the unheard movie review

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In Jeffrey A. Brown ’s “The Unheard,” one young woman’s past trauma collides with a present-day terror in a sleepy Northeastern town. After Chloe ( Lachlan Watson ) enrolls in a clinical trial at the Northeast Eye and Ear Institute (which looks to be based on Mass Eye and Ear) to repair her hearing that was damaged during a childhood illness, she heads out to her dad’s residence on the Cape to recover and help him sell the house where they last saw her mother ( Michele Hicks ) before she disappeared. You’ll soon discover this town has an awful history of missing women. Lost in between waves of nostalgia and videotape-induced flashbacks, Chloe begins to hear voices and sounds no one else can. 

“The Unheard” has its shining moments, but they are not enough to cover for some glaring missteps. Although the premise is strong, its execution is less-than-convincing. Watson plays the leading role in such a whisper that their underwhelming performance doesn’t carry the screams or suspense the movie aims for. It seems as if they weren’t given enough material or direction to liven things up on-screen, which is noticeable since they are alone for a good portion of the movie. Not all of the filming, editing, or writing choices land on the same tone, which lessens the story's overall impact. Some of the more badly staged moments elicited a few eye rolls and groans from this viewer. 

Screenwriters Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen weave two parallel scary narratives into one—that of a young woman who undergoes experimental surgery with unintended consequences and that of a haunted town where women like Chloe’s mother go missing. But the two story threads don’t always blend smoothly. Some plot twists are given away or shoehorned in, and some scenes take too much time luxuriating in VCR trips down memory lane instead of building towards something. It’s as if this movie’s rhythm is off-beat.

Despite this supernatural influence from cassette tapes, Brown and cinematographer Owen Levelle imagine Chloe’s world to look rather drab. It’s the off-season on the Cape, but the setting is brown and muddy instead of New England’s famous fall colors. Some images have a soft-focused quality as if the sharpness was blurred to look like it was shot through a light haze. When light streams through the windows, the image looks blown out, intensifying the haze. Other scenes are so aged and vaguely sepia-toned that I briefly thought it looked like a period piece. 

Lead actress Watson has the unenviable task of playing a soft-spoken character going through extraordinary circumstances, but their performance never entirely moves past wide-eyed intrigue. The other characters Chloe meets on her journey, like Joshua ( Brendan Meyer ), the strange boy staying next door, and Hank ( Nick Sandow ), the odd too-helpful neighbor who seems too suspicious, and Doctor Lynch ( Shunori Ramanathan ), Chloe’s well-meaning specialist in Boston, are similarly one note.

However, Brown uses sound in such a way that immerses the audience in Chloe’s world. This can mean that conversations sound muted or muffled before the surgery, or it can spike uncomfortably to demonstrate when she’s hearing something beyond what most people can hear. Before and immediately after her procedure, Chloe relies on live transcription software to bridge any sound gaps while the movie’s audio plays unaltered in the background to demonstrate how she navigates the world independently.

It’s a testament to the work of sound designer Colin Alexander and the rest of the sound department that “The Unheard” works at all. Otherwise, Brown’s film left me wanting more. There’s not much else to enjoy from the uninspired visuals, stilted acting, and clunky script that leads up to an ending so fantastically dull it undoes the little goodwill the movie accumulates over the course of its runtime. Perhaps “The Unheard” is better left unseen.

Now playing on Shudder.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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Film credits.

The Unheard (2023)

124 minutes

Lachlan Watson as Chloe

Nick Sandow as Hank

Brendan Meyer as Joshua

Michele Hicks as Mom

Shunori Ramanathan as Dr. Lynch

Boyana Balta as Ellen

Beckett Guest as Young friend

Michelle Violette as Store Clerk

• Jeffrey A. Brown
• Shawn Rasmussen
• Michael Rasmussen

Cinematographer

• Owen Levelle
• Aaron Crozier

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The Unheard Reviews

The Unheard is a hypnotic cinematic experience best experienced in the pitch black with sound-canceling headphones.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 10, 2023

The Unheard achieves so much in its first hour and then torches it near the end.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 5, 2023

There are so many redundant scenes of Chloe hearing static-y auditory hallucinations, the viewer can be forgiven for shouting, "OK, we get it already!"

The Unheard contains many elements that should make it work, but the film ends up being an extremely slow and tedious supernatural thriller.

Full Review | Apr 3, 2023

The Unheard had a lot of potential to be a movie about the frequencies of paranormal and supernatural sounds. Not having a bridge between those two points, or even a ferry with a temperamental motor leaves it adrift in a sea of what could have been.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 3, 2023

Watson’s fine performance and Brown’s thoughtful stylish touches (especially in the sound design) make the slice-of-life scenes special. The rest of the picture is more sketched-in.

Full Review | Apr 1, 2023

Its final moments are its most viscerally cathartic; if you were able to adapt to the movie’s rhythms yourself, you might just feel the tug. In your gut, that is, if not on your nerves.

Full Review | Mar 31, 2023

The film’s climax is a bit of a letdown, as it turns more brutal and stabby and less introspective and psychological, but when taken as a whole, The Unheard still mostly works and helps solidify Brown as a filmmaker worth keeping an eye on.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Mar 31, 2023

“The Unheard” has its shining moments, but they are not enough to cover for some glaring missteps.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 31, 2023

There’s too much movie without any pulse, and not enough third-act resuscitating to save an otherwise long-winded mystery that’s solid performances are lost in the static.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.0/10 | Mar 30, 2023

When all of the threads connect here, you’re left with a sum that’s ultimately less than the parts, no matter how well-crafted they may be.

Full Review | Mar 29, 2023

The premise’s intriguing aspects are bulldozed by a derivative slasher-in-the-house showdown. It’s not the ending that the film deserves, and it ignores everything that makes Chloe a recognisable and relatable character.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 28, 2023

Once it becomes a standard thriller, it is only that. But before the picture chooses tidiness, it's electric.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2023

The Unheard is a superb slice of all-enveloping dread.

