Shudder has announced its February 2022 lineup, including new Shudder original films like Jeremiah Kipp’s Slapface, Igor Legarreta’s All The Moons, Abel and Burlee Vang’s They Live in the Grey, and Toby Poser, John Adams, and their daughter Zelda Adams’ Hellbender. Plus new additions to Shudder’s growing library, including genre classics such as Tales from the Hood and Battle Royale.
My impression on first hearing about the hugely popular [young adult] book trilogy (and now mega money-making feature-film franchise) The Hunger Games was: ‘Hey, teenage contestants forced to fight to the death in a populist amusement engineered by a manipulative, despotic master of a dystopian future world? Wow, what an interesting idea! …But wait, isn’t that just like…’
Battle Royale (2000): Enforcing the terms of the new ‘Battle Royale Act’ one class of ninth-grade students is selected annually by lottery and relocated to an isolated island, fitted with explosive collars, given random weapons and forced to participate in a 3-day survival competition in which the last student left alive is the winner.
When a new era of Asian horror films entered mainstream Western cinema with Hideo Nakata’s ‘The Ring’, Asian horror movies were soon perceived to be chasing Hollywood’s more hackneyed horror efforts into the shadows.
