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When there's no more room in hell, the dead will play hockey

It’s been so long since I actively followed the making and marketing of Kevin Smith’s movies that I completely forgot that there are actually people out there who do. Bless ‘em all, though, for without a few other pairs of observant eyes, I wouldn’t know about Smith’s first foray into fear flicks.

Those who do keep tabs on Smith and his View Askewiverse might assume I’m referring to Red State, the politically overt horror film he’s been working on (currently slated for a 2010 release). But while Smith temporarily tabled that project so he could squeeze out another wacky, offbeat romantic comedy, his interest in horror is manifesting on the big screen nonetheless, albeit on Seth Rogen’s sweaty chest.



The promotional still above, from a scene in Smith’s latest, features Rogen and New Jersey’s favorite video store clerk paying homage to the original Dawn of the Dead as teammates on a hockey team titled the Monroeville Zombies. The new film was shot and is reportedly set in Monroeville, PA, and includes scenes filmed in the same shopping mall where the dead once famously walked the earth. And, as is typical with the props and fake brands featured in View Askew movies, Smith’s stick-wielding stiffs have shambled onto real-world jerseys you can buy from his Secret Stash comic shop.

And that’s just the start of Monroeville’s resurging undead infamy. While attending the June HorrorHound Weekend in the Pittsburgh ‘burb, the crew of NOTLP met and interviewed one of the guys behind Monroeville Zombies: The Zombie Experience, described as sort of a zombie museum/theme park/gift shop hybrid coming soon to a vacant mall storefront. There’s not much up on the project’s website yet, but it definitely sounds like it will be worth a trip to Pittsburgh.

Whether or not it justifies actually braving a shopping mall is another matter entirely…

Who's the fairest French horror auteur of all?

So pummeled into indifference was I by the Hills Have Eyes remake that I'd forgotten how much it excites me to see Alexandre Aja's name attached to something.

Not that the theatrical poster for his latest film, Mirrors, (which Shock broke last week) needed anyone's name on it to generate excitement. Stark and rich all at the same time, the only thing that could make this one-sheet more breathtaking would be the absence of names - cut the credits, drop the "From the director of..." heading, and alter the title treatment so just that one backwards 'R' is red to match the nicely highlighted rating, and this thing would be a masterpiece. Even without any clues regarding the film's plot (which, for the record, sounds equally rad -- check the brief details here), it swallows me whole and makes August 15 seem impossibly far away.

UPDATE: The film's red band trailer debuted today, and it takes a decidedly less subtle approach than the poster above. But if there's one filmmaker who's been consistently successful conveying brutal, relentless horror, it's Alexandre Aja Neal Marshall. But if there's a filmmaker who's been moderately successful at that approach, it's Alexandre Aja, so we'll keep the books open on this one until it spills for real on August 15.