Full Review | Mar 23, 2023

The Unheard is a film that relies heavily upon sound... But rather than wielding it as a lazy shock device, director Jeffrey A. Brown does so in a specific way that goes hand in hand with the film’s story — and creates a truly terrifying effect.

Jeffrey A. Brown’s ghost story slash serial killer thriller allows a young woman, cured of deafness, to tune into the noisy dead

What a tantalising, frustrating experience from the Rasmussens, who do some painstaking work here, only to set it bafflingly aside.

Full Review | Mar 6, 2023

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The unheard, common sense media reviewers.

Creepy horror about deaf woman regaining hearing; gore.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Movie centers on young woman who is recovering fro

Movie centered on young woman with a hearing disab

Woman attacked in her car and killed by a masked m

Infrequent strong language. "F--k" used a couple t

Whiskey drinking. Drinking in a bar. Beer drinking

Parents need to know that The Unheard is a 2023 horror movie in which a young woman with a hearing disability suffers auditory hallucinations after undergoing an experimental surgery. Expect some bloody violence, including characters killed by having their necks sliced open with box cutters, resulting in…

Positive Role Models

Movie centers on young woman who is recovering from surgery to regain her hearing after she lost it as a child from having meningitis; while this is a horror movie where much of the suspense centers on the auditory hallucinations she suffers after the surgery, she's also shown as a strong and capable lead character.

Diverse Representations

Movie centered on young woman with a hearing disability -- it's a positive representation of a character trying to regain her hearing after an experimental surgery.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Woman attacked in her car and killed by a masked man who slits her throat with a box cutter -- blood spurts out of her neck and onto the windshield. Man's throat sliced open, blood puddles around him. Man stabbed with a box cutter, left for dead. Woman attacked, knocked out, tied up to a bed post. Dead body tied to ceiling, rope around wrists. Quick flashbacks to when the lead character as a young girl found a dead bird in the woods with its entrails sticking out. Jump scares. Spooky ambient noises throughout.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent strong language. "F--k" used a couple times. Also: "s--t," "goddamn."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Whiskey drinking. Drinking in a bar. Beer drinking. Cigarette smoking. Vaping.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Unheard is a 2023 horror movie in which a young woman with a hearing disability suffers auditory hallucinations after undergoing an experimental surgery. Expect some bloody violence, including characters killed by having their necks sliced open with box cutters, resulting in spurting and puddled blood. A character is knocked out then tied up to a bed post. A dead body is found hanging from a ceiling, hanging by their tied-up wrists. Jump scares and spooky ambient sounds throughout. Whiskey and beer drinking. Cigarette smoking and vaping. Infrequent strong language, including "f--k." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

In THE UNHEARD, Chloe (Lachlan Watson) has traveled up to Boston from Maryland to undergo an experimental surgery to treat the hearing loss she suffered as a child. She lost her hearing due to meningitis shortly after the untimely death of her mother while spending the summer in a beach house in outside of Provincetown in Cape Cod. After the surgery, Chloe returns to the beach house to recover and wait for the results of the surgery. To her and the doctor's surprise, Chloe regains 80% of her hearing. However, the return of her hearing also gives her auditory hallucinations and heightened oversensitivity to sound. Unable to sleep, she watches home movies on the VCR of her childhood, but as the lights flicker and the sounds grow increasingly stranger, it seems that someone is trying to speak to Chloe through these auditory hallucinations. Meanwhile, women in the area are disappearing under strange circumstances, and as Chloe seeks to find out what it is she's hearing, it seems that it's somehow connected to what's going on in the area.

Is It Any Good?

This is an interesting concept that feels mostly squandered due to the movie's excessive length. The Unheard is trying to be a "slow burn," and for the first half, not much seems to happen besides the lead character Chloe recovering from an experimental surgery that restores the hearing she lost after coming down with meningitis after the untimely and mysterious death of her mother. There's a gratuitous childhood flashback involving a dead bird, and a gory murder of a woman not directly involved with the story during this first half, presumably to "keep it interesting," but it's actually sort of slow and boring.

The problem isn't the acting, but the length. It's a two -hour-and five-minute movie, and it could easily lose 20 minutes without anything being lost in the story. There are so many redundant scenes of Chloe hearing static-y auditory hallucinations, the viewer can be forgiven for shouting, "OK, we get it already!" Furthermore, the plot twists aren't the most surprising, and the payoff of Act 3 more or less treads the familiar path of horror movie climaxes. It's such a great premise, but the whole thing falls short and ultimately disappoints.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about horror movies like The Unheard . How is this similar to and different from other horror movies in terms of violence, gore, suspense, story?

Was the lead character a positive representation of someone with a hearing disability, or did it seem like the character was merely part of a horror movie formula? Why?

Were the plot twists effective, or did they seem predictable? Why do you think horror movies rely so heavily on plot twists?

Movie Details

• On DVD or streaming : March 31, 2023
• Cast : Lachlan Watson , Michele HIcks , Brendan Meyer
• Director : Jeffrey A. Brown
• Inclusion Information : Non-Binary actors, Pansexual actors
• Studio : Shudder
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 125 minutes
• MPAA rating : NR
• Last updated : July 16, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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The Unheard – Shudder Review (3/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Mar 28, 2023 | 3 minutes

THE UNHEARD on Shudder is a new horror movie with lots of truly creepy moments. Exactly the kind of horror that creeps under my skin. Also, there’s a serial killer subplot. There’s a good story, but it is too long. Read our full The Unheard movie review here!

THE UNHEARD is a new Shudder horror movie that I immediately connected with. The creepy horror moments utilized early on (of the psychological horror variety), just got me hooked. However, I do think it’s way too long which ultimately dulled the experience for me.

