Tusk

When podcaster Wallace Bryton (Justin Long) takes a trip up to the north of Canada to interview a mysterious seafarer named Horace Howe (Michael Parks), he is taken hostage by the strange sailor who wants to turn him into a walrus (yes, you read that correctly). In the meantime his girlfriend (Genesis Rodriguez) and best friend (Haley Joel Osment) team up with an ex-cop (Johnny Depp) to investigate his disappearance.

Why we’re looking forward to this: Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Kevin Smith always does something interesting with his movies, and even the slight misfire that was Red State wasn’t enough to damage his reputation as an imaginative filmmaker in our eyes. Tusk promises to be another Smith film that will potentially divide audiences for no other reason than it’s essentially a movie about a mad scientist who wants to turn a man into a walrus – The Human Centipede with flippers, if you will.

Before you give yourself a hernia from laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the plot, however, bear in mind that Smith is a master of dark comedy, and that the actors attached – Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, and Johnny Depp – all have form in the genre, so Tusk should hopefully be less Sharknado and more Shaun of the Dead in the horror comedy stakes.

Tusk is released in the US on 19 September and later this year in the UK.

The Houses That October Built

On a quest to find the most extreme haunted house attraction for Halloween, five friends set off on a road trip in their RV to track down the best underground Haunt. Just as their search seems to hit a dead end, however, strange and disturbing things begin happening and it becomes clear that the Haunt they were looking for has instead found them.

Why we’re looking forward to this: We love Halloween here at This Is Horror (who’d have thought!), and if there’s one thing that America does very well in the month of October, it’s the walk through haunted house attraction. Sadly for us it’s something that has never really caught on outside of the US so we’re always happy to vicariously partake in the experience through a movie like The Houses That October Built.

The thrill of these walk through haunts comes from the up close and personal nature of the encounters with the ghosts, ghouls and maniacs that inhabit them, and the hand held, found footage style direction that is evident from the trailer means that we’ll be right there with the (most probably) doomed thrill seekers as they discover, once again, to be careful what you wish for.

The Houses That October built is out in America on 10 October and hopefully  in the UK not long afterwards.

RICH COSGROVE