WE ARE STILL HERE

This trailer for upcoming SXSW midnighter We Are Still Here is so fucking rad. 

It's directed by first-timer Ted Geoghegan, and stars the lovely Barbara Crampton (and I'm delighted to see her making such a wholehearted return to the genre).

Geoghegan (I have no idea how to pronounce that) got his start writing for German sicko Andreas Schnaas, after which he penned the screenplay for Stacy Davidson's ultra-violent Sweatshop. With a gory background like that it's not surprising to see the red stuff flowing freely in this trailer, but it's not the grue that excites me here (well, maybe just a little bit), it's the atmosphere. Pure, 100% Fulci worship in the same vein as The Beyond and House by the Cemetery. I thought I might just be projecting my own love for Fulci onto the trailer but then I found this on IMDB:

Numerous characters in this film are named after characters or people associated with the Lucio Fulci film The House by the Cemetery (1981), which this film was inspired by.

I got all anal retentive and compared the credits of both films, and I can confirm that that's indeed the case. There's also a character named "Joe the electrician" which is an obvious nod to "Joe the plumber" from The Beyond.

I know that kind of fan service is just silly and is usually the hallmark of shitty fan films, but this trailer has me stoked for something much better than that. A high quality, atmospheric, gory Fulci homage that's also a good film in its own right. And let's be honest, how often do we get those? There's been hundreds of Romero knockoffs in recent years (including the highest rating show on TV), but how many really worthwhile Fulci throwbacks have we seen? The only ones that spring to mind are Nacho Cerdà's The Abandoned and Eric Valette's Maléfique (and to a lesser extent Atsushi Muroga's Junk and the Ford brothers' Dead movies).

Really hoping this lives up to the trailer, dying to read the first reviews out of SXSW!