I still very much want to recommend this movie, so it’s not like it completely lost me. It’s just that I was finding it extremely intriguing and that didn’t last. The story and acting worked brilliantly for me, so it’s all about the pace. Too many moments lingering which did not help the story. I get why, but when so heavily utilized, it loses the intended impact. It just irritates.

Continue reading our The Unheard movie review below. Find it on Shudder from March 31, 2023.

When you can’t trust your own senses

There have been many movies where the main character can’t trust their own senses. Either due to being drugged (or using drugs themselves) or mental illness. In the case of  The Unheard , it’s more of a physiological issue. Though our main character is unsure of what is real and what isn’t.

Having lost her hearing as a child, Chloe Grayden (Lachlan Watson of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina ), takes part in an experimental procedure. The purpose is to completely restore her hearing, which does seem to happen. However, she is also hearing the voice of her mother, who vanished when Chloe was a child.

In fact, while in a coma due to meningitis, Chloe woke up without her hearing and her mother. Whether she left or was the victim of an accident or crime, no one knows. Chloe does still have her dad and the two clearly have a very good relationship.

The auditory hallucinations Chloe experiences do seem to revolve around her mother, so obviously, she isn’t sure what to trust. Also, strange things are happening around her while she’s alone in the family cabin that’s about to be put up for sale.

A serial killer on the loose

From Chloe’s arrival at the cabin in a small town, we see posters of missing women. A lot of missing women. To anyone who’s keeping attention, the obvious conclusion is that a serial killer is on the loose. However, as seen in numerous movies and documentaries, the police are rarely quick to heavily investigate cases where many women disappear suddenly.

Understandably sometimes, and a damn mystery at other times.

In The Unheard , there is a serial killer plot that plays out. A subplot at first, but ultimately it becomes the main plot. It works really well in the context of the plot in this movie. It absolutely does. What also works brilliantly for me is the performances by the cast.

Watch The Unheard on Shudder!

The director of this new Shudder horror movie is Jeffrey A. Brown. This is his second feature film as he had his debut with The Beach House (2019) . The screenplay for The Unheard  comes from Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen, who also wrote movies such as Alexandre Aja’s Crawl  (2019) and John Carpenter’s The Ward (2010) .

Lachlan Watson delivers a very  powerful performance as Chloe. Both while being without hearing and when struggling with having it come back with auditory hallucinations on top. Supporting roles are portrayed by familiar faces such as Brendan Meyer ( The Friendship Game ), Nick Sandow ( Clarice , Orange Is the New Black ), and Shunori Ramanathan ( Gypsy ).

What doesn’t work for me, is the lingering way too long at way too uncomfortable moments. We’re talking about actual discomfort in terms of flickering lights (which there is an appropriate warning for) and intense sounds. The fact that this is what adds so much time to the overall runtime is a shame.

With a runtime closer to the two-hour mark than the 90-minute sweet spot, it lost out on being truly brilliant.

The Unheard is streaming on Shudder from March 31, 2023

Director: Jeffrey A. Brown Writers: Michael Rasmussen, Shawn Rasmussen Cast: Lachlan Watson, Nick Sandow, Brendan Meyer

The Unheard follows 20-year-old Chloe Grayden (Lachlan Watson), who after undergoing an experimental procedure to restore her damaged hearing, begins to suffer from auditory hallucinations seemingly related to the mysterious disappearance of her mother.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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The Unheard (2023)

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The Unheard 's Intriguing Premise Falls Prey to Too Many Horror Clichés

Lachlan watson (chucky, chilling adventures of sabrina) stars in the latest from jeffrey a. brown (the beach house) ..

After undergoing a procedure aimed at restoring her hearing after 12 years of silence, college student Chloe ( Chucky ’s Lachlan Watson ) heads to her family’s Cape Cod cottage to recuperate. It’s lonely—but as The Unheard explores, she finds she’s not alone, seemingly in both natural and supernatural ways.

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Deafness is a surprisingly common theme in horror, used to make a character more vulnerable, and/or empower them in unexpected ways (see: Mike Flanagan ’s Hush , the A Quiet Place series ). The Unheard taps into that but also pulls in elements from movies like The Eye , in which a formerly blind woman begins to experience ghostly phenomena after a cornea transplant brings back her sight. In Chloe’s case, the experimental treatment swiftly proves successful, an apparent medical miracle that carries with it some disturbing side effects—including the fact that her hearing now appears to be enhanced by extrasensory perception.

This intriguing premise layers into a story that positions Chloe at the center of an ongoing mystery. The year she fell ill and lost her hearing, her mother vanished without a trace, a pair of tragic events that inspired her father to move himself and his daughter several states away. When Chloe returns to Cape Cod, both to recover from her operation and to start the process of readying the long-neglected home for sale, she finds plenty of psychic pain waiting for her, fed by melancholy memories—her mother’s voice is the last she can recall hearing—and a stack of dusty videotapes containing home movies of happier times.

The Unheard ’s setting shares some DNA with director Jeffrey A. Brown’s prior film The Beach House— both take place in isolated seaside communities that are ostensibly peaceful, but have a sense of foreboding hanging over them. The Unheard makes good use of the baked-in eerie quality of a vacation town in offseason mode , where something as innocuous as a light flicking on at the supposedly empty home next door can cause instant paranoia.

As we come to learn, Chloe’s not as mentally stable as she pretends to be; still grieving the loss of her mother, she’s been taking anti-depressants, a fact she fails to disclose to the doctor running the hearing project. When she begins to spiral—becoming fixated on those VHS tapes, which seem to be communicating with her somehow; drilling holes in the floor to figure out where the disembodied static sounds she can’t escape are coming from; and even snooping around that home next door—her behavior feels reasonable for a young person dealing with a whole lot of emotional weight, even with the joyful yet confusing sensation of being able to hear again. You wish she’d taken the doctor up on an offer of therapy as part of her treatment, and you also wish her circle of acquaintances on Cape Cod extended beyond two men, both of whom could take up entire chapters in The Gift of Fear . It doesn’t help that The Unheard works in a prominent subplot that lets us know that in the years since Chloe’s mom vanished, the community has had an ongoing missing-young-women problem.

