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Paul C. Hemmes’s ‘MAYA’ (2022) – Movie Review

Monster Dugan May 4, 2023 Movie Reviews , News , Reviews Comments Off on Paul C. Hemmes’s ‘MAYA’ (2022) – Movie Review

A shape-shifting soul collector seeks to lead a group of unsuspecting non-believers into the afterlife in  Maya , a 2022 horror film, written and directed by Paul C. Hemmes ( Dead Enders 2010, A Grave in the Woods 2018).

Maya (2022) Synopsis 

Nothing is what it seems when a group of unsuspecting friends head out on a camping excursion and come face to face with a shape-shifting soul collector who looks to lead them into the afterlife, with a vengeance. 

The film stars Victoria Paege ( Camp 139 2013, Western X 2016), Vic Rogers ( Controlled 2022, The Unhitch King 2022), Jennifer Scott ( The Other Side of the Door 2014, Eyes Upon Waking 2022), and Crystal Inzunza ( The soldier and the girl 2021, Dr. Saville’s Horror Show 2022).

It also stars Seth Gandrud ( A Devil’s Game 2016, Atomic Shark 2016), J.C. Márquez Pulita ( Dead Enders 2010, A Man Called Nereus 2012), Samantha Panu ( Disappear 2021, Holding Secrets 2021), Jessica Eenhuis ( Coyotaje 2018, Maya 2022), Dineta Williams-Trigg (TW: Invisible 2017, Sad Man 2018), Brinkie Stevens ( The Slumber Party Massacre 1982, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 1988), and Cat Roberts ( Star Trek Continues 2013, Eyes Upon Waking 2022).

This is a creepy, unhinged, engaging watch with a unique off-the-wall story and some truly incredible, unorthodox special effects. The editing is excellent and the acting is great, although it can be a little rough at times. The music is fantastic, giving an old-school eighties vibe. It’s eerie, ominous, and minacious.

Outside of the music, the audio could use a little work. Some of the sound and effects are a tad gruff and echoey in spots. The costumes could use some a bit of touching up. The camera work is great and the dialogue is apt and fitting. Also, the pacing wanders a bit in places, with some areas much smoother than others. Nonetheless, it’s still morbid, macabre, and entertaining. 

What stood out the most, to me, were the ridiculously amazing special effects. They’re similar to the old late-night horror films you’d catch on tv when everyone was supposed to be fast asleep (although they usually never were). It’s truly a remarkable, ingenious piece of FX work.

One complaint I have, though, is that the colored-filtered scenes stand out like a sore thumb. It would have been better suited to using more natural hues, as opposed to bogging it down with dark saturated tones. It’s an outdated, overused genre trope, harkening back to the old Italian flicks from the seventies and eighties. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, Maya is harsh, unsettling, and creepy as hell. It’s dark, diabolical, and seriously twisted. If you like old-school, low-budget, throwback horror films, then this one’s for you.

Check this one out if you get the chance, it’s one warped, wicked ride.

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Tags Brinkie Stevens Cat Roberts Crystal Inzunza Dineta Williams-Trigg J.C. Márquez Pulita Jennifer Scott Jessica Eenhuis Maya (2023) Paul C. Hemmes Samantha Panu Seth Gandrud Vic Rogers Victoria Paege

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Maya Review - Scares that are worth getting scared of

Published date : 17/sep/2015.

­ Maya Review - Scares that are worth getting scared of

In the recent past, there have been few well-made meta movies and also some widely appreciated horror films. Newcomer Ashwin Saravanan’s Maya is a valiant attempt at combining both these success formulae.  It is surprising and heartening to see Ashwin Saravanan not follow the footsteps of loud and so-called comedy horror films. Check out why  this movie stands out.

The movie revolves around Apsara (Nayanthara), a struggling actress who finds it hard to make ends meet with her baby. Being separated from her husband and having debts that need to be settled, Apsara takes a daring decision that changes her life.

Nayanthara proves that she is capable of much more than what she does in most of the films with leading heroes.  The screenplay demands her to be calm and composed throughout, and it is a cakewalk for her. Watch out for the close-up shots where she emotes flawlessly.

The director must be lauded for casting lesser-known actors like Aari, Lakshmi Priyaa and Amzath Khan in important roles. This has helped a great deal in keeping the screenplay unpredictable, thanks to their unassuming characterizations.

Technicalities

Rohan Yohan’s music and Sathyan Sooryan’s cinematography have played significant roles in sending consistent chills to the audience. The background score is quite apt to the proceedings and sets a haunting mood. Sathyan Sooryan has done a commendable job as his camera has traversed effortlessly through the forests and managed to capture the emotions under minimal lighting conditions. Editor TS Suresh’s seamless cuts, especially in the second half, maintain the momentum of the film and keep the screenplay unperplexing.

Screenplay and Direction – Ashwin Saravanan

Ashwin Saravanan’s screenplay is almost watertight sans any nonsense and frills. Kudos to the director for sticking strictly to the central plot, without trying to play safe by inducing elements like comedy, needless songs, etc.  The scares in the movie aren’t something we have never witnessed previously, but they stand out due to riveting execution.

The director has intelligently used different colour tones to distinguish sequences, which one could appreciate after watching the film. On the flip side, if some of the sequences in the first half had been cut short, the movie might have made a bigger impact. Nevertheless, watch the film for an undiluted horror experience.

Maya stands tall with its distinctive approach to horror, and the scares in the movie are worth getting scared of.  Watch Maya for some top-notch horrifying moments that will make you half-close your eyes.

Rating : 3.25/5

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Maya Movie Review

Review Overview

Performances, screenplay and direction, technical aspects and bgm, a viscerally satisfying, well-crafted horror flick.

Maya is a terrific, well-crafted horror thriller which stays grossly unsettling right from the first frame. Apart from its success as a bona-fide horror movie, Maya also accomplishes as an intriguing whodunit steadily. Highly recommended.

