Wednesday 25 January 2017

Film news (UK): Horror Channel launches Sci-Fear season


No one will hear you scream on Saturday nights this February as Horror Channel launches a Sci-Fear Season with four ultimate science-fiction shockers, including the UK TV premiere of William Eubank’s inventive and stylish fantasy head-trip THE SIGNAL starring Laurence Fishburne. There are also network premieres for Christian Alvart’s Lovecraftian survival thriller PANDORUM, starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster, and John Bruno’s visually stunning chiller VIRUS, based on the comic book by Chuck Pfarrer, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, William Baldwin and Donald Sutherland. Plus there’s another showing of eXistenZ, David Cronenberg’s enigmatic body horror, starring Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Willem Dafoe and Ian Holm. The season runs from Sat 4 Feb to 25 Feb at 9pm.



Sat 4 Feb @ 21:00 – THE SIGNAL (2014) *UK TV Premiere


Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) are MIT students engaged in an online altercation with the mysterious hacker ‘Nomad’. They get a lead on Nomad's whereabouts and, with Nic’s girlfriend Haley (Olivia Cooke), investigate an abandoned desert shack. Suddenly everyone loses consciousness, and Nic awakens in what seems to be a secret hospital. What’s going on? Where are Jonah and Haley? What is this ‘Extraterrestrial Biological Entity’ he’s being told about? And what does the mysterious Dr. Wallace Damon (Laurence Fishburne) want from them?


Sat 11 Feb @ 21:00 – PANDORUM (2009) *Network Premiere


Astronauts Payton (Dennis Quaid) and Bower (Ben Foster) awake in a hypersleep chamber with no memory of who they are or what their mission might be. While Payton stays behind to monitor the radio transmitter, Bower ventures out of the chamber into the seemingly abandoned spaceship. The men quickly realise that they are not alone, and that the fate of mankind hinges on what they do next…
 

Saturday 18 Feb @ 21:00 – VIRUS (1999) *Network Premiere


Caught in a typhoon, a tugboat commanded by Robert Everton (Donald Sutherland) comes across a mysterious near-deserted ship. Excited to find a vessel that could be sold for as much as $30 million, Everton and his crew board and prepare to move the craft, despite the warnings of sole survivor Nadia Vinogradiya (Joanna Pacula). When a malevolent alien presence begins killing off the crew, it’s up to steely navigator Kit Foster (Jamie Lee Curtis) to get the rest of them to leave before it's too late.
 

Sat 25 Feb @ 21:00 – eXistenZ (1999)


Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who has long been fascinated by the ways new technology shapes and manipulates us, is in familiar territory with eXistenZ; a futuristic thriller which combines elements of science fiction, horror, and action-adventure. eXistenZ is a new organic game system that, when downloaded into humans, accesses their central nervous systems, transporting them on a wild ride in and out of reality. A leader of the field is game designer Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), but when she narrowly escapes an assignation attempt, she finds herself on the run with a marketing trainee (Jude Law) in a race against time as they try to prevent the pod containing the only copy of the eXistenZ game from being stolen. But what is the game, and what is reality?
 
There are also five further network premieres this month including TUCKER AND DALE VS EVIL, Eli Craig’s endearingly cheeky tribute to suspense and slasher classics, SAW IV, Darren Lynn Bousman’s bloodiest of the popular franchise, Peter Hyams’s museum monster-chaser THE RELIC, starring Tom Sizemore, John Erick Dowdle’s REC-inspired QUARANTINE, and Marcos Efron’s 2010 gripping remake of AND SOON THE DARKNESS, starring Amber Heard.
 

Fri 3 Feb @ 22:50 – SAW IV (2007)
 
Despite Jigsaw's death, and in order to save the lives of two of his colleagues, Lieutenant Rigg is forced to take part in a new game, which promises to test him to the limit.


Fri 10 Feb @ 21:00 – TUCKER AND DALE VS EVIL (2010)


Tucker and Dale are on vacation at their dilapidated mountain cabin when they are attacked by a group of preppy college kids.


Fri 17 Feb @ 21:00 – QUARANTINE (2008)
 
A television reporter and her cameraman are trapped inside a building quarantined by the CDC, after the outbreak of a mysterious virus which turns humans into bloodthirsty killers.


Fri 24 Feb @ 21:00 – THE RELIC (1997)
 
A homicide detective and an anthropologist try to destroy a South American lizard-like god, who's on a people eating rampage in a Chicago museum.


Sun 26 Feb @ 21:00 – AND SOON THE DARKNESS (2010)
 
When two American girls on a bike trip in a remote part of Argentina split up and one of them goes missing, the other must find her before her worst fears are realized.


TV: Sky 319 / Virgin 149 / Freesat 138 | Freeview 70