In celebration of this creepy, horror-filled holiday – being that it’s Friday the 13^th is this weekend, we’re very excited to share a new behind-the-scenes look about what goes into “Creating a Classic Ghost Story” from cast and filmmakers courtesy of your friends at The Woman In Black – arriving in theaters February 3, 2012.

Of course, you know the movie stars Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter).

Featuring exclusive interviews from cast and filmmakers, “Creating a Classic Ghost Story” is a behind-the-scenes look at what makes a classic, atmospheric ghost tale and how writer Jane Goldman alongside production company drew inspiration from Susan Hill’s acclaimed novel and theatre versions to create that film.

In addition, check out the new Signs Your House Is Haunted tumblr page giving you all the tell-tale clues that your place is occupied!

Just what is the story about?

Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), a widowed lawyer whose grief has put his career in jeopardy, is sent to a remote village to sort out the affairs of a recently deceased eccentric. But upon his arrival, it soon becomes clear that everyone in the town is keeping a deadly secret.

Although the townspeople try to keep Kipps from learning their tragic history, he soon discovers that the house belonging to his client is haunted by the ghost of a woman who is determined to find someone and something she lost… and no one, not even the children, are safe from her vengeance.

Directed by James Watkins, who brought us Eden Lake, written by Jane Goldman (X-Men: First Class) and co-starring Ciarán Hinds and Janet McTeer.

The long-delayed horror film, starring Chris Hemsworth, The Cabin in the Woods finally arrives to horror audiences at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Directed by Drew Goddard, the twisted creeper has been selected as the opening-night film for the fest — March 9, 2012 at the annual Austin fest. As an extra bonus, the panel discussion will include producer Joss Whedon on Saturday, March 10, 2012.

Cabin is the directorial debut of Goddard. He also wrote Cloverfield and worked on the series “Lost” and “Alias”. Goddard also co-wrote the screenplay with Whedon.The film will get an April 13, 2012 theatrical release.

According to a report in the LA Times, the upcoming zombie apocalypse movie World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, may be the first one in a trilogy. Apparently, Paramount Pictures and director Marc Forster see World War Z as a trilogy, rather than a standalone flick. World War Z, with a reported budget of $150 million, is slated for release in December 2012.

Sequels keep the heart of Hollywood beating strong and steady. Some say that is not a good thing; but it brings money to the studios. Paramount studio is developing another Paranormal Activity feature – fourth one within four years.

The studio announced the plan for the fourth sequel yesterday while also announcing Paramount as the No. 1 studio with worldwide grosses in 2011 — scoring best ever at $5.17 billion. If you do the math, In North America the studio brought in $1.96 billion and $3.21 billion internationally. That’s quite a showing in North America.

The fourth installment is listed as part of the studio’s 2012 lineup, which also includes G.I. Joe: Retaliation, World War Z and The Dictator.

It’s hard to imagine what more Paramount can milk out of the supernatural storyline. The last two installments were pretty much similar as prequels to the original. The combined $581 million in worldwide grosses is, obviously, the key factor for making a fourth. The first movie opened as a limited release, whereas the next two sequels went into wide release the weekend before Halloween.

The original Paranormal Activity, written and directed by Oren Peli, was a phenomenon – costing only $15,000 to produce. Peli used the infamous “found footage” technique. The storyline centered on a young couple haunted by a supernatural presence.

Paranormal Activity 3 was directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman from a screenplay by Christopher B. Landon. The fourth installment producers, director, writer and release dates have not been announced yet.

The folks out at Entertainment One sent out a copy of Born of Earth, and this one looked on the surface like it had all the makings of a good monster movie. Nifty cast, not only featuring a Baldwin (Daniel, but still) but also one of my personal favorites in Brad Dourif, as well as some decent looking monster effects. But would this whole be greater than the sum of its parts…or less?

Born of Earth revolves around Danny Kessler, a man that’s been having a rough time of things lately. His wife was recently murdered, and his children recently abducted. That’s rough enough for anybody, but when Danny discovers that, just to make things even worse, there’s a race of horrible monsters living right around the area, he’s going to not only have to find out the truth behind these horrors and put paid to them before they can run amok on a killing spree of their own over large chunks of the planet.

Implausible? You bet! But then, some of the best monster movies are exactly that, at least in the early going. The down side here is that, not only is it implausible, it’s also kind of dull. See, Born of Earth has a run time of about eighty four minutes. We see the monsters only a couple times in the first five minutes, and then, not again for better than the first half. When you’ve only got about an hour and twenty minutes on your movie, you need to hit things hard and fast. Thankfully, the ending does somewhat make up for this with loads of monsters running around and lunching up the assorted residents, many of whom actually deserve to get gnawed on for one reason or another, which makes this something of a strange one.

It’s always kind of a weird sign when you have to ask, are the horrible twisted flesh-eating forces of justice or murderous monsters? Equally thankfully, the doubts won’t last long. They rapidly reassert themselves as horrors, and this is for the best. Born of Earth does quickly pick up its pacing toward the end, and though the ending isn’t the best, the end does at least take care of most of the loose ends. It’s really rather underwhelming, and looks more like the kind of thing you’d get out of a SyFy Channel Saturday night special than something you might more notably expect in video store shelves or theatrical releasing.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Born of Earth a somewhat nonplussed five out of ten. A good rental, but really, not much more than that.