Cast: Nayanthara, Aari, Robo Shankar, Lakshmi Priya, Amzath Khan & others

Cinematography: Sathyan Sooryan

Music: Ron Ethan Yohaan

Editing: TS Suresh

Art Direction: Ramalingam

PRO: Johnson

Visual Effects: Prism & Pixels

Written & Directed by: Ashwin Saravanan

Produced by: Potential Studios

Distribution: Sri Thenandal Films

Release Date: 17-09-2015

Run Time: 02:20:00

Debutant director Ashwin’s Maya is a terrific, well-crafted horror thriller which stays grossly unsettling right from the first frame. Apart from its success as a bona-fide horror movie, Maya also accomplishes as an intriguing whodunit steadily.

There is nothing that you haven’t seen before in other horror films. But what makes Maya standout is the plausible presentation and deft handling of the script using the familiar tropes of the genre. Done and dusted horror movie props like diary, doll and ring are part of the film. But, nothing is exploited to death solely to give you the heebie-jeebies. Very rarely do horror films in Tamil come without provocative clothing, sleazy characters, objectifying camera angles, special effects chaos and most importantly, a social message . Maya has neither of the aforementioned banalities and still works well as a suspenseful flick.

Maya narrates the story of Apsara (Nayanthara), a debt-ridden single parent, who is an actress by profession. When a condescending money-lender confronts her at the door step, she takes an unexpected decision which turns her life upside down.

I liked the conviction with which Ashwin gradually builds up the intensity of the film by making us invested in his characters cleverly. I liked his inventiveness to employ the crescendo-esque ending pitch of Anupama’s ‘Konjam Nilavu’ song from ‘Thiruda Thiruda’ to trigger a creepy moment. I liked the sweaty-palm tension he has stirred up throughout the film without any overdose of bloodshed, gore or violence . Man, Ashwin, certainly, looks like a talent to watch out for.

The overpowering technical values are a stellar addition to the film. Cinematographer Sathyan Sooryan’s well devised shot compositions, aided by editor Suresh’s nifty, superbly thought-out cuts and pauses will leave you cowering in the corner at few important junctures . Ron Yohaan’s mellifluous passages capture the film’s atmosphere sublimely. Nayanthara delivers a measured performance as Apsara with great ease and it’s a delight to watch her perform in a role which demands a good deal of restraint.

Maya is a highly recommended watch for every true horror movie fan. It is a viscerally satisfying film which has genuine creeps to grab you by the throat.

Maya Movie Review Rating: 3.5/5

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Written by Surendhar MK

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“Mayuri” : A gripping horror film

[intro]A promising debutant director Ashwin Saravanan makes a sophisticated and riveting ghost horror film that is sure to win  many  hearts.[/intro]

The genre of “cursed horror” cinema gets a redefining presentation by an exciting debutant director Ashwin Saravanan in “Mayuri” (“Maya” in Tamil). In all of 143 minutes, this 25-year old director presents a gripping story of an aspiring actor Mayuri (Nayantara) with plots and and sub-plots and a finish that delivers a knock-out punch to the audience who travel with the story from the start.

To give away the story in a horror film is to spoil the beauty of cinema that can goose you. But if an outline be told, here’s how it goes. The central theme of the story revolves around a village called Mayavanam in which mysterious deaths are happening whenever someone is trying to uncover the mystery shrouding the death of innocent patients of a mental asylum – all of them buried in a graveyard there. The most-famously buried victim is a young lady Maya Mathews who delivers a baby but gets killed by the inmates – and her looming spirited presence hovers around the area of Mayavanam. The urge to investigate the truth takes a writer Vasanth (Aari), episode writer Madan (Uday Mahesh) and finally Mayuri (Nayantara) to the forbidden periphery of Mayavanam at different times with bone-chilling consequences. What is the real truth behind the killings? What is the truth behind the mysterious death of a rich lady Maya Mathews who is killed by the inmates of the Asylum after delivering a baby? Who survives this saga and who dies in the search?

If you want answers to some or more questions that get thrown up in the narrative, “Mayuri” is a riveting watch – that will be the cult-classic amongst the genre of horror films in recent times. What makes the film different is the many rules the director breaks in a quest to give the mother of all horror films of our generation. Here’s why this film deserves wider reach.

Firstly, instead of using the conventional approach of using spooky angles and awkward close-ups, director Ashwin uses the elements of a good story with many characters and plots who lead normal lives despite having dysfunctionalities typical of modern life – lust for money, affairs, divorce and all that. Because of this, the genre collapses many elements of a normal story of love, friendship and betrayal into a single horror film which is itself a feat – and then builds a three-act screenplay which builds the tempo gradually, initially seeming disconnected but as the layers of the story unravel, the dots are all connected in the end. This is what makes the film a treat to watch – breaking new ground in narrating a horror film.

Secondly, it uses Cinema as a medium within cinema itself to give us a paranormal experience that psyches us occasionally. For example, Steven Spielberg used TV as a central backdrop in the epic film “Poltergeist” as the spirits communicate with the mortals in a house and then stake claim on their lives. In “Mayuri”, the big multiplex screen in front of you becomes a centrepiece of communication used by the ghostly spirit in the movie trying to tell the truth. If this sounds unclear, it will get clear when you actually watch the movie’s climax which entirely runs like a visual canvass within a running movie on a multiplex screen. In this process, the director gives us the eerie moments at unexpected places and times – in a multiplex, in parking lots, in your living room, when you open the door besides the compulsive shots in the forest and at lonely times in the night. The high-point of the narrative is there are no visceral pleasures enjoyed by the Cameraman Sathyan Sooryan in focusing unnecessary angles at objects or human beings who are embedded in the story. A lot of the characters in the story are inter-linked to each other in more ways than what is obvious in the narrative – a standpoint that disarms you into making conclusions that distract you.

Thirdly, the director uses forty to fifty per cent footage in Black & White photography which makes the film get under your skin from the beginning. Infact, after the first twenty-five minutes of watching which comes with a powerful prologue sound episode that is linked to the main character of the film, you actually wonder whether you are watching a bygone era B&W film. This makes all the scenes that freak you out that much more impactful –a facet that is used with selective care by other film-makers. Parts of B&W footage were used by directors like RGV and others (“Vaishali”). In this aspect, Sathyan Sooryan, the cinematographer stands out for his work in both the color and B&W frames, it is nothing short of award-winning work and elevates the technical brilliance of a horror film like never before.