Those latter points are ultimately where The Unheard —which at two hours feels overly long, with maybe too many scenes of flickering, repetitive VHS footage—loses its bearings. Chloe’s restored but unreliable hearing, and the way it ties into her ability to perceive what appear to be voices from beyond, are interesting threads for a horror movie to pull on, even if you get a good sense from the start that her mother’s uncertain fate is going to prove important. Unfortunately, the cast is so small that it’s not hard to pick out exactly who the baddie is. And as The Unheard pivots to a predictable cat-and-mouse scenario, even a last-minute twist can’t make up for the feeling that you knew where this was heading way too early on.

The Unheard is written by Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen, who also co-wrote the excellently tense alligator horror movie Crawl . Along with Watson, it stars Michele Hicks (Mr. Robot, Orange Is the New Black) , Shunori Ramanathan (Search Party) , Nick Sandow (Orange Is the New Black) , and Brendan Meyer (The OA) . It begins streaming on Shudder March 31.

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The unheard.

Directed by Jeffrey A. Brown

Chloe Grayden undergoes an experimental procedure to restore her hearing. Soon she begins to suffer from auditory hallucinations related to the disappearance of her mother.

Lachlan Watson Nick Sandow Brendan Meyer Michele Hicks Shunori Ramanathan Boyana Balta Beckett Guest Michelle Violette

Director Director

Jeffrey A. Brown

Producers Producers

Shawn Rasmussen Sam Slater Andrew Corkin David Bernon Jeffrey A. Brown Derek Rubin Lisa Lovaglio Michael Rasmussen Blake Hoss

Writers Writers

Shawn Rasmussen Michael Rasmussen

Casting Casting

Bess Fifer Aaron Schoonover

Editor Editor

Aaron Crozier

Cinematography Cinematography

Owen Levelle

Lighting Lighting

Duell Davis

Production Design Production Design

Mollie Wartelle

Stunts Stunts

Corey Pierno

Composer Composer

Roly Porter

Sound Sound

Colin Alexander Brandon Bak Justin Helle Jose Ramirez

Costume Design Costume Design

Amanda Bujak

Makeup Makeup

Meagan Coyle

Alternative Titles

Lo Inaudible, 闻所未闻, 聞所未聞

Drama Mystery Horror

Releases by Date

22 mar 2023, 31 mar 2023, releases by country.

• Digital Shudder
• Premiere Boston Underground Film Festival
• Digital NR Shudder

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Popular reviews

Review by Zay ★★ 15

Competently made, well acted with a solid lead performance from Lachlan Watson. The premise was intriguing with a hearing impaired young woman getting experimental surgery that will restore her hearing. The way the sound design was used made it easier to understand what the lead was going through before and after the surgery.

Unfortunately this dragged on for a long while with absolutely nothing happening. Things picked up during the last 20 mins but by then it was to little to late. Another film ruined by its unnecessarily long runtime.

Review by joshrowley ★★

Creative; overlong; sleepy; slow; uneven; well-made.

Review by thedayofthedot ★★

A deathly slow mystery filled with static

Review by Annatude 🛸 ★★½

This movie was really slow. And I think because it was 2 hours long it almost falls on the side of boring for the most part. If you make it through to the 1:40:00 point it gets really good.

Review by Scarecrow88 ★★

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!! There, I said it. Okay, breathe, just breathe.

Chloe regains hearing after experimental ear treatment under clinical trial. Chloe's mother has been missing since Chloe was 8. Chloe twelve years later still reels from the loss of the mother, returning home to a summer home in preparation for a sell once the dad eventually arrives. Meanwhile Chloe takes eardrops, continues to deal with muffled hearing, and eventually regains full hearing, just elated for the sounds returning. The sounds we take for granted and fail to appreciate, Chloe just can't get enough of, even noting a song at a bar with the ear doctor and how ice melting in a glass of liquor sounds like static.

Review by Deathy ★★½

Score : 5.6/10 ✅

Filled with enough distortion and static sound to make you go crazy (in a good way) but the story is ultimately what brings it down. It goes in a lot of direction without accomplishing anything significant.

The concept and the Giallo vibe is probably what I enjoyed the most here. The performance from Lachlan Watson was very good which makes her solo scene worth the watch. Some scary moments that made me feel uneasy (creepy sound through the floor, for instance). Wish it capitalize more on her curiosity of these weird static sounds. An okay but kinda boring film.

Review by AaronYDG ★½

this did not need to be 2 hours long, it was so tedious to get through, mostly boring, loud fucking buzzing and by the end, what's the point? why? who knows? cause I bloody don't

on the plus side the sound following along with the lead was great, a good performance from Lachlan Watson , cool trippy VHS clips

Review by Wiccaburr ★★★

I truly enjoyed the story and characters in this movie. The set up and usage of sound made for an interesting viewing. The build up behind Chloe's hearing and the mysterious past of her mother kept me invested. Especially as the sound and visual distortion began to mount up.

That said, I wasn't crazy about the two hour run time to make this a solid movie. I understand that the runtime was needed to build up the lead and everything around her. But I feel that a trimming of 15-30 minutes could've worked in this movie being a bit tighter. That's not to say this wasn't a bad movie, far from it. Director Jeffrey A. Brown had done well with…

Review by SweeneyTom ★★

i never want to hear "say happy 4th of July" again with how often i had to hear it over these two hours

Review by AJ ★★★ 1

Looks like I liked this more than most, but I kind of expected that. I'm deaf due to nerve damage in my right ear, so I'm halfway there to the main character. Haven't done any experimental procedures to unlock this level of hearing, but I have tried out a couple different hearing aids with some freaky results, like hearing things from different floors of the building or giving everyone the exact same robotic voice.

