The expression “desperate times call for desperate measures” is common for good reason. Desperation often leads people to stretch the boundaries of their morals—or ignore those lines altogether—in an effort to acquire something they wish to obtain. That something could be as vital as food for sustenance, which is understandable in a sphere of scarcity. But oftentimes, it is far more trivial, like adoration from strangers who have parasocial attachments to them. They want the most viewers, the biggest platform, the unyielding attention.

People will lie, manipulate, kill, and exploit to satisfy those kinds of goals, sometimes at the expense of others. Exploring these sins is recurrent in horror narratives. But I’ve never seen anyone do what director/writer brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes do in Late Night with the Devil. This found-footage flick, with a haunting and sensational leading performance by David Dastmalchian as Jack Delroy, takes us to Halloween night in 1977 to watch sensationalist efforts spiral into a demonic train wreck on a late-night television show. 

Late Night with the Devil honors films like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby alongside the effervescent appeal of ‘70s-era late-night TV legends à la Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett. Its found footage narrative successfully blends humor, heartbreak, and dread, all of which are bolstered by the glorious style of gore that only Cronenbergian-style practical effects can offer. From its opening scene that puts the state of the world and the construction and crumbling of late-night host Jack Delroy’s life and career into focus to its absolutely batshit ending, Late Night with the Devil draws you in and refuses to release its grip. 

The film follows Delroy’s last-ditch effort to save his television show, which is rapidly falling out of favor with viewers. He’s grappling with a personal tragedy and just can’t seem to nab the #1 spot. His membership in a mysterious arcane organization and wacky on-air efforts still don’t move the rankings needle. With cancellation and Satanic panic creeping over the horizon, Delroy and his production staff pull one last stunt. They plan a Halloween episode with several strange guests who will both mesh together and hate each other. 

There’s Christou the medium (Fayssal Bazzi), Carmichael the former magician and supernatural skeptic (Ian Bliss), and Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), a parapsychologist and author. The latter is the true key to Delroy’s trick, thanks to her patient Lily (Ingrid Torelli). She’s a teenager with a harrowing backstory and an unsavory spirit living inside her. Jack pulls a fast one on the good doctor, coercing her in front of a live-audience to do something never seen before on live television: summon and commune with the Devil. This can’t go wrong in any way, right? Of course it can and it does in spectacular real-time fashion. We get a holistic and voyeuristic view of it all from two perspectives: in front of and behind the camera.

The film runs at a cool 93 minutes, which could have felt sluggish with a less captivating cast. David Dastmalchian is the foundation and master of this narrative. He brings Delroy’s smarmy and smug yet oddly endearing persona to life with every wide-eyed stare of disbelief and scathing remark. He’s a clear connoisseur of the genre, so much so that his Fangoria article about regional TV horror talk shows caught the eyes of the Cairnes brothers, leading to his casting. Anyone who’s seen Dastmalchian in, well, anything knows this leading role has been long overdue.

The new (to US audiences, anyway) standout in this film is undoubtedly Torelli as Lily. Her soulless stares and unsettling smirks into the camera will send chills down even the most fearless viewers’ spines… and that’s before the titular Devil takes over. Her quiet yet commanding screen presence slowly pushes an already eerie atmosphere over the edge of destruction. Torelli’s physicality and delivery play perfectly alongside Laura Gordon’s mounting perturbance and controlled panic. It is easily one of the best supporting horror performances in recent memory. 

Late Night with the Devil’s ending feels a bit rushed and convoluted. However, the big creative swings and pure chaos help soothe those issues. Questions are left unanswered, and that’s okay. Instead of tying up loose ends into a neat knot, things are delightfully unraveled and uncertain. Deliciously dark, frighteningly fun, super strange, and full of thoughtful thematic choices, Late Night with the Devil is poised for horror classic status.

Late Night with the Devil hits theaters on March 22 with a later release on Shudder on April 19.

Late Night with the Devil ⭐ (4.5 of 5)

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Parasyte fans, rejoice! Fans of the Japanese body horror manga and anime will get a chance to dive into this world from a South Korean perspective in live-action form. Netflix’s Parasyte: The Grey is set in the same world where the very cool Shinichi Izumi’s story took place as he learned to deal with Migi, the parasitic organism that took over his right hand. The teaser trailer for Parasyte: The Grey introduces a new tale of humanity rising up against a threat. 

In the Parasyte: The Grey trailer, we immediately jump into the perspective of the humanoid parasites who must take over human bodies to live. Because they look like humans, it’s pretty easy to integrate themselves into society and gain people’s trust. When the time is right, they reveal themselves in a rather dramatic fashion as their heads separate into long tentacles with their eyes hanging in the balance or even separating. It’s quite the fun spectacle for us to witness, although I’m sure the people in this universe are not enjoying it at all. As usual, the military tries to fight back, but, well, there’s not much you can do against beings who can whip their tentacles around and beat others up.

There is one woman in this trailer who moves much differently than her counterparts. She doesn’t seem down with this takeover, so we can assume she’s the Shinichi of this narrative. Based on Parasyte: The Grey’s trailer, it seems that you can have a little—or a lot—of knowledge about the source material and still enjoy this series. I am always down for body horror, so I’ll give it a go. Plus, the director is Yeon Sang-Ho, who gave us Hellbound and the absolutely brilliant Train to Busan. 

When Does Netflix’s Parasyte: The Grey Series Premiere?

We won’t have to wait long to see what happens in this series. Parasyte: The Grey‘s trailer reveals that it hits Netflix on April 5.

The post PARASYTE: THE GREY Trailer Brings Parasitic Aliens to Earth appeared first on Nerdist.

Halloween night is the perfect time for something sinister to happen. The veil is thin between the world of the living and the realm of the dead. People are wandering the streets in strange garb while seeking candy and mayhem. And, if you’re in Haddonfield, there just might be a tall man in a white mask who stalks babysitters and wanders the streets. Nowhere feels truly safe except maybe the confines of your own home. Even then, evil can somehow find you through your television, especially if there’s some greedy dude who succeeds at “communing” with the Devil. Now that’s one hell of a horror movie premise. In fact, it’s the plot of Late Night with the Devil, IFC’s upcoming flick with a trailer that promises live television chaos. 

The film stars David Dastmalchian as a late-night TV show host who hopes to get his ratings up. Of course, there’s nothing like the drama and spine chilling fear of summoning evil to do the trick. This seems like the absolute worst idea, especially when America is on the cusp of all-out Satanic Panic. 

Here’s the synopsis: 

October 31, 1977. Johnny Carson rival Jack Delroy hosts a syndicated late night talk show ‘Night Owls’ that has long been a trusted companion to insomniacs around the country. A year after the tragic death of Jack’s wife, ratings have plummeted. Desperate to turn his fortunes around, Jack plans a Halloween special like no other, unaware that he is about to unleash evil into the living rooms of America. 

Well, this sounds absolutely delicious. I can’t say I envy those folks in the live audience. The trailer for Late Night with the Devil reads almost like a surreal documentary and looks delightfully ‘70s. 

What Is the Release Date for Late Night with the Devil?

Late Night with the Devil will hit theaters on March 22.

The post LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL Trailer Gives the Devil a TV Guest Appearance appeared first on Nerdist.

The Blaxploitation film era is, for better or worse, a cornerstone in the foundation of modern Black history. The subgenre, a portmanteau of Black and exploitation, came at critical time between the late 1960s when social turbulence and Black Pride intertwined and the 1970s era of superfly style, disco and funk music, and the continued reign of the all-mighty Afro. Blaxploitation gave audiences films that centralized our communities and made us the protagonists, infusing our stories with socioeconomic commentary Black slang and music, Black fashion, and much more. 

Many of the behind-the-scenes creatives were also Black, at times putting a realistic eye on their content. Their work was not without controversy from some prominent Black leaders about how these stories reflected the collective. To be fair, not every portrayal shined a positive light on Black communities. However, this explosion soon led to Hollywood’s continuous capitalization and curious outside eyes. A flurry of stories that were, well, exploitative and leaned into harmful stereotypes about Black people came about. (I’m looking directly at Dino De Laurentiis’ Mandingo.) These non-Black filmmakers and directors would take any story and “Blacken it up,” usually to the point of pure nonsense. 

Blaxploitation’s meteoric rise and decline took place in the same decade. But its influence continues to resonate in Black media of all genres. Most people rightfully point to films like Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, and Foxy Brown as the pivotal films of this genre with a profound influence on their descendants. But Blaxploitation horror is arguably just as important with stories centered around crimes, rituals, and period drama with supernatural narratives. Oftentimes, exploring the full scope of what it meant to be a Black American during this time period—or any time period, honestly—involved some aspect of horror, even if it was only clear to the intended audience. Let’s explore the history of a few pivotal (and maybe not-so-great) Blaxploitation horror films. 

When you consider the scope of filmmaking in any genre from decades past, it is often hard to pinpoint definitive “firsts.” We tend to largely filter genres through a mainstream or highly-lauded indie perspective, so many films fly under our radars. Who knows if an indie filmmaker made a lost-to-time Blaxploitation horror in, say, 1967? But, we do know that one of the earliest Blaxploitation horror films is also one of the most successful films of this era, period.

William Crain’s brilliant Blacula (1972) is more than just a “Black Dracula.” It makes a profound metaphorical connection between slavery and vampirism through Mamuwalde’s misfortunes. He is a wealthy African prince who goes to Transylvania to petition Count Dracula to stop the slave trade. In return, Dracula refuses to comply, bites him, and curses him with the name Blacula. He’s resurrected in the 1970s and falls in love with Tina, a Los Angeles native.

At this time, horror was only a couple of years from giving birth to a golden age of slashers. Filmmakers leaned heavily into remakes in the early 1970s, including several Dracula flicks. So, taking that trend, putting Black people on both sides of the camera, and crafting a moving horror film with a love story undercurrent struck the perfect nerve. There were imitators, like the rightfully panned Blackenstein (1973), but zero duplicators. The Black vampire energy continued to permeate the air with a slightly less successful sequel, Scream Blacula Scream (1973). In 2021, plans for a Blacula reboot were underway.

But the true standout Blaxploitation horror film of 1973 was Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, a moody vampire film that dances with some tenets of Blaxploitation films like dealing with “The Man,” overt sexuality, and Afrocentrism. Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones starred as Dr. Hess Green, a wealthy anthropologist whose assistant stabs him with an ancient ceremonial dagger. Hess becomes a vampire as a result and falls in love with Ganja (Marlene Clark), his assistant’s widow. Ganja & Hess is a smart and sexy film with themes of assimilation, respectability politics, and more through the ebb and flow of the protagonists’ relationship. While Ganja can be perceived as the stereotypical “seductress,” there’s more depth to her character that she likely wouldn’t have gotten if written from a non-Black perspective.

Overall, Ganja & Hess resides on the more favorable side of Blaxploitation offerings. The film’s off-screen journey took a strange turn when its producers sold it to Heritage Enterprises. The company drastically recut the movie and packaged it as Blood Couple. I suppose the new owners thought it was a little too “smart” for audiences. Needless to say, Gunn wasn’t happy about the chopping of his movie, which was thankfully preserved in its original format. Ganja & Hess continues to resonate with modern audiences, from thoughtful examinations for its 50th anniversary to a discussion of the film in the documentary Horror Noire. Famed director Spike Lee’s remake of the film, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus, brought it to a new generation’s attention in 2014, with many agreeing that there’s nothing quite like the original. 

This film set off a deliciously dark and creative spark that carried into 1974 with more Blaxploitation horror films. In fact, two of them came to us courtesy of American International Pictures (AIP). There’s the wildly silly yet enjoyable Abby, which follows a woman who is possessed by (or, depending on how you interpret it, influenced by) a West African spirit of chaos and lust. (The creators’ limited understanding of orishas is slim to none, obviously.) And that’s exactly what this film dishes out in ample amounts as Abby Williams (Carol Speed) becomes a hypersexual one-woman wrecking crew—a lifestyle not befitting of a preacher’s wife. (Abby also stars William Marshall, a.k.a. Blacula himself, as Abby’s archaeologist father-in-law.)

Abby became a financial success; however, it ran into a legal issue with Warner Bros. claiming it was far too similar to The Exorcist and therefore violating a copyright. There’s a noticeable influence but Abby’s writer G. Cornell Layne and producer/director William Girdler didn’t copy every single test answer. Still, it was pulled from theaters at the height of its fame. Abby spent decades out of print until its inclusion in CineFear’s Collector’s Edition in 2006. Since then, copies are hard to find with the “clean,” original copy of the film still unreleased. As of February 2024, Abby is available to watch for free on Plex. 

Much of Abby is quite campy and ridiculous. However, it does find some grounding in its decidedly good performances and unorthodox approach to a possession tale. The juxtaposition of chaos/evil spirits in a religious Black family and watching a “respectable” and proper Black woman completely turn from those notions offers food for thought but only if you want to go down that pathway. Otherwise, it is a great example of horror fun that’s so bad, it’s kinda good.

The horror genre at large needs its vampires and evil spirits for sure, but there’s nothing quite like a zombie flick. 1974 gave us a supremely fascinating and entertaining offering with Sugar Hill. Despite its behind-the-scenes creatives being largely white, Sugar Hill manages to tell a Black-led story that’s engaging and unique without much of the overt (and thinly veiled) racism of other horror flicks at the time. Is the representation perfect by any means? No. But it could certainly be much, much worse.

The titular character, played by Marki Bey, exacts revenge against a mob boss and his henchmen who killed her nightclub owner boyfriend Langston. Sugar goes to a voodoo queen (we love a voodoo queen) who summons Baron Samedi, the lord of the dead. Samedi raises an army of zombies to kill the mobsters. It’s an inspired premise with dialogue that is as classic Blaxploitation as it gets. Sugar Hill doesn’t lean into the excessive gore or brutality that we see in more current offerings like The Walking Dead; however, it establishes an unsettling atmosphere with its zombies.

Speaking of them, they are deceased African slaves who almost exclusively kill white people. There’s much to be said about a long lineage of Black pain, righteous anger, and, to a lesser degree, ancestral power and veneration. Bey’s Sugar Hill is one of the most badass women to ever grace a horror flick. She certainly laid the foundation for the Selenas, Michonnes, and Jerylines to come. As today’s youth would say, she was mothering.

Of course, there are other films that I won’t dive into, like the ridiculous Vampira (1974) that shows Dracula’s wife transforming into a “foxy lady” or the downright nauseating Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), with its touches of Blaxploitation and dousing of sexual assault. Gross. We can’t talk about them all, right? But we can move towards the end of the classic Blaxploitation horror era with 1976’s Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde. Under the direction of Blacula‘s William Crain, the story does an obvious play on the Jekyll/Hyde dynamic. Funnily enough, the doctor’s last name is not Black, but instead Pride (Get it?!).

He’s an LA-based wealthy gentleman who wants to cure liver cirrhosis. He experiments with potential cures on himself and attempts to force experiments on others. Pride turns into a white-skinned, freakish monster who kills sex workers and pimps before the police gun him down . Respectability issues aside, this film touches on historical and unethical experimentation against Black people. It also flips the Black-coded/othered monster trope established in earlier (and very racist) horror films on its head. Pride himself is supposed to be aspirational or a sell-out, depending on the viewers’ perspective. Predictably, (overwhelmingly white) reviewers at the time hated this film. But it continues to hold a special place in old-school horror fans’ hearts. 

That adoring sentiment also exists for J.D.’s Revenge (1976). It’s a rather somber Blaxploitation horror-thriller with some serious actors in leading roles. Glynn Turman stars as the quiet law student Ike who somehow channels J.D.’s superfly spirit during a hypnosis show. Decades prior, J.D. (David McKnight) was unjustly murdered for a violent crime against his sister that he didn’t commit. As J.D. overtakes Ike, the latter begins to act uncharacteristically while also trying to solve the aforementioned crime. It’s a mental trip that moves at a slower pace yet deftly explores the devolvement of one man’s mind. Good stuff, indeed. 

By the late 1970s, the Blaxploitation era as a whole began its decline; however, these films made a lasting impact on cinema. The ‘80s brought us offerings like The Last Dragon, a martial arts film with heavy Blaxploitation influence. But Black-led horror suffered despite the rise of franchises like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Many Black characters became tropes like the sidekick, Magical Negro, and sacrificial lamb. (Yes, exceptions exist, including Grace Jones’ campy Vamp (1986) and the no-good, very-bad Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984).)

Blaxploitation horror’s influence is stronger in the ‘90s and early 2000s, with the anthology series Tales From the Hood (1995), Leprechaun in the Hood (2000), Def By Temptation (1990), Candyman (1992), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Bones (2001) and a string of “hood” based films with titles ending in a Z (hello Zombiez). These films would explore issues affecting Black communities, like AIDS, abuse, and poverty, through the lens of scary stories. The continuous rise of hip-hop music further fueled these Blaxploitation-inspired films, with rappers Snoop Dogg, Coolio, and Ice-T stepping into acting.