Fourthly, the director uses no gimmicks to use props of one image or character to scare you, that is the easy way out. Instead, the props change and come at unexpected moments. Cinema is one prop you can say, but the projection of it comes only in climax whereas most of the other times, the scares come in at regular frequency throughout the film. The principal ghostly character in the film – surprise, surprise, never reveals the face – and that gives as Ashwin says, an atmospheric feel of the spirit throughout the film that lingers on for some time after you leave the hall.

Lastly, the music of the film has to be more than surreal to carry the magnitude of the spookiness in the film which has zero relief except in one or two solitary funny lines thrown on marriage and infidelity. Rohan Ethan Yohaan is the music composer who lifts the many moods of the film with emphatic orchestration. When the credits roll, it is pertinent to observe so many talented violists and members of elite orchestras of East-European/Russian origin who were assembled to form the many overtures composed by Rohan. For any horror film, music forms the fulcrum of impact and director Ashwin uses the talent of Rohan to give consistently arresting scores throughout the film. Since this genre is dominated by the films with rich composing talents used in Hollywood, it is no mean feat to have a score for this film as used by Rohan Yohaan – he uses three signature tunes, of which the one associated with the reappearance of ghost repeats episodically until the climax. If you thought the music of “The Conjuring” which collected Rs.100 crores was the high-point of BGMs, ‘Mayuri’ will stump you with what natives in India are capable of scoring.

On the whole, the film is capable of wider appreciation because of the effort which translated into near-perfect film for a genre of this kind. The only areas in which it falters is in not giving any relief to the audience which commercial cinema gives even in genre kinds. Between the likes of Ramsay brothers and Ram Gopal Varma films at extreme ends, there has to be a better path, a middle path to show ghost horror films in better light. Ashwin Saravanan succeeds in giving us a taste of that capability. Editing by T.S.Suresh is good but could have been better to enhance the audiences’ understanding. At a few crucial juncture, editing cop-out makes the audience take time to understand what is happening really to wind the complex story to its logical ending. A few characters like the forest ranger and the paramour of Editor could have been omitted to make the story seem more compact. The only glaring logical flaw in the film has been that most of the explorations in pursuit of the mysterious spirits happens without any thought of taking help from the police or psycho-therapist or the mandatory Spirit-Dictor. It may be a first of its kind to attempt a story without the presence of any of these characters, but in the effort to strip the story of these all-pervading characters, director Ashwin gives a logical miss. Why, when so many inmates are dying in a god-foresaken mental asylum, neither the police nor the law-enforcing Human Rights activists cordon off the place and dig out the truth themselves is not clear. Quite ridiculous that the story contrives the law-enforcing agencies as virtually non-existent in the quest for knowing the unknowns.

But for these, performances by all characters stand out. Lakhmi Priya as Nayantara’s friend Swathi, and Aari as the hero give breakthrough performances. Nayantara has dialogues fewer than a K.Vishwanath heroine – it won’t even add up to a paragraph in the film – but she steals the show with a clean and nuanced performance. The rest of the characters do ample justice to their roles and nobody over-acts which is a rarity in Tamil films. If you ignore the few logical fallacies, this film is a must-watch for lovers of horror stories. The quality of dubbing into Telugu is also superior and exemplary – no place you get the feeling of watching a dubbed film and producer C.Kalyan seems to have taken good care. You won’t get the luxury of giggling at your neighbour often during the duration of the film which is itself a major achievement.

Rating: 3.25/5

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• What is the release date of 'Maya'? Release date of Ester Noronha and Suresh Kondeti starrer 'Maya' is 2024-03-15.
• Who are the actors in 'Maya'? 'Maya' star cast includes Ester Noronha, Suresh Kondeti and Swapna Chelly.
• Who is the director of 'Maya'? 'Maya' is directed by Ramesh Nani.
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Maya, a Telugu film unveiled in 2024, delves into the poignant narrative of Riya, whose life takes a harrowing twist with the simultaneous loss of her husband and daughter.

The profound sorrow she experiences unleashes a darker side within her, pushing the boundaries of her emotional endurance. The film intricately explores the complexities of grief and the transformative journey it thrusts upon Riya.

In the wake of such devastating tragedy, the central question arises: Can Riya summon the strength to reclaim her semblance of normalcy?

The cinematic exploration revolves around the human spirit’s resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity, depicting Riya’s struggle to reconcile with the shattered fragments of her existence.

As the narrative unfolds, Maya becomes a poignant exploration of grief’s impact on the human psyche and the arduous path towards healing.

Through evocative storytelling and nuanced character development, Maya invites audiences to empathize with Riya’s turbulent emotional landscape, prompting introspection on the fragility of life and the indomitable spirit required to rebuild shattered lives.

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Film review: maya (1989).

Todd Martin 01/05/2020 Uncategorized

A woman investigating her father’s mysterious death discovers that an evil spirit is responsible and it isn’t long before it starts taking out anyone it comes into contact with in a number of gruesome ways.

Review-To be honest I had never even heard of Maya before I watched it so I went into it not knowing a single thing about it. I didn’t even know what it was about so wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. While it starts off a little slower than I would have liked things do eventually start to pick up at one point and I have to say that overall I thought that it was a pretty decent little movie with an interesting premise, some fun gory death scenes, and some nudity thrown in for good measure.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up liking it and can’t believe that it took me this long to discover it as it was actually released back in 1989.