The Unheard is too long, not enough happens, and there are too many threads, but I'm a conspiratorial half-deaf person so it still works for me! Even with all of these threads, the atmosphere crafted is genuinely unsettling.

Review by Justin ★★½

I think Jeffrey A. Brown is a really exciting director to watch. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like she’s a huge Lovecraft fan. I got heavy vibes from this and more from his last one. There’s some giallo in this and that works about as well in this that it does in any giallo… toe it doesn’t. This was really interesting in its first hour. I was really hoping to love this and want to go back and watch it with headphones on but it just meanders and doesn’t really go anywhere interesting to me. Lachlan Watson I’ve been enjoyed for several years now. I think they do a great job here and hope to see them do more.

Review by Chichobutt89 ★★

Is there a fetish kink with deaf white girls alone in big houses being terrorized in horror movies that I missed?

Cook Book Film Review 1/4 cup Hush 1/4 cup See For Me 1/4 cup White Noise 1/4 cup Fire Alarm Dash of Giallo Dash of V/H/S Dash of The Eye

Grab all of that disability goodness all that moody goodness into a bowl and whisk it up with single white girl in house thrillers bursting with rich flavors in

Skinamarink Strap in for this Shudder original tale about yet again another recycled deaf white girl alone in a big scary house thriller fueled by severe migraine inducing incessant blaring ringing that will have your ears bleeding as we follow…

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Review: The Unheard Offers More Psychological Thrills than Stabby, Scary Ones

• March 31, 2023
• Film , Film & TV , Review

From director Jeffrey A. Brown ( The Beach House ) and the writers of Crawl and John Carpenter’s The Ward , Michael Rasmussen and Shawn Rasmussen, comes The Unheard , the story of a young deaf woman named Chloe (the ethereal Lachlan Watson) who undergoes an experimental surgery that is meant to restore all or part of her hearing. She takes her recovery period to spend time at her family’s beachfront home, which she and her father have decided they are going to spruce up and sell. We also learn that Chloe’s mother (played by Michele Hicks, whom we see in faded home movie footage) disappeared when Chloe was just a girl and the family was last at the vacation home, leaving everyone with lingering questions about whether the mother was kidnapped or abandoned them.

As her recovery progresses, two things become clear: her hearing (which she lost when she had meningitis as a girl) is returning almost back to normal, and the process seems to have opened her up to picking up things beyond the realm of normal human hearing, including possibly voices and sounds from the spirit world. Along her journey of both exploring the house and figuring out what exactly she’s hearing, Chloe meets a few locals, including the local handyman, Hank (Nick Sandow) and an old childhood best friend, the ever-watchful Joshua (Brendan Meyer) and his ailing mother (Boyana Balta). We’re also made aware that there have been a string of disappearances locally for many years, so it’s entirely likely that a couple of the characters in this very small cast are the likely suspects in these crimes—so be prepared to have that reveal be in no way shocking.

I’m fairly certain director Brown’s intent with The Unheard is to scare us until we pee our pants. In fact, there are almost no actual scares in the film beyond a couple of loud sound cues that are meant more to illustrate Chloe’s returned hearing than anything terrifying. But the low-level tension and fairly engaging mystery of the mother’s disappearance keep things interesting, despite the film’s overlong runtime (very few horror films of late can justify a running time of longer than 100 minutes; this one is 125 minutes). While big scares aren’t in the cards here, the filmmaker keeps a foreboding, sometimes threatening atmosphere at play that really adds to the experience of watching Chloe figure out the now-noisy world around her.

In addition, Brown’s use of sound (or lack there of for big stretches of the movie) combined with Watson’s truly moving performance gives us the best sense of what Chloe is going through, both in terms of her hearing and her psychology. The impact is uniquely unnerving and exactly what this film needs to get us into the head of the protagonist. The film’s climax is a bit of a letdown, as it turns more brutal and stabby and less introspective and psychological, but when taken as a whole, The Unheard still mostly works and helps solidify Brown as a filmmaker worth keeping an eye on.

The film is now streaming exclusively on Shudder.

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Steve Prokopy

Steve Prokopy is chief film critic for the Chicago-based arts outlet Third Coast Review. For nearly 20 years, he was the Chicago editor for Ain’t It Cool News, where he contributed film reviews and filmmaker/actor interviews under the name “Capone.” Currently, he’s a frequent contributor at /Film (SlashFilm.com) and Backstory Magazine. He is also the public relations director for Chicago's independently owned Music Box Theatre, and holds the position of Vice President for the Chicago Film Critics Association. In addition, he is a programmer for the Chicago Critics Film Festival, which has been one of the city's most anticipated festivals since 2013.

‘The Unheard’ is an Overstuffed but Atmospheric Chiller from Shudder [Review]

With his sophomore feature The Unheard , filmmaker Jeffery A. Brown cements himself as a promising directorial voice in the indie horror world. The contemplative horror follows a young deaf woman named Chloe Grayden (a quietly assured Lachlan Watson), who returns to her family’s summer home in Cape Cod following an experimental surgical procedure designed to restore her lost hearing. It’s the first time Chloe has been to her childhood vacation home since the mysterious disappearance of her mother some years ago- a loss that still haunts her and her father. It haunts the town, too. Missing posters of vanished women dot the walls, telephone poles, and shopfronts across the sleepy seaside village. 

Chloe spends most of her time inside recovering until one morning finds her hearing completely, and miraculously, restored. The experimental procedure has worked- with a catch. Chloe begins to experience auditory hallucinations, her mother’s remembered voice echoing up through the floorboards and a permanently static television set. Soon, a local waitress disappears, setting in motion a mystery whose answers may lie in the potentially paranormal auditory phenomena Chloe is experiencing. 

