LA Film Festival Review: THE BODY (2018)

THE BODY is the first episode of the brand new Hulu anthology horror series Into The Dark, produced by Blumhouse Television.  The episodes are more like feature length films and will be released monthly for the next year starting on Oct 5th.  Each episode will be inspired by a holiday from the month that it is released.

The plot of THE BODY revolves around a hitman that, through a series of unfortunate circumstances, has to drag around one his victims wrapped in plastic all of Los Angeles, but since it’s Halloween night, everyone thinks it’s just part of his costume.  According to Director/Co-Writer Paul Davis, the story was inspired by a scene in Danny Boyle’s 1994 film Shallow Grave in which the characters have to drag around a dead body in public.  He and Co-writer Paul Fisher wondered low long someone could get away with doing that on Halloween night.

The film stars Tom Bateman (Murder on the Orient Express) as the hitman and Rebecca Rittenhouse (Unfriended: Dark Web), Aurora Perrineau (Truth or Dare), and Ray Santiago (Ash vs. Evil Dead) as a group of party goers he reluctantly joins up with.  The one thing I found surprising about THE BODY is how much humor is infused into it.  The chemistry of the actors paired with their perfect comedic timing and some very clever writing has created a very funny film that puts THE BODY in the Horror-Comedy genre alongside such classics as Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.

However, the film is not all laughs.  The most compelling character in the film is Maggie (Rittenhouse) who is seemingly on a slow decent into madness and could snap at any second.  As the film progresses she morphs into a charismatic psychopath that somehow comes off as an anti-hero.  I’m not sure if she was intended to be the main character but Rebecca Rittenhouse definitely steals the show with this role.  At one point her character actually made me feel sad, a rare reaction for this type of film.

On September 21, 2018 THE BODY had it’s world premiere at the LA Film Festival in Los Angeles, CA.  I had the opportunity to speak to some of the cast and crew on the red carpet before the screening began.  Director Paul Davis is very excited about the concept of the new series and went on to say “It gives you an excuse to watch a new horror movie every month!”   Actress Sasha Grey makes a cameo appearance in the film as herself.  When I asked her if she was a huge horror fan she informed me that she named her dog after Kurt Russell’s character in John Carpenter’s “The Thing”, so that answer was obviously “yes”!  Another face horror-comedy fans will find familiar in the film is Ray Santiago who recently ended his role as “Pablo” on the now canceled series Ash vs. Evil Dead.  When I asked him how he felt about the end of the series he explained to me that Evil Dead “is never really over, it just takes a break.  No one on Evil Dead is really ever dead.  The franchise has been going for 30 years so I’m looking forward to wheeling out Bruçe in another 30 years to keep the franchise going!”

Overall I thought THE BODY was a lot of fun and a great way to start off this brand new series where Hulu subscribers get a brand new Blumhouse movie every single month.  I can’t wait to see what the other director’s contributions to Into The Dark bring to the table over the next year!

Movie Reviews

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *