The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 17 Page 8

  Steve Dikto: Space Wars collected various sci-fi strips by the co-creator of Spider-Man in both hardcover and softcover.

  Published as an oversized hardcover, David Britton’s designed-to-shock Fuck Off and Die was illustrated in colour and black and white by Kris Guidio and included digs at Terry Pratchett and James Herbert.

  In March, Walt Disney and the Weinstein brothers announced that they would abandon their twelve-year-old Miramax partnership at the end of September. Disney would retain the film library of more than 500 titles, while the Weinsteins would keep the ongoing projects. The Miramax Books imprint was absorbed into Hyperion.

  An even bigger upset occurred in December when Viacom’s Paramount Pictures agreed to buy DreamWorks SKG for $1.6 billion. Created eleven years earlier by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg as an alternative to Hollywood’s established studios, DreamWorks reportedly could not produce enough movies to become a major distributor.

  For much of 2005, Hollywood suffered its worst year at the box-office for twenty years. Despite an increase in ticket prices, takings throughout the year in America were down 10 per cent on 2004. This followed a lacklustre summer in which the top ten box-office gross was down a quarter on the previous year, and many hyped-up blockbusters opened strongly but quickly died following negative word of mouth. Just five films, including Star Wars Episode III, War of the Worlds and Batman Begins, accounted for one-third of the whole season’s profits. In Britain, grosses were only down 4 per cent on the previous year.

  However, the box-office was given a late boost at the end of the year with the Christmas release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Peter Jackson’s three-hour remake of King Kong. As it turned out, Disney’s family-friendly Narnia beat out the over-hyped Kong, taking more than $450 million world-wide to the latter’s disappointing $222.5 million.

  In fact, the year’s most successful film in America was George Lucas’ Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, followed by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at #2, War of the Worlds at #3, The Chronicles of Narnia at #4, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at #6, Batman Begins at #7 and Madagascar at #8. In the UK, Harry Potter (with a world-wide gross of $535 million) just edged out Star Wars to take the top slot, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Nanny McPhee also both made the top ten (at #4 and #10, respectively).

  After twenty-eight years and six films, George Lucas’ epic space opera finally came full circle with the third prequel, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Christopher Lee was killed off too early, and it was a pity that Lucas chose not to put Dave Prowse in the Darth Vader suit again or recycle any footage of the late Peter Cushing (a lookalike actor was used), but the special effects were stunning and the script moved along at a cracking pace.

  The film opened at #1 on both sides of the Atlantic. It grossed $158.4 million during its first four days in the US (breaking the record held by The Matrix Reloaded) and broke more records by taking $303.00 million with simultaneous premieres in 115 countries world-wide. However, with 9,000 prints, Episode III was released in 50 per cent more screens than the previous entry, and in its first week accounted for an astonishing 70 per cent of the entire US top ten and two-thirds of business over its first weekend in May. It broke the $250 million barrier after just eleven days, one day faster than Spider-Man 2 in 2004, and passed the $300 million barrier in seventeen days (one day earlier than the record set by Shrek 2).

  Mike Newell’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth instalment in the series about the schoolboy wizard, was the fourth-largest opening of all time when it opened at #1 in the US in November with a weekend gross of $102.3 million. The film also took £14.9 million at the British box-office over its first weekend, the highest three-day take in UK cinema history despite being the first Potter film to be given a restrictive “12A” rating by the British Board of Film Classification. However, it was also the first of the Potter films to actually disappoint, especially Ralph Fiennes’ unimpressive Lord Voldemort. The producers needed to learn that sometimes, less is more.

  Steven Spielberg’s lazy remake of War of the Worlds starred a dull Tom Cruise as a blue-collar father trying to save his family from an alien invasion. Although H. G. Wells’ Victorian novel was relocated to contemporary New Jersey, the film benefited from some great-looking special effects and blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos by Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, stars of the superior 1953 version.