I dug the premise and thought that it was pretty interesting. Basically what we have is a woman trying to get to the bottom of her father’s death (who died while studying a Mayan pyramid) with the help of one of his friends. While they are trying to figure out what happened to him people start getting killed off in a number of brutal ways by an invisible force and it turns out that it is some sort of evil spirit. I know that sounds pretty vague but I don’t really want to go into anymore details than I have to because I don’t want to give anything away. I like the evil spirit’s back story and thought that it was just a cool idea in general. I’m not going to say that Maya has the most original premise in the world as it is very similar to several other movies but it works for the most part. I kept me entertained pretty much the entire time I was watching it (with the exception of some of the slower parts toward the beginning) and by the time things really got going and people started dying off I found myself really enjoying myself more than I ever thought I would considering I had no clue this movie even existed before I sat down to watch it.

I thought that the death scenes were quite awesome as well. We get several of them and the biggest majority of them are pretty hardcore and bloody. The evil spirit doesn’t screw around when it comes to taking people out and the results are pretty damn cool. We get several brutal and creative death scenes that look painful as hell. My personal favorite involved a woman in a bath tub that gets her head and face slammed against the side of the tub and faucet several times. The poor thing has the living hell beaten out of her to the point that her nose is just totally obliterated before she finally dies. This scene goes on for a bit and while I dug it I think that it might bother some viewers with a weak stomach (especially when they see what happens to her nose at the end of the scene. Ouch).  I thought that all the death scenes were well-done and the special effects were quite impressive as well. If bloody death scenes are your thing then you won’t walk away feeling disappointed in the least.

As much as I dug the movie it wasn’t without a couple of issues. As I’ve said things start off very slowly and I was a little bored toward the beginning before things started to happen. I also wasn’t that big on some of the characters either. I didn’t really care for Peter (Peter Phelps) and thought that he was sort of a jerk. Even though he was one of the main characters I found him to be highly unlikable for the most part and I really didn’t care what happened to him. As bad as he was though I could take him over the two annoying guys from Texas that make an appearance at one point. They are annoying as hell, horrible people in general (they attempt to rape someone at one point), and just got on my nerves. Thankfully they both get what is coming to them and I couldn’t have been happier to see them go. I was also a little on the fence with the ending as well, and while it wasn’t horrible it just didn’t really do it for me and I think it could have been a little better.

If you ask me Maya was a hidden gem. Even though it wasn’t a perfect movie I still thought that it had a lot going for it and I had a great time checking it out.  It’s not for everyone but if you are into films about evil spirits running around killing people you will most likely dig it. Check it out if it sounds like something you might enjoy, you may just be surprised by how much you liked it after everything is said and done like I did.

Tags 1989 Antonello Fassari Cyrus Elias Erich Wildpret Marcello Avallone Mariangélica Ayala Mariella Valentini Mirella D'Angelo Peter Phelps

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Just because fairies are small in size doesn't mean they're not nasty little buggers. The original fairy myths present a very different picture from the adorable family-friendly Tinkerbell. Fairies are demanding, mischievous, and bossy. They abduct babies out of their cradles. They can overrun your life if you don't handle them just so . You invite them in for a cup of tea, hoping to appease them, and before you know it, they've unpacked their bags. Director Jon Wright , in " Unwelcome, " has fun with these ideas, playing around with all kinds of stereotypes (about fairies, about Irish small-town life), and putting it into a horror context. In " Grabbers ," set on an island off Ireland's coast, Wright mixed horror and comedy with sci-fi aliens, and " Unwelcome " has a similar mashup. Some of " Unwelcome " is legitimately creepy and upsetting. Some of it is hilarious. Whether or not the hilarity is intended is unclear.

Maya ( Hannah John-Kamen ) and Jamie ( Douglas Booth ) are a young couple living in a housing estate in London somewhere. In the very effective opening scene, Maya learns she's pregnant. Their shared ecstasy is genuine. All is shot to hell in what happens next: three guys, straight out of Bill Buford's nightmarish Among the Thugs , break in and beat Jamie senseless, also attacking Maya (kicking her in the stomach at one point). Jamie watches helplessly from across the room as the three men attack his girlfriend (or wife? She says later, "I married a nice guy...").

Traumatized, Maya and Jamie move to a remote town in Northern Ireland. Jamie's aunt died, leaving him her house. The couple is not in town 30 seconds before strangeness shows up, in the character of an older woman ( Niamh Cusack ) who greets them at the door. Jamie's aunt was "a strange one," she says, who "believed in the old ways." Uh-oh. Every night, Jamie's aunt would leave out a little plate of food at a gate in the back garden, an offering for "the little people." Maya and James laugh. Jamie exclaims, "Leprechauns! This is so Irish!" The woman is not amused. She begs Maya—demands, really—to keep up the tradition. Every night, every night, mind you, leave out a plate of food for the "little people," known as the far darrig, the "redcap" fairies. You do not want to mess with the far darrig.

Naturally, in horror film tradition, Maya and Jamie pooh-pooh this "quaint" wisdom and proceed to ignore all the red flags. They hire the Whelan family to work on the house (which is like inviting the locals in " Deliverance " as day laborers). Similar to fairy behavior, the Whelans settle in like they own the place. The loud-mouthed father ( Colm Meaney ) has some surface charm, but when he insists on being called "Daddy," something steely and scary emerges. The three adult Whelan children ( Kristian Nairn , Chris Walley , and Jamie-Lee O'Donnell) are almost feral. The oldest, Owen, is a lumbering man-child who creeps on Maya. The other two rifle through Maya and Jamie's possessions or loll about on the front steps smoking pot. Their hostility has historical and political implications. They throw "Oliver Cromwell" and " Michael Collins " into Jamie's face when he objects to their behavior. Henry VIII is name-checked. Jamie and Maya have no recourse in the face of this. As far as the Whelans are concerned, they are just uppity colonizers. 

It takes a long time for the actual redcap fairies to show up, and when they do, the effect is either supposed to be hilarious, or it's unintentionally so. They're a little like Gremlins or Yoda (if Yoda were a wise-cracking mean-spirited trickster). The mystery of these beings is what makes the opening hour of the film so creepy. You know they're there. You just can't see them. Making them explicit, and seen, tips the film over into a comedy. (One of the Whelan kids sees a teeny hand coming through a doorway and murmurs, "Oh, for f**k's sake ..." Reader, I laughed out loud.) The Whelans are human, but they are so much more frightening than the Gremlins dancing around, wielding teeny swords. There are a couple of sequences, especially the one involving a severed head inside a plastic bag, that play like slapstick comedy. This was obviously deliberate, but the overall tone is uneven.