Ah, the drive-in movie theater. An immortal era in American cinema. These icons of the past can still be found in some places, if you’re willing to go looking, and you too can spend a night out under the stars in your own car, watching a movie on a giant screen in what amounts to a parking lot. And the folks out at Image Entertainment sent over a copy of Chillerama for us to review, a testament to the drive-in era. But will Chillerama manage to succeed on its own merits, or will it only be a hollow tribute coasting on former glories?

Chillerama takes us out to a sad day in American film…the closing of the last drive-in movie theater anywhere. And its proprietor, one Cecil B. Kaufman, isn’t planning to out on a whimper, but rather a bang. He’s planning to show four of the greatest lost movies ever known–or rather, unknown–to mankind, including such greats as Wadzilla, Diary of Anne Frankenstein,  Deathication and I Was A Teenage Werebear. You might think with a playbill like this there would be nothing to do but sit back with some popcorn and the biggest Coke you could smuggle in your car and enjoy the show, but there’s a little extra surprise waiting for the unsuspecting moviegoers.

Indeed, ahead of watching this one, I took the extra minute to pop up some corn. A movie so clearly geared toward the drive-in era all but demanded such accompaniment. And indeed, this was some of the most thoroughly B-movie action that I’d seen in a good long time. Some of it was so thoroughly outlandish as to be beyond belief. More than once I had to jam my rewind key to make quite certain that I had, in fact, actually seen what I’d just seen. Wadzilla alone gave me half a dozen such moments, and by the time I got to the musical beach flick-style that was I Was A Teenage Werebear, well, I knew I was in for a doozy. And I assure you, it only got bigger, louder and more utterly bizarre from there. Deathication will be one of the most disgusting things ever…but there’s a real surprise attached to this one. Strictly speaking? It’s not part of the movie. Confused? You’ll want to see for yourself. But brace yourself, because it’s a real doozy.

It’s B-movie on a scale we don’t ordinarily see, and the wraparound story that this one comes with only improves things, along with some truly terrific performances that make this one absolutely crackle with sheer filmmaking awesome. It is an utter delight of exploded or otherwise removed heads, monsters that strain credibility at every turn, and plotlines that outdo virtually every thing for sheer unaccountable baffling.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this one a straight ten out of ten, and Chillerama should be on every horror buff’s must see list.

Screenhead has joined up with Warner Bros. to help promote the release of the final Harry Potter movie. We’ve included this Harry Potter Widget and DVD contest.

The final face-off between good and evil is finally upon us as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is now available, just in time for the holidays! Join Harry, Ron and Hermione as they do battle against Voldemort in the epic conclusion to the film series!

Screenhead has a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 to giveaway.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and take The Harry Potter Trivia Quiz and share their results in the comments section on your Facebook or Twitter page! We will pick the winner November 29, 2011.

The folks at Well Go Entertainment sent out a copy of Helldriver for us to review, and if you were in the mood for a crazy slice of Japanese horror, well, you’ve got it in spades right here. Helldriver’s going to pack some truly bizarre stuff into its lineup, and your enjoyment of this one is going to depend mainly on your tolerance for weird.

Helldriver takes us out to Japan, where a mysterious mist has settled in over the northern half of Japan and animated the dead. Now with the living hiding themselves in armed camps in the southern half–where the mist hasn’t yet reached–and behind a massive wall, and the northern half now a zombie invested wasteland of lawlessness, the Japanese government has a plan to take back the north from the walking dead. And that plan revolves around Kika, a beautiful young lady with a chainsaw sword an an artificial heart. Kika’s been dispatched to take on the queen of the zombies, Rikka, but as it turns out, Kika and Rikka have a lot more history than you might expect.

I’ve seen more than a little Japanese horror, as you probably found out with last weekend’s multi-review, and generally, it falls into one of two classes: the ultra serious and extremely chatty, or the crazy and exciting rock-and-roll horror. Helldriver is much, much more the crazy kind than the chatty kind. It’s preposterous for a bunch of reasons, any of which would make a good movie by itself to explore but gives this one a kind of surrealist quality to it by trying to put all of this in at once. For instance, here, the zombies not only know how to operate chainsaws, but also have a kind of antler-shaped tumor growing out of their skulls that serves as their weak point, as well as as a kind of illicit drug that, once ground into powder, has a euphoric effect on humans.

They tried to put a whole lot of plot in this movie, give them credit, and this adds to an overall feeling of density and confusion, but that’s actually working for this movie. It’s bizarre, yes, but so are the circumstances under which it operates. The whole of Japan has gone insane, and so, it’s for the best that we don’t entirely get what’s going on.

Still, there will be plenty of action and lots of great fight scenes–not to mention a few good laughs thrown in for variety–that make this one just sparkle with wit and excitement.

The Screenhead Ten Scale in turn gives Helldriver a wild, crazy and downright nonsensical eight out of ten for making a terrific, if downright ludicrous combination of laughs and horror.

