Horror movies

In recent years, Black horror has undergone a remarkable renaissance, driven by the visionary work of filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta.

While the genre often uses horror as a lens to explore the historical experiences of Black Americans—racism, slavery, and social politics—it is far from a modern invention. Its origins stretch back to the 1920s, long before its surge in popularity during the Blaxploitation era of the 1970s. Over the years, key figures have emerged in Black horror, including trailblazing actors like Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead. However, for decades, Black creatives behind the camera were lamentably scarce. This raises an intriguing question: what was the first horror film directed by a Black filmmaker?

Amazingly, the first horror movie made by a Black director came out in 1922 during the silent era. During that period, Oscar Micheaux – an author, director, and producer who is regarded as the first African-American feature filmmaker – made his first foray into horror with The Dungeon.

It tells the story of a Black woman who is forced to marry a corrupt politician who has made a secret deal with white power brokers to support segregation in exchange for political influence. She calls him out on this and, in return, is thrown in a subterranean dungeon her husband used to murder his previous wives.

Unfortunately, nobody can watch The Dungeon today because all prints have been lost to history.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/23290322

After Rose Byrne’s stress-inducing motherhood-is-hell panic attack If I Had Legs I’d Kick You premiered, 70s-set folk horror Rabbit Trap is providing yet more confirmation to Sundance attendees that children should be avoided. In writer-director Bryn Chainey’s patchy feature debut, his lead couple might not have a child of their own, but a mysterious local stranger would certainly disagree, forcing himself into their household, whether they like it or not.

For a while they do, sound recordist Darcy (Dev Patel) and alternative musician Daphne (Rosy McEwen), charmed and intrigued by the nameless kid (Jade Croot), an unusual and self-possessed boy eager to teach them more about the area. They moved to a remote Welsh cottage from London, both transfixed by the many sounds of nature, hoping it might lead to creative inspiration. Chainey is as fascinated as they are and it’s immediately easy to see why, the film’s ASMR immersion into the specific squishes, gusts and crunches of the countryside around them proving to be entirely transporting.

It doesn’t take long for us to suspect something sinister might be at play, even before the kid starts teaching them about the fine line between the real world and those of the fairies (cue grim flashbacks to last year’s hokey horror The Watchers) and how one should be careful not to disturb the Tylwyth Teg, mythological creatures from Welsh folklore. Delivering them a dead rabbit is also not the best sign.

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Chainey is certainly skilled at distracting us, drowning his film in atmosphere and mood to offset the devolving half-baked hokum of his plot. But after being urged to listen closer, to try and hear for something more, we’re left with nothing. It’s a trap we can easily wriggle out of.

Trailer

IMDb

cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/21132778

cross-posted from: https://thelemmy.club/post/21132777

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/23100347

Cineverse has announced that “The Toxic Avenger,” a darkly comedic reimagining of Troma Entertainment’s 1984 cult classic of the same name, is headed to theaters in 2025.

Directed by Macon Blair (“I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore”) and starring Peter Dinklage, “The Toxic Avenger” reboot will premiere as an unrated wide release later this year.

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In this new chapter of the franchise created by Lloyd Kaufman and Troma Entertainment, Dinklage stars as downtrodden janitor Winston Gooze, who, after a freak accident, transforms into a mutant vigilante known as Toxie. “Armed with his signature mop, the unlikely hero battles freaks, gangsters and corrupt CEOs while trying to save his relationship with his son. The story channels the subversive gonzo energy of the original ‘Toxic Avenger’ while delivering a fresh, contemporary twist,” reads the official synopsis.

Along with Dinklage, the film stars Kevin Bacon, Elijah Wood, Jacob Tremblay, Julia Davis and Taylour Paige.

After tackling vampires with Nosferatu, filmmaker Robert Eggers is taking on another horror creature genre in his own inimitable style.

Eggers has co-written Werwulf, a werewolf horror project that he will direct as his next feature.

Focus Features, Universal’s art house division which released and financed Nosferatu, is back in business with the filmmaker for Werwulf. The company has dated the thriller for a North America release on Christmas Day, 2026. The parties are hoping for more holiday greetings as Nosferatu was also released on Christmas Day and went on to become an improbable hit.

Eggers wrote Werwulf with Sjón, who co-wrote heady Viking saga The Northman with the filmmaker. While details are scarce, sources say the story is set in 13th century England. The script also features dialogue that was true to the time period and has translations and annotations for those uninitiated in Old English.

For the bulk of the 2010s, Blumhouse was synonymous with horror. Sinister, The Purge, Paranormal Activity, and Insidious all captured the zeitgeist thanks to their catchy concepts, many of which have since been turned into larger franchises.

Arguably their most impressive moment was the one-two punch of Get Out and Split, released just a month a part, earning over half a billion on a combined budget of just $13.5 million. It was Jason Blum’s very own Barbenheimer.

That brings us to 2025, with Blumhouse’s new $25 million Wolf Man reboot opening to an anemic $12 million over the four-day holiday weekend.