  Based on the classic book series by C.S. Lewis, Andrew Adamson’s epic children’s fantasy The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe featured superb CGI effects and Tilda Swinton as a chilling White Witch. Disney hired several Christian marketing groups to promote the film in an attempt to exploit Lewis’ religious beliefs. It was endorsed by Focus on the Family, a conservative religious group that claims a membership of two million. The film exceeded industry expectations in the US, where it opened at #1 in December with a $65.6 million gross – the third largest opening of the year, the second highest for a December weekend after the final Lord of the Rings film, and the best opening ever for a Disney live-action film. In Britain, Narnia took an impressive £8 million in its first three days, the biggest opening ever for a Disney movie in the UK, and it opened at #1 in twelve other countries as well.

  Tim Burton’s remake of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened in America in July at #1, taking $55.3 million. It was a career-best opening for star Johnny Depp, even beating his 2003 hit Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

  Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan’s oh-so-serious reinvention of the movie franchise starring Christian Bale as the Caped Crusader, didn’t break any opening weekend records, but it did open at #1 in both the US and the UK in June.

  After being held off the US top slot by Star Wars Episode III, DreamWorks’ comedy cartoon Madagascar eventually went to #1 for a week before going on to gross almost $200 million in the US. A tale of pampered zoo animals shipwrecked on a desert island, it featured the voices of Ben Stiller and Chris Rock.

  Released too late in the year to be included in the box-office totals, Peter Jackson’s well-intentioned, but overlong and ultimately redundant remake of King Kong beautifully recreated the original 1933 setting, but was let down by poor castings choices and variable CGI sequences (a brontosaurus stampede was particularly poor). With special effects shots costing around $100,000 per minute, the film reportedly went an estimated $32 million over its original $175 million budget, with the director apparently covering the extra cost himself in return for a lucrative profit-sharing deal. Andy Serkis created Kong’s body movements, but he just looked like a big gorilla.

  New York’s Times Square was brought to a standstill by the US premier in early December, where a twenty-foot replica of the giant ape was displayed outside the cinema. However, despite all the publicity, King Kong opened well below industry expectations.

  In John Polson’s Hide and Seek, a slumming Robert De Niro learned that he’d better take notice of Charlie, the “imaginary” friend of his young daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning) when they moved into a new home. The film went to #1 in the US in January with a gross of just $22 million.

  Geoffrey Sax’s White Noise starred Michael Keaton as a widower attempting to contact his dead wife (Chandra West) through EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomenon.

  According to a survey, 59 per cent of the US audience for the “hoodoo” thriller The Skeleton Key was female. Kate Hudson found herself looking after a catatonic John Hurt and his complaining wife Gena Rowlands in a haunted Southern plantation house.

  A team of experienced spelunkers found themselves trapped in a lost cave system and battling winged “demons” below a 13th-century Carpathian church in Bruce Hunt’s high-concept B-movie The Cave. Meanwhile, in Neil Marshall’s The Descent, six British girlfriends on a spelunking holiday in the Appalachian mountains also found themselves trapped in an unexplo
red cave system and fighting for their survival against flesh-eating albino creatures.

  “Based on true events”, Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose was inspired by a 1978 case of possession and a priest’s subsequent trial for negligent homicide. It became a surprise US box-office #1 in September, with more than half the audience under twenty-five. The film’s success was credited to its distributor, Screen Gems, deliberately courting religious conservatives.

  And if at first you don’t succeed . . . Following the failure of Renny Harlin’s underrated Exorcist: The Beginning last year, Paul Schrader’s $40 million shelved version, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, co-scripted by novelist Caleb Carr, received a limited release from Warner Bros./Morgan Creek in May. Stellan Skarsgård starred in both versions as Father Merrin, confronting his own demons in 1940s East Africa.

  Based on the cult BBC television series, The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse transported the bizarre characters of Royston Vasey into the “real” world, in search of their creators.

  Mark Waters’ supernatural romantic comedy Just Like Heaven, starring Reese Witherspoon as a dead doctor falling for Mark Ruffalo, opened at #1 in the US. Exit polls revealed that 77 per cent of the audience was female.