The production design of " Unwelcome " is all fairy-tale, all golden light and thick greens, misty shadowy forests, almost the platonic ideal of Ireland in its purest state, the Ireland of the mind. Shot by Hamish Doyne-Ditmas , the film's look is artificial, so much so that a couple of exteriors look like they were shot on a soundstage (and perhaps they were). This creates a strange effect, but welcome, particularly today where so many films seem to have been shot in a strictly black-and-grey palette, or like there's a layer of dirt over the camera lens. In " Unwelcome, " it's all golden and green. Wright told Empire he liked "horrors" that were "like adult fairy tales." " Unwelcome " definitely applies.

John-Kamen and Booth create a believable relationship, good building blocks to develop as " Unwelcome " progresses. Jamie, ashamed at his cowardice during the apartment invasion, quivers with impotent rage, totally deteriorating his sweet personality. He needs to prove himself a real man. Booth really leans into this, and his sense of rage at the Whelan Invasion is palpable. Hannah, hugely pregnant throughout, goes through the biggest transformation, from traumatized skeptic to wild-eyed believer. John-Kamen tracks this progression every step of the way. Her journey is harrowing, and John-Kamen makes us believe it.

Now playing in theaters and available on digital on March 14th. 

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O'Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master's in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Unwelcome (2023)

Rated R for strong violence and gore, pervasive language, some drug use and sexual material.

104 minutes

Hannah John-Kamen as Maya

Douglas Booth as Jamie

Jamie Lee O'Donnell as Aisling Whelan

Chris Walley as Killian Whelan

Kristian Nairn as Eoin Whelan

Colm Meaney as Colm “Daddy” Whelan

Niamh Cusack as Niamh

Lalor Roddy as Rory

Cinematographer

• Hamish Doyne-Ditmas
• Zsófia Tálas
• Christian Henson

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Maya Rudolph's Beyoncé still can't handle the heat in SNL 's Hot Ones parody sequel: 'Why can't I slay this?'

Cowboy Carter is back for wings round 2.

Maya Rudolph might officially be the queen of Hot Ones parodies.

Not only did she recently have a meltdown on the spicy wing show as her Loot character Molly Wells, but she has now starred in two Saturday Night Live sketches spoofing it as Beyoncé . And no, the diva's second attempt did not go much better than the first.

In a sequel to the original 2021 sketch, Rudolph’s Bey is Cowboy Carter –flavored and ready to get down. But why did she bother returning?

"This was the only thing I have attempted that I did not slay,” she tells host Sean Evans (played by Mikey Day ). 

Initially, it seems like the icon has a chance at redemption: She crushes the first wing and coherently answers a question without flinching. But by wing No. 2, the “Texas Hold ‘Em” singer has gone cross-eyed and lost her cool.

“Damn, my bones are hot,” she says, fanning herself with the wing as she summons her assistant. “I need you to go on Google and search, ‘Is it possible to take someone’s bones out they body, replace them with bones that aren’t on fire.’” 

The host then moves on to Beyoncé’s next challenge: a nameless sauce whose label is just a picture of a toilet on fire. After a single bite, Rudolph shuts down his next question.

“You need to shut your Charlie Brown–looking ass for a minute, and you need to listen to me,” she demands. “Beyoncé about to do something very human, so I need you to blur my face in 3… 2… 1.” 

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly 's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

Then, with her face blurred, Rudolph’s Bey lets out a huge belch.

Next, she asks Evans to hand over his milk — which she promptly throws in his face.

“You need to kill yourself, Gollum,” she tells him. “That’s what you get for giving the world's baddest bitch swamp-ass on YouTube."

After trying to alleviate the pain by drinking some of her $600 lotion, Beyoncé eventually departs as only the world’s biggest star could: with a little help from the Men in Black neuralyzer.

Watch Rudolph’s Beyoncé fail to slay on Hot Ones in the SNL sketch above.

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Release date : July 21, 2017

123telugu.com Rating : 2.25/5

Director : Govindh Lalam

Producer : KV Hari Krishna

Music Director : Sai Karthik

Starring : Dilip, Eesha Rebba

Continuing the trend of low budget films, yet another horror comedy which has hit the screens is Maya Mall. Let’s see how it is.

Dileep(Dileep Kumar) and Mytri(eesha) are lovers who decide to marry against their parent’s will. The elope from their village and land in a shopping mall for some purchase. This is also the time when a small mishap happens in the mall and the coupe gets stuck in the mall along with Shakalaka Shankar and Tagubothu Ramesh.

What is that mishap? How will the couple come out of the mall? and Is there a scary factor related to the mall? To know answers to these questions, you need to watch the film on the big screen.

Plus Points :-

The basic twist in the climax is pretty interesting. Telugu girl, Isha has done a wonderful job in her role. She brings a lot of depth to the film with her performance. Deeksha Panth provides some good eye candy for the masses.

Newcomer Dileep is also good for his first film. Happy Days fame Sonia is decent in her role and looks good. Some horror effects here and there are decent enough in the film. The way entire film runs in a single mall looks quite convincing.

Minus Points :-

One of the biggest drawbacks of the film is the routine horror comedy line. There is nothing new in this film as the proceedings are a copy of many recent horror comedies. The film looks fake most of the time with silly proceedings.

Shakalaka Shankar and Tagubothu Ramesh do not evoke any laughs as their roles have been written quite weakly. Prudhvi has not been used to his fullest. There is no depth in the emotions showcased as the proceedings are filled with some over the top comedy and outdated twists.

Technical Aspects :-

As said earlier, the way the shopping mall has been showcased with good camera work is quite interesting. Coming to the director Govind, he has done a very poor job with the film. His narration is quite bland as he has written only some scenes well. But as a whole, he makes the film quite predictable. Background score was good and so was the editing part.