Now, it’s much more commonplace to see Black horror movies like Get Out, Us, The Blackening, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, Eve’s Bayou, and Vampires vs. the Bronx. There’s also the lower budget “hood” films like Amityville in the Hood (2021) and the wildly titled Bitch Ass (2022). (The latter actually isn’t as bad as you’d imagine, btw. It is not a masterpiece but better than those awful “Z movies.”) 

Many Blaxploitation horror films certainly had problematic elements; however, the idea that Black stories have a place in this genre space laid a foundation for great things to come. Whether introspective, silly, or downright bizarre, Black horror stories from the 1970s were truly a special time in cinematic history. 

The post A Brief(ish) History of Blaxploitation Horror Movies appeared first on Nerdist.

Are you afraid of the dark? At some point in our lives, the answer to that question is an affirmative yet nervous nod. We have all feared a shadow or two, right? Even if you’re comfortable with dark spaces as an adult, you probably slept with a night light as a kid. That faint and comforting glow was a security blanket to cast away all trepidation… especially if you had just watched something super scary. This small light fixture inspired the name of NIGHTLIGHT, a podcast that’s a vital addition to the horror fiction landscape. Created by Tonia Ransom, NIGHTLIGHT features a hefty catalog of stories written and performed by Black creatives that will make you want to keep the lights on at night.

Following this unique creative path was Tonia’s destiny. She fell in love with horror as a kid, watching scary movies with her older brothers to connect with them. “I was about nine years old and really afraid of being afraid,” recalls Ransom. “I didn’t want to jump or do anything like that! If anybody has brothers, you know that they’re ruthless and they’ll never let you live anything down. So, I knew that I had to be brave.”

Tonia soon began penning her own frightening tales. She recalls one early—and hilarious—experience that got her hooked on the euphoria of emotionally moving others with her words. 

“I fell in love with writing horror when I had this school assignment in second grade,” said Ransom. “We were tasked with writing a book and creating the book. We had to get a chipboard and contact paper to actually construct it and we had to write and illustrate the book. I wrote Michael Myers fanfiction, complete with bloody knives and corpses… and I was known as a really good kid in school. My teacher, of course, called my parents. I was thinking it was because she loved the story but, once I got to middle school, I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ She was probably worried about me and scared for a different reason.”

Like most of us, her fanfiction adventures didn’t translate into a career… at least, not initially. Tonia went into marketing and web development; however, she never lost her passion for storytelling. Internet radio stations helped her maintain her focus during long workdays. Her appreciation for audio stories sparked an idea that wouldn’t leave her alone, even though she kept putting it off. 

“I was a web developer, not a writer at that point, and definitely not working in radio or anything like that,” she notes. “So, I knew that it was going to be almost impossible for me to go to anyone and be like, ‘Hey, let me write a show for you, and it’ll be super successful, and it’ll be great!’ …A couple of years later, podcasts became a thing and I thought, ‘Okay, wow. Well, now I can do this.’ But I kept putting it off… One day I was like, ‘You know what? I keep making excuses. And this is never going to happen if I keep waiting for the “right time” to do this.”

This is where NIGHTLIGHT’s story begins. Tonia didn’t have a platform on social media nor followers who were necessarily her niche market. So, she turned to crowdfunding and using her marketing prowess to get others on board. Obviously, the idea of a Black-led audio horror podcast resonated with people because she quickly raised thousands of dollars. And the rest, as they say, is history. NIGHTLIGHT launched in 2018 and has six seasons of sinister stories for your podcast listening pleasure. 

Each episode may only run 30-40 minutes; however, it takes up to 20-30 hours—and hundreds of dollars—to produce them. Tonia initially estimated that an episode would take five hours to complete but that wasn’t the case. She begins with reading submissions or sourcing stories for consideration. Upon acceptance, there’s the business of negotiating contracts, finding the right narrator, and, of course, the recording process. Thankfully, Tonia now has a team to help her with all these working parts.

Then, it is on to quality control to see if there is a need for pickups, which are retakes if a person flubs a word or misses something else. Sometimes, the vocals need to be scarier… almost frightening enough that the listener will have nightmares. Finally, there are sound effects and music to amp up the tension. Once that’s complete, a new NIGHTLIGHT story is ready for the podcast masses to hear. 

Every person involved, from the writers to the narrators, receives compensation for their talent and hard work. This is why NIGHTLIGHT continues to seek support from sponsors and Patreon memberships. The podcast provides fantastic entertainment for horror lovers as well as an established platform for new writers to break their material. Opening the door for marginalized creatives is something that we dig at Nerdist and is also close to Tonia’s heart. 

“I think any marginalized group has to have the opportunity to tell their stories and have their stories heard,” Tonia states. “It creates this atmosphere where it’s really hard to hate a group of people once you’re exposed to their perspective. People don’t like being preached to. They don’t like being told, ‘Oh, well, Black people aren’t this, and you shouldn’t think that,’ and that sort of thing. But people do love listening to stories. You can weave in the things that you want to say in terms of acceptance and sharing your own struggles, challenges, and victories for your culture and the things that you love about your culture… stories are a great way to connect people and fight all forms of bigotry.”

NIGHTLIGHT is gearing up for its seventh season on February 8. In the meantime, you can check out the podcast, visit its Instagram, Facebook, and BlueSky pages, or lend your support via Patreon.

The post NIGHTLIGHT Podcast Crafts Chilling Audio Horror Stories by Black Creatives appeared first on Nerdist.

Odds are if you know anything about Italian horror, you’ve heard of Dario Argento. The iconoclastic filmmaker gave cinema some of the most bombastic and gruesomely beautiful murder set pieces of all time. From his 1971 debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, through his fittingly sweeping epic Opera in 1987, he effectively had nothing but hits. And then he just started not to make good movies. From 1990 forward, Argento’s output was on the low end, peppered by a few decent-to-good outings on occasion.

This alone would have made an interesting focus of a documentary. So would his time as one of the most photographed people in Italy during his celebrity director era. His complicated and troubled family history also would have made for a compelling watch. Unfortunately, Simone Scafidi’s documentary Dario Argento Panico doesn’t pick any one of these, but attempts to touch on all of them. In under 100 minutes, Scafidi’s focus feels a bit scattered, as we see talking head interviews with family, collaborators, celebrity fans, and even the man himself.

In 2019, Scafidi made a seemingly similar documentary on Lucio Fulci called Fulci for Fake with the interesting conceit of painting the Zombie and The Beyond director as an unknowable enigma, unable to pin down. Whether or not Fulci was as strange as the film portrayed is less important than having the clear and defined point of view while taking the audience on a guided tour of his life and career.

Dario Argento Panico, perhaps by centering so much on the very much still-alive Argento and his interview, feels like it’s pulling punches, afraid to get too deep into any of the possibly less savory aspects of his life. Rare exceptions include actor Cristina Marsillach, the lead of Opera who famously had a rough go with Argento during filming. She says his curtness with her led to a better performance. Later, when asked to describe Argento as a person, she breaks down saying she doesn’t know him at all. This felt so out of place, I wasn’t sure whether it was scripted for some added drama or if it was genuine.

The usual suspects of people in Argento’s orbit also appear. These include his daughters Fiore and Asia, the latter, a controversial figure in her own right. Asia gives the movie its lone discourse about how Dario treated her mother, Daria Nicolodi, as well as her own fraught working relationship with him. It was absolutely weird and creepy that he cast her in roles that required nudity and torment. Other than mentioning this, we never get a ton of justification from Dario nor any real condemnation.

Acolytes Luigi Cozzi, Lamberto Bava, and Michele Soavi—all of whom owe their own directing careers to Argento to varying degrees—provide little beyond specific filming anecdotes, while opposing viewpoints from writers and producers are all-too brief. Directors Guillermo del Toro, Nicolas Winding Refn, and Gaspar Noe pop up to discuss Argento’s filmmaking prowess in his heyday, and while I found this stuff interesting the way I always find filmmakers talking about influences interesting, these bits feel out of a different film.

So, here’s the rub. Dario Argento Panico is not a bad documentary. It’s well-made, has plenty of interviews and clips, and will give viewers a passable potted history of his life and best films. At 98 minutes, however, the material is little more than an overview. I knew most of this stuff from just years of watching his movies and listening to audio commentaries, so I don’t find much here to call it “definitive.” As the movie will debut on Shudder, it’s reasonable to assume horror buffs will be the ones watching it. Really, it’s much better suited to newcomers.

It’s worth a watch for the Argento family interviews, but don’t expect a deep analysis of either the man’s life, mind, or work.

Dario Argento Panico hits Shudder February 2, 2024.

Dario Argento Panico ⭐ (2.5 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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If you know anything of the Italian horror films of the 1980s, chances are the names you recognize are Argento, Fulci, and Bava (both Mario and Lamberto). But the name you should know without a doubt is Michele Soavi. Working as an assistant under Dario Argento for a number of years, as well as appearing in several films for the others as an actor, he eventually directed a quartet of the best and most underrated horror films of the era. He’s finally getting his due here in North America from Severin Films who are releasing brand new restorations of three of his masterworks.

The movies in question are Soavi’s second, third, and fourth horror films. Those are The Church (1989), The Sect (1991), and his most famous, and best, Cemetery Man (1994). All three are Gothic-infused, hallucinatory nightmares into the occult and macabre. Soavi’s movies have an artyness and mood that sets them apart from the contemporaries. And some of that might come from a particularly upsetting memory from his childhood which he shared in this exclusive clip from the extras on Severin’s The Sect set.

I feel like you’d probably have horror in your veins too if your parents threatened to take you into a massive, cavernous pit below your kitchen if you didn’t eat your veggies. That legitimately looks like something out of one of Soavi’s horror movies. Pits buried deep under the seemingly normal and pristine homes, hiding some perhaps ancient evil. Good stuff. Glad he has a good sense of humor about it.

Severin is releasing the three Soavi films in brand new 4K restorations. Each set has multiple discs with features and the movie in both UHD and HD. All of them also include a CD soundtrack for the movies. Everyone knows Italian horror movies have the best music. Pop it in whatever device you have that plays CDs and enjoy. Check out Severin Films for more info.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Happy Nerdoween! Every October, Nerdist gets into the Fall and Halloween spirit with a fresh slate of posts and highlights from our previous hits. We have a little something for everyone, from not-scary board games to play to the bizarre history of the Ouija board. This year, we are doing something a little different with Trope Day, a one-day celebration of how tropes play into the horror genre. 

The Seven Deadly Sins: The Horror Tropes Edition

Horror tropes are a staple in the genre, a setup for impending gore or perhaps a powerful commentary on our socioeconomic strife. They can be funny, thoughtful, or even irritating, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a horror offering that doesn’t lean into one of those tested pathways. When we began to think about horror tropes, we noticed that many of them line up with the seven deadly sins. As we all know, religion and horror often walk hand-in-hand, so this is not a shocking revelation. From “The Jock” archetype representing pride to the (somewhat fading) plot device of “having sex = death” obviously referring to lust, this was a fun way to examine common tropes through a fresh lens. 

The Classic Horror Tropes That Will Never Die

There are a few horror tropes and character archetypes, like the wide-eyed “Spook” and “haunted Indian burial ground,” that are thankfully fading into obscurity. Like any other genre, horror is continuously evolving and aiming to reflect the progressive changes in our society. But there are some tropes that will never, ever die. While horror can be quite serious, fans will always love the unseriousness of running up the stairs. “I’ll be right back…” Yeahhhh, you won’t be. And, of course, even with the worst antagonists imaginable, human beings are almost always the real monsters. A Nerdist collaborative post is always a good time!

Laser Focus Podcast: Horror Tropes

Kyle Anderson, Nerdist‘s Senior Editor and the host of our podcast Laser Focus, sat down with Features Editor Tai Gooden to chat about all things tropes. As always, there’s a few fun tangents and a lot of nerdy chatter about how tropes play into horror. 

Nerdist News: The History of Horror Tropes (Video)

Team Nerdist digs into the history of a few major horror tropes that still resonate in media today! Surely you will learn at least one new fact from this in-depth video.

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The post Nerdist Celebrates All Things Horror with Trope Day appeared first on Nerdist.

Horror’s prevalent and enduring tropes are key parts of its foundation, for better or worse. The victim running up the stairs when the front door is right there, people fornicating or partying when there’s a killer on the loose, and an intrepid character investigating that strange noise are both maddening and thrilling. Some horror tropes make us cringe and roll our eyes while others spark joy, but either way we wait with baited breath to watch the inevitable unfold. There’s undoubtedly several motifs that run through any given horror film, especially the connection between moral sins and deadly consequences. We are all familiar with the seven deadly sins from several religious sects—pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth—and each one of them show up in the horror world in the form of a few classic tropes.

A Horror Jock’s Pride Leads to a Mighty Fall

Proverbs 16:18 of the Bible warns us that pride comes before a great fall. And boy does this sin apply to certain horror tropes, particularly in the form of character archetypes who appear in an ensemble cast. One of them is the infamous Jock, an often young, musclebound male idiot who thinks his “superior” athletic ability will ensure his triumph over a murderous (and sometimes supernatural) maniac. This is the case with Julius, a boxer in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. He believes he can defeat Jason with his “guns” (read: muscles) and tries to box with a homicidal… entity. Julius goes down by the ultimate knockout as Jason punches his head clean off his shoulders. Bravery is not a bad thing in horror but overconfidence will get you murked. 

Sometimes, the jock’s pride leads them to do horrific things that make them the true villain. Such is the case with The Rage: Carrie 2 and its group of jocks that exploit and humiliate girls. They have no shame about their actions and believe that they can get away with it because they are untouchable gods. Their pride and status works for them until Carrie teaches them a righteously vengeful final lesson. 

The Pleasure of Lust Begets the Pain of Murder

The deadly sin of lust is a very obvious horror trope one is with far too many examples. The golden horror rule about avoiding sex was a staple in past decades. Final girls like Alice Hardy were always the “good girl virgins” among their friend group, their purity somehow sparing them from a grim fate. Anyone who would dare bare it all risked their lives in the process, with the killer luring them to death one by one.

Some of this was writers/directors inserting their personal morality beliefs into the script. However, there’s also a direct tie with the vulnerability of post-coitus nakedness and a fear of something sinister happening. There’s a reason why we are paranoid when we are home alone and in the shower. And no, it’s not just because Psycho exists.

Thankfully, this trope isn’t prevalent anymore, especially in films like It Follows, where the concepts of death and sex are intertwined in a novel (and not-shaming) way. Many of today’s final girls (and other targets) are choosing to have sex and still obliterating killers to our great delight. But, the sin of lust will never quite fade away in horror, even if it is from a comedic perspective poking fun at the genre. 

Mighty Is the Wrath of a Scorned Soul

Wrath is a driving force in many horror narratives, especially from the perspective of the villain. One frequent trope is the “scorned baddie” exacting revenge in a world where they are severely abused (Carrie) or they are seeking vengeance for their death/death of their loved ones. A famous example of the latter is Mrs. Voorhees, who goes on a killing spree against camp counselors because of her son’s death. Sure, she kills the ones responsible but she also, um, kills other counselors who weren’t even there when it happened. 

But even when the wrath is righteous and from the good among us, like the parents who burned Fred Krueger in his home, it almost always results in a ripple effect of unintended and negative consequences. This all points to one message: never act out of wrath and rage, lest you want innocents to potentially pay the future price for your choice.

Envy Is the Gateway to Evil (and Murder)

This is quite the tricky sin with a lot of different examples, especially in films that straddle the line between horror and classic thrillers. It often roots itself in the trope of the voyeuristic stalker who desires what their prey has and a victim who feels like someone is watching them. Inside (2016) follows the horror story of a psychotic woman who envies a pregnant woman so much that she wants to kill her and steal the child on Christmas Eve.

We also see envy tied into the horror trope of the secret killer family member(s). In Scream 3 (2000) there’s Roman Bridger, who sees the attention and love his half-sister Sidney Prescott got after their mother’s death. His envy of Sidney’s life (along with the pain of rejection) is literally the flame that sparked the events of the entire franchise. There’s also envy in Get Out, a story where affluent white people devise a gross procedure to literally take over Black people’s bodies because they desire their traits. Envy is truly a gateway for evil. 

The Soul of a Sloth Hath Nothing Good Comin’ Its Way

If there’s one rule you better follow in a horror film, it is to move your ass ASAPtually. Do not live in denial and pretend that there’s no real threat happening here. Do not allow others to do the heavy lifting on your behalf. If you do, then you may end up hopping into action when it is already too late to save yourself and others. A great example of sloth behavior typically comes from the ongoing horror trope of the lazy/incompetent police force that constantly fails to do its basic job.

We witness some baffling idiocy from two police officers in Scream 4 (2011) who gawk at a teenage girl in her bra and fail to prevent her murder. But even they don’t hold a candle to the pure overall laziness of the entire police department in Hell Night (1981). You can pretty much count on the cops to be useless and exhibit peak sloth behavior in horror films. 