Related: ‘Last Shift’ Reboot ‘Malum’ Is a Helluva Ride [Review]

To call The Unheard a “slow burn” is to be (perhaps overly) polite, as the picture unfolds its various disparate (until they’re not) corners with a deliberation that borders on plodding. And while the core premise is quietly ingenious in its high-concept simplicity, it periodically crumples under the weight of the film’s less interesting tangents. There’s an underserved queer romantic angle, an undercooked murder-mystery, and a Sundance-ready grief drama battling for space atop a gloomy character study informed by Chloe’s isolation. It’s a lot of needles to thread, and yet, the movie still can’t help but feel padded with its 120 minute runtime. 

But, even with all of its structural cracks, The Unheard holds up. There is a certain element of buy-in required, but if it can be managed Brown’s take on the giallo-esque premise filtered through the trendy nu-analog horror aesthetic is pleasantly brooding, moody, and atmospheric. Lead Lachlan Watson is an intriguing on-screen presence. They imbue Chloe with a magnetic, low-key confidence without ever forgoing a grounded sense of vulnerability. Chloe is suffering, but never helpless. It’s a smart character choice, and strong showing from a promising performer. 

Related: ‘Unwelcome’ Inexcusably Squanders a Great Premise [Review]

The Unheard loses steam in its final quarter, when Brown attempts to merge the movie’s parallel puzzles together. The pieces never quite snap together as seamlessly as one might hope in terms of plot, but on its face, the climax is compelling enough- and Brown does successfully marry the various aesthetic quirks in the final moments. The Unheard requires patiences, but in this case, that patience is (mostly) rewarded.

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Jerry seinfeld’s ‘unfrosted’ divides critics: “one of decade’s worst movies”.

The comedian's directorial debut is getting strong reviews from some top critics, but most are not bowled-over by the Netflix cereal comedy.

By James Hibberd

James Hibberd

Writer-at-Large

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Jerry Seinfeld is having an odd time lately.

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'unfrosted' writer unpacks the pop-tart movie's buzziest moments -- including that tv reunion, events of the week: 'the fall guy,' 'the idea of you' and more.

Seinfeld’s Unfrosted (trailer below) is a zany star-filled comedy that tells the story of rival cereal companies, Kellogg’s and Post, “racing to create a pastry that will change the face of breakfast forever”— Pop-Tarts. Seinfeld stars in, co-wrote and directed the film, which also stars Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Sarah Cooper and Bill Burr.

Out of the gate this morning, the film has only a 42 percent positive critics score on Rotten Tomatoes which — as Tony the Tiger would say — isn’t exactly g-r-r-reat! Some reviews are downright scathing, as you’ll soon read.

And yet, some of the country’s top critics at publications like The New York Times , Wall Street Journal , The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle gave the film modestly positive reviews.

But let’s start with a few notices that won’t be lucky charms for the film.

The Chicago Sun-Times declared Unfrosted “one of the decade’s worst movies. I’m surprised … Seinfeld, one of the sharpest and most observant comedic minds of his generation, didn’t halt production halfway through, call time of death and apologize to everyone for wasting their time. Unfrosted is so consistently awful it makes the aforementioned Flamin’ Hot seem like The Social Network . If there was a thing called the IMDB Witness Protection Program whereby you could get your name taken off the credits of a particular project, this would be that project.”

The Daily Beast called the film “as bad as you’d expect.” “Superior to Seinfeld’s prior cinematic offering, 2007’s animated  Bee Movie , it’s content to be childishly silly rather than legitimately weird, veering between gags concerning age-old products and Jan. 6 with a mildness that keeps things pleasantly pedestrian. There’s nothing particularly awful about it, but there’s also very little that’s memorable.”

Collider wrote: “Considering we’re in a world where  Barbie  can make $1.4 billion and become a commentary on feminism and the patriarchy, or Tetris, Air Jordans, and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos can get their own halfway decent biopics, it’s a shame  Unfrosted  doesn’t try a bit harder. Again, even a film like  Weird  managed to make its jokes and cameos work as part of a larger story, whereas  Unfrosted  always puts the story itself on the back burner.”

But comedy is, if nothing else, subjective, and several top outlets rather enjoyed Unfrosted .

The Guardian wrote “there’s a steady stream of excellent gags, creating a rising crescendo of silliness similar in effect to Seinfeld’s own distinctive falsetto-hysterical declamation at the moment of ultimate joke-awareness …As a whole, it’s not exactly a masterpiece, but amiable and funny in a way that’s much harder to achieve than it looks.”

The Washington Post gave the movie 2.5 stars and wrote, “ Unfrosted may be the Platonic ideal of the Netflix movie: ephemeral, edible, enjoyable, forgettable. It’s essentially Jerry Seinfeld inviting everyone in his Rolodex to come on over for an extended hang to parody the current craze for trademark biopics … The hit-to-miss joke ratio is decent — about three gags land for every one that gets stuck in the toaster.”

And, yes, The Hollywood Reporter was among the positive reviews , calling the film “gleefully silly,” and writing, “For those willing to put aside reality for 90 minutes, as  Unfrosted  does with gusto, the Netflix movie whips up a frothy sendup of storytelling tropes and clichés … At the helm of a cast filled with virtuosos of comic timing, Seinfeld draws performances that are, for the most part, understated, effectively heightening the ridiculousness of the setup by playing it straight … Best of all, there’s not a drop of corporate mythologizing in the mishmash of factoid and fantasy.”

Unfrosted was released today on Netflix, so feel free to Chex it out yourself.

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Unfrosted review – Jerry Seinfeld delivers a surreal toast to Pop-Tarts

The history of how the all-American breakfast snack was created is served up with lashings of goofiness in this comedy caper

S tandup veteran Jerry Seinfeld makes his directing debut with this decent family comedy that puts a surreal twist on the history of Pop-Tarts, one of the US’s most beloved snacks: the sheer goofiness and disposable pointlessness are entertaining.