On the whole, Maya Mall is yet another routine horror comedy which has absolutely nothing to offer. Except for some eye candy of Deeksha Panth, this film is a letdown and can be ignored this weekend.

Reviewed by 123telugu Team

Click here for Telugu Review

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‘The Strangers’ Bets Big: Why a 3-Film Horror ‘Odyssey’ Is Dropping in One Year, Plans for a 4-Hour Cut and What’s Next in ‘Chapter 2’ (EXCLUSIVE)

By Jordan Moreau

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In horror, bodies are usually split into parts, not the movies themselves.

Lots of slasher icons are revived for sequel upon sequel over the years (just look at Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees) but very few franchises — in any genre — have released a trilogy of movies within one year. Lionsgate ‘s “ The Strangers ” is breaking down the door in an ambitious, three-chapter strategy to give horror fans a never-before-seen horror “odyssey.”

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Once producer Courtney Solomon, a fan of the 2008 movie, acquired the rights to “The Strangers,” he knew he had a much larger story to tell, but he didn’t want to do a remake.

“In order to tell it you’re gonna need to go back to the great original,” he says. “It’s the primal nature of the original concept, these three random people and unexplained, random acts of violence, which is just so terrifying and real. I don’t know if you can improve upon that, so why don’t we take that basic premise as a starting point and modify it for a bigger story that becomes proper, character-driven horror. You need to spend time with both protagonists and antagonists, so I went off and came up with what ended up being a 285-page script.”

“In terms of how audiences are consuming content, the thing that was interesting was you can make three movies at once and deliver them in a quick manner. A lot of people don’t have to wait,” says Geobert Abboud, Lionsgate’s executive vice president of global distribution. “We’re not necessarily trying to make theatrical a bingeing media, but the idea was to release a film that we were confident was going to work theatrically, as well as number two and three that can follow up pretty quickly with another experience versus waiting a year or two years to get that sequel.”

That ambitious rollout resulted in a 52-day shoot in the Slovakian wilderness under the deft hand of veteran director Renny Harlin . No stranger to horror, Harlin has helmed installments of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “The Exorcist” plus action thrillers like “Die Hard 2” and “Cliffhanger” over his 40-year career. He shot the “Strangers” trilogy interchangeably, starting with the opening of “Chapter 2,” then a scene from “Chapter 3” and so on. Though there aren’t premiere dates yet for the two sequels, he estimates they’ll be released in “September or October” and then wrap up in “the beginning of next year.”

“If it had been a straight remake or a sequel, I wouldn’t have done it at this point of my life,” he says. “I have such respect for the original film and am somewhat intimidated by the quality of it. Simply doing a sequel or remake didn’t appeal to me, but this was such an opportunity to have four and a half hours of a case study of victims of a violent crime and the perpetrators and what makes them tick and how it affects a person who goes through this.”

Madelaine Petsch , in her first major role since “Riverdale” ended, managed to fit the shoot between filming the ending of her CW drama. She plays Maya, who is the latest to get the “Strangers” welcome party with her boyfriend Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) in a remote Airbnb in Oregon. Even though “Chapter 1” follows the traditional “Strangers” home invasion, she teases that the next two movies put Maya through all-new trauma.

“Throughout every step of the next two films it’s just, ‘How is she going to get out of this terrorizing situation?'” she says. “And it’s not necessarily all only home invasion, but they continue to invade her life in any way possible. Even in ways you don’t think are possible, they’re doing something fucked up. We really bend the rules a lot, which is fun.”

One reveal in the sequels is that “Strangers” fans will finally learn who Tamara is, whom the killers always ask for when they knock on the front door in the middle of the night.

And for fans who want the four-and-a-half-hour director’s cut, there’s a very real chance it could happen once the trilogy finishes. Abboud confirms there is “some version of that we’ve discussed at a high level that we’d like to see at some point.”

Harlin adds, “It’s in our heads. This is definitely what we want to do. We want to cut together the full arc. We know exactly how to do it, then we’ll create a movie and see who are those diehard fans who will come to the movie theater for four and a half hours. I don’t know if we need to have an intermission so people can get some food and go to the bathroom, but I definitely want to have that event and see if people take four and a half hours of dread and fear and terror and despair.”

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New Horror Movie With 20% RT Score Passes Huge Domestic Milestone In Week 2

• Tarot is expected to end the week with $11.7 million at the domestic box office.
• Despite its excellent box office returns, Tarot has struggled to earn the respect of critics.
• Tarot earned a 20% Rotten Tomatoes approval score from critics.

Tarot is thriving at the box office, but critics still have little love for the newly-released horror. Focusing on a group of college students, the movie follows their terrifying adventure as they each play with a cursed Tarot deck. Every member of the group is targeted by their own Tarot reading, and they are left desperately fighting to survive. It was released on May 3 and features an ensemble cast led by Spider-Man: Far From Home 's Jacob Batalon.

According to a report by Deadline , Tarot is already near the point of profitability. With a total domestic take of $3.2 million on the weekend, it will finish this weekend having passed the $10 million domestic milestone. It will have approximately $11.7 million at the box office, which means that it has likely already broken even and is approaching profitability. This comes despite Tarot 's exceptionally poor reviews , which left it with a 20% Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer score.

Tarot's Surprisingly Positive Box Office Performance

Even poor critical reviews can't topple tarot.

While Tarot had well-known stars, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Spider-Man trilogy's Jacob Batalon , it did not receive much respect from critics. Its 20% score from critics was set with an average review of 4.5 out of 10, which is far from a positive response. Audiences have been similarly disappointed, as the movie earned just a 57% approval rating, while also holding a C- on CinemaScore , which puts it below the C score of the similarly panned 2024 horror Night Swim .

Tarot Ending Explained

The supernatural horror film Tarot takes a familiar occult parlor game and elevates it into a chilling exploration of growth and escaping one's fate.

Negative critical and audience scores have not stopped the Tarot release from achieving financial success. Partly supported by a slow box office during its opening weekend, Tarot enjoyed a strong $6.5 million domestic take in its first three days . The domestic results alone have earned back its budget through the first two weeks, leaving it well on its way to profitability. Its small budget of $8 million makes profit a realistic prospect even despite the poor word-of-mouth that led to its 51% drop on the weekend.

