Friends encounter unspeakable horror while hiking in the woods in The Stairs
THE STAIRS (Peter “Drago” Tiemann, 2021)
AMC Kips Bay 15, 570 Second Ave.
Regal Union Square 14, 850 Broadway
AMC Empire 25, 234 West Forty-Second St.
Thursday, August 12, 7:00
www.fathomevents.com
“People go missing during a blood moon,” a convenience store clerk tells two men about to go hiking in the woods in Peter “Drago” Tiemann’s grisly thriller The Stairs, a Fathom/Cinedigm one-time-only event screening in select theaters on August 12 at 7:00. If it reminds you of the warning the truck driver (Joe Belcher) gives Jack (Griffin Dunne) and David (David Naughton) in John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London — “Boys, keep off the moors. Stick to the roads, and best of luck” — well, you’re on the right track.
The film begins twenty years in the past, as a hunting sojourn with Grandpa Gene (The Dukes of Hazzard’s John Schneider) and his eleven-year-old grandson, Jesse (Thomas Wethington), goes bad when the boy finds a mysterious set of steps in the middle of the forest, harboring something evil. It quickly becomes apparent that it’s not exactly a stairway to heaven.
In the present, best bros Nick (Adam Korson) and Josh (Brent Bailey) are going camping with their friend Rebeccah (Stacey Oristano) and her new squeeze, Jordon (Tyra Colar), along with the unpredictable and wild Doug (Josh Crotty), who completely throws off the dynamic. After they encounter a strange, eerie couple (Karleena Gore and David S. Hogan), all hell breaks loose, as people start dying in brutally violent ways, with a fab supernatural twist.
A festival favorite, The Stairs is a stylish horror film in the manner of Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, the original Friday the 13th, Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods, Rob Schmidt’s Wrong Turn, and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; in homage, there are even brief cameos from a chainsaw and a lake. You’ll find yourself screaming at the screen as characters make bad choices while Tiemann, who wrote the movie with Jason L Lowe, gleefully exploits genre tropes. We should always listen to Bugs Bunny, who famously told a monster, “Don’t go up there — it’s dark!”
A mysterious evil stirs up trouble in The Stairs
The pandemic lockdown has kept most of us inside for a year and a half, avoiding movie theaters and camping with friends; after watching The Stairs, you might never go outside again. The film is being shown at AMC Kips Bay 15, Regal Union Square 14, and AMC Empire 25, with a prerecorded introduction by Oscar nominee Kathleen Quinlan (Apollo 13, The Doors), who plays Grandma Bernice; a discussion with longtime stunt coordinator Tiemann; and bonus content.