Seinfeld created the film with co-writers Spike Feresten, Andy Robin and Barry Marder, the same writing team that worked on Bee Movie , the animation that Seinfeld starred in, produced and co-wrote in 2007. Unfrosted doesn’t quite have the flair of Bee Movie, but there’s a steady stream of excellent gags, creating a rising crescendo of silliness similar in effect to Seinfeld’s own distinctive falsetto-hysterical declamation at the moment of ultimate joke-awareness. There are also nice supporting roles and cameos, including an extraordinary dual walk-on from Jon Hamm and John Slattery, recreating their ad exec Mad Men personae Don Draper and Roger Sterling.

Seinfeld plays Bob, an executive for Kellogg’s in the early 1960s, working (of course) on breakfast cereal, whose genius, he says, is that “you’re eating and drinking at the same time with one hand”. He works with Edsel Kellogg III (Jim Gaffigan), a descendant of the founder, and Donna Stankowski (Melissa McCarthy), a Nasa scientist seconded to Kellogg’s to develop its top-secret project: a jam-filled rectangular pastry comestible unit that is going to be the next big thing in breakfast food.

The company is in a fierce contest to get its idea into America’s homes first, before its deadly rival Post, the cereal company headed by Marjorie Post, played by Amy Schumer . While the space race rages, they are all in the fight of their lives as they invent Pop-Tarts.

The comedy is not quite innocent, because almost every gag has something seductively knowing about it. When the Kellogg’s team have to ask President Kennedy for a favour, he keeps erupting with irritation: “Did you just ask me what I can do for you? Didn’t you hear my inauguration speech?” The president tells them his wife has given him a great idea for a breakfast cereal called “Jackie-Os”; it isn’t until much later that they realise this doesn’t make sense because his wife is surely called Jackie Kennedy? But they conclude simply that the president must have meant something like Cheerios.

Added to this, there is some bizarre business about Bob having to wear 27th president William Howard Taft’s old morning suit in the White House because he had no other clothes and we get an outrageous sight gag about Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager’s appearance from the smoky wreckage in The Right Stuff. As a whole, it’s not exactly a masterpiece, but amiable and funny in a way that’s much harder to achieve than it looks.

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Madonna Brings Massive Free Concert to Rio, Capping Celebration Tour

The pop superstar performed a final date on her global trek marking four decades of hits: a set on Copacabana Beach before the largest live crowd of her career.

By Flávia Milhorance and Julia Jacobs

Reporting from Rio de Janeiro and New York

When Madonna stepped out onto the mammoth stage constructed on Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach on Saturday night in a gleaming halo headpiece and black kimono, she was greeted by the largest live crowd of her four-decade career.

The free show, announced in late March, was a grand finale to the pop superstar’s latest world tour, which has delivered 80 performances since last October . Without ticket data, concert crowd sizes can be difficult to gauge; Riotur, the municipality’s tourism department, estimated that 1.6 million people flooded onto the 2.4-mile stretch of sand on Saturday that had been turned into a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot stage.

It was the culmination of days of Madonna-mania in the city, where talk of the singer, 65, was inescapable. Her songs spilled out of stores and car stereos. Fans assembled outside her hotel and shouted her name. Updates about the concert, which was broadcast on the network Globo TV, dominated local media reports.

The spectacle in Rio was a milestone in Madonna’s career: the victory lap for her first stage retrospective, called the Celebration Tour , in which she chronicled her rise to stardom, performing hits like “Into the Groove,” “Like a Prayer” and “Ray of Light” with a cadre of dancers, four of her six children, and a wardrobe of elaborate costuming that recalled some of her most memorable looks.

“Here we are, the most beautiful place in the world,” Madonna announced early in the concert, indicating the ocean and the mountains around her. “This is magic.” Later, she expounded on her gratitude for her Brazilian fans. “You have always been there for me,” she said. “That flag: that green-and-yellow flag, I see it everywhere. I feel it in my heart.”

The two-plus-hour Rio show hewed closely to the Celebration show, with a few exceptions: Madonna added her 2000 track “Music” to the set list, rearranged as a samba with live drummers and a special guest, the Brazilian drag star Pabllo Vittar. “Live to Tell,” staged as a tribute to victims of AIDS , included photographs of the Brazilian musicians Cazuza and Renato Russo, and the actress Sandra Bréa. For “Vogue,” Madonna appeared in a sparkly dress in the colors of the Brazilian flag and was joined by the pop sensation Anitta , who helped “judge” the competitors strutting down the runway.

The show had lifelong Madonna fans — many of whom came dressed in homage to their heroine in cone bras and lace gloves — screaming and dancing along. Ernesto Magalhães, 42, adorned in the style of Madonna’s “Material Girl” era in a gown and boa while balancing on stilts, epitomized the exuberant spirit of the occasion: “I’ve been a Madonna fan since I was 8; I couldn’t miss this.” Surya Rossi, a 31-year-old illustrator, decided on a last-minute trip from Rio Claro, São Paulo, after coordinating with her cousin, and stayed with friends. “Madonna has been a tremendous influence on me, both as a feminist and an artist,” she said. “Her empowering history and approach inspire me.”

It was also something of a landmark moment for live concerts globally. At a time of astronomical ticket prices and rising production costs for major shows, a free concert attracting a crowd of this scale is exceedingly rare, especially in the United States. California’s Coachella festival, where a three-day general admission pass starts at about $500, draws up to 125,000 attendees a day. Musikfest, a mostly free music festival in Pennsylvania, welcomed about 1.3 million visitors over 11 days last year.

“To have a free show like that in recent years is relatively unheard-of,” Katelyn Yount, the director of festivals at AEG Presents, said of Madonna’s closing show. Hangout, an upcoming music festival on Alabama’s Gulf Coast that is among the annual events AEG produces, is capped each day at about 40,000 attendees, who pay more than $300 for a three-day pass.