The three day tally was lower than last year’s Night Swim, and barely above Imaginary. Largely expected to take first place, it instead wound up behind both Christmas holdover Mufasa, as well as the new buddy comedy One of Them Days.

What does this mean for Blumhouse?

Fans of The Substance will probably appreciate this low-budget Kiwi body horror, intent as it is on tearing holes in the human meat carapace in order to question modern beauty standards. Grafted is actually more superficial than Coralie Fargeat’s film in terms of what it says about appearance – but that is somehow fitting and ably concealed by director Sasha Rainbow with a heavy grouting of punky attitude.

One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one...only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening. Trapped in the valley, they're forced to relive the nightmare again and again - only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn.

IMDb

Steamboat Willie‘s reign of terror is now set to hit the big screen this spring.

Iconic Events Releasing has shifted the U.S. theatrical release date of the Steamboat Willie horror movie “Screamboat” from late January to April. The distributor has also unveiled a first look at the killer mouse, portrayed by David Howard Thornton, best known for his role as Art the Clown in the “Terrifier” franchise.

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Per the film’s official description, “‘Screamboat’ follows a group of New Yorkers on a late-night ferry ride that turns deadly when a mischievous mouse begins a rampage, targeting unsuspecting passengers. The unlikely crew must band together to thwart the murderous menace before their relaxing commute turns into a nightmare.”

Intermittently effective but grindingly repetitive, this lupine-themed horror posits a world where nearly a billion people have died after a supermoon turned anyone exposed to its light into a werewolf. A full year has passed, and in an unnamed city (San Juan, Puerto Rico and Los Angeles, California are listed as the locations used) folks are preparing for yet another supermoon-werewolf apocalypse by securing their homes with booby traps and arming themselves to the teeth.

Trailer

2024’s Christmas and New Year film calendar was interesting, to say the least. There wasn’t a genuine Christmas film in sight, so audiences had the option of singing their hearts out in the Land of Oz, watching a superfast blue hedgehog fight an evil egg man, beholding the CGI-rendered origin story of a famously deceased cartoon lion, or travelling to the lost island of Motufetu with an animated Dwayne Johnson. Fascinatingly, though, many cinemagoers chose to counter-programme their holiday season by embracing the darkness of Robert Eggers’ remake of the classic silent vampire tale Nosferatu. Most of them won’t have known, though, that Eggers’ Gothic fairytale wasn’t the only remake of that German Expressionist classic released in 2024. Instead, please spare a thought for the mostly-ignored Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, starring Doug Jones of The Shape of Water fame.

On December 3rd, 2014, David Lee Fisher’s proposed shot-for-shot remake of FW Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter. Fisher’s intention was to make the same film again but with a new cast, a full script and symphonic musical score, and backgrounds created through a mixture of sets and CGI. At this point, Fisher’s version would have been the movie’s second remake after Werner Herzog’s 1979 opus Nosferatu the Vampyre. However, in July 2015 – only eight months later – Eggers’ own remake of the film was announced by Studio 8. This proved that Nosferatu remakes are like buses – you don’t see any for 35 years, then two come along at once.

Unfortunately for both Fisher and Eggers, though, the next decade proved extremely difficult when it came to translating their respective visions to screen. Jones, Hollywood’s premier monster actor, was cast as Fisher’s grotesque Count Orlok and shot his part in 2015, several years before he played the haunting Amphibian Man in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning romantic oddity. He returned for some pick-up shots two years later before the film fell into what he described as “a very, very long post-production process.”

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Ultimately, Fisher’s film would finally premiere in Michigan in November 2023 but wouldn’t become widely available to the public until September 2024, when it was quietly released as a video-on-demand rental. Eggers’ star-studded $50million version followed on Christmas Day in the US and New Year’s Day in international markets. Naturally, most people were only aware of the version that starred Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Bill Skarsgård as Orlok instead of the strange low-budget version that quickly got lost in the streaming wasteland.

Looks like the Scream franchise is finally back in business. Original franchise creator Kevin Williamson shared a photo on Instagram of the first slate for Scream 7, revealing that the slasher sequel is officially filming, and that they’ve just wrapped their first day of shooting.

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The news of the sequel’s filming comes after several key cast members have returned to the franchise, notably Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, but also Mason Gooding, who featured in the last two “legacy sequel” films in the franchise. Scream 7 is also set to star Ghostbusters: Afterlife stars Celeste O’Connor and Mckenna Grace, as well as Anna Camp and Isabel May.

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Scream 7 hits theaters on February 27, 2026.

Images for Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare offer a first look at the horror version of Tinkerbell (Kit Green) and Captain Hook (Charity Kase). Written and directed by Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey director Scott Chambers, the upcoming horror retelling of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is a new entry in the Twisted Childhood Universe, only in theaters from January 13 to 15. The official synopsis sees Wendy Darling (Megan Placito) attempt to rescue her brother Michael (Peter DeSouza-Feighoney) from an evil Peter Pan's (Martin Portlock) plot to send him to Neverland.