Be On Your Guard Against the Greed (and Gluttony) of Gentrification and Disturbing the Peace

Ahhh yes, there’s nothing like greed and gluttony, specifically in the economical sense, to set up an intense and bloody narrative. Gentrification and looting are the crux of many haunted house/city/town and cursed land horror tropes. We have seen this one before in many forms. Some rich (and usually white) person thinks they are “doing good” by purchasing property in a marginalized neighborhood. Or they build something on top of sacred land or take some object that isn’t theirs for profit and BOOM, the ancestors or evil spirits are on their ass. (Thankfully, horror has mostly moved away from the harmful ” haunted Indian burial ground” trope that somehow tried to make the ancestors evil. Just respect their land and stop messing with it!)

Sometimes, a person goes into an allegedly haunted space and disturbs the spirits for attention and profit. It never ends well for that person. Busta Rhymes learned this the hard way in Halloween: Resurrection (2002) when a group of students tried to create an internet reality show in Michael Myers’ house. Very stupid behavior, indeed.

Vampires vs. the Bronx (2020) uniquely addresses this with vampires who are sucking the life out of a Black and Latinx neighborhood in multiple ways. They are literally killing people but also killing local business and the neighborhood’s established culture. When a person, ahem, bites off more than they can chew, you can be sure that there will be consequences to their actions.

Considering the frequent crossing of horror and religion, its no surprise that many horror tropes have ties to the seven deadly sins. Like Jason Voorhees, many of these tropes will never die… and we are (mostly) cool with it.

The post The Seven Deadly Sins: The Horror Movie Tropes Edition appeared first on Nerdist.

What’s your favorite scary movie (trope)? No matter how much the horror genre continues to evolve, there will always be room for tropes. Those tried-and-true plot devices and character archetypes, while sometimes overdone, are effective in many ways. Sometimes, a trope is meant to simply humor the viewer as they confidently assert how they would act differently from a film’s character(s). Other times, horror tropes play a more intellectual role, perhaps holding a mirror to the dark aspects of our reality.

They build the foundation to deliver a flawless ending, terrorize us with unexpected visuals, or play into our deepest fears and insecurities. Horror tropes can be fun, exhausting, and heartbreaking, sometimes all at once. And while some tropes are rightfully fading into obscurity, there are a few that, like Jason Voorhees, will never die.

In honor of those enduring tropes, the horror lovers at team Nerdist and our scary movie loving freelance contributors picked tropes that thrill, chill, and reflect our society.

The brilliance of John Carpenter’s legendary The Thing is that it will never again let us trust anybody. We’ll never get tired of wondering if the Childs we saw during in the end was human or not. 

Alison Mattingly: Of all the horror tropes, nothing feels more synonymous with the genre to me than the “final scare.” One of my earliest and fondest horror memories is watching the original Friday the 13th with my parents one Halloween when I was in my early teens (after begging my mom to let me buy the DVD from a bargain bin at the local Wal-Mart). Having been a lifelong chicken with a morbid curiosity for all things dark and scary, I had decided I was ready to watch my first adult horror film. I proceeded to watch the ’80s slasher with awe and terror, enjoying the rollercoaster ride of its thrills.

However, the moment that sealed the deal for me as a born-again horror fan was the final scare trope, which to this day, I think Friday the 13th perfected. With the killer dead and the danger seemingly over as help arrives the next morning, Jason Voorhees springs from the depths of Crystal Lake to drag Alice into the water and deliver one final burst of fear for an unsuspecting audience. I can still distinctly remember both my mom and I screaming. She burst into tears proclaiming, “I hate this movie”, and I, quietly in my nervous laughter, proclaimed my love. 

“…They’re all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act who’s always running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door…”

Tai Gooden: Iconic final girl (and anti-horror advocate) Sidney Prescott says these exact words in Scream (1996) during her first phone call with Ghostface. As we now know, this very-meta franchise often pokes fun at horror’s many tropes while simultaneously leaning into them. And when it comes to horror tropes, “running up the stairs” is one of the most nonsensical and hilarious ones in existence. Rarely if ever does it make sense to go upstairs to evade a killer, yet countless people (specifically women) have met their demise by making this choice.

Like the audience, Sidney may believe she’s smarter than the average horror character. But that’s simply not the case when she’s the one in peril. Moments later, Ghostface appears and, after a brief scuffle, Sidney tries to go out the front door but the lock chain holds her back. Does she run out of the back door instead? No. She heads straight up the stairs for a heavy dose of irony. Thankfully, final girl plot armor worked to her advantage, saving her from Ghostface’s knife.

Kyle Anderson: As soon as you see a bathroom in a horror movie, you can all but guarantee bad stuff will happen. One of two things can happen. One, someone will die in the shower, which is a trope of its own. The other is having the life scared out of you with a hideous monster or other nasty sight in the bathroom mirror behind our hapless victim. You can see this trope coming a mile away. If the camera lingers too long on the sink, it’s over. The person looks at themselves in the mirror, then they go to splash some cold water on their face, and then when they look up, someone’s behind them!

Either it’s a figment of their imagination, or a portent of something bad, or just a real monster or killer. But you WILL be scared, mark my words. The variant of this one, if not the splashy-water set-up, is if the person opens the medicine cabinet. Oh dear heavens, when they shut that thing and look in the mirror again, terror ensues.

While many movies have used a scary thing in the mirror, the best and arguably first real instance of the trope version comes in 1981’s An American Werewolf in London. The movie had already had a few fake-out jumpscares to this point, but about halfway through the movie, our hero David goes to the bathroom, rifles through his new girlfriend’s medicine cabinet, and then is terrified by the grinning visage of his dead and decaying friend Jack behind him. It’s part funny, part scary, an all-time great.

Lindsey Romain: Something in horror that always works on me, even though I hate it, is the “police don’t believe you” trope. It’s a step above “no cell service” in terms of frustration. We’re trained to think the police are the ultimate saviors in moments of danger, but as with real life, that’s rarely the case in horror. They often cause even more death and damage. An ineffective cop is one thing, but cops who blatantly disbelieve our protagonist are even worse. We see it in movies like Cabin Fever and Fright Night, and most recently in Barbarian.

When heroine Tess finally escapes her basement prison and finds law enforcement, she’s met with disbelief. They see her ragged conditions and assume she’s a vagrant, abandoning her to danger. It’s even thornier considering Tess is a Black woman and police violence against Black people remains a horrifying reality in the United States. Horror is best when it’s reflecting real-world truths, even when it’s uncomfortable. Tropes like this may not be pleasant, but they’re certainly effective—and even educational. Tess is the hero of Barbarian in spite of the police who failed her, cementing her as one of the best final girls in recent memory. 

Eric Diaz: I believe the children are the future as much as the next person. But even those of you with children of your own know that kids are sometimes just really creepy. You ever walk into a room with a preschooler having a full conversation with someone not there? Or perhaps they are singing an eerie tune to themselves. Then you know what I’m talking about. However, kids are by far the creepiest in horror films. From The Shining’s ghostly twins, to little Damien in The Omen, and even the chorus of ghostly youth at the start of Stephen King’s It, creepy kids are enough to make you lose some sleep.

But the princess of creepy kids remains poor possessed Regan McNeil in The Exorcist. Her transformation from innocent 12-year-old to filth-spewing demon retains all of its power 50 years later.  There’s just something truly terrifying about what’s supposed to be innocent corrupted by evil. It will always be one of horror’s most effective tropes because of this.

DarkSkyLady: Every time this horror trope pops up through darkened homes, abandoned silos, or dank forests, audiences curse or praise the horror gods. When facing an unknown threat, they need to recall Colonel Mustard’s “there’s safety in numbers.” From films like You’re Next to The Strangers 2: Prey at Night to earlier classics like the Halloween franchise and Friday the 13th, whether stated or implied, splitting up is often the death knell for characters. Yet, we love it because it’s fun! It gives viewers a feeling of superiority that, in the same position, they’d survive. 

Then there are films like Cabin in the Woods, which seek to explain this ridiculous “let’s split up” decision. It’s a gas that leads to poor decision-making! In this movie, one character, Marty, hilariously reflects the audience’s thoughts on this bright idea when he incredulously says, “Really?” Whether a film shows foolish characters hacked beyond recognition or reflects viewer savvy, this one whets the appetite for impending carnage. 

Jules Greene: Evil nuns have never been more in vogue. However, there’s something uniquely compelling to me about evil nuns who aren’t monsters like Valak from The Conjuring movies, but rather ordinary people. The found footage film The Devil’s Doorway featured a Magdalene asylum in Ireland, run by a chilling Mother Superior played by Helena Bereen. The Magdalene asylums were places where “fallen women” in Ireland (young girls and unmarried women who were pregnant, disabled, or defiant of social norms) were imprisoned and forced to work in inhumane conditions.

Director Aislinn Clarke showcases the brutality of the asylums, with the film’s Mother Superior as the driving force behind all of it. While we don’t have to look far to find evil nun movies today, the painful truth behind The Devil’s Doorway is what turns this trope into a damning exposé of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Joshua Mackey: My favorite horror trope would have to be “humans are the real evil.” It essentially reveals that, even though there’s something that “goes bump in the night” within the film, people are the true horror. My favorite film with this trope is Jennifer’s Body. Megan Fox’s Jennifer Check is supposed to be the “big bad” in the film. And in some ways, she is. Is she dismissive and mistreats her “best friend” Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried)? Yes. Does she feed on the flesh of the men she preys on as a succubus? Also yes.

However, she was turned into the film’s monster by Nikolai Wolf (Adam Brody) and his bandmates who were the real monsters after *spoiler alert* sacrificing her to Satan for their own capital gain. Needy knew not to trust Nikolai and his crew. In the end, she made sure to take care of them. 

The Horror Movie Trope: “I’ll Be Right Back…”

The Movie: Halloween (1978)

Tai Gooden: If you’re in a terrifying situation and you tell someone that you’ll be right back, then you can bet your a** that you probably will not return. The “I’ll be right back… ” trope almost always proceeds the next round of gore as some bizarrely confident person walks straight towards their last living moments. There are many, many examples of this trope and one of my all-time faves is Halloween. Lynda and her boyfriend Bob break a (formally) cardinal rule about having sex when a killer is on the loose. Bob takes a causal drag of his cigarette before declaring that he will be right back. Of course, Michael kills him and inexplicably nails his body to the wall with a single butcher knife. So much for physics, I guess.

I love this example because it gives us a small and rare window into Michael’s humorous side. He acts like Bob in a ghost costume before eventually taking Lynda out. It’s not the first example of this trope but it is a popular one among horror aficionados.

The post The Classic Scary Movie Tropes That Will Never Die appeared first on Nerdist.

Just in time for the spookies, Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher series has dropped on Netflix. As ever, he and his collaborators have proved once again they aren’t just highly cinema literate but also literature literate. The modern day mélange of Edgar Allan Poe stories, poems, and characters might be the best adaptations of any of them. But in case you want more Poe to pour over, we have some movies and TV episodes that you should watch after you finish The Fall of the House of Usher.

Because the series deftly weaves several Poe stories together, explaining what ones specifically could be spoilers to anyone who hasn’t watched. Ergo, we’re throwing a spoiler warning here and a message to go watch The Fall of the House of Usher first. It’s amazing, so you should anyway. I’m going to go in order of how the stories are adapted for the show.

House of Usher (1959)

The most obvious watch after Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher is arguably the second best movie adaptation. Roger Corman made a masterful cycle of Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price between 1959 and 1964. Basically I could just recommend all of them, but I’ll expand it a bit. Still, Corman and Price’s very first Poe film is among their very best. Price plays the pallid yet immaculately coiffed Roderick Usher, whose family he believes doomed. The movie adds a romance between Roderick’s sister Madeline and the visitor/audience surrogate, but it’s otherwise a very lavish and macabre adaptation.

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

Another of the Corman and Price Poes, this one is the most artful of the bunch. Price plays Prince Prospero, the despicable and cruel nobleman who houses an orgy of aristocrats at his castle while the peasant class die of a horrible disease outside. Not only has he horded his wealth and refuses to help his people, but he decides to throw a masquerade to celebrate their suffering. Prospero’s hedonism can’t last forever, especially when a mysterious skull-masked patron shows up. The movie also adapts another Poe short story, “Hop-Frog,” since the titular story is very short indeed.

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

The story in question is much less a horror story than the name would suggest. It’s actually the first in what would become “Detective Fiction,” or a story in which a clever sleuth uses perception and deduction to solve a crime. Poe’s master detective is C. Auguste Dupin who’d go on to appear in another two stories. But what most people remember about this story, and indeed what all subsequent movie adaptations have focused on, is the ape murderer. In Robert Florey’s 1932 Universal Horror film, Bela Lugosi plays a sideshow mesmerist who injects ape blood into women he has abducted in order to make a mate for Erik, his talking chimp. It’s wild, y’all. And somehow Dupin solves it. It’s truly something.

Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972)

The story “The Black Cat” has had a million film adaptations, so I decided to choose a giallo because I gotta be me. This Italian film from the heyday of the cycle finds a rich but cruel writer who is obsessed with his dead mother and mistreats his wife spends his evenings partying and drinking with hippies he invites into his dilapidated villa. So a little bit different from the story. A black cat does appear and all the stuff from the Poe story happens as well, there’s just a lot more sex, murder, and double-crossing intrigue. Also that title is beyond reproach.

The Tell-Tale Heart (2008)

This one is in the running for Poe’s most famous story. For this one I’m recommending The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers’ 2008 short film. It’s a very faithful and moody version of the story of a young servant driven mad by his decrepit old master’s bodily functions. After murdering the poor man, the servant buries him under the floor only for the beat of the man’s heartbeat to keep haunting him. What makes Eggers’ short so cool is that the old man is actually a full-size puppet for supreme decrepitude. It is the perfect movie to quickly watch after you’re all done with The Fall of the House of Usher.

Spirits of the Dead (1968)

This European anthology film features three different Poe adaptations from three different filmmakers. The first story, “Metzengerstein” from Poe’s story of the same name, is not important for our purposes. Director Roger Vadim cast his wife Jane Fonda as the female lead and her brother Peter Fonda as the male lead…yes, think the things you’re thinking. It’s not a great one. In the second story, Louis Malle deftly adapts “William Wilson,” about a cruel and depraved man who sees his own doppelganger throughout his life. This one was the basis for Tamerlane’s story in Usher.

And finally and most famously, Federico Fellini loosely adapts “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” into the haunting “Toby Dammit,” about a boozed up Shakespearean actor in Rome to make a Spaghetti Western only to have several run-ins with the devil, depicted as a little blonde girl with a white ball. This story isn’t in the show, but the name Toby Dammit sure is.

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)

Another one with a great title! This surprisingly good and suitably atmospheric German horror film adapts Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” and features the great Christopher Lee as the titular Dr. Sadism. That’s not actually the character’s name, it’s just for the title. A young heiress and her strapping, lantern-jawed lawyer make their way to “Castle Blood” in order for her to receive a handsome inheritance. Unfortunately, the castle was the property of Count Regula (Lee) who murdered 12 virgin maidens believing their blood would give him immortality. Also there’s a pit and a pendulum. It’s not a perfect adaptation, but it is really fun and hyper bloody for the time.

Tales to Keep You Awake – Episode 5 “El tonel” (1966)

Spanish television’s answer to The Twilight Zone was Tales to Keep You Awake, aka Historias para no dormir. Its maestro, Narciso Ibanez Serrador adapted several great authors like Ray Bradbury, Henry James, and of course Edgar Allan Poe. The first of these was “El tonel,” an adaptation of “The Cask of Amontillado.” Lowkey, Mike Flanagan’s show adapted this in the final episode. It features a man getting revenge on his wine-peddling rival buy bricking him up in a wall deep in a wine cellar, away from any help. Slowly dying in a dark pit is pretty bad if you think about it. I highly recommend this whole series, which you can now helpfully get on Blu-ray from Severin Films.

Beetlejuice – Season 4, Episode 13 “Poe Pourri” (1991)

This one is just for fun. An episode from the final season of the animated Beetlejuice series finds the author’s ghost wandering the Neitherworld irritating Beetlejuice with his laments for his lost Lenore. The episode gets increasingly trippy as a jazz-voiced raven walks around saying “Nevermore.” It also has a recurring gag where Poe says he’s Poe and people thinking he’s saying he’s poor and tossing him some money. It’s silly, but it was my first exposure to Edgar Allan Poe so it has a special place in my heart.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

The post Movies to Watch After THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER appeared first on Nerdist.

If a horror film wants to rank in the upper echelon of genre offerings from a critical and commercial perspective, then it is imperative for the narrative to stick its landing. A film’s concluding scene is the vital connective tissue that ties its ongoing storyline(s), thematic underpinnings, and overall character development together in a way that’s logical for its world while playing within the bounds of established tonal settings. It is the aftertaste that makes a meal delicious or ultimately repulsive. A beautiful cap to a dazzling horror tale leaves that coveted lasting impression of ample praise, deep analysis, and widespread recommendations. 

There are many horror films with final scenes that have left fans in awe. But there are a select few that are embedded into our consciousness. Their lasting impressions changed horror cinema history, setting new standards and spawning trends that others may emulate but can never quite duplicate. 

Let’s celebrate thirteen of the best final scenes in horror movie history. 

