By Chris Kavan - 12/04/14 at 06:52 AM CT
Now that Thanksgiving is over and we're all working off that mountain of food we all ate (right? right!?) - Hollywood is also going to take a step back to recover before assailing us with some more big-budget offerings. It's going to be a quiet weekend overall - there is one horror movie hoping to capitalize on fans being hungry and a buzzy Reece Witherspoon drama drawing comparisons to Into the Wild and has been drawing praise since premiering at the Toronto Film Festival back in September. Yet neither film is going to hit a wide release, which means nothing is going to be able to toppled Mockingjay and we're looking at a Hunger Games three-peat for the weekend.
WILD Reece Witherspoon has come a long way since her Legally Blonde days. In the past few years she has taken chances are some more low-key, dramatic affairs: movies like Mud, Devil's Knot and this year's The Good Lie. But Wild is the movie that has been getting the most attention. Based off the best-selling novel by Cheryl Strayed - it depicts a woman coming to grips with her life after her mother dies, she gets divorced and starts down a dangerous path. Looking to get her life back on track, she decides to go on a solo hike across the Pacific Crest Trail - though woefully inexperienced and unprepared. The people she meets along the way help her on the journey, physically and emotionally. Many comparisons can be made to story of Chris McCandless - which was turned into the film Into the Wild (a really great film, in my opinion) - though the emotional baggage may also draw comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love (a film that makes me want to gag). So I'm unsure which way this film is going to unfold. One thing is for certain, Witherspoon has been earning raves and even if Wild leans towards the more emotional side, it should be a career high point for the actress.
Nothing quite ushers in the old holiday spirit like a... horror movie? While January has been proven to be fertile ground for horror releases over the past few years, December just seems like a strange time to release a horror movie. As with the earlier As Above, So Below, this appears to be yet another "found footage" exploration type horror movie - also featuring a relatively unknown cast (outside of Denis O'Hare and Ashley Hinshaw) and the movie is opening under just short of wide release (550 theaters) so I'm guessing Fox doesn't have the most faith in the film, either. This is the kind of movie that is going to be in and out in short order and will do most of its business on VOD/streaming rather than in theaters. A few million in the bank, nothing more, and it will be lucky to last three weeks before it's gone.
I doubt the top five is going to change any from last weekend as we are in for a breather before some really big-name films make their presence known. I'll be back on Sunday with the final report.
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