THE KINOGO UNEASE A MONTHLY DISPATCH OF HORROR, STORYTELLING & THE UNEASE

Thank you for returning to The Unease.

At Kinogo Pictures, we truly believe that everyone can love horror. They just need to find their own pathway into the genre. Maybe that’s dipping your toe in with a comedy like Zombieland, or falling in love with the cheesier side of horror through something like Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Horror shares corners with nearly every other genre.

This is the third issue of The Kinogo Unease. Maybe by the end, you’ll have a better sense of what kind of horror made you fall in love with the genre in the first place.

Thoughts on horror, filmmaking, and the stories shaping the genre.

We asked above, “WHO IS HORROR FOR?” The better question may be: “What kind of horror is for you?” Too often, we at Kinogo encounter folks who claim they don’t like horror or view it as a cheap genre. However, horror can pull elements from nearly every genre. Some of our most prestigious films fall within its boundaries. SINNERS broke the all-time record for the most Oscar nominations for a horror film and won Best Screenplay, Cinematography and Score, while Michael B. Jordan walked away with Best Actor.

That doesn’t mean every horror film finds its audience. Eli Roth’s latest film, ICE CREAM MAN, was a financial disappointment with an opening weekend gross of $2.1 million domestically. With poor reviews to back it up, it’s a fair question to ask, “Who liked this film?”

Great horror can even convert those who dismiss the genre. Look at JAWS, SINNERS, GET OUT, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, or even more traditional horror like IT. These films defied expectations by finding their audience and inviting in people who might otherwise claim they don’t like horror.

At Kinogo, we strive to find ways to bring audiences into our films, and we are horror-focused, we don’t think that has to alienate audiences. Rather, it can open them up to great, character-driven stories that invite us into unique worlds.

Updates from Kinogo Pictures, projects in development, and what’s coming next.

Upcoming horror releases and films creeping towards theaters and screens.

Onslaught
A rogue squad of genetically engineered super soldiers escapes from a secret military facility into the desert. An Army sniper mother must use her skills to protect her young daughter from the deadly threat.

For anyone still wondering, “Who is Horror Really For?” this is a great example of a film that blends the genre with action, creating what looks like a fun entry point into horror.

HOPE
After premiering at Cannes, this NEON film will release in September and is the first film by Na Hong-Jin since THE WAILING in 2016. Horror and thrillers translate incredibly well across borders, with some of the best genre films of the 21st century coming from Japan and South Korea. 

Breeder
An eccentric poodle breeder lures a broke college student to her remote ranch, where he soon learns there’s a catch. The film premiered at the Tribeca Festival this past June, and IFC/Shudder acquired it shortly after. We’re particularly interested because one of the Executive Producers is Steven Schneider, who is also an EP on Kinogo’s upcoming film SEND A SCARE.

The summer horror films we return to year after year.

This month’s Viewing Rituals focuses on those eerie stories surrounding small, isolated towns. Some of our favorite films take place in these settings. It’s why we’re developing our own small-town horror film at Kinogo and hope to share more in future newsletters.

The Blob:
The remake of the ’50s film is an incredibly entertaining B-movie with the effects to back it up. A small town is thrown into chaos as an alien substance begins growing and devouring people. Government containment keeps everyone trapped as they try to survive this unknown entity. Let’s just say… thank God it doesn’t like the cold.

A quiet town suddenly falls unconscious for several hours. Months later, every woman of childbearing age gives birth to eerie, identical children with platinum blond hair and telepathic powers, leading to a terrifying battle between the townsfolk and the children.

The Fog:
Another John Carpenter film makes our list this month… but this one stands among his best. A small town has a local legend about a ship lured onto the rocks by a supernatural fog. When that mysterious fog returns, its victims rise from the depths seeking vengeance. For those looking for an entertaining horror film on a dreary day… look no further.

Forgotten horror worth rediscovering

For those who love THE LOST BOYS, this film deserves more recognition. It’s currently missing from major U.S. streaming and digital rental platforms, which is a shame for a film that deserves to be rediscovered. And for all those who tried the nomad lifestyle during COVID, just know there may be a group of nomadic vampires roaming around out there.

This month’s nightmare

With each issue, we'll spotlight an original tale of unease from a filmmaker, writer, or collaborator within the Kinogo community. Today’s story comes from Daniel Byers, the writer and director of our past project ERADICATION and our upcoming film DARK HOLLOW.

Turn down the lights, settle in, and enjoy this month's nightmare.

By Daniel Byers

The slow elevator trembles, structural unease running deep around us and into the distance. Children clutch closer to parents, and those alone hug their baggage tighter. Heads crane upwards, searching for a stream of sand or tumbling chunks of stone, as though this were some kind of ancient tomb.

Not yet.

Wails from around us in the slow elevator - the old lady, she had family up there, that guy in the corner too; his wife I think, maybe.

“Thank God,” says the man behind me, pawing me, drenched in his own sweat. “Thank God we’re in here, where it’s safe. It’s safe, here, isn’t it? Didn’t they say it was safe?” he turns his attentions to the brunette next to him when I don’t acknowledge: “Didn’t they say it was safe?” There’s a hint of hysteria in his voice now, and the walls answer with another long, labored groan. Somewhere, far away, a bomb is going off in a glorious inferno, shockwave a hundred miles across, but beneath this carved beast of collapsing crystal and rock all we hear are the telltale moans that echo through its skeleton.

“Down deep it’s safe,” the man continues in earnest; the woman’s trying not to look at him but she’s scared too so she can’t help it. We’re passing another glass exit now, red-taped and sliding by, halls beyond leading deep into the mountain. She starts moaning, just a little. The man: “It’s safe! We’re safe!”

Gravity gives one sharp cough, and the slow elevator jams under our buckled knees.