Get Out (2017)

Get Out deftly tackles themes of microaggressive racism, dehumanization, fetishization, and more through the unsettling tale of Chris Washington, a young Black man who nervously meets the affluent parents of his white girlfriend Rose. Things go awry as he uncovers the entire family’s sinister and heinous plans to utilize his body as white man’s Earthly vehicle. The final scene’s tension is at an all-time high as Chris strangles Rose, the last antagonist standing between him and certain freedom. Suddenly, the flashing lights of what appears to be a police vehicle illuminate the darkness.

Chris’ palpable fear shakes the viewers’ belly as they steel themselves for a heartbreaking outcome. At best, Chris will end up in handcuffs and accused of violently murdering “good white folks.” At worst, his fate will mirror Ben’s in Night of the Living Dead with the cop shooting him to death after his valiant fight for survival. Get Out lets this uncertain dread momentarily linger before the vehicle door opens. Anyone watching this film can’t help but cheer at the sight of his intrepid best friend Rod in his TSA vehicle. It’s a lovely subversion of expectations that allows you to unclench after a long third act of violence, fear, and anxiety. We get to rest in the joy of Chris’ rescue and survival. 

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The swerve ending is a ubiquitous staple of horror movies going way back, but the way Wes Craven uses it in A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most jarring. After seemingly defeating dream demon Fred Kruger, heroine Nancy immediately steps outside her front door to a beautiful, sunny day. It’s almost like beginning-of-Blue Velvet levels of idyllic.

If that weren’t enough to get us thinking something’s off, Nancy’s friends—who all died by Freddy’s razor-gloved hand—return to pick her up in a convertible, as Nancy’s alcoholic mother now stands at the door to cheerily wave them off. But things turn bad real fast. The convertible top comes up marked with the familiar stripes of Freddy’s sweater, and Freddy’s hand grabs Nancy’s mom from a tiny window in the front door. She turns into a dummy and gets pulled through, proving you can’t kill the master of nightmares.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

The final scene of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is crazy as hell, especially by horror standards of that time. Sally Hardesty has been fighting for her life against Leatherface and his family all night long. She finally gets a big break when a trucker is able to subdue Leatherface just long enough for Sally to flag down a pickup truck driver. Covered in blood and sweat, she hops into the back of the truck as it speeds off.

Leatherface runs behind them briefly before stopping in the middle of the open road, wildly swinging his chainsaw around in a defeated dance of frustration. Sally’s wide eye stare, hyperventilating, and eerie manic laughter as she distances herself from her torturer is a horror moment that burrows itself into your long-term memory. It’s a solid culmination of her rapid psychological breakdown and the feral carnage we have witnessed throughout the film.

The VVitch (2015)

The Witch is one of the most unsettling horror films of recent memory. With its era-perfect depiction of a puritan family imploding while a real forest witch skulks around, the movie feels icky in a number of different ways. But the ending leaves the sole survivor on a bit of a hopeful note. As the object of her family member’s various Deadly Sins, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) has had to endure a lot through no fault of her own. Having no idea what to do after all of them die, she visits the barn which houses the family’s massive billygoat, Black Philip. Turns out he’s the devil and asks her if she wants to live deliciously. She then walks into the forest, finds a group of other women dancing naked around a bonfire, and gleefully joins them, floating up to the sky. Good for her!

Friday the 13th (1980) 

After a night of terror, Alice finally thinks she will get some reprieve as she floats in a canoe on Crystal Lake. But the seemingly not-so-dead and disfigured corpse of a child Jason Voorhees is there to greet her, pulling her into the depths of the waters. She awakens in a hospital, convinced that the boy is “still there.” Alice is both right and wrong in this instance. He’s not physically a child anymore. However, Jason Voorhees IS in fact still there, waiting to exact his revenge on anyone who dares step foot on his cursed ground. It’s a horror movie final scene that laid a perfect foundation for not only a sequel but a bonafide franchise, something that many slashers continue to aim for today.

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

If you thought a Sam Raimi horror movie could possibly end happily, then you only have yourself to blame. The increasingly ridiculous and jump-scaring toils that befell Christine after she denied a loan to an old Romani woman had finally come to an end, it seemed. She passed an item of her own to the dead woman’s casket, meaning the curse placed on her would lift and she wouldn’t in fact die in torment. Uh oh. Just as everything seemed fine, she realized it was the wrong envelope! Now it’s too late! As if to illustrate everything we need from a title like this, the ground opens and demons literally drag Christine to Hell. Moral: don’t work in banking.

Ready or Not (2019)

Grace’s overnight battle against her new (and hella rich) in-laws in a twisted ritualistic game makes for a modern horror classic. Ready or Not’s dark comedy, sharp dialogue, and truly diabolical narrative keeps us on a wild ride leading up to a literally explosive ending. Grace narrowly survives until sunrise and the curse works its magic as the Le Domas family explodes one by one, drenching her in their blood. Their palatial mansion is ablaze as a soaked Grace walks to a set of steps, drained from her exhausting ordeal.

“Love Me Tender” by Stereo Jane plays as she stands where she exchanged vows, the serene wedding décor juxtaposing the house’s flaming chaos.  She sits down and casually lights a cigarette as the police flood the scene. An officer asks her what happened to her. Grace’s long drag of a cigarette and deadpan “in-laws” answer caps off this wild film perfectly. In-laws are the bane of many married folks’ existence but this story truly takes the cake. 

The Invitation (2015)

The slow burn of Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation takes us from awkward dinner party, through tense dinner party, until finally we get to violent death-cult dinner party. We’ve all been there, obviously. While a few members of the hapless bougie people, brought together in a house in the Hollywood Hills to reconnect, survive the ordeal, the actual horror of the severity of the night’s events becomes clear. It wasn’t just their group that was taking part in the mass murder-suicide (as evidenced by the red lamp hung outside) but in fact it was dozens of other houses. Basically all of the Hills, and probably loads more, had also had similar, or even more fatal, gatherings. It takes a scary premise and turns it nigh-apocalyoptic simply through the image of lantern lights.

Carrie (1976)

After an epic night of exacting revenge on her teenage enemies and her disgusting mother, Carrie sadly sets her own home ablaze and dies in the fire. The sole prom survivor, Sue Snell, sits at Carrie’s gravesite with flowers. Her sadness quickly transforms into terror as Carrie’s bloody arm shoots through the grave and grabs her. Sue is alive but she’s trapped in her own version of hell where Carrie’s memory will haunt her waking thoughts and nighttime dreams. This moment is not the first jump scare scene ever. But it popularized it in the genre, inspiring Friday the 13th and many more horror films to have the undead killer rise for one final moment of terror.

The Mist (2007)

Infamously, writer-director Frank Darabont changed the ambiguous ending of Stephen King’s short story “The Mist,” in which strange, eldritch creatures descend on a small Maine mountain community out of mysterious fog. To his credit, Darabont knew the audience needed a real gut-punch, and King himself approved. Our hero David, his son, and a few other survivors might have gotten away from one horde of monsters, but they don’t know how widespread this is. They don’t know if the entire world has been taken over! Silently, they all decide they don’t want to continue.

David quickly shoots all of them with the remaining bullets in his revolver only to find he doesn’t have one for himself. As he screams in grief, he gets out of the car…only to see the mist lifting and the military role through. David and the audience have to grapple with the knowledge that had he waited another five minutes, it would have been a happy ending. Brutal.

Eden Lake (2008)

A couple heads to a remote lake to spend an idyllic and romantic weekend together. What could possibly go wrong? A lot actually, especially when a pack of wayward teens led by Brett, true psychopath, cross your path. Eden Lake is an overflowing bucket of despair up until the very end. Sole survivor Jenny awakens to seemingly sympathetic faces after crashing her escape vehicle. This brief moment of relief soon shifts to horror as she realizes these people are the parents of her torturers. The gang blames the night’s murders on her and she makes one last attempt to fight for her life. But it is to no avail. Eden Lake ends with her horrific muffled screaming offscreen as Brett wears her deceased boyfriend’s sunglasses and stares into a mirror. It’s brutal, sickening, ruthless, and a flawless unhappy ending. 

The Wicker Man (1973)

You’d be forgiven for watching almost the entirety of Robin Hardy’s 1973 film The Wicker Man and not have any idea why it’s called that. Surely it’s a weirdly dreamlike film, in which a devoutly Catholic and judgmental police officer comes to a remote island community with information that a young girl had disappeared. The islanders practice a kind of paganism, communing with animal spirits and copulating in the night, which repulses the lawman. He scoffs at the preparation for the spring festival, and its hopes of bringing back the island’s apple crop.

Slowly the film reveals the entire mystery was a ruse in order to catch the policeman and prove that he is their perfect virgin sacrifice. As the islanders cheerily lead him over a hill he sees a giant wicker man, already full of livestock, a ladder leading to the man’s head, and a pyre at its feet. He, and the audience, know what will befall him and no amount of his pleas to them and his beseeching of his Christian god will save him. He will burn, while people cheer and sing about it.

Smile (2022)

A horror film where evil triumphs is an exceptionally disturbing treat. This is the case with Smile, a psychological spiral with an ending that haunts you long after the credits. Rose’s fraught mission to rid herself of a murderous supernatural entity that feeds on her deep-rooted trauma takes us back to her abandoned childhood home. We hope that its dilapidated walls will somehow hold a key to Rose’s survival and perhaps make sense of the bizarre monstrosity that plagues her. But that is not the case. The final moment of Rose with that sinister smile plastered on her face as she sets herself on fire in front of Joel is both glorious and gut-wrenching. This is one of the best final scenes in a horror film that people will talk about for years to come. The curse lives on. There is no happy ending. Sometimes, evil simply cannot be contained. 

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October is all about spooky stuff as we celebrate the greatness of Halloween. But it is also the wonderful precursor to the holiday season, specifically the overwhelming joy of Christmas. This means it is a perfect time to introduce horror fans to a scary new Christmas tale. That’s what we get with RLJE Films and Shudder’s new flick, cleverly titled It’s A Wonderful Knife, and its trailer full of bloody cheer. 

Of course, the film’s title is a play on the Christmas classic It’s A Wonderful Life. However, life is anything but wonderful for Winnie Carruthers. (If she looks familiar to you, it’s because Jane Widdop played Laura Lee in Yellowjackets.) Last Christmas is haunting Winnie for a very good reason and it seems this year will not be any better. There’s so much going on in the trailer for It’s A Wonderful Knife that it is baffling yet quite intriguing. Blood, a parallel universe, holiday happenings, and a killer dressed like an angelic version of Ghostface. I love it. 

Here’s a quick synopsis for It’s A Wonderful Knife to bring it into sharper focus:

A year after saving her town from a psychotic killer on Christmas Eve, Winnie Carruthers’ life is less than wonderful — but when she wishes she’d never been born, she finds herself in a nightmare parallel universe and discovers that without her, things could be much, much worse. Now the killer is back, and she must team up with the town misfit to identify the killer and get back to her own reality. 

The film also stars Cassandra Naud, Justin Long, Jessica McLeod, Katharine Isabelle, and Joel McHale. Tyler MacIntyre of V/H/S/99 fame directs with a screenplay by Freaky’s Michael Kennedy, so we can expect some fun with this one. It’s A Wonderful Knife will hit theaters on November 10 and make its way to Shudder afterward.

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The possession story is one that horror fans know all too well. A demonic or parasitic force creeps its way into a human’s body, wiping away all traces of them and replacing it with something sinister. It frequently manifests as pure evil unleashing itself into its immediate surroundings with a body horror flare. The person’s aesthetic appearance devolves into something delightfully nightmarish. Demián Rugna’s Spanish language horror film When Evil Lurks certainly holds true to the classic possession story. However, it takes notable deviations from this subgenre’s norms. Some leaps stick a solid landing while others barely take flight but it comes together for an entertaining film to add to your Halloween watch list. 

When Evil Lurks follows brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jimmy (Demián Salomon) discover something grotesque that leads to something worse. There’s a “rotten” (read: possessed being) that is bloated and sort of decaying in a nearby farmhouse. All of the typical logical choices, like shooting it or calling in religious reinforcements, either don’t come into play or work to their detriment. The result is an unleashing of evil that spreads across their rural community and has profound effects on their family. Pedro and Jimmy are not the brightest horror duo ever, so their missteps are our entertainment.

This film jerkily hops between full-on panic, quieter emotional character beats, and grotesque scenes, which is in odd contrast to its overall steady pacing. Speaking of grotesqueness, When Evil Lurks gives a hefty offering to the gorefest gods. The best kind of movie is one that knows exactly what it is. And this flick’s primary purpose is to disturb you and make your stomach turn. These well-crafted scenes—and not necessarily the film’s at times convoluted plot—are what will resonate strongest with viewers.

The tension is palpable, the blood is spilling, and the power of this malevolent force becomes abundantly clear. When Evil Lurks‘ perpetrators and victims take on many faces that we don’t wish to see, from young children to typically adorable animals, while expanding its world quite well. One can’t help but make loose connections to this swiftly spreading yet seemingly commonplace force and what the world has experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic. The same goes for human evil, specifically in terms of colorism. But again, those are not the large crux of the film, which is sick, twisted, and rather bizarre entertainment.

When Evil Lurks does fall into pockets of overexplaining its lore instead of just trusting its audience. The first half sets an intriguing stage with physical and emotional terror. Unfortunately, the latter half never quite dials things up. There are some striking scenes in pockets that somehow culminate in a fizzled end. What will keep viewers in the game are the film’s performances, which elevate its material significantly. When Evil Lurks isn’t packing the same powerful punch as Rugna’s Terrified (2017) but it is far from being a terrible film. There are different flavors for horror fans to chew on, if they dare to give it a go.

When Evil Lurks hits theaters on October 6 with a Shudder streaming release on October 27.

When Evil Lurks ⭐ (3 of 5)

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With Saw X‘s release comes a new set of deviously sadistic traps to torment the chosen victims and horrify moviegoers. Part of what makes Saw a cut above is not only the inventiveness but the significance of the traps. Usually, they tie in with the person’s transgressions, and Saw X continues that blood-soaked trend. So, let’s take a tour of the traps in this newest installment and break down who is in them and who gets out. Before we di[v]e in, here’s your spoiler warning. 

Saw X‘s First Trap: Eyes or “Sticky Fingers”

Early in the film, while in the hospital, Kramer spies a custodian in a patient’s room stealing their possessions. So, strapped in a chair, his challenge is sacrificing those five-finger discount digits or his eyes. His fingers individually have a device wrapped around them. He must turn a dial to snap each finger. If not, the suction tubes attached to his eyes will remove those instead. Though he fails, he survives because this occurs in Kramer’s mind, and the custodian returns the items. 

Pipe Bomb or Skin

Diego, the touristy driver, and the fake Dr. Cortez is next. Diego’s hands drove Kramer to the scam, and he pretended to operate on Kramer’s head to remove the tumor. Now’s his time to hone his scalpel skills. He has pipe bombs with wires stuck to his forearms and a scalpel taped to his hands. To survive the challenge, he has to cut the skin off his forearms to remove the bombs. He succeeds and, as is Jigsaw’s philosophy, lives on. 

Fake Test to Real Bone Marrow

Valentina’s turn is where the gruesomeness ratchets up. After putting Kramer through useless tests for his fake surgery, she now faces real stakes. She’s stuck in a seat with a wire saw at neck level set to behead her. She has to use a wire saw along the dotted line on her leg to sever and use a suction device to suck enough of the bone marrow out for a key, or its lights and life, out. Though she tries, she fails to meet the allotted three-minute deadline. 

Brain Surgery…For Real

As Mateo pretended to help in the surgery and anesthetizing, his test required surgery sans anesthesia. Strapped to a chair, he has a metal trap with coils that heat up on his head. It’s currently open but will close if Mateo doesn’t pass his exam. He must first drill into his skull and remove the bone. Then, Mateo has to take pieces of his brain out and place them in a container with acid. A key will release when there’s enough brain in it, and he has three minutes to get it done. He does not survive, and the metal mask slams shut on his head and face. 

Radiation Lift Off

Gabriela provided fake care to real cancer patients. So, Gabriela’s test finds her suspended in the air, one hand chained above and one foot chained below. In front of her face is an X-ray machine. To survive, she must smash her foot with a hammer to slip free and then her hand before the machine unleashes deadly radiation. Though injured and badly burned, she survives the test. But unfortunately, she does not survive Cecilia, who gets free thanks to Sears and snaps her neck. 

Kramer and Carlos’ Test

Through circumstances, Kramer finds himself and the kid he cares about, Carlos, trapped in the test he meant for Cecilia and Sears. Tethered on opposite sides of a metal slab that operates like a seesaw with chains around their necks and a lever beside them, their test begins. Kramer pulls his lever, which lowers his side, and blood pours out, waterboarding him, but Carlos is elevated and safe from the blood. But Carlos, despite Kramer’s demand not to pull, cranks his lever and undergoes the same torture to help Kramer. They both survive, thanks to Sears and Cecilia activating the final trap. 

This test highlights the blood on Kramer’s hands despite his assertion that he is not a killer, and Carlos emphasizes how someone innocent always pays the price. 

