Synopsis: A group of six young tourists, looking to go off the beaten path, hire an "extreme tour" guide. Ignoring warnings, he takes them into the city of Pripyat, the former home to the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, but a deserted town since the disaster more than 25 years ago. After a brief exploration of the abandoned city, however, the group soon find themselves stranded, only to discover that they are not alone...

Found-footage films are not a new concept; especially in horror movies where the idea goes all the way back to ‘1999’s The Blair Witch Project and has been utilized in such recent hits as Cloverfield, the Paranormal Activity franchise and The Devil Inside. However, two films in particular this year, Chronicle, and Project X, have pushed the envelope by incorporating the found-footage concept into entirely new film genres. With Warner Bros.’ Project X, the technique was used to illustrate a high school party movie, and with 20^th Century Fox’s Chronicle, which is available on Blu-Ray and DVD beginning May 15^th, the concept was fused with the super hero genre to great success as the film was an international box office hit.

First time director Josh Trank, along with screenwriter and childhood friend Max Landis, created a found-footage story about three friends who find something mysterious that gifts them with unthinkable super powers. The film follows Seattle high-school seniors Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell), and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), as they form a close bond after receiving telekinetic abilities from an unknown object. The boys use their newfound abilities for mischief and personal gain until Andrew begins to utilize them for more nefarious purposes. Since the initial success of the film, Trank has been mentioned as a possible director for several upcoming comic book based films including a Fantastic Four reboot, a Venom Spin-off, and an adaptation of Image Comic’s The Red Star.

In honor of the Blu-ray and DVD release of the film, I recently had a chance to chat with director Josh Trank about Chronicle, as well as his rumored involvement in those upcoming comic book adapted film properties. Trank discussed his recent movie, developing the story with screenwriter Max Landis, marrying the super hero and found-footage genres, his actual cinematic inspirations for the film, what the studio wanted him to change, the technical aspects of directing a found-footage movie, and which comic book-based film he will direct next.

Last summer, Universal Pictures put Ouija into turnaround after having developed the project as a tentpole action-adventure that would've cost in the neighborhood of $100 million.  After several months during which development continued outside the studio to make a movie based on the Ouija board, it's now back at Universal, but it's a whole different movie, a little horror movie with a considerably more modest price tag.

Fans of the Paranormal Activity franchise will soon be able to possess their own copy of the third film in the series as Paranormal Activity 3 becomes available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning January 24th. In honor of this monumental event, the creator of the series, and several actors from the franchise assembled at Hollywood’s legendary Roosevelt Hotel recently (on Friday, January 13^th in fact) to discuss the success of the series and drop a few hints about the unenviable Paranormal Activity 4.

Along with several other members of the press, IAR attended the “Tea with Toby,” which is of course named after the demonic entity featured in the films. Tea, coffee, cheese and dessert were served while we all sat down at a table that had seating cards with our individual names printed on them. A special spot at the table was reserved for our host – Toby, but he never made his presence known.

On hand was series creator Oren Peli, as well as actors Katie Featherston, Micha Sloat, and Chris Smith. Also in attendance were Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown, the young actresses that play Katie and Kristi, respectively, as children in the most recent film.

After spending the last weekend of 2011, and the first weekend of 2012 atop the charts, Tom Cruise’s extremely successful Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol was unseated as the champion of the box office by an unlikely competitor … The Devil Inside. Paramount’s documentary-style, found footage, supernatural, horror film cost less than $1 million to make yet it earned $34.5 million in its opening weekend and has gone on to earn over $46 million in just two weeks at the box office. While the film has done quite well financially, it has also received some complaints from fans regarding its abrupt ending and use of a website to tie up the film’s loose ends. None-the-less, that hasn’t stopped audiences from seeing the new movie, which is currently playing in theaters across the country.

The Devil Inside is directed by William Brent Bell, and co-written by Bell and producer Matthew Peterman, the duo behind the 2006 horror film Stay Alive starring Adam Goldberg, and Sophia Bush. The film features a cast of basically unknown actors including Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmth, Ionut Grama, Suzan Crowley, and Bonnie Morgan. The Devil Inside tells the story of Isabella (Andrade), a documentary filmmaker, and her mother Maria (Suzan Crowly), who committed a triple homicide over twenty years ago as the result of an exorcism gone terribly wrong. The Catholic Church intervened and Maria has been in a Catholic psychiatric hospital in Rome ever since. But when Isabella decides to make a film about exorcism and travels to Rome to find out more about her mother’s condition, she discovers a horrifying truth about the Catholic religion that she never could have imagined.

I recently had an opportunity to speak with William Brent Bell and Matthew Peterman about The Devil Inside and their work on the project. They discussed the film, its surprising opening weekend, the controversial ending, found footage, the Catholic Church, and the possibility of a sequel.

As soon as Paranormal Activity 3 showed that the franchise could continue making dumptrucks full of money at minuscule budgets, it was abundantly obvious that Paramount Pictures would have Paranormal Activity 4 at multiplexes across the nation just in time for Halloween 2012.  So for months its been a foregone conclusion that Paranormal Activity would be the new Halloween horror standby after years of the Saw franchise's grisly reign.  Now, the fourth installment has a release date and a pair of familiar directors.

The first Paranormal Activity movie, as written and directed by Oren Peli, cost around $15,000 to make, was purchased by Paramount for somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000, and went on to gross more than $100 million when it reached theaters in October of 2009.  Last year, Paranormal Activity 2, made for just a few millions dollars, grossed just under $85 million. 

Given those ratios of expense-to-profit, it was guaranteed that another entry in the found footage franchise would roll around this Halloween, and probably for the next several Halloweens as well.  The first poster for Paranormal Activity 3 premiered online today, sticking to the style of its predecessors while claiming that audiences will "Discover how the activity began."

If you're anything like me, then you already have an elaborate and uncompromising plan in place for the event of an apocalyptic viral pandemic.  Coco, the hero of the Argentinian film Phase 7, however, had no such plan in place, and when his apartment block is put on quarantine, he must protect his pregnant wife and his precious refrigerator from paranoid, marauding neighbors.  Phase 7 is a potent mix of horror, social satire, comedy, and claustrophobic thriller, earning a legion of enthusiastic fans in Argentina.  Now, the film is coming to America as part of the "Night Terrors" film series, brought to you by The Collective, AMC Theatres and Bloody-Disgusting.

Opening in U.S. theaters on June 10th, and airing on VOD beginning May 6th, is the horror-thriller TrollHunter from Norwegian director Andre Ovredal. The film was shot in a mockumentary style like The Blair Witch Project but also uses the "found footage" technique similar to Paranormal Activity. The film's cast includes a mix of unknown actors such as Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Morck, Tomas Alf Larsen, and Urmila Berg-Domaas, as well as Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen. We recently had a chance to sit down with filmmaker Andre Ovredal to discuss TrollHunter, how he shot it, working with the cast, the film's mythology, and making the visual effects look real.

As someone with 1/7 troll ancestry, I am deeply offended by the depiction of my people in the latest trailer for Troll Hunter, the Norwegian found-footage thriller from writer-director Andre Ovredal.  Sure, my great-uncle is a hideous three-headed monster with a taste for human flesh, but he's also very sensitive.  You'll find no shortage of impressively rendered and unabashedly offensive troll-stereotypes in the trailer, which you can watch right here, or in HD at Apple.