my new plaid pants

Friday, April 10, 2026

Please Dacre, Don't Hurt 'Em

Consider this a mea culpa to Dacre Montgomery since I wrote that I wasn't enamored with his performance in this weekend's horror movie Faces of Death in my review -- he is clearly having a whole lot of fun with his big performance and there are a couple of shots of him wearing a skin-tight body-suit thing (just from above the waist) where he is twisting and writhing and he looks super hot. That's not nothing! But I thought he was much better in last year's surprisingly terrific Gus Van Sant crime flick Dead Man's Wire, which I'm ashamed I never reviewed -- I haven't expected much from a GVS movie in awhile but that one reminded me how wonderful a director he can be. Straight-forward, low-key, thrilling and perfectly performed by Bill Skarsgård and Dacre -- if y'all never checked that one out I say do that! It's ace. Okay -- have a great weekend! I'm out. (pics via)

Today's Mood

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

True History of the Kelly Gang (2019)

Sgt O'Neil: Reminds me of a dog that I once had. It was a mangy old thing. And I am a cruel bastard, so I would whip it every which way. I'd beat on him just for looking at me. So, I figure if you hate on something for long enough, well, he just comes to love you anyway, just for those few moments when you don't.

You might think that quote is a weird one for me to choose as a "life lesson" to celebrate Charlie Hunnam's 46th birthday today with, to which I tell you -- we're talking about Charlie Hunnam. And Charlie could treat mt like a dog and whip me every day and I would love him anyway. I watched his King Arthur movie ffs. This stopped being a hypothetical long ago. Happy birthday, Charlie!

Pics of the Day

Rose of Nevada is the new "horror" film from Enys Men director Mark Jenkin -- if you've seen Enys Men then you probably understand why I put "horror" in quotes; it's because his movies are more surreal and uncanny than they are straight-up horror. They want to destabilize you in a way that's starting to feel wholly unique to Jenkin, two movies in -- I am a fan of them both, having seen Rose at NYFF last fall, and not just because this new one stars Callum Turner and George MacKay as ship-mates who look like they look in the photos seen here (via) from the set. The movie is hitting the UK on April 24th -- it comes out here in the U.S. in June so I'll try to say more then. Until then just spend some time today imagining being these boys' bunk-mate -- it's absolutely what I'm doing!

Billy Magnussen Three Times

Awww we're so proud of Billy, getting his own big feature in The New York Times -- read it here (thx Mac). He's talking his buzzy new series The Audacity, which sees him playing a tech-bro asshole to supposedly great effect -- the reviews I've seen have been great! We've been rooting for great things for Billy since forever so this all makes us happy, and I guess I will watch this show even if spending time with tech-bro douchebags doesn't really sound like a thing I wanna do in the year 2026. I said the same thing about finance assholes before I started watching Industry and obviously that turned out to be dumb on my part! Anyway these photos aren't as slutty as the ones in EW earlier this week (to get back to the important things) but he looks lovely as ever. ETA oh and here's a gif from a little video too:

The Walking Man

The horror video-game adaptation Exit 8 is out in movie theaters today and as I said back when I shared the first killer poster and trailer for it -- this movie rules, go see it. I really dug it, but I am admittedly an easy mark for liminal horror -- I have a feeling the upcoming and similarly-vibed Backrooms movie will very much be my jam as well. Anyway Neon, the studio releasing Exit 8, have a small collection of Exit 8 merch available on their site as of today and I'd be remiss if I didn't point you in the direction of the limited edition poster seen above -- you can grab it over at their store for pre-order right now. It's fantastic! Love it. This is turning out to be one of those movies where I'm wanting to collect all the posters -- they all kick ass. They also have a bag and a t-shirt in their store so click around if you're so inclined. And go see Exit 8! And tell me what you thought! Well tell me if it's anything other than, "Your stupid and have terrible opinions," I'd prefer if we put a pin in those comments for 2026. There's a lot going on, in case you hadn't noticed. Aim that vitriol somewhere else please and thank you!

Leslie Vernon Rises From the Grave!

If you've been visiting MNPP since its early days... good grief we're all so old now right? Wait that wasn't the point I was making. My point is I started this site in 2005 (good lord) and in 2006 a little meta-horror flick called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon came out, and I was obsessed. I wrote about it a ton. I have the action figure; I have the poster. (And here is my original review.) Its hottie leading man Nathan Baesel even has a tag here on the site -- one that hasn't been added to in a decade, which was the last time I whined about wanting a sequel.

Well here it is twenty years after that film dropped and at a screening this week to celebrate that milestone the film's director Scott Glosserman dropped the news that we are in fact now getting a sequel! And everyone involved is returning! Holy shit! I really thought this day had passed. Not to be rude (ti's hard to get movies made!) but Glosserman somehow turned the hot buzz off the original into a whole lot of nothing -- he made an MTV horror movie in 2011 called The Truth Below that went nowhere and that was all she wrote on his career apparently.