Just Breathe

Sears and Cecilia trigger their test in the office. It fills with a gas that burns them as they breathe it in. In the wall, there’s space to stick their head out of the room to catch their breath, but there’s only room for one. So, the couple does what any couple built on greed and duplicity would do. They fight. Cecilia stabs Sears and sticks her head out. Whether she survived has a question mark. She can breathe, but everyone leaves her in that room, so her fate is unknown. That’s the last trap in the movie. However…

Saw X’s Post-Credit Trap: Stomach Scar 

Henry Kessler was the one who showed Kramer his fake scar across his stomach from his “surgery,” setting off the scam. Of course, Kramer did not forget. The final trap in the post-credits scene of Saw X shows Kessler suspended in the air with a contraption on his stomach, with razor-sharp blades moving and ready to slice his abdomen. Whether he survives is also unknown. 

Saw X is in theaters now.

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Horror killers are vital to the success of a film or franchise. Victims come and go at a swift pace but those iconic and terrifying figures are foundational to building an engaging and entertaining story. Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kruger, Jigsaw, and many others are deeply embedded into our pop culture landscape and well-known by all, even those who don’t love horror. They all share the common activity of killing; however, they are actually quite distinct in terms of their motivations and personalities. When you think about it, some horror villains seem to align with certain traits that we associate with specific Zodiac signs. Maybe—just maybe—we see hints of ourselves in how they operate in the world because we are a fiery Aries or stubborn Taurus. 

In honor of Nerdoween and the everyday awesomeness of horror in general, let’s line 12 infamous horror killers up with the Zodiac sign that we think fits them best. Surely this won’t cause online outrage, right? 

Jason Voorhees – Capricorn (December 22-January 19)

This silent but very deadly slasher legend walks under the stars in the darkness of Crystal Lake. But he surely doesn’t care about astrology. Like a Capricorn, Jason is a very ambitious and determined being. He only wants to meet his one goal: kill every person who crosses his path. And boy does he do that well, with one of the highest kill counts among his peers. Jason is a sensible and pragmatic dude who uses his nearby resources well. 

Pinhead – Aquarius (January 20-February 18) 

Aquarius people are known for their keen intelligence and innovation. So is Pinhead, the horrifying Hell Priest in the Hellraiser franchise. Pinhead is very intentional about their moves, not the most emotional being, and incredibly smart with their approach. Also, Pinhead makes their victims suffer forever and looks good while doing it, just like a clever Aquarius would do. 

Samara (The Ring) – Pisces (February 19-March 20)

Samara’s watery demise isn’t the only reason she’s a Pisces. This killing entity from The Ring wants you to feel what she felt leading up to her death, torturing you for seven long days and nights before she claims you. Those specific feelings involve pain and suffering that you must spread, lest you want to die. Complex emotions and chaotic thoughts are the definitely hallmarks of a Pisces. 

Chucky – Aries (March 21-April 19) 

Everyone can agree that Aries is the Zodiac sign that fits this horror villain the best. Chucky is ginger, fiery, and so evil that his soul refuses to slumber but instead possesses a doll to continue haunting others. Chucky acts on impulse and has a temper that you don’t want to contend with. If you’re in his path, he will certainly keep you on high alert because his energy is a boundless whirlwind. 

Jennifer (Jennifer’s Body) – Taurus (April 20-May 21)

Is Jennifer really a villain? She’s more of a victim seeking vengeance honestly. Jennifer is staunchly loyal to her bestie Needy and committed to only doing things her way. She can be insensitive at times but her alluring personality and pretty girl privilege make it easy for her to gain fans and prey alike. 

Gabriel May (Malignant) – Gemini (May 22-June 20) 

Gabriel May is literally the parasitic and evil twin of Emily May in Malignant. But we’d dare say that quite a few horror villains have the duality of a Gemini, balancing their normal side with a darker one. Gemini’s get a lot of hate from other signs for being bold, sorta mean, and a bit terrifying, and that fits Gabriel May for sure. 

Leatherface – Cancer (June 21-July 22) 

Cancers are known for being sensitive beings who would hide in a shell all day if they could. That’s what we get with Leatherface, particularly in Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s earlier installments. Unlike many others on this list, Leatherface is not inherently evil. He is a person with limited mental capacity who would probably be kind but he’s driven to do murderous things by his family. Leatherface is also sensitive to the point that he hides behind someone else’s face, which is terribly sad. 

Hannibal – Leo (July 23-August 22)

Yes, we know that Hannibal’s in-universe birthday (January 20) makes him an Aquarius. But he gives off the energy of a Leo for sure. He loves the spotlight and lives for drama, doing everything with a fun flair for applause. Hannibal is super confident in himself with a stylish aura and a driven leader, much like a mighty lion.

Michael Myers – Virgo (August 23-September 22)

Michael Myers was born on October 19, so he’s technically a Libra. But this silent and mysterious boogeyman who moves at his own steady (and shockingly swift) pace gives off Virgo vibes. He’s hyper focused on the task at hand and a true strategist who often outsmarts his victims. Does Mike like small talk? Nope. Does Mike like to win against his enemies? Absolutely. His relentless commitment to his profession is why the Halloween franchise will probably rise again in the future. 

Jigsaw – Libra (September 23-October 22)

Jigsaw’s twisted quest for justice is very much like a Libra. John Kramer wants to balance the scales of society, teaching victim’s lessons or punishing them for their indiscretions with deadly games. He’s a smart dude and, based on those contraptions, super crafty as well. As Beyoncé sings in “Signs,” a Libra will stay on your mind. And once you have see Jigsaw’s work, it will certainly never leave your thoughts.

Freddy Krueger – Scorpio (October 23-November 21)

Freddy Kruger’s dream manipulations and slippery presence makes you never want to sleep. It makes perfect sense for this horror villain to have a water Zodiac sign like Scorpio. This charred killer with sharp fingers can get incredibly violent and he’s passionate about crafting hellacious nightmares. In his world, his power seems limitless to the point that it dominates every waking thought of his victim. Freddy can be silly sometimes but that’s only to lure you in for one hell of a sting. 

Ghostface – Sagittarius (November 22-December 21)

They aren’t (jokingly?) known as Sagiterrorists for no reason. A Sag is known for having a lot to say, stirring up a mess, and being hyper-confident, sometimes to the point of their own detriment. But they are also great at conversations and generally fun to be around. A killer who will chat with their target over the phone at length before unleashing full chaos is indeed a Sagittarius. There have been many killers behind the Ghostface mask, yet the persona of this character remains mostly the same. Ghostface is blunt but also witty and can easily blend into just about any situation. 

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The Saw universe is back with John Kramer (Tobin Bell) a.k.a. Jigsaw taking his painful lessons to Mexico. Saw X doesn’t have the mind-blowing shock of the original film. But, with inventive deaths that will make viewers’ faces and extremities cringe in horror, it’s a great—even occasionally funny—addition to the franchise. 

Directed by Kevin Greutert and written by Josh Stohlberg and Pete Goldfinger, Saw X packs in gore with a more personal story surrounding Kramer. Given Saw‘s long history of twists, seeing them forgo this in lieu of a deeper emotional investment is refreshing. For all his technological trap savvy, Kramer is still an old man dying from a cancerous brain tumor. He even falls victim to the same scams that others in his generation do.

Saw X captures the susceptibility and allure of scams, not to mention how disarming con artists appear because they tell people what they need to hear. John’s hope rises after Henry Kessler (Michael Beach), a fellow cancer support group member, discloses his special treatment and subsequent freedom from cancer. Another conversation with Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) further feeds into John’s curiosity. With the perfect blend of surety and sympathy, Dr. Pederson convinces John to come to Mexico for the surgery. This is a flashing red flag with resounding alarms for most people. If there isn’t a whole level of hell for folks who swindle the dying, there should be.

It’s easy to sympathize with Kramer despite his history of torture. Saw X humanizes John Kramer moreso than previous Saw films. He befriends a child, Carlos (Jorge Briseño), helping fix the wheel of his bike and cares about the soft-spoken woman, Gabriela (Renata Vaca), who sees to his comfort while he awaits surgery. It’s that affection that makes him return to the location with a wine bottle that is supposedly for luck, and nothing is there except clues to the scam. Tobin Bell somehow makes Jigsaw likable, infusing the character with a frailty and vulnerability that screams, “Don’t let me down.”

But, of course, that’s what transpires. And hell hath no fury like a Jigsaw scammed. The film shifts back to the franchise’s standard of setting horrific traps and everyone is on the list. This is where Saw X‘s supporting cast shines. In addition to Lund and Vaca, Paulette Hernandez as nurse Valentina, Joshua Okamoto as Diego the driver, Octavio Hinojosa as anesthesiologist Mateo, and Steven Brand as Parker Sears along with other cured patients played their role to perfection, delivering award-winning and legitimate performances.

The traps don’t have the jaw-dropping shock of previous Saw films. However, how they are often tailor-made for the individual’s transgressions deserves a tip of the hat. The rigged traps play expertly off of the fake operation scam with hospital themes. There is ample body horror, blood, and viscera—though this part causes shocked laughter. Like the other films, Saw X makes viewers question the lengths they’ll go to survive. Spatters of laughter ease some tension, but throughout Kramer’s trip, the viewer’s senses register at varying DEFCON levels. 

While the film certainly excel at gore, the gentler aspect of Kramer adds dimension and presents a stark contrast to the later bloodshed. Despite his failing health, he reminds the bad people and audiences why he is still the Jigsaw GOAT. Tobin Bell immortalized this character, cementing him as one of the most iconic villains of the last twenty years. Inventive and shady in his punishment, the traps reflect his wit and show that a sharp mind remains in Saw X, one you cross at your peril. 

Saw X hits theaters on September 29.

Saw X ⭐ (4 of 5)

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There are iconic horror villains like Michael Myers, Ghostface, and Pinhead who fans reference when waxing about their favorite films. But there are other horror villains, be they monsters or people, that often fall by the wayside. When it comes to horror, the ’80s and ’90s delivered some supreme films that went in unbelievable directions with villains who deserve more recognition and shine. So, let’s celebrate some of the most underrated horror villains of the ’80s and ’90s!

Note: Some films on this list do not disclose the villains’ identity until the climax of the film, so please proceed with caution.

John Ryder – The Hitcher (1986)

The Hitcher takes the familiar cautionary tale about picking up hitchhikers and ratchets it up. John Ryder—a.k.a. The Hitcher (Rutger Hauer)—plays a cat-and-mouse game with Jim (C. Thomas Howell), the young man who gives him a ride. Even when Jim realizes his mistake and escapes, Ryder is unavoidable. Smiling, creepy, and downright sadistic, Ryder instills terror to the point that dying becomes less a fear and more a blessed relief. 

Harry Warden/The Miner – My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Sometimes, celebrating a holiday has dire consequences. The Miner (Peter Cowper) might not talk under the mask, but his blood-soaked rampage speaks louder than words. Few horror films combine small-town mine terror with an urban legend and a holiday. Plus, his laugh at the end is the stuff of nightmares. This ’80s horror movie might be B-horror and camp, but they knew how to stick the landing with this underrated horror villain. 

Horace Pinker – Shocker (1989)

It’s unfair when villains get a paranormal payback buff. An underrated Wes Craven gem, Shocker is a supernatural serial killer flick. Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) is a terrifying murderer with a high body count before his execution. After his death, he returns, seeking vengeance against the young man who turned him in. While the effects do not age well, Pinker inspires chills and laughs like another Craven villain. 

Pumpkinhead – Pumpkinhead (1988)

“Keep away from Pumpkinhead unless you’re tired of living.” You don’t have to tell us twice. But giving this summoned beasty a wide berth is easier said than done if it gets called up to kill you. If you’re not the target, Pumpkinhead gives peak “mind the business that minds you” energy. Tall, lanky, and ghastly pale with a tail, this beast is nigh undefeatable with a chilling smirk. Not only does Pumpkinhead deserve more love, but we want to see it in Dead by Daylight. 

Angela Baker – Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Considering the portrayal of summer camps in horror films, it’s surprising they still exist. Watching Sleepaway Camp again with the awareness of who the killer is adds a layer of surprise each time. While some know the series, few mention Angela Baker (Felissa Rose) by name and it’s time that changed. She’s burned someone with scalding water and beheaded another. And Angela achieved all this while being a teeny teenager. The original film even spawned four sequels thanks to that unforgettable ending, so put some respect on Angela Baker’s name. 

Sandman – Sleepstalker: The Sandman’s Last Rites (1995)

The Sandman’s story is as creepy and tragic as his supernatural invincibility. To maintain his sand-resurrected body, Sandman has to sever the link to his mortal world. So, he goes on a murder spree searching for that link, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. With his body made of sand, he can transform parts of himself into a weapon, like his arm into a spear. Otherworldly killers abound in cinema, but thanks to a creepy song and his distinct features and abilities—sand gets everywhere—the Sandman earns a spot on this list. 

Patrick Channing – The First Power (1990)

Before he played the mentally unstable vampire, and later the magic-dealing warlock on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jeff Kober was Patrick Channing—an erratic and violent supernatural killer on a violent murder spree after his execution. I am sensing a trend here. Jeff Kober always nails the disturbing murderer role. Patrick’s power set is actually overpowered—resurrection, teleportation, and possession—and that makes him pure nightmare fuel. Murderers who massacre from sheer enjoyment are in a different league.  

Stewart Swinton – Wolf (1994)

If smarmy, yuppie killers had a runner-up to Patrick Bateman, Stewart Swinton (James Spader) fits the bill. He takes his mentor’s position at work and has an affair with his wife. But when he fails to hold the job, the claws come out literally as he delves into payback. Wolf is a slasher horror with practical effects that still hold up well; Swinton is the beast that’s greedy and hollow, who wants what others have. He’s a villain you despise before he even kills anyone. 

Alex Hammond – Prom Night (1980)

There’s something about slashers that make you question the villain. Alex (Michael Tough), in his glittery mask towing an ax, is one of those. Creepy calls and a murder spree in one night make for superb killers. The clincher is he is not otherworldly or one of those villains who keep getting up after being stabbed, bludgeoned, or anything else. When he attacks, he puts his weight into wielding his weapons. He is mortal in every sense and one of the few sympathetic villains on this list.  

Candyman – Candyman (1992)

Another character who should be in Dead by Daylight, Candyman, is a graphic killer, and Tony Todd’s voice adds a layer of charisma amidst the blood-curdling terror. Yes, we are all familiar with what happens if you say his name five times in a mirror or a reflective space. But Candyman doesn’t often make the list of great/iconic horror villains like Ghostface and Jason Voorhees, so that’s why he’s on this underrated list. The way he butchers characters is artful, and he does not hesitate to arrive when summoned. This is a killer to avoid, even with a tragic backstory, because he’s into exquisite pain. Don’t expect a quick death. 

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Horror villains are an essential part of the genre for obvious reasons. Stories of sheer terror, gore, suspicious happenings, and/or psychological distress cannot exist without a frightening antagonist. But, in order to slice, dice, maim, and murder, scary foes must have something at their disposal. The best and most iconic horror movie weapons are just as famous, if not more, than the killers themselves. They play a major role in a film’s most memorable deaths and often intertwine into the narrative in a specific way.

Unlike a victim desperately searching for something to defend themselves against evil, a villain’s weapon is their sidekick. It often unveils more about their lives and killing style. Sometimes it is not a physical weapon at all! What are the common weapons? Which villains use them? When, if ever, do they deviate from the norm and go rouge during a kill? Let’s break it down using a few classic villains/antagonists and their iconic horror weapons of choice.

Michael Myers and His Butcher’s Knife

Ahhh, we love this silent slasher villain. Michael Myers has been hitting his victims with the stabby stab since the original Halloween film in 1978. And, throughout the franchise’s many films, including the most recent rebooted timeline, a butcher’s knife is his choice weapon. Why? We don’t really know. Mike’s first kill came at the tender age of six. By then, kids know that knives are very dangerous and could seriously hurt someone.

And he seriously wanted to hurt his older sister. However, there are times when he tosses his beloved blade aside and utilizes his own brute strength. He’s rather nimble and able to grab people by the neck and crush their windpipe with ease. Using your hands as a deadly weapon makes sense, especially for a large and homicidal man who is now an iconic horror figure.

Jason Voorhees, the Machete Master

This hockey-masked murderer is a machete wielding nightmare. The usage of a machete as Jason Voorhees’ weapon of choice points to his sad past. It’s a legacy weapon passed down from his mother, the original Friday the 13^th killer. She used it against her victims only to have her own head cut off with it. Interestingly, Jason’s first kills happen with an ice pick and an ax before he gets his hands on the machete.

And boy does it work. Jason might be one of the most versatile killers on this list with a bevy of weapons at his disposal. He’s used a speargun, liquid nitrogen, a sleeping bag, and even a syringe to take his victims out. And, who can forget when he literally punched a man’s head clear off his shoulders and threw poor Kelly Rowland into a tree? Still, the machete is the most iconic killing tool that he (and others) have used in this franchise.