The 2022 Japanese horror Kisaragi Station from director Jirô Nagae is getting a sequel titled Kisaragi Station Re:, according to Yahoo! Japan.

Kisaragi Station is based on a real life urban legend surrounding a mysterious, non-existent train station which first appeared on message board 2chan back in 2004. The post allegedly came from a woman named Hasumi, who found herself stuck in a parallel universe after disembarking at a train station in the Hamamatsu Region that didn't appear on any maps.

In the first film, Yuri Tsunematsu starred as a a young woman studying folklore at university, who decides the subject of her graduation thesis will be on the legendary Kisaragi Station.

Nozomi Honda will star in the sequel, which is set three years after Kisaragi Station.

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Kisaragi Station Re: is set to hit Japanese theaters this spring.

In Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, the dark shadow of a long-fingered hand looms over the fictional German port town of Wisborg. It is a chilling, striking shot: an aerial view of twinkling, snow-dusted houses, the ugly threat of a monster’s grasping hand gliding overhead.

Conjuring atmosphere is something that Eggers, the American horror director behind The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman, is especially good at. His reimagining of the 1922 German silent film by FW Murnau, itself a barely disguised (and distinctly unauthorised) reimagining of Bram Stoker’s 19th century gothic novel Dracula, isn’t scary exactly: even its moments of gore and grossness are studied and artful. But it is spooky.

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Yet for all its sexual tension, the film ends up feeling oddly cold. The baroque displays of passion and extravagant flowing blood usually associated with vampire movies are deployed sparingly. Unlike in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 version of Dracula (which is, for better or worse, the one imprinted on this critic’s mind), both necrophilia and the devouring of children are tastefully implied. In that film, the love story at its heart felt real and moving, in spite of its gleefully over-the-top trappings. In Nosferatu, Eggers leans away from, rather than into, anything that might be considered playful, but the deadly serious tone can have the opposite effect.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22408620

The trouble with Nick Frost’s knowingly cartoonish and silly comedy paying homage to folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar is that Frost has done this kind of movie before, and better. His hugely enjoyable collaborations with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End, had a perfect command of comedy horror. The tone here feels less good natured, more self-congratulatory, the comedy not quite so light on its feet. Though it comes into its own with a cheerfully gruesome gorefest in the last half-hour.

Frost writes and stars alongside Aisling Bea (who really does deserve a better horror film). They play Richard and Susan Smith, an ordinary-seeming middle-aged couple with the irritating habit of calling each other “mummy” and “daddy”. The Smiths have dragged their bickering grownup kids Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres) on holiday to a fictional Swedish island to watch the Karantän festival. Every year locals stage an eight-hour re-enactment celebrating a grisly episode of early 19th-century history when their ancestors turned cannibalistic and chomped four British soldiers who’d starved the island.

Of course, in folk horror tradition, the Smiths are hapless outsiders blundering like lambs to a freaky ritualistic slaughter.

Trailer

After the cult success of last year’s I Saw the TV Glow, filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun has set their next film, and much like their last two films, it looks like they’re planning to flip an entire genre on its head. The film, titled Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, takes a meta look at slasher franchises and their legacy, from a “psychosexual point of view.”

At a recent screening of I Saw the TV Glow, according to critic Siddhant Adlakha, Schoenbrun described the film as “Portrait of a Lady on Fire set in a Friday the 13th sequel.” This lines up well with the logline for the film, which follows “a queer filmmaker hired to direct a new installment of a long-running slasher franchise. The director fixates on the prospect of casting the ‘final girl‘ from the original movie, and the two women descend into a frenzy of psychosexual mania.”

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22289030

Apologies to anyone with a birthday in the upcoming month, but, let's be honest, January famously kind of sucks. If you're on a comedown from the festive high, never fear – we have a balm for your blues in the form of 10 of the best upcoming 4K and Blu-ray releases hitting horror shelves this January.

They are:

• April Fool's Day (4K UHD) - Kino Lorber Films
• Azrael (Blu-ray) - IFC Films
• Cure (4K UHD) - Eureka Video
• The Last Voyage of the Demeter (Collector's Edition 4K UHD + Blu-ray) - Scream Factory
• Incubus (Limited Edition 4K UHD/Limited Edition Blu-ray) - Arrow Video
• Smile 2 (4K UHD SteelBook) - Paramount
• The Substance (Blu-ray/4K UHD + Blu-ray combo) - MUBI
• Se7en (4K UHD SteelBook) - Warner Home Video
• Vampires (4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector's Edition) - Shout Factory
• Yellow Dragon's Village/Visitors (Blu-ray Double Feature) - Terror Vision

So throw in your top ten horror movies (or top how many you saw) from 2024. No wrong answers.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22120096

Robert Eggers has confirmed that “Nosferatu” will be released on 4K Blu-Ray in an extended cut. Is it the near 3-hour version that was test screened earlier in the year? Quite possibly.

In 2023, I read the script and after having seen the released cut, all I can say is that Eggers left a lot of footage out of version we saw in theaters.

Clip of the announcement (if you don't want to watch the full video linked), on Reddit