I haven't actually sat down and watched Leslie Vernon in a very very long time, but weirdly, a couple times over the past couple of years, it's popped into my head and I've been thinking about revisiting -- well here's the nudge I needed. If you don't remember what it's about or if, hell some of you weren't even born when this movie came out (good grief) -- the movie tells the story of a journalist named Taylor (Angela Goethals) who decides to make a documentary where she follows the titular slasher killer Leslie (Baesel) on his stalking and killing rounds. Obviously this project is a doomed one. It's very good, or at least I remember it being very good -- we'll have to see how it's aged. But I remember both of the leads being really solid and it being genuinely unsettling. Anybody watch it recently?

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Sufjan Turns Water Sports Into Poetry

No the above image is unfortunaely not the cover of a new Sufjan Stevens album -- god, imagine! That would make my millennium. No, this is new old news instead -- via Stereogum comes the story that apparently when Sufjan was in college at the New School in the 90s he wrote a little chapbook of poetry that included poems he wrote every time he had to pee, alongside a photo of the place he peed. This came via a person who knew him in college and is now a professor at Penn State -- he showed the book to his students and obviously, they took this wonderful news to the internet to share lightning quick. There are more images at the link up top but I think the one below really sets the scene best. This is so him. He needs to reprint this book immediately. I know I'd rather die than let anyone read all the poetry I wrote in college (did y'all know I graduated with a Minor in Poetry? Can't you tell from my exceptional use of da English language?) but this is something different. This is History!

Good Morning, World

Russell Tovey should feel flattered this morning... I mean he probably should feel flattered every morning because a lot of gay men just spent their night having dirty dreams about him. But specifically he should feel flattered this morning because last night I posted a couple of these photos from Behind the Blinds magazine on Bluesky convinced they were leftovers from his 2022 photoshoot for BTB mag (posted here). But they're not! They are brand new! In other words I apparently think he hasn't aged a day in four years.

That's nothing to spit at, Russ! I think I've aged about fifty years in the past four but I'm not holding it against me -- it's the goddamned world. It's a conspiracy! Anyway so yeah they are indeed new photos (via), and this being Behind the Blinds magazine there will surely be dozens more to drop before we're done. But today, this Friday, this morning, we're posting what we have. Hit the jump for that...

The Real Snuff

For some reason when my cousin and I were scouring the horror aisle at the video-store in my teen years we never bothered to rent the original Faces of Death -- probably because it clearly didn't have any sexy naked people, which is why we kept watching the same Slashers over and over again after all. But I was legitimately afraid of its VHS box too, and even though I now know it was all a bunch of hooey, that legacy of the forbidden remains attached to its title. And director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei (of the fantastic Cam) have done a solid job embracing and expanding that with their... it's not a remake. Reboot, I suppose. Set in a world like ours where the Faces of Death video haunted a generation, Faces of Death (2026 Edition) introduces a serial killer (Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery) who's viciously reenacting the original's seedy tableaus to gain viral social-media fame. And it's up to a content moderator named Margot (Barbie Ferreira) to track him down and press permanant pause on his reign of cyber-terror!

Anyway the very real gig where a person watches "content" all day long to flag the worst offenders has been sitting around for several years now outright begging for this treatment -- this movie would make a perfect double-feature with Prano Bailey-Bond's killer 2021 film Censor, which did the 1980s "Video Nasties" version of the same thing (and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the original Faces of Death got name-checked in that). And the team of Goldhaber & Mazzei do make some murderous magic of it, tapping into the very real social-media sickness that's saturated our culture, anesthetizing us to real horror. The film's at its best when its staring into the dead eyes of the normies who don't give a shit about violence for whatever reason, be they benefitting from its monetization or simply part of the parade of empathy husks now found on every corner.

The actual stuff with Montgomery though, who goes way over the top, is a little less successful -- okay we get it Dacre, you watched Manhunter, you watched Dahmer; maybe dial it down a notch or two. This movie has stellar vibes that all his shrieking keeps swallowing up. As for Ferreira she makes for a likeable presence that we're rooting for. Even if the movie vacillates wildly between her character having superpowered MacGyver-like skills when it needs her to (the way she manages to break out of the killer's cage after being there for all of five seconds while the people who've been locked up for weeks look on -- if I'd been one of them I would've told her to fuck right off) while then having her acting dumb as a box of rocks when the movie needs that. In that same vein this whole new Faces of Death endeavor is both sloppier than necessary while also being smarter than it had any right for. You should be pleasantly surprised, even if your groans sometimes get the better of you. (Although a few points knocked off for Yet Another Dead Gay in a year of too many of those. I would just prefer not, y'all.)