  In Nora Ephron’s post-modern fantasy Bewitched, a nose-twitching Nicole Kidman was perfect as the real-life witch cast as Samantha in a revival of the 1960s TV series. But there was no romantic spark between the actress and her hardworking co-star Will Ferrell, and it was left to veterans Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine to weave any magic.

  Ryan Reynolds and Melissa George moved into the Long Island house with a bad history in Andrew Douglas’ pointless remake of The Amityville Horror. Co-produced by Michael Bay, it was the final major release from MGM, which was sold to Sony.

  Having been pushed back from a November 2004 opening, Dark Castle Entertainment’s House of Wax was directed by “Jaume” (Jaume Collet-Serra), better know for his TV commercials. Although Chad Michael Murray and Elisha Cuthbert were the nominal stars, Paris Hilton had a much-publicised cameo as a victim. A $48.00 limited edition T-shirt emblazoned with the legend “See Paris Die” sold out within three hours of going on sale at a trendy Los Angeles boutique.

  John Carpenter co-produced the redundant remake of his own The Fog, which starred TV actors Tom Welling and Maggie Grace and opened in the US at #1 with a gross of only $11.8 million.

  Walter Salles’ Dark Water was yet another remake of a hit Japanese horror movie, as separated mother Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) tried to protect her five-year-old daughter Ceci (newcomer Ariel Gade) from the vengeful ghost in their spooky New York apartment. Pete Postlethwaite, John C. Reilly, Tim Roth and Dougray Scott added some classy support.

  Directed by original series creator Hideo Nakata, The Ring Two opened to a better box-office than its predecessor did in 2002. It was a no-scares sequel that had investigative reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) and her creepy-looking son Aidan (David Dorfman) again menaced by the vengeance-seeking videotape. Sissy Spacek had a cameo as a mad mother.

  The psychopathic Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) set up another series of lethal booby-traps in Saw II, which opened in the US at #1 over Halloween, almost doubling the amount the previous entry took in its first week.

  In Larry Guterman’s belated comedy sequel Son of the Mask, the infant son of aspiring cartoonist Tim Avery (Jamie Kennedy) was transformed by the Mask of Loki, and its manic owner (Alan Cummings) would stop at nothing to reclaim it.

  Keanu Reeves gave a brooding performance as the eponymous chain-smoking demon-hunter from Hell in Francis Lawrence’s Constantine, based on the long-running DC Comics/Vertigo series Hell-blazer. However, it was Tilda Swinton as the angel Gabriel who stole the film, which opened at #2 in the US before suffering a 64 per cent drop the following week.

  Comedy director Tim Story bungled the big-budget origin of the Marvel comic book Fantastic Four. When a scientific experiment in space went wrong, exposure to a cosmic storm caused naïve Dr Reed Richards (a likeable loan Gruffudd), sexy Sue Storm (Jessica Alba), reckless Johnny Storm (Chris Evans) and short-tempered Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) to develop super-powers. Even Julian McMahon failed to register as metal-skinned villain Dr Victor von Doom.

  Rob Bowman’s Daredevil spin-off Elektra starred Jennifer Garner as the high-kicking heroine in red leather. The DVD release included a deleted cameo by Ben Affleck.

  Robert Rodriguez’s ultra-violent Sin City was based on co-director Frank Miller’s 1991 graphic novel. A stylized blend of live-action and digital video, Mickey Rourke stood out amongst an all-star cast that included Rosario Dawson, Rutger Hauer, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis and Elijah Wood. Quentin Tarantino was credited as “Special Guest Director”.

  Rodriguez’s other film of the year was the very different children’s adventure The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D, which was co-written by the director’s seven-year-old son.

  Although producer Laurie McDonald blamed stars Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson for the box-office failure of Michael Bay’s derivative The Island, she should perhaps have taken some of the criticism herself for not only hiring them, but also for freely “borrowing” concepts and ideas from Michael Marshall Smith’s novel Spares and the 1979 movie Parts: The Clonus Horror. The film cost almost $150 million to make and grossed an abysmal $12.4 million during its opening weekend.

