Movie News

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema reveals reopening dates for Dallas-area theaters

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema

The movies are back: The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema theater chain now has dates on the reopening of its five Dallas-Fort Worth theaters.

In a nutshell, they'll all be open by the end of August.

According to a release, the cinema company will reopen all of the six theaters it recently acquired after their closure as part of the franchisee's Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing — including five across Dallas Fort Worth: Cedars, Denton, Lake Highlands, Las Colinas, and Richardson — as well as the Woodbury location in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

The reopenings will be staggered throughout the month of August as follows:

August 9: Alamo Drafthouse Richardson
August 13: Alamo Drafthouse Lake Highlands
August 16: Alamo Drafthouse Cedars
August 20: Alamo Drafthouse Denton
August 23: Alamo Drafthouse Las Colinas
August 27: Alamo Drafthouse Woodbury

Tickets for upcoming shows will go on sale on a theater-by-theater basis shortly before each reopening date.

Beyond simply reopening the theaters, Alamo Drafthouse plans to implement improvements and upgrades to several of the venues.

The Richardson location will get state-of-the-art 4K laser projectors and Dolby Atmos sound in a new The Big Show auditorium – Alamo Drafthouse’s premium large format experience, with a targeted date of Labor Day. Las Colinas will get premium recliner seats and 4K laser projectors by spring 2025.

Each location will host a soft opening for the first two weeks after opening with $5 tickets for all shows and 25 percent off select food and beverage items. Programming for the soft opening includes some of the most anticipated films of the summer, including Deadpool & Wolverine, It Ends With Us, Alien: Romulus, and Blink Twice.

Anyone who purchased tickets before the shutdown will receive rainchecks via email once tickets go on sale. Additionally, previously purchased merchandise for Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine will be distributed to guests during the soft opening period.

Season Pass members affected by the closure will also be given the opportunity to reactivate their account and receive two months free for doing so once tickets for their preferred theater go on sale.

Priot to opening, Alamo Drafthouse will host a hiring fair for past employees on July 23 at the Lake Highlands and Woodbury locations, both to make them whole for lost wages that they were owed before the closure and to give them first access to interviews for open positions. (Anyone unable to make the event can apply here.)

Those who are rehired will get a more robust benefits plan with immediate eligibility, including access to daily pay, substantial 401k match, paid medical leave, accrued PTO, and free mental health services.

“Our number one goal throughout this difficult period has been to do right by the former teammates and get back to providing the exceptional cinema experience our guests deserve,” says Alamo Drafthouse CEO Michael Kustermann. “We’re thrilled to say that that goal is in sight and that we’ll have teammates and guests back in those theaters very soon.”

This news comes amidst a surging box office this summer, with titles like Bad Boys: Ride or Die, The Bikeriders, Longlegs, and Inside Out 2 all major successes for Alamo Drafthouse. With highly anticipated titles like It Ends With Us, Alien: Romulus, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice all coming out during or immediately after the reopening period, DFW movie fans have a lot to look forward to at Alamo Drafthouse.

Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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