Candyman and the Hook of Horror

Be his victim. Candyman’s lore tells you exactly how he’s coming for you. Say his name five times in a mirror and prepare to die ASAPtually. Candyman aka Daniel Robitalle’s origin story is a sad and racist one that results in him being a superpowered entity with telepathic powers. He can make people go into a trance and/or hear his voice in their heads. But his weapon of choice is a hook, which is interestingly given to him by his killers/oppressors.

The hook is meant to disparage an important part of his body: Robitalle was an artist so cutting off his hand is a sickening blow. And putting a hook was a tactic to dehumanize and cause him further pain. So, he kept the hook and sought vengeance. Unlike Jason, Candyman sticks pretty closely to using the hook as his horror weapon of choice in his movies. But he’s not above sending some killer bees to take someone down, too.

The Ghostface Killers of Scream and their Modified Buck 120 Knives

Each Scream film features a rotating cast of killers, all of whom die at the end of every movie. They have different motivations and approaches to killing but one thing remains (mostly) the same: using a knife to, as Randy said, “slice and dice.” (The specific type is a modified Buck 120, for those who wanna know.) This horror weapon of choice originates from the first movie with Billy Loomis and Stu Macher, who got much of their inspiration from films like Psycho and Halloween.

Both of those flicks feature killers who use knives. So it is no surprise that these horror-obsessed teen killers would follow suit. The Scream killers do introduce some variety in the mix from Tatum’s garage door demise to Roman’s failed attempt at shooting Sid. But that sharp sound of Ghostface’s knife unsheathing is a classic.

Negan (The Walking Dead) Beats You with a Baseball Bat

Is The Walking Dead horror? As a fan of both the show/comic and genre, I say yes. Horror does not have to be scary, which itself is rather objective. A world where flesh eating undead people are roaming around is indeed horrifying. Unfortunately, the undead are the least of people’s problems because human beings will find a way to do bad things. One shining example is the former villain Negan, one of the franchise’s most believable antagonists.

He was (and still kinda is) a grade-A a**hole with enough charisma to get lost people to follow him. While he had access to fire and manpower, his brutal weapon of choice was a barbed wire baseball bat named after his deceased wife Lucille. It’s an inspired horror weapon choice that played a part in one of the most iconic and heart-wrenching deaths in the show and comic’s history. Honestly, I’d rather someone shoot me in the head than to have my brains slowly bashed in with a spiky bat.

Leatherface and the Chainsaw of Death

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is about as bizarre as you can get. Imagine the terror of being chased by a physically imposing man wearing a human skin mask. His weapon is pretty obvious based on the franchise’s name. But, funnily enough, Leatherface’s first kills are with a hammer and impaling someone on a meat hook. He also doesn’t technically perform a true massacre until much, much later in the franchise. Still, the eventual chainsaw chases and deaths in this franchise will never get old.

Considering the Sawyer family’s preoccupation with meat (both human and animal) and occupations as slaughterhouse workers, using a chainsaw makes a lot of sense. And boy, is it a gruesome choice. Like other large and silent killers, Leatherface does have strength and general ingenuity to take someone out. But the old and faithful chainsaw is usually the way to get the job done.

Carrie, the Telekinetic and Vengeful Teenager

Is Carrie truly a villain or a victim seeking vengeance? Depends on who you ask. She did choose some pretty extreme retaliation tactics against her terrible classmates and mother. Mortal weapons are no joke but supernatural telekinetic powers? That’s a tough one to fight. We don’t fully understand the origins of Carrie’s powers but I’d like to believe that they manifested as a protective mechanism from the cruelty she faced in the world.

Your chance of dying is 100%… unless you too are a super being too. Carrie can shut doors, flip cars, and send sharp objects flying your way without blinking her eyes. Now, that’s the definition of a deadly and super iconic weapon for much horror delight.

Freddy Krueger and His Gloves with Bladed Fingers

Dealing with a horror antagonist in the flesh is one thing. Having a killer take you out in your dreams is something else. Freddy’s using your nightmares to come for you… and you can’t lock a door in your mind. Using a human’s need to sleep against them is a terrible horror weapon for sure. But the Nightmare on Elm Street antagonist takes this terror further with his infamous gloves with blades on the fingers.

It’s never made clear why he chooses this unorthodox (and now iconic) weapon to deliver horror in folks’ dreams. But for a sadistic and truly “evil for no reason” character like him, there’s no logic to be had. The blade fingers are makeshift and work a lot like a bear claw with the ability to leave scars or annihilate. Freddy does use some other tools (including Jason’s machete in their standoff film) but we all know that horrifying glove (and ugly sweater) all too well.

The Fisherman (I Know What You Did Last Summer) Hooks His Prey 

I Know What You Did Last Summer is another slasher franchise with a roster of victims. The original film stars several wildly popular ‘90s teen icons, pitting them against super cringe dialogue and a man with a hook. They thought they killed him but a year later, he rose from his “grave” like Jesus, except dark and ready for murder.

The original killer Ben Willis uses a hook, which is both a nod to his profession as a fisherman and a matter of convenience. If you are near a boat or dock and want to kill, why not use this accessible sharp object? Like Scream, the killers change but the primary weapon (and that weird black cloak) remain the same.

Zombies/Walkers/The General Undead Take a Bloody Bite

Are zombies are truly horror villains? To be fair, they are mostly everyday people who couldn’t run fast enough. They don’t purposely have a sinister agenda because they are rotting flesh. But, the undead are technically antagonists in an apocalyptic world, so we’ll throw them in here.

Zombies (or walkers, as The Walking Dead calls them) come in different versions with some of them running like hell while others amble sneakily. But they all use the same weapons to get victims: their teeth. Their scratches and blood/guts are also a biological hazard that could lead to death. As seen above, they might even get nonsensical strength and pull your guts out. The use of teeth as a weapon is relatively common in horror movies, even outside of the undead. Pennywise and Xenomorphs also have deadly chompers.

Pinhead’s Teleportation, Illusions, and Summoning Skills

Hellraiser’s bad guy could possibly kill you with his looks alone. That would be one hell of a sight to encounter. Pinhead is straight from Hell so he rightfully has a ton of otherworldly abilities and weapons at his disposal.

He summons hooks and chains to rip his victims to shreds, making them move and shapeshift with his mind. Pinhead also uses teleportation and illusions to take down his victims. And there’s really nothing that can take him down for good. He’s a purveyor of chaos who will pretty much do anything to kill when the unction strikes.

Of course, there are many, many horror baddies who use some iconic weapons in their movies. All of them have some sort of method, whether it is physical or psychological, to wreak havoc. Knives, chainsaws, hooks, and more all lead to splatter and gore.

Originally published on October 4, 2021.

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I have a weird love of the ramshackle, often uneven, but undeniably interesting V/H/S franchise. I love a good horror anthology anyway, and the found-footage gimmick has waxed and waned in effectiveness over the years, but has remained a hallmark of the series. After the first three theatrical installments, the series took a hiatus until horror streaming service Shudder picked it up in 2021. Each of those has had the extra gimmick of taking place in a specific year. V/H/S/94, V/H/S/99, and now, going way back for its latest entry: V/H/S/85. Take a look at the first trailer below!

This latest installment is the sixth mainline entry since the original in 2012. And like all the films, it has a pretty impressive roster of filmmakers giving us the different shorts. David Bruckner (The Night House, Hellraiser) was one of the original directors back 11 years ago, and he returns in V/H/S/85. Joining him are The Black Phone director Scott Derrickson, Gigi Saul Guerrero (Bingo Hell), Natasha Kermani (Lucky), and Mike Nelson (Wrong Turn).

The charm of the V/H/S movies has always been the handcrafted ingenuity. Some of the segments are truly impressive, both in what they attempt and what they achieve. Standout segments over the years include: Amateur Night and 10/31/98 in the first film and Safe Haven and Slumber Party Alien Abduction in the second. I didn’t much care for V/H/S Viral if I’m honest. But, the Shudder-era movies have great bits. For me, the best are 94‘s The Empty Wake and The Subject, and 99‘s To Hell and Back. I can’t wait to see what we get from V/H/S/85.

The Shudder premiere of V/H/S/85 is October 6, 2023. Spooky season, ho!

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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Vampire films are perhaps the most versatile subgenre of horror. They can be just about anything: comedic, sensual, gory, whimsical, and/or gutting. The best are a blend of many of these elements, mapping cultural, often metaphorical, fear and fantasy onto violent virality. Think of Dracula (1931) with an arch but deliciously funny Bella Lugiosi at the center, Salem’s Lot (1979) with a window scene so iconic it haunted a generation of kids, and Let the Right One In (2008) where adolescence is tinged with a foreboding gloom.

That’s the great genius of blood-sucking. It can be so many things. Lust and sexuality. Intimacy and connection. Existential dread about what it means to be alive—or unalive. It makes sense, then, that one of our formative body horror maestros would tackle a vampire film. And in 1977, David Cronenberg did just that with his indie feature Rabid, a fascinating, pulpy, prescient, and undeniably the one of the strangest vampire movies that’s unlike anything you’ve never quite seen. 

Because it’s Cronenberg, Rabid isn’t exactly a traditional vampire film. There’s blood-sucking, yes, but it transpires via armpit instead of mouth. The film centers on Rose, who gets into a motorcycle accident with her boyfriend in the opening moments. She’s significantly injured in the crash, which prompts a plastic surgeon named Dr. Keloid to perform a radical new procedure on her. Keloid uses morphogenetically neutral grafts on Rose, hoping to replace her damaged skin and organs. Instead, he accidentally triggers a mutilation that causes a stinger-like organ to grow under Rose’s arm. And the stinger is hungry for blood.

Cronenberg has been a fixture in genre filmmaking since his first feature Stereo in 1969. He’s best known for his transgressive body horror, displayed most evidently in films like The Brood, Videodrome, and the remake of The Fly. Rabid is his fourth directorial feature and operates like a bit of a test run for the ideas that would percolate and better render later in his career. It’s not just about a vampiric hunger, but also sits at the intersection of horror and sexuality—a Cronenberg specialty. 

Beyond its premise making it one of the strangest vampire movies, Rabid is memorable because of how it acutely and radically examines its sexuality. Rose is played by Marilyn Chambers, one of the most famous pornographic actresses of the 1970s. Prior to Rabid, she was known for her work in adult films like Behind the Green Door. Cronenberg originally wanted Sissy Spacek for the part of Rose, but was convinced to hire Chambers because producers thought her adult fan base could attract an audience for the film. 

But beyond the potential financial benefit, casting Chambers was a stroke of metatextual genius. Rose’s new appendage awakens a hunger from within. A hunger that appears out of nowhere like sexual lust. The scenes where she bites her victims at first play out like sex scenes. In fact, Rose is nude the first time she bites a fellow hospital patient. He caresses her, there’s intimacy, but then she brutally stabs him with her stinger, molten blood pouring from his side. 

That Rose’s sexuality is used to source and maim victims is part of Rabid’s lasting appeal. It’s hard to watch the film today and not see all that it extrapolates from the cultural and societal fears of the time, as well as what it forecasts. The film predates the AIDS epidemic by four years, but the panic around sexual transgression is all over Rabid. Rose’s blood sucking begins its own epidemic, one that turns her victims into zombie-like vampires themselves. The contagion spreads quickly through Montreal, where the film is set, causing widespread anxiety. It feels like stark commentary on sexually transmitted disease and how marginalized people often take the fall. 

Putting a porn star at the center of the film only highlights the film’s sexual politics. Chambers is a wonderful lead—demure, beautiful, curious. Rose’s characterization is a little flat—an issue in many of Cronenberg’s early films—but Chambers’ presence does so much of the work. There’s a confidence to her that assists the violence she both creates and endures onscreen. In one scene, she attempts to drink the blood of a cow before a drunken farmhand attacks her. He tries to seduce and then assault her, but she swiftly ignites her fanged appendage and stabs him in the eye. WIthout so much as breaking a sweat. Chambers is a master at this dance between seduction and predator. She uses her body like an instrument, playing it gently but with highly complex notes. 

One seminal scene in Rabid even takes place in a porn theater. Rose enters the theater looking for a victim and quickly identifies one. Their interactions begin like flirtation before evolving to something sensual. But, of course, the moment ends with the man’s silent death. Rose leaves his body behind, propped up and positioned toward the screen playing out male fantasy. 

Sexuality is intrinsic to the vampire genre, the origins of the gothic creature rooted in the perverse. One of the earliest examples of vampire fiction, John William Polidori’s The Vampyre, is a loose allegory for vampirism as seduction. Further novels, like Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Bram Stoker’s Dracula are similarly erotic. The interplay of sexual prowess and blood lust is as carnal as it gets, which makes for fertile ground in horror storytelling. This is certainly something Rabid is eager to explore.

But the most notable literary predecessor to Rabid is Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend, about a pandemic that turns the world’s population into vampires. The book is arguably one of the most important horror works of the 20th century not just for what it contains, but for its lasting influence. It’s decidedly not sexual, but it shows interest in the intersection of viral disease and vampirism. In effect, this helped kickstart the modern zombie genre. Rabid, too, is arguably both a vampire story with zombie elements that make it a strange yet powerful movie. 

And that’s again what makes it so prescient. It’s impossible to watch Rabid in 2023 without thinking of the COVID-19 pandemic, which corresponded with other forms of civil unrest, conspiracy, and sex panic. Those themes, so present in our everyday, are in Rabid, too. Cronenberg has a knack for this finger-on-the-pulse approach. It’s easy to see how this film serves as both homage and a precursor to other genre and exploitation films. There are shades of movies like Dawn of the Dead and They Live in Rabid. We also see shades of the Cronenberg oeuvre that would soon define and inspire body horror forevermore.

Rabid’s strangeness as a vampire film is many fold. It defies easy categorization, is transgressive in a way that is imaginative and incendiary, and has an element of counterculture punk rock coursing through its veins. If you’re looking for a strange and unique vampire movie that sits neatly within the genre—while also daring to expand and revolutionize it—Rabid is worth checking out. If nothing else, you’ll never look at armpits the same way again.

Rabid is currently available to stream for free on Tubi.  

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For a book written in 1897, Dracula has had an exceptionally long shelf life. As such, the story and especially the title character have made their way to screens both large and small for over 100 years now. Only a handful have made an indelible impact. Often the revisionism of the revisions just come across as so many extra footprints in territory so well-trod it’s a deep furrow. This year alone we already had Renfield which, Nicolas Cage aside, was maybe the worst in decades. However, I was oddly excited for The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a feature-length take on a single, rarely adapted section of Stoker’s novel. Sadly, good premise is almost all there is.

I should hasten to add, it’s not like the movie is bad necessarily. It’s a supremely competent horror-thriller that’s definitely in the vein of studio monster movies that came before. Certain shots and moments are very effective. The decision to make Dracula more monster than man is a fun riff, and the setting certainly sets it apart. But it’s also just loads of plot without much story, characteristics rather than characters, and a pace better suited to action than horror. But without much action either. They make for a pleasant enough two hours without ever engaging much.

The premise is certainly the strongest part. We follow the events of the second major section of Dracula, which features the logs of the captain of the Demeter, a cargo ship making its way from Romania to London with private shipments bound for Carfax Abbey. The captain here, naturally on his personal last voyage before retirement, is Liam Cunningham, who is basically perfect for the character. His first mate is Mr. Wojchek (David Dastmalchian), who will inherit the ship when his mentor leaves. The new arrival is Clemens (Corey Hawkins), a trained physician whose skin color makes him unhireable as such. This is easily the most interesting aspect of any of the characters and it’s little more than backstory.

Other deckhands have names but exist mostly as vampire fodder later in the story. We also, for some reason, have the captain’s eight-year-old grandson Toby (Woody Norman), and a strange stowaway named Anna (Aisling Franciosi), sick with blood poisoning and riddled with bite marks. Wonder what happened to her. Naturally, the strange cargo turns out to be one of your Draculas (Javier Botet), whose makeup and vibe place him somewhere between the angel in Midnight Mass and Barlow from Salem’s Lot. Both, naturally, derive from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu which is still the movie with the best adaptation of the Demeter story.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter by its very nature is something of a foregone conclusion. It’s right there in the title! The movie also never hides the fact that it’s adapting part of Dracula, so we pretty much know they won’t stop the threat. This isn’t a problem inherently; plenty of amazing movies come from tragedies we know will happen. Frigging Titanic, anyone? The trouble is, the movie seems to entirely rest on the novelty of this being a Dracula movie without any of the typical trappings of such. This is a creature, a bat-thing that can move faster than anyone on the ship. The most tense sequences involve Dracula in an enclosed space, lurking in the shadows. Once he’s outside, which happens very frequently, he’s a CGI swoop.

Like I said, it’s not as though there’s nothing to enjoy or praise here. Director André Øvredal (Trollhunter, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark) knows we want to see Dracula, so gives him plenty of big closeups. We also have a few legitimate surprises when it comes to the fate of some of those Dracula bites. Vampirism as plague is not a fresh idea, but it’s effective here. And I’ll say the siege on Toby when he’s locked in the Captain’s quarters is particularly well done. The problem is the movie seems to exist in spite of this artistry and not for it. The script is overwritten yet all-too spare. Characters talk about things we don’t get to see and speed through things on which they should linger.