If a performance of this magnitude was going to be held anywhere in 2024, it would probably be in Rio, where officials have experience with enormous crowds. In 2006, about 1.5 million people attended a free Rolling Stones concert at Copacabana Beach, Brazilian police and other authorities said at the time. An even larger crowd was said to have gathered for a Rod Stewart show there on New Year’s Eve in 1994.

The idea for the sprawling event was first planted two years ago, when Luiz Oscar Niemeyer, an executive with Bonus Track, a live entertainment company based in Rio de Janeiro, approached Madonna’s managers after hearing about plans for the tour. The Rolling Stones concert in 2006 helped convince him that something like this was possible, he said.

Negotiations stalled until last year, when a Madonna show in Mexico City was announced — ticketed dates for the Celebration Tour ended up wrapping with five nights there at the Palacio de los Deportes — and Niemeyer resumed his efforts to convince the pop star’s representatives and secure funding.

“It was an ambitious project for everyone, aiming to attract the largest audience of her career, and I thought this would help me persuade her,” Niemeyer said in an interview last week.

The concert’s corporate backers include the Brazilian bank Itaú and Heineken, and the government has made a significant investment as well.

Preparation for Madonna-palooza had consumed a segment of the city in recent days. A week ago, cargo planes carried about 270 tons of concert material to the city, including costumes and gym equipment. Eighteen sound and video towers were built across the beach, and last Wednesday, 4,000 workers prepared the stage in scorching heat.

Because this was the only Celebration concert in South America — Madonna last toured there in 2012 — fans congregated from all over the continent. In the days leading up to the event, a Madonna impersonator, Izelene Cristina, danced to “La Isla Bonita” at a bus station as she welcomed travelers. She would not be attending the concert because excitement over the superstar’s performance had led to a flood of bookings.

“Such is the life of an artist,” she said. “You work to move and entertain people.”

On Monday, Madonna and her touring team of about 200 arrived in Rio, heading directly to the French Riviera-inspired Copacabana Palace, the luxury hotel near where the stage was built. Later in the week, crowds gathered as close to the stage as possible, as the pop star crossed a specially built footbridge from the hotel to the stage to rehearse with some of her dancers.

Social media was flooded with clips of Madonna running through songs including the opener, “Nothing Really Matters.” “Are you happy? Are you ready?” she asked the assembled crowd at one point . The response: wild cheering. “OK, just checking,” she replied.

At a press briefing ahead of the concert, officials discussed the safety concerns that can accompany an audience of that size and unpredictable weather on the shore. Last year, the Brazilian D.J. Alok scheduled what had been billed as the “concert of the century” on Copacabana Beach, but a storm led part of the crowd to scatter, and concertgoers were faced with rampant pickpocketing , a problem at least some faced on Saturday night as well.

Marco Andrade, a spokesman for the Rio police, told reporters that the department planned to deploy 3,200 officers at the Madonna concert, compared with about 900 for Alok’s event. He said that facial recognition technology would be used at inspection areas, in addition to drones to monitor the crowd. In the end, the audience stretched into the ocean as well — a collection of boats anchored in the waters near the venue.

The atmosphere on the ground Saturday night was like a World Cup event, street carnival and New Year’s Eve celebration combined. Street vendors offered shirts, hats, cups and fans adorned with Madonna’s face and rainbow colors, and a plethora of barbecue, grilled cheese, empanadas and the Brazilian cocktail caipirinhas were available. To fight the heat, a firefighter atop a fire truck sprayed a jet of water on the crowd.

As the show ended with a remix of her 2009 track “Celebration,” Madonna addressed the audience for a final time: “Thank you, Rio,” adding “obrigada,” the equivalent in Portuguese. She smiled and let go of a Brazilian flag, flipped a white veil over her head and descended beneath the stage.

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the Bonus Track executive who approached Madonna’s team about the Brazil show. He is Luiz Oscar Niemeyer, not Luiz Guilherme Niemeyer.

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Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times. More about Julia Jacobs

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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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• ‘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) 16 hours ago
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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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When it comes to superhero movies sidestepping their demise at the box office, Spider-Man: Across the Universe is Exhibit A. It was by far the most successful superhero movie of last year, and pristine proof that they’re not dead. As for how to make sure the genre survives, it’s evident: Make movies that are better than the cookie-cutter MCU and DC versions we’ve already seen, and make them significantly different. The animated multiverse escapades of Miles Morales continue to be the ultimate trip for moviegoers, who swung to Across the Universe with an A CinemaScore. The Oscar-winning first movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, also was a holiday blockbuster ($190.2M domestic, $384.2M WW in 2018); its fans were starving for a follow-up, and Sony created pent-up demand. Of utmost importance is that Sony didn’t rush this toon penned by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also produced with Amy Pascal, into theaters. The movie originally was intended to be in theaters on October 7, 2022, but was held up by the Covid-created post-production logjam for with feature films and streaming series. Still, Sony wowed exhibitors at CinemaCon 2022 with early footage, even though it was delaying the sequel to June 2, 2023. When the movie world premiered in LA’s Westwood, below-the-line talent from the film said that it was a wet print, many working on it to the very last minute. All of this speaks to the great artistry and craft invested in this avant-garde feature toon style, which involves character lighting (it’s not roto-scoping, even though many bill the style as that). Spider-Man: Across the Universe clocked the second-best domestic opening of 2023 with $120.6MM (behind only Barbie ‘s $162M), which was 3.4 times higher than the first movie’s $35.3M stateside opening. And Across the Spider-Verse, unlike Sony’s recent live-action movies starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, was made without the fingerprints of Disney’s MCU. With a profit of $328M, Spider-Man: Across the Universe ‘s gravy is higher than the $200M profit made by the 2017 Tom Holland-Zendaya live-action Spider-Man: Homecoming, and it’s not far from the $339M net profit of the 2019 sequel Spider-Man: Far From Home.

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