapter some time thereafter. Article content Article content Article content But it's also three movies in one, which may annoy some viewers and thrill others — just as you're getting into (or giving up on) one storyline, it suddenly shifts to another. Article content Article content After a brief and largely unnecessary prelude — yes, there was a zombie apocalypse once upon a time, we get it — the film opens with 12-year-old Spike and proud papa Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) heading out on a rite of passage in which the boy will kill his first zombie. Or 'infected,' to use the film's parlance. Article content It turns out that the infectious outbreak of the first movie was contained to the British Isles, which the rest of the world simply and quickly quarantined; shades of Brexit. Spike lives in a community on an even smaller island, connected to mainland Britain by a causeway that it only passable at low tide. Article content It's an odd existence, part turn of the millennium, part medieval. The rest of the world may have moved on to SmartPhones (which is also what this movie was shot on) and online shopping, but the U.K. has reverted to subsistence farming and archery. Even those with pre-pandemic memories only remember dial-up. Portraits of Queen Elizabeth II still decorate civic spaces. As one of the film's producers put it: 'Britain has paused.' Article content Article content Spike's quest — you can almost feel society forging new traditions, perhaps even a new religion — is shot with an almost dreamlike impressionism by Boyle. The nightmarish sense of the new world is crafted through use of a very old recording from this one — a recitation from 1915 of a 1903 poem by Rudyard Kipling, titled Boots, which you can also hear in the film's trailer. It's as terrifying now as on the day it was written. Article content Article content Article content But the mood doesn't last. Jamie and Spike return home, where the boy becomes disillusioned with his father's behaviour, and convinced that the mainland may be home to a doctor who can help his mother (Jodie Comer), whose brain has become addled. Article content Thus a new quest begins — less The Road, more road trip. Spike and his mum are aided by Erik (Edvin Ryding), a Swedish soldier who's been accidentally marooned in this backward land.
News.com.au
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Why viewers had to ‘applaud' the fate of Justin Long's character in horror film Barbarian
What do you get when producers from some of the world's best horror films join forces in one movie? According to one critic, you get a 'masterclass in tension and unpredictability'. The producers of It, The Grudge and The Ring all worked together on the horror thriller Barbarian, which is currently one of the top films available for free on streaming platform Tubi right now. Starring Justin Long, Bill Skarsgård and Bird Box actress Georgina Campbell, the premise is very modern-day but the thrills are a throwback to classic horror. Picture this: you arrive at your Airbnb in the suburbs only to find it is double-booked by a mysterious tenant named Keith (Skarsgård). It's a stormy night so he invites you in, arguing that you can just co-habitate for the night as he's harmless. What do you do? For Tess (Campbell), she accepts the invitation, albeit reluctantly. After a surprisingly pleasant night exchanging life stories, the scenario becomes increasingly disturbing when she discovers a secret compartment in the house's basement. Suddenly, suburbia turns sinister. Long plays disgraced Hollywood actor AJ Gilbride who is the owner of the Airbnb. When he finds himself in financial strife after being fired from a movie when accused of raping his co-star, he returns to the home to prep it for sale, only to find that his investment property holds a horrifying secret beneath the house. The film was released in 2022 and became one of the most compelling films that year. So impactful, some fans have already added it to their rewatch list. 'Rewatched Barbarian, still impressed that what begins as a Your Worst Airbnb Fears movie takes a radical turn and delivers. Caught more on a rewatch about the differences between who is a monster, and who is a predator,' one viewer tweeted. 'The movie that made me simultaneously terrified of both airbnb's AND any house with a basement,' added another. 'Full of great surprises, suspense, humour, and probably the craziest tonal heel-turn I've ever seen in a movie.' And yet another commented, 'I wish more horror movies were like this & didn't rely on jump scares!' The aforementioned predator is soon revealed in graphic scenes – a towering, naked and deformed woman that embodies both terror and tragedy. Known as 'The Mother', she appears more mutant than human – the product of decades of abuse, left to lurk in the house's underground tunnels with no light. However, her backstory is heartbreakingly disturbing as Tess and AJ learn after she savagely smashes Keith – who turned out to be a nice guy – in the head, killing him. But, in a shocking plot twist that will leave jaws on the floor, it is Long's character who holds the titular barbarian role thanks to his actions at the end. 'I'm a horror fan. To be in an audience of equally excited and passionate horror fans … and to hear them applaud my death — I know this sounds strange, but it was oddly thrilling for me,' Long told Vulture in a previous interview. 'It meant that they were invested and I did my job. That his character was truly deplorable and deserving of a pretty rough ending.'