If you want a mindless escape with a monster and some jump scares, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is plenty fine. If you wanted a truly fresh take on cinema’s most enduring creature of the night, keep looking.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter hits theaters August 11.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter ⭐ (2.5 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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There are many hard and fast rules in horror. Don’t run up the stairs when there is literally an exit door to freedom. Never investigate that strange noise in the basement or attic. Leave that weird book, relic, or box wherever the hell you found it. And never, ever try to resurrect a person. It will always end badly. That’s the lesson that everyone learns the hard way in birth/rebirth, a film about a morgue technician who resurrects a dead child for experiments. The trailer for birth/rebirth is super unsettling and quickly goes off the rails. 

We meet Dr. Caper (Marin Ireland), a morgue tech who is not following the rules when it comes to disposing of corpses in the birth/rebirth trailer. Instead, she’s been taking them home and conducting her own Frankenstein experiments. She’s found the perfect candidate, a little girl named Lila (AJ Lister), who died from an infection. However, we learn in the trailer that birth/rebirth‘s Dr. Caper (Frankenstein) doesn’t realize that Lila’s mom Celie (Judy Reyes), is also in the medical field. They even work at the same hospital. Celie quickly catches onto Dr. Caper’s suspicious activity and discovers to her horror, that Dr. Caper has Lila’s missing body in her apartment. Even more shocking, Lila is alive (but unconscious) on a respirator. The two form a terse alliance as Celie wants her daughter to live while Dr. Caper seems to have more nefarious goals.

At the end of the birth/rebirth trailer, Lila wakes up, but she’s no longer herself. What will they do with this version of Lila? What are Dr. Caper’s ultimate goals? There are so many ways this film can go, but the general premise tips its hat at Mary Shelley’s infamous tale, much like The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, albeit through the exploration of motherhood. Fans will have to wait and see when birth/rebirth hits theaters on August 18.

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It is impossible to talk about the last 10 years of horror films without bringing up Jordan Peele’s name. His impact on the genre with game-changing offerings like Get Out, Nope, The Twilight Zone, Wendell & Wild, and Us is undeniable, encouraging more Black creatives to unleash their complex horror stories into the world. While we can dissect and analyze his works in perpetuity, we are always wondering what he will do next. Following on the heels of Nope’s success, Jordan Peele is heading into the print space with Out There Screaming, a horror anthology book featuring a slate of stellar writers and scary short stories. 

Monkeypaw Productions made the big announcement about the anthology of Black horror, which Jordan Peele edited and curated, on its Twitter page. According to publisher Penguin Random House, the book will explore “not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.” 

Here’s a detailed description of Out There Screaming:

A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid.

Jordan Peele put together quite the list of horror authors for Monkeypaw’s Out There Screaming anthology book, including the following: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

Out There Screaming releases on October 3 and pre-orders are currently available. We can’t wait to see what delightful frights lie within its pages.

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There are few horror villains who truly scare the hell out of me. Michael Myers and Ghostface are my besties in my twisted mind. My nightmares and morbid sensibilities are disturbing enough that Freddy would run away from me. But I will never, ever get Valak a.k.a the demonic nun’s creepy face out of my head. It will haunt me until my final days. (You’re fabulous, sis. Please don’t kill me!) Five years after The Nun became a horror sensation, the film’s sequel, aptly titled The Nun II, is here with a trailer that will leave you praying for protection. 

In The Nun II, Taissa Farmiga returns as Sister Irene four years after the events of the first film. It is 1956 and a priest dies in France. A couple of girls realize that something is not quite right, and BAM, the demonic nun is back in action. Sister Irene knows this thing has come back for her yet again and goes on a journey to discover more about Valak. The titular nun wants its power back, but Irene is determined to send the evil entity back to the depths of hell. Sounds like a hellaciously good time. The film also stars Jonas Bloquet, Storm Reid, Anna Popplewell, and Bonnie Aarons.

The Nun II trailer teases that new truths will come to the light. How will it all end? The only way to find out is to grab your holy water and head to the theater when The Nun II drops on September 8.

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The fear of something unknown or scary coming to get you is a big part of our childhoods. We imagine a monster is under our beds or something is lurking in the dark corner of our rooms. Or perhaps we hear strange, creaking sounds and think something sinister is waiting for us. It usually turned out to be our very active imaginations but some stories suggest otherworldly happenings. That’s what we get with Cobweb, a horror thriller starring Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr, and Woody Norman with a very creepy trailer. 

In the clip, we meet Norman’s character Peter. He’s eight years old and hearing knocks from his bedroom wall. Predictably, his mom Carol (Caplan) says his imagination is out of control. But there’s something surely happening from his perspective as he sees (and draws) very scary s**t. Meanwhile, his dad Mark (Starr) tells him that hard decisions must be made to protect family. We don’t know what that means in the context of their situation, but something’s not quite right with Mark. Then again, Starr does play Homelander so it is very easy to see him as a villain.

The trailer for Cobweb promises many jump scares and plot twists ahead, which isn’t shocking considering the creative minds behind this film. Samuel Bodin of Marianne fame is the director and Chris Tomas Devlin (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) penned the script. The production team has hits like Barbarian and It under its belt. What is haunting poor Peter? Probably the ghosts of his parents’ mistakes. The answers will come when Cobweb hits theaters on July 21.

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One of life’s greatest wounds is death and the subsequent grief that follows. It is the steep price we pay for the honor of communing and sharing our soul with another living being. Their absence forces us to accept and acclimate to a new version of normal, one with a landmine of triggers that can slice our emotional flesh at any given moment. And, for some of us, death and loss are repetitive, cyclical hells that threaten to completely consume us at any moment like an invasive disease. But, what if death itself were a disease that could be cured? Would we want the antidote, even if it came with bloody ramifications? That is the crux of Bomani J. Story’s horror drama The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster, a oft-bleak meditation on systemic oppression and violence, heartbreak, and death.

The film borrows general inspiration from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein but shifts its setting to a disenfranchised project housing development. At its center is Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes), a gifted Black teenage scholar whose life has been marred by her surroundings. After losing her mother years prior and her brother Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy) recently to gun violence, Vicaria sees death as a disease and is on a mission to cure it. Unfortunately, her environment provides ample test subjects as she desires to bring her brother back to life. She’s the polar opposite of Dr. Frankenstein’s classic depiction as a wealthy privileged white man who is, in a sense, playing God because he can. 

She’s jokingly called the “mad scientist” and the moniker fits. This is especially true when she pulls flesh apart and reassembles it while disturbingly chuckling at her own brilliance. But, this is not about exploitation or satisfying a need to create something world-changing. Instead, Vicaria wants to bring balance to a community that is constantly in flux and soothe her palpable pain. A stroke of genius, luck, and, yes, electricity resurrects her brother… but there is a price to pay. Chris is not fully himself, but rather an entity hellbent on revenge. He seemingly reacts from a place of crushing residual pain from his life that ended far too soon. But, Vicaria’s pain and motivations provide further fuel for his actions, too.

DeLeon Hayes delivers a stunning performance as the titular and righteously angry Black girl. She dips between morbid curiosity, panicked fretting, paralyzing terror, and unbridled confidence with ease. Her heartbreaking rationale and ever-changing currents of grief will resonate with viewers as she parses through her grief. Vicaria fights against the ills of society with the only tools she has: her mind and determination.

The always-stunning Chad L. Coleman makes every second of his screen time count as Vicaria’s loving and protective father Donald, who struggles with drug usage and regrets. And, Denzel Whitaker’s Kango is a solid deuteragonist who is both a part of the problem and the solution. Whitaker and DeLeon Hayes go for several verbal sparring rounds with the final one packing a mighty punch. It is perhaps the best scene in the entire film that blurs the lines between hero and supposed villain.

The film’s version of the Modern Prometheus, however, is a mixed bag. Much of the resurrected Chris’ time depicts him as a vengeful boogeyman whose actions increasingly affect those who loved him. In a sense, this presents the conundrum about what it means to be alive. It surely is more than jolts of electrical energy through our bodies that make our hearts pump. Chris is breathing, walking, and can even say a few words but the essence of him is no longer present.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster uses Chris’ twisted body and exploits to lean into its horror. He presents as a shadowy hooded figure with a gravelly voice. His twisted fingers creep around a corner, a single eye peeking from an abandoned space to watch in silence. Story’s professed adoration for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Shining are crystal clear. There’s no holding back on the brutality he delivers but the gore is realistic vs. a more splatter approach to match the film’s overall tone. Unfortunately, the interactions between Vicaria and her resurrected brother lack the frequency and connection to truly drive home the film’s points about his humanity and motivations.

Despite a rather lean 92-minute runtime, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster painfully sags in the middle. The focus wanders too far away from its primary plot, losing the steam that it successfully built in its first act. Thankfully, things wander back on course for the third act with an intense, surprising, and thought-provoking finish. Overall, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is an innovative take on a Gothic tale with sharp dialogue, solid performances, and a protagonist who wields a mighty power.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster will hit theaters on June 9. It will hit on Demand and Digital on June 23 before it later finds a home on Shudder and AllBlk.

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster ⭐ (3.5 of 5)

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Stephen King’s short stories are some of the bleakest, most upsetting horror fiction of his career. And that’s really saying something. In the same stretch of the early ’70s that saw publication of some of his most celebrated, including “Trucks,” “The Mangler,” and “Battleground,” King gave us “The Boogeyman,” a riff on perhaps the classic nightmare monster. The story is excellent, depicting the titular menace attacking a family and picking it apart person by person. It’s a nasty, fun little story. Adapting it to a feature film, director Rob Savage (Host) keeps some of that, but not quite enough to make it stand out.

Story goes, in 2018 A Quiet Place screenwriting partners Scott Beck and Bryan Woods optioned the King story. After loads of Hollywood production nonsense, which saw other writers come on and leave, the eventual script comes to us from Beck, Woods, and Mark Heyman whose previous feature films are co-writing 2010’s Black Swan and co-writing 2014’s The Skeleton Twins. End of list. Directing duties fell to Rob Savage, the British filmmaker who made a splash in 2020 with the hour-long, shot-on-Zoom horror movie Host. The result feels a bit like A Quiet Place but in a house, with a bit of mental health stuff thrown in.

The movie follows the Harper family; father Will Harper (Chris Messina), a psychiatrist, is trying to solo parent his teenage daughter Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and elementary-age daughter Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) following the sudden death of their mother. Will has, as yet, been unable to open up to Sadie about his feelings, leaving her to mostly cope alone. One day, a disturbed man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) comes into Harper’s home office and wants to tell him about the deaths of his children, seemingly at the hands of an unseen shadow force. Oops, now the monster wants the Harper family! Dang it, Lester!

The Boogeyman boasts some solid jump scare moments and a wholly otherworldly monster. It definitely feels more alien than demonic, and it has a similar long-arm-crawly thing that the Quiet Place aliens do. Except instead of attraction to sound, this guy has aversion to light. Savage handles the tension and thing-in-the-dark chills quite adeptly. We never fully get a sense of how this creature operates, but its methods—including warping the sound of loved one’s voices—works in the mix.

The problem is the story. It takes no chances at all in the Harper family drama. We’ve seen this a million times before. Following the death of a parent, the other parent closes off while the eldest child has to be the grown up and the youngest child has nightmares. It’s Horror Movie Setup 101. As good as the actors are, the plot follows such a rote path without taking risks or adding wrinkles. Dad doesn’t believe there’s a monster, so eldest daughter has to try to save the day.

For those who haven’t read the short story, it entirely focuses on Billings relaying the horrifying events to the psychiatrist. That’s where all the horror truly lies as it sees a man forced to watch his children succumb to this monster. That portion of the movie is incredibly brief and the rest feels so underwhelming. It’s like a bit of Insidious; a scosh of Poltergeist; even a little Haunting of Hill House. It never branches out into its own thing.

And I think its biggest failing is it doesn’t go as hard as last year’s Smile which attacked the mixture of demonic curse and mental health/trauma so much more effectively. The Boogeyman isn’t bad, it’s fine. It has a couple of nifty sequences, some good scares. It’s just nothing like as scary as it ought to be. It pulls too many punches, tries to explain too much and not enough. The monster in the closet, under the bed, in the basement—we’ve seen it all before. Without the punch of King’s original prose or macabre sensibility, it’s little more than a passing shiver.

The Boogeyman hits theaters on June 2.

The Boogeyman (PG-13) ⭐ (2.7 of 5)

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.

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The Scream franchise’s impact on horror is undeniable. Scream (1996) ushered in a new era of the genre, inspiring a slate of teen ensemble films full of meta-commentary and gore. Sidney Prescott is now in the “Iconic Final Girl” pantheon alongside Laurie Strode and Nancy Thompson. And Ghostface’s ever-popular mask, ominous silhouette, and catchphrases span multiple generations of fans. There are a lot of things about the Scream films that get two knives up from horror fans (myself included); however, there’s an aspect of this franchise that, until recently, continued to be problematic. The history of Black characters in the Scream films is full of untapped potential, cringy stereotypes, and overall lackluster character development. But, there’s also a spark of a promising future. Let’s take a trip down horror memory lane to see what it means to be Black in the Scream universe.

Backgrounders Only… and That’s Okay (Scream 1996) 

Wait, what?! Were there actually Black people in the first Scream film?! Yes, indeed. The reason you don’t remember any of them is because they barely pass muster as people. Almost every Black person you see is a background character. There’s a photographer taking pictures of the school when Sid and Tatum are walking inside and discussing the previous night’s murders. A Black kid hands Sid’s teacher a note that prompts her to call Sidney to the office. And a couple of kids in Sid’s class and in the hallways are Black.

But, the only Black person who speaks in this film is a reporter. She holds up the Ghostface mask and says it is what the killer is wearing while pondering when these murders will come to an end. And you know what? It’s actually not a terrible thing that Black folks aren’t a factor in this movie. Sid’s entire friend circle either died or was shot (hello, Randy). And at least no Black people died just for dying’s sake or sacrificed themselves for a white person. So… kind of a win for us but a loss for representation in general?  

Maureen, Phil, Hallie, and Joel (Scream 2) 

It seems that someone got the message about how, up until the ’90s, a lot of mainstream horror would exclude Black folks from the story. How do we know this? Well, the opening scene for Scream 2 features two new characters Maureen and Phil, a couple at the movies to see Stab. Maureen brings up this point as a reason why she doesn’t care for the genre in general. Sadly, Maureen and Phil quickly fall as casualties to Ghostface, making them the first two kills of the movie. Imagine that. The first two significant Black people in the franchise die within minutes.

Unlike Casey Becker, who at least had a tangential relationship with Sidney as a classmate and Stu’s ex-girlfriend, neither of them are connected to her at all. We discover later that they were targeted because of their names, which fell into the pattern of victims from the original killings. And that is a plot thread that literally goes nowhere. Hate to see it. It feels like Phil and Maureen only existed to feed into the “Black folks die first/early” trope.

Now, when it comes to Hallie, there’s so much untapped potential here that it is sickening. In the film, she’s Sidney’s roommate and a psych major who wants to pledge a multicultural sorority. She’s also weirdly dismissive of Sidney’s trauma despite her interest in psychology. We see Hallie quite often and Elise Neal adds a lot of flair to her character. Who doesn’t love her “Did you get that on film?!” line after Sid punched Gail (again)?

However, Hallie still doesn’t feel like a fully developed character, and her relationship with Sid is surface-level at best. Sure, they don’t have to be best friends just because they are roommates but something about their connection feels off. Sadly, Hallie also dies in this film… and it is indirectly Sidney’s fault. (Sidenote: the scene of them escaping that car is one of the best and most intense scenes in the franchise.) Instead of listening to her very wise roommate’s advice to “get the f*ck outta here” after barely surviving a Ghostface attack, Sid wants to go back and unmask the killer. Of course, he’s not there and ends up jumping out and killing Hallie in front of Sid.

The saddest part about this is that Hallie could have had a much more significant role in the film. An earlier “dummy script” actually had Hallie as one of the killers alongside Sid’s boyfriend Derek, whom she was having a secret relationship with, Mickey, and Mrs. Loomis. While having yet another one of Sid’s boyfriends wouldn’t have worked no matter what, it would have been interesting to explore Hallie as a killer. Dewey and Randy have a conversation about her potentially being “Candyman’s daughter,” with Dewey rightfully pointing out that serial killers are usually white men.

So, making Hallie the killer would have been a wild plot twist. I am 100% here for more Black women killers, tbh. Perhaps her interest in psychology is what led her to want to get close to Sidney so she could study a survivor’s mind. Or, in the vein of American Horror Story: 1984, she was partnering with a killer to understand them but took things a little too far. Truly a missed opportunity. 

The final Black person in this film is one of my favorites in the franchise: Joel Martin. Despite having a successful book that spawned a movie, Gale can’t find a cameraman and hires Joel. The entire time, Joel is questioning if he should be there because, well, there’s a killer on the loose. Gale is frustratingly abrasive to him and he eventually does what Hallie and Sid should have done after the accident: got the f*ck out of town.