Sometimes I wonder how The Asylum does it. Considering that, next week, you’ll be getting a look at 11-11-11, directed by none other than Darren Lynn Bousman, it’s no less amazing to see that just five days ago, the folks at The Asylum got a copy of 11 / 11 / 11 on store shelves. And of course, the first question people will ask is, is this version worth watching?

11 /11 / 11 follows Jack and Melissa, a normal couple who head a normal family, much like any other. And considering their son’s birthday is coming up, it’s looking like a good time to be Jack and Melissa. But the closer their son’s birthday, which just happens to be the titular 11 / 11 / 11, well, he starts acting a bit weird. And not just your normal little boy about to have a birthday weird, but full blown crazy. And when Jack and Melissa discover that their son is actually the key to the apocalypse, which will happen on the little boy’s birthday, Jack and Melissa are going to have to try and stop it…without harming their son.

I give The Asylum all the credit in the word for trying, they really did do their level best to put on something that approximates a scary movie here. And in the grandest tradition of little Antichrist movies like Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen, they did really put up a halfway decent job of making the world seem like it was falling apart around our young couple. The problem here comes in the less than stellar acting job put up by the various cast on this one–frankly, Melissa spends half her time in this movie in bed and Jack is basically a giant tool, meanwhile everyone else is trying to put up a vibe of evil and / or insane and it just comes off like some kind of low-rent high school production, which is sad, because with a bit more substance on the cast’s part, they might have been able to leech something of this. But as it is, none of it seems to quite jell together.

However, the last twenty minutes or so are just preposterous and action-packed at the same time. Frankly, the last twenty minutes of 11 / 11 / 11 represents some of the most lunatic filmmaking I’ve seen in quite some time. You’ve got old women screaming in Latin, screaming Bible verses, then just plain old screaming while waving a machete over their heads.

And then from there, it gets weird.

It’s nowhere near as bad as you might think–it may not be anyone’s idea of a great movie, but it will qualify for at least watchable rank–and might make a good movie to get the crew together and make fun of over beer and pizza. A decent rental, but not too much else.

And with that less than ringing endorsement, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands 11 / 11 / 11 about a fifth of what it adds up to, giving it a six out of ten. It may not be the best thing you’ve seen lately, but it likely won’t be the worst.

Well folks, we’ve got a doozy for you this weekend, as our weekly multi-review tackles a three pack from a wholly different source. Today we turn to the folks from Synapse Cinema, who sent out a sweet set of three Japanese horror titles: Horrors of Malformed Men, Battle Girl: The Living Dead In Tokyo Bay, and The World Sinks Except Japan.

Horrors of Malformed Men follows a man who may be going insane…or he may have just experienced something too horrifying to be regarded as anything but the ravings of a lunatic. He’ll chase down his own lookalike in a bid to find out why he even exists, but along the way, he’ll find terrifying things, including a man who takes human beings and turns them into the titular malformed men.

Considering we start out in what looks like an insane asylum where a woman is trying to stab a guy while topless women jump around the attempted murder scene, you know we’re in for a real doozy right here. And when you further consider that this is a work by no less than Japanese monster of horror Teruo Ishii (and right now, Japanese horror buffs are either clapping their hands in glee or groaning in resignation at what we’re about to see), you can figure this will be no less than a serious piece of work. Ishii’s work has always been a little on the weird side, even for Japanese horror, and this one will be no exception. Plenty of things won’t make sense, and more will horrify you beyond all reason, but if you want some serious splatter and you don’t mind being bored for large chunks of a movie (or a couple unusual laughs, strange beyond words for an Ishii title), you’ll have all you need and more right here.

Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay is pretty much exactly what the box says, as a meteor lands in Japan and forms a shield of fog around the island, as well as raising the dead on the island. Now a host of zombies is roaming the country, and about to be used for world domination by a corrupt general. But only K-ko, a special agent armed with a bladed, bulletproof leather suit, can shut down the operation and bring life back to Tokyo.

This is one of those great bizarre action / horror hybrids that Japan seems particularly enamored with. Basically, if you liked Junk or Assault Girls, you should find a welcome home right here. If you like your movies to make sense, meanwhile, you may just want to keep right on moving. This is going to strain logic almost gleefully, so take care not to get too deep over your head.

The World Sinks Except Japan gives us an unusual premise–basically, the world has become Waterworld…except now, Dry Land is Japan. With the bulk of the world’s land now under Japanese control, the rest of the world tries to assimilate as best they can, and refugees that fail to blend in sufficiently are arrested. But with another seismic catastrophe in the works, will Japan emerge  near as well as they did previously?

It’s bizarre to say the least–think the John Travolta film White Man’s Burden times a million–and it’s going to really make you think about the nature of geopolitics on Earth. Of course, there’s quite a bit left unexplained (what happened to the various boats out there, for one, though from the look of the destruction they might have been taken out), but what’s here is sufficient enough to spark a whole lot of beer-and-pizza night discussions. It’s weird, it’s wholly unprecedented that I can think of, and it’s something very much worth watching.

And so, there you go–a slate of three great titles from the folks at Synapse Films!