Aptly set to The Turtles‘ “Happy Together,” the trailer for Together teases a horrific codependent relationship portrayed by real-life spouses Alison Brie and Dave Franco.
Following its international premiere at London's FrightFest last year and a successful festival run, Irish horror An Taibhse (The Ghost) has been picked up for worldwide sales by Toronto-based genre specialists Raven Banner and Firebook Entertainment, with a new trailer today teasing a creepy new entry into the folk horror canon.
Bong Joon-ho recently confirmed that following his already-shot animated film about sea creatures — potentially titled “The Valley” — he plans to direct a horror action film set in an underground Seoul subway station. Bong’s horror movie will now have a score composed by John Carpenter.
In the sleepy town of Clover Falls, popular teens are butchered with regularity by a disfigured masked killer in the Freddy/Jason/Michael mode, named Roger Bladecut (Billy Burke). Their deaths are (somehow, invisibly) filmed and sold as horror movies at the local video store, run by Roger Bladecut. This maniac’s daughter, Abbie (Sari Arambulo), is for some reason keen to follow in her father’s footsteps, but when she starts hanging out with other teens realises that maybe murdering your fellow humans isn’t all its cracked up to be.
After two decades, ten films, and over a billion dollars grossed worldwide, Saw remains one of horror’s most popular and enduring franchises. Unfortunately, the series’ iconic villain Jigsaw may have already set his last trap, according to an anonymous source BD has verified as being close to the production of its newest sequel.
The public domain is, in a way, the great cinematic universe in the sky — the final resting place for all intellectual property where characters from all walks of life are legally allowed to encounter one another. Untouchables Entertainment sees a filmmaking opportunity in that. The banner has released the first trailer for “The Dark Domain: MVW Mickey-Vs-Winnie,” a horror imagining that sees the Mickey of Disney’s “Steamboat Willie” and Winnie-the-Pooh coming face-to-face and haunting a killable group of childhood friends.
The first reactions are in for new horror movie Clown in a Cornfield after its premiere at SXSW – and viewers are full of praise for the slasher comedy with a twist.
Film-maker James Ashcroft has created a scary and intimately upsetting psychological horror based on a story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall set in a care home, a film whose coolly maintained claustrophobic mood and bravura performances make up for the slight narrative blurring towards the end. It’s a movie about bullying and elder abuse – more specifically, elder-on-elder abuse – and it is always most chilling when it sticks to the realist constraints of what could actually happen.
As this highly derivative but mildly absorbing Canadian horror thriller kicks off, we meet Ethan (Douglas Smith), a young man seemingly on the verge of killing himself. He looks out over a picturesque stretch of Saskatchewan landscape bathed in magic-hour glow before we cut to a welter of confusing, often blood-soaked flashbacks (or flashforwards) – and his voiceover then explains that although his memory doesn’t work so well, he’d rather not remember most of his life anyway. That’s because unfortunate Ethan is suffering from a kind of cyclical amnesia, not unlike the disorder that bedevilled Guy Pearce’s character in Memento, which compels him to keep reintroducing himself to people he’s met many times before. This is a particularly dangerous condition to have because Ethan is living in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that’s turned everyone who hasn’t gone full zombie into skittish, trigger-happy survivalists desperately clinging to what little resources they have.
Since George Romero first pioneered the concept with his Living Dead films, the zombie apocalypse has become a staple of horror films. Combining elements of monster movies and the disaster genre, these stories can evoke many different fears at once. From illness and death to isolation and societal collapse, zombie apocalypse narratives explore different facets of human nature and, often, the undead themselves are the least terrifying part. Generally, the true danger of such films is other people and the paranoia and desperation that develops among survivors, leaving zombies as a secondary threat. The cult classic, Stake Land, however, upped the horror by introducing a vampire apocalypse, making the undead more threatening than ever.
Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge is a thrilling blend of science fiction, horror, and action, wrapped in a high-stakes romance that pits two elite snipers against an unspeakable nightmare. With an intriguing premise, pulse-pounding action, and a chilling sense of mystery, the film delivers an engaging experience, even if it occasionally stumbles under the weight of its ambition. Anchored by strong performances from Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy, The Gorge weaves together military suspense, monstrous horrors, and a forbidden love story into an intense cinematic experience.
Focus Features’ Nosferatu begins streaming exclusively on Peacock on February 21st. Peacock will also stream the film’s never-before-seen-in-theaters extended cut. Released on Christmas 2024, Robert Eggers’ adaptation brought in $176.5 million. It stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, and Willem Dafoe.
In the long history of exploitation and horror movies, the fairer sex tends to get a raw deal when it comes to preserving their privates. But, as audiences found out this week, that’s changing with anti-heroines like Maxine Minx. Attempting to account for every woman’s wounded whispering eye would be an exercise in futility. What about the man-meat mutilation? How often do we get to see some gnards gnashed?
This one starts very strong. Mindy Vogel (Krsy Fox), a single mother, is summoned to her basement by the ringing of a bell. A barely glimpsed monster with a lugubrious but threatening voice demands that she feed him. They engage in a dialogue from which we infer this is something of a long-term dynamic, with the grim beast nibbling from her arm on a regular basis. She tells him she’ll need to go to the hospital if this carries on much longer; the abusive relationship parallels are not accidental. This monster is dangerous, but he’s also a parasite, standing in contrast to the horror genre’s typical one-munch-and-you’re-done type beast.
A24 is getting set to unleash their fantastical nightmare Death of a Unicorn in theaters on March 28, 2025, and the film has received its official rating from the MPA this week.
Hammer Films, arguably the biggest name in British genre filmmaking, is busy making a new horror feature – its first since 2023’s Doctor Jekyll. Called Ithaqua, it’s a period piece with a solid cast including Luke Hemsworth and Kevin Durand.
Originally, Ryan Gosling was attached to star in the 2025 Wolf Man remake, and the plot was much different. This direction could have tied into an increasingly popular horror subgenre, namely one with a lot of marketing cache with younger viewers. Add in what could have been a far more impressive werewolf design, and the unmade film makes the finished product an even bigger silver bullet to the genre.
Last month, Boyle told Empire that he was going to be directing the trilogy capper, and claimed that it wouldn’t be shot “until audiences respond to the first film.” Judging by the record-breaking reaction to the trailer, I don’t believe Boyle/Garland will have much of a problem completing their trilogy.
Welcome to Horror Explorer, a curated column showcasing the month’s best movies, series, books and everything else spooky worth checking out. I’m William Earl, the editor of Variety.com and the publication’s resident horror enthusiast. Please drop me a line at wearl@variety.com if there’s something I should check out for next month’s missive.
The trailer for the film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story The Monkey has apparently been banned by multiple TV networks for its excessive displays of violence and bloodshed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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