Intercom, and before it even finishes people start rushing by the glass sliding doors: “…structural integrity compromised by… imminent collapse… evacuation procedures immediately…” Uniformed men springing by in their black leather boots, posts abandoned, thrusting into one another, not a glance aside to look into our glass cage. Tremors through the mountain like murmurs through a failing heart and the slow elevator breaks, drops thirty degrees on its rear end, and people go from yelling to screaming.

Outside the men still rushing by, countless and indistinguishable in their uniforms, bear witness to our tumbling, pounding, struggling pleas.

The thick glass silences us. Mutes: Let me out!

The stragglers glance at us screaming pounding mutely but do nothing, keep running, and we all hear the mountain moan in pain. The sweaty man has a foot in my ribs, and I think they might be broken, and I’m stuck between a two-ton piece of boxed luggage and some kid’s shattered cello.

“-Not gonna let us - “ - Bastards, for the love of fucking Christ - “Oh please, please “-

And then one of the stragglers glances aside and I recognize it.

“Farner!” I haul on the sweaty man’s foot and he slips, slams teeth-first into the metal floor (starts screaming). I step on his back and drive an elbow into a woman’s head to get her out of my way. The luggage is all sliding to the back, tilting the slow elevator further away from the doors with the groans and pops of corded steel.

“Farner! Fucking Christ, look at me!”

He almost doesn’t, but right before he passes, he glances inside and his blue eyes widen as they land on me pressed up against the bloodied glass. Slacks and a white coat: that’s why I noticed him. He adjusts his spectacles and does something to a panel next to the glass doors, and with a hiss they part down the middle, and then he's hauling me out, dragging me away from the frantic exodus, shoving me into the back seat of his bike, strapping me on.

Behind us a bearded man struggles out, pulling at his wife to get her through, yells over his shoulder: “Which way?! Which way is the exit?”

“Doesn’t matter,” says Farner. “You don’t have time.”

And he kicks the bike forward at about a thousand miles an hour.

In the tunnels you can’t see or hear, it’s just zipping guidelights and the vacuum rush of supersonic speed. I imagine I can see the mountain crashing down behind us, but of course I can’t.

He settles on a parking lot, empty. When the bike stops, he takes his time, lets a long sigh, and keeps his eyes on the night sky. The wrinkles all disappear from his face when he gazes thoughtful like that, but somehow, he still looks older than usual.

“No bombers,” I say, following his gaze.

“No,” he says.

He waits another moment, then comes to undo my buckles.

“Thanks,” I sit up, grunt with the pain in my ribs, lay back down. The pain’s too much for a minute and I must just ride it out, teeth grinding tight against each other in my jaw. He looks back up.

“I was hoping to have a telescope for this,” he says.

Inhales hurt. Exhales are okay. “Is the whole mountain coming down?”

He grins at me, half-smile, like I’m some kind of funny color he’s never seen before. “It’s going to collapse inside, if that’s what you mean. It isn’t going to fall over. It’s a mountain.”

“How many do you think made it out?”

“Oh,” he looks away, back up at the sky, “not many.”

And “what the hell are you looking for anyway?” I ask Farner.

“The Weapon.”

“You’re looking up there for a weapon?”

“Yes.”

“Is it our weapon?”

“Yes.”

I search the night sky again, but there’s still nothing. A weird stillness, the kind of quiet I haven’t heard since I can remember.

“What does it do,” I ask.

“Look, look.”

The silence lasts a long time now, and the sky - dark, still. I’m impatient but he’s just staring, staring glitter-eyed like he might miss the second coming. I’m considering leaving him there, checking the bike for a medkit and some painkillers, when suddenly it’s like daytime, and I see it.

It does catch the breath.

A nebula cloud spins itself out of stardust in the night sky, purple as a fresh bruise, bluer and deeper inside, orange-maned and gaping.

I ask: “Isn’t it very far away?”

“Very far,” he agreed. “In the Draco galaxy - over it, and far beyond it.”

“Then how do we see it, if we only now used it.”

He smiles again and I feel childish, though I don’t know why.

“We used it a long time ago. But now we know that it worked.”

“And the Dracos--?”

“Their strategy was the same as ours. This - ” he indicates the nebulae, “will be the first message they’ve received from home in a very long time.”

I strain to think of it: the generations passing between them, the tenacity to continue with their decades-long invasion on centuries-old orders issued by dead men - that is, if the Dracos aged like we do at all, which no one knows.

“Will they surrender now?” I ask.

“God knows.”

I strain to think of it: what it must be like - have been like, all those hundreds of years gone when it happened -for them. When The Weapon spun its supernova, swallowed their whole galaxy up and blasted it to brilliant stardust. Their capitol city, a great black crystal suspended in a vast underground cavern, reflecting their god-emperors into the subterranean ocean below - it trembles on its ebony chain, it splinters and moans, and the screams of countless billions sound its frequency so that it sings. It sings so that the canyon ruptures and the water stacks up on itself in spires, impaling the reflected god-emperors, and then it is gone, torn apart by a spun galaxy painted across the sky by its enemies. The Dracos dissolve into themselves and they die, if the Dracos do die, if they do live. We don’t know. Ten thousand years of war, and we don’t know that.

Not yet.

The purple borealis of their vaporized world dances over ours, and something like a scream wells up from all around, a hypersonic lament. The bombers reigniting, burning their bright paths across the sky from every direction, coming to finish what they started. There was no going back for them now, and they knew it. Annihilation, unforgivable, and answerable only in kind.

“They're coming,” I said.

Farner didn't say anything. He was watching the sky with his small smile, and I could tell, for the first time maybe in his life, he was happy.

Until next month, keep the lights on.

Sleep well.

– Kinogo Pictures