  A computerised jet-fighter with a mind of its own went all Forbin Project in Rob Cohen’s $124 million high-concept Stealth, featuring Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, Jamie Foxx and Sam Shepard.

  Filmed in 2002 and finally given a limited release, Edward Burns and Ben Kingsley starred in A Sound of Thunder, Peter Hyams’ adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s story about a time-travel dinosaur hunt that had repercussions back in the future.

  Based on the shoot-them-up video game set on Mars, and starring The Rock as the leader of a group of marines fighting scientifically-created monsters, after opening at #1 in the US, Universal’s Doom saw takings plummet 73 per cent in its second week.

  Nobody wanted to see Joss Whedon’s short-lived Fox TV show Firefly, so it didn’t come as any surprise that equally few people cared about the big-screen version, retitled Serenity.

  Despite both being nominated for Academy Awards for performances in 2005 films, neither Charlize Theron nor Reese Witherspoon could count their genre appearances from the year amongst their best work. In fact, Karyn Kusama’s futuristic action film Aeon Flux, set 400 years in the future and starring Theron as the eponymous MTV cartoon assassin, had no previews in America and only managed a disappointing $16 million at the box-office.

  Douglas Adams’ SF comedy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy finally reached the screen after twenty-five years in development and went to #1 in both the US and UK.

  George A. Romero returned to his roots with Land of the Dead, the fourth entry in his “Living Dead” series of zombie movies. Set in the near future, Dennis Hopper played the corrupt owner of an urban apartment complex, defending his investment against a horde of organised walking corpses.

  Voodoo snakebites turned people into zombie rednecks in Venom, while Undead was a low-budget comedy about the inhabitants of a small town being turned into the shambling dead, directed by Australian identical twins Peter and Michael Spierig.

  Based on an old script by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, Wes Craven’s Cursed featured Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg as siblings who found themselves turning into werewolves. Craven had more success with the claustrophobic psycho thriller Red Eye, starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy on a flight from hell.

  In John Maybury’s box-office flop The Jacket, Adrien Brody played an amnesiac Gulf War veteran and convicted murderer whose psychiatric treatment at the hands of Kris Kristofferson’s sinister doctor sent him fifteen years into the future, where he encountered Keira Knightley’s troubled waitress.

  Christian Bale lost sixty-five pounds to play the emaciated lead in Brad Anderson’s The M
achinist, about a man who had gone without sleep for a year, and the ever-busy Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling were trapped between reality and fantasy in the confusing Stay.

  When German girl Kate (an unsympathetic Franka Potente) missed her last train on the London Underground, she found herself pursued by a homicidal mutant cannibal in Christopher Smith’s unpleasant debut film Creep.

  A pre-Doctor Who Billie Piper starred in David Smith’s Spirit Trap, in which five students rented a haunted mansion in North London, and vengeance came to a small town in Sheldon Wilson’s low budget Shallow Ground.

  Room 36, from the creators of Revenge of Billy the Kid, was a barely released British horror film that featured veterans Brian Murphy, John Cater and John Forbes-Robertson.

  After his father mysteriously vanished, Barry Watson kept peering into dark closets in Stephen T. Kay’s “PG-13” horror hit Boogeyman, which was “presented” by Sam Raimi and opened at #1 on both sides of the Atlantic in February.

  Bill Moseley and Sid Haig starred in The Devil’s Rejects, Rob Zombie’s gory follow-up to House of 1,000 Corpses.

  A group of students invented their own serial killer on the Internet, who then started hunting them down in Jeff Wadlow’s campus slasher Cry_Wolf, starring Gary Cole and Jon Bon Jovi.

  John Jarratt played the Outback crazy hunting a group of teens in Wolf Creek, an Australian slasher “based on true events”.

  Renny Harlin’s Mindhunters was shot in 2002 in Holland for less than $40 million. Christian Slater, LL Cool J and a fleeting Val Kilmer starred in the Ten Little Indians-inspired plot set during a training session for FBI profiler cadets on a remote island. Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark also headlined Slater who, along with Tara Reid and Stephen Dorff, confronted sharp-toothed monsters that came out at night.