Who among us doesn’t quake in fear at the thought of nature’s most vicious animal – the squirrel? Like a rat glued to a furry caterpillar, its beady eyes glow with malicious intent, its buck teeth eager to gnaw through bone.
Okay, squirrels might not be that scary. But Timur Bekmambetov clearly thinks they can be. The Russian-born director (whose English-language outings include Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) and his production company, Bazelevs, have put out a sales trailer for their upcoming tongue-in-cheek horror flick, Squirrels. Check it out after the break.
Aside from its overuse of CGI, the trailer really isn’t that bad. Sure, you can predict every beat from the very beginning, but seeing an elderly woman tussle with what is clearly a fake stuffed squirrel (seriously – mediocre CGI may be the latest trend, but for campy horror, there’s nothing better than a mediocre effect) is great, and the reveal at the end has just the right balance of creepy and stupid.
Right now, Squirrels has a screenplay written by Daniel Antoniazzi and Ben Shiffrin, and Bleeding Cool reports that Machete co-director Ethan Maniquis is attached to direct. The story will center on a man who returns to his hometown after his father’s mysterious death, only to find that deforestation has sent the town’s squirrel population hunting for a higher spot on the food chain.
If this trailer can drum up enough interest/funding (and really, who wouldn’t want to see a movie about killer squirrels?), we should expect plenty of nut-related puns in the near future.