The main reason for Tarot 's success is likely that it is the only major new horror movie in theaters at the moment. Abigail is already in its fourth week, but this movie is still relatively new at the box office. Most theaters are currently filled with action movies, meaning that it has the opportunity to fill a role that nothing else is truly covering. Its success can also be associated with its relatively unique concept and recognizable faces, so while critics may be panning it, Tarot is still on the way to success.

Source: Deadline

Tarot (2024)

Director Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

Release Date May 3, 2024

Studio(s) Ground Control, Alloy Entertainment, Screen Gems

Distributor(s) Sony Pictures Releasing

Writers Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

Cast Avantika Vandanapu, Wolfgang Novogratz, Larsen Thompson, Humberly Gonzlez, Harriet Slater, Jacob Batalon, Adain Bradley, Olwen Four

Rating PG-13

Runtime 92 minutes

Genres Mystery, Thriller, Horror

Main Genre Horror

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Bambi: The Reckoning

Inspired by the animated movie Bambi, it will transform the innocent deer we know into a killing machine. Inspired by the animated movie Bambi, it will transform the innocent deer we know into a killing machine. Inspired by the animated movie Bambi, it will transform the innocent deer we know into a killing machine.

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Prolific 'king of B movies' filmmaker Roger Corman dead at 98

Genres included sci-fi, horror, biker films and rebellious teen fare.

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Low-budget cinema maestro Roger Corman, who cranked out hundreds of outrageous films over six decades and helped launch the careers of acclaimed directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron and Ron Howard, died on Thursday at age 98, family members said.

Corman, a producer and director hailed as the "king of B movies," died at his home in Santa Monica, Calif., his wife and daughters said in a post on his Instagram account late on Saturday without giving the cause of death.

"It is with profound sadness, and boundless gratitude for his extraordinary life, that we remember our beloved husband and father, Roger Corman," his wife Julie and daughters Catherine and Mary, said in the post.

"His films were revolutionary and iconoclastic, and captured the spirit of an age," they wrote.

Corman was given an honorary lifetime Academy Award in November 2009 for his "rich engendering of films and filmmakers."

Honoured for 'weird, cool, crazy moments' on screen

"Roger, for everything you have done for cinema, the academy thanks you, Hollywood thanks you, independent filmmaking thanks you," Academy Award-winning filmmaker Quentin Tarantino told Corman at his Oscar ceremony. "But, most importantly, for all the weird, cool, crazy moments you've put on screen, the movie lovers of planet Earth thank you."

Corman's work — he produced more than 300 films and directed about 50 — was filled with those weird, cool and crazy moments. The movies were shot swiftly on the cheap and only a handful lost money.

They covered genres including sci-fi, horror, biker films, rebellious teen fare, Edgar Allan Poe tales and more. Their titles were not exactly subtle —  Attack of the Crab Monsters  (1957), The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent  (1957), The Brain Eaters  (1958), Teenage Cave Man  (1958), A Bucket of Blood  (1959), Creature from the Haunted Sea  (1961), Bloody Mama  (1970), Gas-s-s-s  (1970), Galaxy of Terror  (1981) and Piranhaconda  (2012).

Past age 90, he was still prolific, producing films with titles such as Cobragator  and Death Race 2050 .

Behind early career breaks in Hollywood

"I believe to be successful over the long run, unless you're a Federico Fellini or an Ingmar Bergman or a true genius in filmmaking, you have to understand that you're working in both an art and a business," Corman told a pop culture website in 2010.

He gave early career breaks to future stars including Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone, Sandra Bullock, Talia Shire, William Shatner, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper.

But he was best known for nurturing directors. As a frugal producer, Corman hired promising young filmmakers who could work on a shoestring budget, launching their careers.

Before Raging Bull , Scorsese directed Corman's Boxcar Bertha  (1972). Before The Godfather , Coppola directed Dementia 13  (1963) for Corman. Jonathan Demme of The Silence of the Lambs  fame directed Corman's  Fighting Mad  (1976). Howard directed Grand Theft Auto  (1977) for Corman before A Beautiful Mind . All four men went on to best director Oscars.

Also, Peter Bogdanovich directed Corman's Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women  (1968) before making The Last Picture Show , and Cameron was art director for Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars  (1980) before Titanic .

Sometimes his proteges thanked Corman by giving him cameo roles, such as the FBI director in The Silence of the Lambs  and a congressman in Apollo 13 .

At Corman's 2009 Oscar ceremony, Howard fondly recalled getting a shot to make his directorial debut with Grand Theft Auto  at a time when he was viewed as a lightweight TV sitcom actor. Howard said he complained to Corman about not getting sufficient resources.

Corman did not cough up more money, Howard said, but told him: "I promise you this: If you continue to do a good job for me on this picture, you'll never have to work for me again."

The Little Shop of Horrors filmed in 2 days

No one would argue that the movies Corman produced were subtle or nuanced. Many were complete schlock, filled with crazy effects, bizarre plots, bare breasts, ridiculous monsters or women behind bars. But some had artistic merit.

He directed The Little Shop of Horrors  (1960), filming it in just two days and one night. It featured a young Nicholson, who had impressed Corman in an acting class, and an icky plot about a lonely flower shop worker who creates a carnivorous plant that craves human flesh.

He also made several horror films in the 1960s starring Vincent Price inspired by Edgar Allan Poe stories, including House of Usher  (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum  (1961) and The Masque of the Red Death  (1964).

Corman stopped directing in 1971 and focused on producing. He directed just one more film, 1990's Frankenstein Unbound .

Worked with high-profile arthouse directors

In contrast to his trademark low-budget stuff, Corman also dabbled in international arthouse cinema, serving as the U.S. distributor of films by fabled directors Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut and more.

Corman was born on April 5, 1926, in Detroit. He graduated from Stanford University in 1947 with an engineering degree, but quit his first job as an engineer after three days and got work at the 20th Century Fox film studio as a messenger.

After a detour studying modern English literature at the University of Oxford, he returned to the United States intent upon making his mark in the film industry. The name of Corman's 1990 autobiography revealed his guiding philosophy: How I Made A Hundred Movies In Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime .

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A Holocaust survivor will mark that history differently after the horrors of Oct. 7

Judith Tzamir, a Holocaust survivor from Germany, poses for a portrait in her family home in Kibbutz Meflasim, southern Israel, Friday, May 3, 2024. On Monday, Tzamir will join 55 other Holocaust survivors from Israel and around the world for a memorial march in Poland, called March of the Living. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Judith Tzamir, a Holocaust survivor from Germany, speaks to a journalist in her family home in Kibbutz Meflasim, southern Israel, Friday, May 3, 2024. On Monday, Tzamir will join 55 other Holocaust survivors from Israel and around the world for a memorial march in Poland, called March of the Living. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

Judith Tzamir, a Holocaust survivor from Germany, poses for a portrait in the garden of her family home in Kibbutz Meflasim, southern Israel, Friday, May 3, 2024. On Monday, Tzamir will join 55 other Holocaust survivors from Israel and around the world for a memorial march in Poland, called March of the Living. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

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KIBBUTZ MEFALSIM, Israel (AP) — When Hamas fighters invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip perpetrated the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

So this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins on Sunday evening in Israel, carries a heavier weight than usual for many Jews around the world.

For Judith Tzamir, a Holocaust survivor from Germany who moved to Israel in 1964, the horrors of Oct. 7 prompted her to mark the somber holiday by making a pilgrimage she has long avoided: She will visit Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

Tzamir, whose kibbutz fended off Hamas attackers on Oct. 7, will join 55 other Holocaust survivors from around the world and about 10,000 others participating in the March of the Living . The event recreates the 2-mile (3-kilometer) march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, where approximately 1 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.

The event, now in its 36th year, usually draws thousands of participants, including Holocaust survivors and Jewish students, leaders and politicians. This year, Israeli hostages released from captivity in Gaza and families whose relatives are still being held captive will also join the march.

“I don’t know if the world will listen, but even for myself, it’s important,” said Tzamir, who had turned down past invitations to visit Auschwitz. “To remember that there’s still antisemitism around, and there are still people who will kill just for religious reasons.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, has traditionally been a time for Israelis to gather and listen to testimony from survivors.

It is one of the most somber days of the year — highlighted by a two-minute siren when traffic halts and people stand at attention in memory of the victims. Memorial ceremonies are held throughout the day, and names of victims are recited. While Israel’s national Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, tries to steer clear of politics, its ceremony this year includes an empty yellow chair in solidarity with the Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.

In 1948, when Tzamir was 4 1/2 years old, the people she knew as her parents dressed her in a light blue dress, with black shoes and white socks, and took her to a plaza in Berlin. She remembers clutching her doll, Yula, when they revealed that they were not her parents and that the woman standing before them was her biological mother.

Tzamir’s mother had hidden her Jewish identity during World War II by serving in the German army. She gave birth to Judith in 1943 in a hospital run by nuns, and left Judith behind to save her life. Tzamir, called Donata at the time, was placed in a foster family. She had no idea she was Jewish until she met her mother.

Sixteen years later, while she was in college, Tzamir went to Mefalsim, a kibbutz in southern Israel on the border with Gaza, through a student-exchange program. After her studies, she returned to Mefalsim, fell in love with a new immigrant from Argentina who was also living on the kibbutz, and stayed, raising four children.

On Oct. 7, Tzamir was faced with the possibility of losing her home once again. Hamas militants poured over the border from Gaza and attacked towns, army bases and a music festival in southern Israel. Mefalsim was luckier than many other kibbutzim in the area, where militants burned homes and left wide swaths of destruction.

The militants killed around 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 others. The attack sparked the Israeli invasion in Gaza, where the death toll has soared to more than 34,500 people, according to local health officials , and driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. The high death toll and humanitarian crisis have prompted genocide accusations against Israel in the International Court of Justice — a charge that Israel angrily rejects.

Hamas has said its attack was aimed against Israeli occupation and its blockade of Gaza, and pro-Palestinian activists deny any antisemitic motives in their opposition to Israel’s military offensive. For most Jewish Israelis, global protests calling for boycotts of Israel and questioning the country’s right to exist often veer into antisemitism.

On the day of the attack, Mefalsim’s emergency preparedness squad was able to hold most of the Hamas militants outside the kibbutz perimeter. Many residents stayed in safe rooms for nearly 24 hours, until the Israeli army was able to evacuate them the next day.

Although there were no fatalities at Mefalsim, its roughly 800 residents were told to leave, along with more than 120,000 Israelis who lived within a few kilometers of the borders with Gaza and Lebanon. Mefalsim, Tzamir’s steady anchor after a childhood filled with upheaval and uncertainty, was no longer a safe haven.

Many Mefalsim residents have been living in a hotel north of Tel Aviv the past seven months, uncertain of next steps, though Tzamir and some others hope to return to the kibbutz in June.

Tzamir said the Oct. 7 attack brought up all kinds of memories from her childhood trauma. She could function during the day, but when she went to sleep her dreams were filled with blood and death and fires, visions that reminded her of the bombings she witnessed as a child in Germany.

Tzamir is one of approximately 2,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel who were forced to evacuate from their homes due to the war in Gaza, according to Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. The ministry estimates that 132,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel.

Tzamir served as a director of her kibbutz for 13 years, so she knows every resident. She said some families may never return to Mefalsim, just a mile (1.4 kilometers) from the Gaza border. Explosions from Gaza reverberate over the buildings, and the sense of security is difficult to reclaim.

But it was never a question for her, she said.

“I’m 80 years old, I don’t want to lose my home again,” Tzamir said as her husband Ran, busied himself tending to a garden bursting with succulents and flowers, just before their flight to Poland. “We are coming back.”

This story has been corrected to show that the spelling of the kibbutz is Mefalsim.