Duane Martin’s role is small but he’s a comedic delight every time he is onscreen. He certainly gets more development than Kenny the cameraman and survives by simply getting away from Ghostface’s targets. Hilariously, he returns at the end, wanting to work with Gale again now that she isn’t being chased by a killer. Love him. However, when you think about all the Black people in Scream 2, the message this film gives is sad. It suggests that the only way a Black person can be safe is to leave or not exist. We do see more overall diversity in the background thanks to a new location, but what good does that do if you kill all the Black folks?

Tyson Fox (Scream 3) 

Scream 3 is the most chaotic sequel in the franchise. It’s like two movies in one. The first is a horror comedy Scooby-Doo murder mystery with Gail, Dewey, and a gang of annoying actors who die. The second is a horror drama with Sidney as she discovers the truth behind it all, including the abuse her mother endured years ago. And, as its sole killer, Roman is basically a supernatural being because how the HELL did he do all that alone?!

Anyway, if fans thought any Black character in this film would fare better than the ones in Scream 2, they were wrong. There is Tyson Fox, a Black actor playing the role of Ricky in Stab 3. His comedic relief is frequently funny but as the film progresses it becomes more like a “joking Black guy” caricature. In fact, right before he dies, he says, “you muthaf*cka” for no good reason. Sigh. And, to make things worse, he’s the only significant Black character in Scream 3. There are some background randoms, including a couple of police officers who come to aid Sid after she’s attacked on set, but that is it. And honestly, there was no reason for Tyson to be there except to have a funny Black guy in the mix. Booooo. Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes. 

Deputy Perkins (Scream 4)

Warning: The above video contains graphic content.

Ten years later and nothing changed when it came to Black characters in the world of Scream. Anthony Anderson’s deputy character Perkins is basically Tyson Fox as a police officer. He’s less like a real person and more of an odd character who also makes jokes until he dies. And, he is the only significant Black person in this film as well, sort of mirroring the original Scream movie that suggests Woodsboro is a very white town. 

Mindy and Chad Meeks-Martin (Scream 2022) 

Well, well, well. It only took 25 years for the franchise to finally introduce a solid Black character who plays a vital role in the narrative and also survives it all. That person is Mindy Meeks-Martin, the child of Martha Meeks (and maybe Joel Martin… more on that later) and a horror aficionado like her uncle Randy. Mindy gives us information and makes us laugh while also keeping a pragmatic outlook on their situation. She can be quite dark at times but we get flashes of her heart. And, her queerness is not made to be something taboo or shocking, but simply a part of who she is. Mindy nearly gets taken down in the third act but thankfully, she lives to fight another day!

There’s still much to explore with Mindy that this film couldn’t do. To be fair, Scream 2022 was introducing an entire new cast to carry the torch forward while also bringing Gale, Dewey, and Sid back into the mix. But Scream VI puts her and Chad Meeks-Martin towards the forefront. In this film, Chad isn’t quite as prominent as Mindy and his character certainly fits into the common “high school jock” trope. And he’s not the brightest crayon in the box, going outside in the dark to look for Liv.

Mindy and Chad-Meeks Martin and Brooks (Scream VI)

Prior to this film’s release, my big fear was that Chad or Mindy would either die in the opening scene like Cotton or in some sacrificial way to save Sam and/or Tara. Thankfully, neither of those things happened. Scream VI makes Chad and Mindy half of the leading “Core Four” alongside the Carpenter sisters. In terms of overall Black representation, Scream VI might be the best out of the franchise considering its character development of Chad.

He goes from being the stereotypical jock to the foundation that holds this group together, dishing out encouragement and wisdom when needed. His blossoming romance with Tara, “muscle” against Ghostface and creepy guys, and delightful comedic relief make him an all-around MVP. Things look frightening for Chad when he’s stabbed by not one but two Ghostfaces (a truly heartbreaking scene that is, ahem, overkill) but he’s apparently immortal because he survives. And you know what? I am okay with that plot armor because white protagonists get it all the time. 

Mindy also gets a lot more shine in this film, including some very intense scenes with Ghostface. Scream VI fleshes her character out a bit more, making her more of a person who actually feels feelings. However, her character also doesn’t make sense at times because it leans a little too hard into “horror expert” trope. For example, her entire scene about the rules (which includes some very spot on accusations) in front of the whole group is wild considering she absolutely knows that at least one person there is the killer. Seems like a better conversation to have among the Core Four considering they barely know these people. Both characters get sidelined for the final showdown; however, it makes sense considering Sam and Tara are the main protagonists. So, the Meeks twins survive yet another film! 

However, this film is not without its faults. First, there’s not a lot of Black peripheral representation despite it taking place in literal NYC. Unlike Woodsboro, there are hella Black people all over the place. Then again, that might be a good thing considering how Ghostface was killing people much more indiscriminately in this film.

There’s also Gale’s boyfriend Brooks, a Black character whose name we only know because it is listed on IMDb and in the Scream VI credits. He appears for a split second, saying approximately one sentence before Ghostface quickly dispatches him in Gale’s apartment. We know nothing about him nor their relationship and no one seems to even care about his death. He’s simply someone who adds to the body count, which is not surprising to anyone. It’s a shame because he was very, very sexy and possibly an interesting person.

Black Character Representation in Scream VII (If We Get It)

It seems pretty inevitable that Scream VII is coming our way. And there’s no reason why Chad and Mindy wouldn’t be a part of it, even if it is to a lesser degree. At this point, both of them have gone through their own respective traumas and the franchise could dig into how they are coping with that. Mindy’s sarcasm and humor will not heal the pain of watching her girlfriend’s brutal death. And poor Chad has been stabbed approx. 156 times so there’s a lot of physical, mental, and emotional fallout behind that experience. They can show this and still ensure that the Carpenter sisters are the proverbial stars of this franchise.

Perhaps we can dig into Chad and Mindy’s lives more and find out who their father is. Their last name hints at Joel Martin and it is not impossible. Joel is a few years older than Martha Meeks, who had the twins in her early 20s. But Martin is a common last name so it could be anyone. Maybe we can see Joel as their uncle (to replace the one they never got to know) and something caused him to come back into the picture. He technically counts as a legacy character, after all. Actor Duane Martin was rumored to return for Scream (2022) so maybe he can come back. (Not if they are gonna just kill him, though.) 

Until then, we can only speculate what will happen next. Thankfully, the Scream franchise seems to be on a better path in terms of Black representation with the Meeks-Martin siblings at the forefront. Let’s remain hopeful and see where this enduring story goes next.

Originally published on January 20, 2023.

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The Scream franchise is officially back in business with Scream (2022) and its quick sequel, Scream VI. All the films go in and out of streaming availability so there are chances to rewatch them in all their Ghostface glory. And, while we love a good marathon watch, sometimes you just want a comprehensive look at a franchise for quick references. It’s also a great place to send your friends if they are just now getting into the wild world of Scream. So, let’s dive into what you need to know about the Scream universe so far and where it could go next.

Jump to: General Scream History // The Overall Premise // Scream // Scream 2 // Scream 3 // Scream 4 // Scream (2022) // Scream VI // The Stab Franchise // Scream Tenets and Theories // Scream VII Thoughts

A Bit of Scream History

In the early ‘90s, Kevin Williamson was an aspiring screenwriter with a couple of small acting credits to his name. After learning about the Gainesville Ripper (more on that real-life Scream history here), he wrote a mini script under the title Scary Movie. The story followed a woman who gets a phone call from someone who breaks into her home and kills her. Williamson soon developed it into a feature length project, infusing it with references from his fave horror flicks like Halloween, Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and When a Stranger Calls.

He eventually struck a deal with the then-new Dimension Films. Wes Craven got involved as the director and Scream was on its way to being a cornerstone in horror history. The first film hit in December 1996, typically a dead month for non-Christmas fare at the time, bringing its whodunit mystery and chilling kills to audiences. It broke the horror mold by casting already familiar names like Drew Barrymore, Courteney Cox, and, to a lesser degree, rising actress Neve Campbell. Scream is credited with revitalizing mainstream horror and setting off a string of teen ensemble horror flicks for decades to come. And, it was the inspiration for the Scary Movie parody film franchise.

What Is the Overall Story in the Scream Movies?

The first four films in the Scream franchise follow Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her cyclical battle with a bevy of serial killers. She’s the main player, a now-iconic final girl, and the real MVP. The murder of Sidney’s mother is the beginning of a revenge plot to kill and/or frame Sidney for various reasons. There is a rotating cast of people around her but two mainstays, Deputy—and later Sheriff—Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and tabloid reporter/salacious author Gale Weathers (later Gale Weathers Riley, played by Courteney Cox) are by her side throughout these ordeals.

Now, the franchise is in a new era with new leading characters. Scream (2022) does include Sidney and Gale; however, the story now centers around Sam and Tara Carpenter, portrayed by Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega, respectively. Sam is the new Sidney Prescott with Ghostface setting their sights on her, her sister, and her sister’s group of friends. Sidney will not be in the next Scream film (a first for the franchise) but Gale will make an appearance, which makes sense considering it takes place in New York City where she currently lives and works.

Scream (1996): The Beginning

Scream takes place in fictional Woodsboro, an idyllic Northern California town where teenage Sidney “Sid” Prescott lives with her father. This film is all about tipping its hat to the genre’s predecessors, including its now classic opening scene with Barrymore’s Casey Becker as she plays a terrifying phone game with a charismatic killer. The exchange ends with her and her boyfriend, Steve Orth, dying at Casey’s house. The killer wears a costume with a long white face with hollowed eyes and mouth and a cheap black robe. A knife is the deadly weapon of choice.

Of course, we get the foundation for our main character. Sidney lost her mom Maureen Prescott in a grisly rape/murder a year prior. She testified against local “sleezeball” Cotton Weary, who claims he had a consensual sexual relationship with Maureen, and he’s on death row. Sid is also trying to parse through her relationship with Billy Loomis, a Johnny Depp lookalike who keeps pressuring her about sex.

After a couple of close calls (literal phone calls and in-person attacks) with the killer, Sid eventually ends up at Billy’s best friend Stu Macher’s house for a party. She goes alongside her best friend (and Stu’s girlfriend) Tatum and close buddy/horror movie geek Randy, who has an unrequited crush on Sidney. Things go very awry when the party thins out and the killer shows up just as Tatum’s older brother Dewey wanders off with Gale Weathers to investigate.

Ya see, Gale and Sidney have bad blood because Gale wrote a book about Maureen’s murder, calling Sidney a liar and saying Cotton Weary was framed. Anyway, Sidney gets chased around, Tatum dies, and she eventually discovers the shocking truth: Billy and Stu are the killers and they killed her mom, too. Why? Because Maureen had an affair with Billy’s dad, causing his parents’ split. Sidney, with help from Gale and Randy (sort of), kills them both and lives another day. Dewey gets stabbed in the back yet survives and Sidney’s dad is cool too. Roll credits.

Although the antagonist is always referred to as “The Killer” in this film and subsequent ones, Tatum calls him Ghostface prior to her death. (The story behind the Scream mask is interesting if you wanna learn more.) While not used within the films until Scream 4, Ghostface is the commonly used name by the fandom and franchise promotional materials. Randy also catches fire with fans, taking our place as the horror aficionado who is pretty aware that he’s living in a real-life scary movie. He even goes so far as naming the rules of survival, including don’t drink or have sex and that the killer is never really dead the first time.

Scream really breaks the mold in a few ways. Sidney starts off as the typical “final girl,” a sweet virgin who makes good grades and stays out of trouble. But we get to peel back her layers, revealing someone who will drop an “f-bomb,” punch a grown woman, have sex when she chooses to, and shoot someone in the head. Her “goodness” doesn’t determine if she’s worth saving unlike some of her predecessors. She fights for her survival all the way, having a ton of autonomy over her decisions and actions.

The revelation of two killers was an absolutely brilliant twist. Billy and Stu aren’t as slick, calculating, physically imposing, nor superhuman as many other classic horror villains. The duo gets their asses kicked, trip and fall, and have a rather clumsy plan that unravels due to their own ego and negligence. It makes Scream feel very much rooted in reality, which only adds to its terror.

Scream 2 (1997): The Plot Thickens

We back! Sidney is now at Windsor College in Ohio, living her life as a drama student and trying to stay low key. That’s kinda hard, though, because Gale’s book about the Woodsboro murders is the source material for Stab, a horror movie. Randy is also inexplicably at the same college as, you guessed it, a film student. Sid has a new crew, including her token Black girl roommate Hallie, pretty frat boyfriend Derek, and “freaky Tarantino” (Randy’s words, not mine) film student Mickey. The murder of Phil and Maureen, two Windsor College students at a Stab screening (just had to kill the Black folks, huh?), puts Sid on edge and brings both Dewey and Gale into the picture. The former is there to protect/support Sidney while the latter hopes she can get fodder for her next book.

Speaking of Gale, she has her own entourage of sorts with her cameraman Joel (who replaces the cameraman killed in the first film) and Debbie Salt, a local reporter and Gale fan. Once again, Sid does not have a good time. Ghostface chases her on a stage, kills her security detail, Hallie, Randy, and eventually Derek, and she has to deal with Cotton Weary. He’s exonerated for murder and wants her to help him capitalize on their unfortunate connection.

Dewey and Gale reconcile after she wrote poorly about him in her book. They go investigating (again) and Dewey gets stabbed (again). Gale barely escapes. Joel skips town because he’s a Black guy who is not trying to die from white drama.

The showdown on the drama stage reveals that Mickey (whom you almost forget exists) is the killer! He wants to “blame it on the movies” and have a big trial where he gets away with murder. And, bigger shock, Debbie Salt is the second killer. But she’s not Debbie. She’s Mrs. Loomis, Billy’s mom who wants revenge on Sidney for killing her son. She kills Mickey to frame him but Cotton thwarts her efforts to kill Gale and Sid. The thrio make it out alive along with Dewey who is possibly immortal (or just has great plot armor).

There are a few things to catch onto here, including the fact that Sidney gets a necklace with Derek’s Greek letters that she holds onto. In fact, we see her wearing it in the next installment. The impact of this film’s murders is a lot higher for Sidney. She feels responsible for Hallie and Derek’s deaths due to her poor decision making and general distrust of people. And losing Randy means her entire friend group from high school is dead.

She also has a terse truce of sorts with Cotton, allowing him to be the media hero because damn more of her friends are dead and sis is tired. The growing romantic relationship between Gale and Dewey gains its footing here too. In the first film, she was more concerned about the story than his well being at the end. This time, she’s in the ambulance with him. Scream 2 also sets the in-universe Stab films in motion, which we will talk about more later.

Scream 3 (2000): The Concluding Chapter of a Trilogy (or not..)

Scream 3 was supposed to be the end of this franchise but that was obviously a lie. The first person we see isn’t a stranger but Cotton Weary. He’s living the high life in Hollywood with a talk show, money, and a role in a Stab 3. Unfortunately, Cotton and his girlfriend become the opening kills for a Ghostface who’s asking about Sidney. She’s living solo in the woods in a nice cabin with a dog and working for a crisis hotline under a fake name. Only Dewey and her dad know her whereabouts.

Cotton’s murder brings Hollywood Detective Mark Kincaid to Gale, who is doing lectures on how to be a heartless journalist. She’s somehow “the expert” he needs because he lacks competence and research skills of his own. They run into Dewey, who is a consultant on the Stab film set and mad that Gale left him for fame… again.

This is where things get squirrely. There are film actor counterparts for our main people. You have film Gale (Jennifer), Dewey (Tom), and of course, Sid (Angelina) along with other characters. The killer starts whacking off actors, bringing the realization that he—or she… or they—is killing people in the order of a film script. And each crime scene has photos of a young Maureen Prescott, claiming that her real killer isn’t Billy or Stu.

Real Sid comes to Hollywood after Ghostface calls her, reunites with Gale and Dewey, and doesn’t notice Kincaid’s borderline obsession with her. Things go very Scooby-Doo with the Gales investigating, a house blowing up, Dewey taking advice from Randy’s pre-death video given to him by Randy’s sister Martha, and Sid visiting a replica of her childhood bedroom.

Meanwhile, Stab 3 film director Roman is concerned about his cast (and film) dying while studio executive Milton doesn’t seem to care… until we discover his truth. Turns out Maureen did a few low-budget Hollywood horror films when she was young and ended up in a gang rape situation at Milton’s swanky home. Oof. Later on, the killer lures all the remaining cast, Dewey, and Gale to Roman’s party at that same home.

He dispatches everyone except Sid’s friends, whom he uses as bait for Sid. Kincaid shows up, gets his ass kicked, and Sid eventually discovers the killer is Roman, who appeared to be dead earlier. He reveals that he’s Maureen’s son, the product of her sexual assault who is mad that Sid got the family he was refused. Roman gathered evidence of Maureen’s affair with Mr. Loomis, giving it to Billy and setting off this chain of murder. He tries to kill Sid but fails, with Dewey eventually shooting him. In the end, Sid, Dewey, Gale, and Kincaid chill at her house and she’s sure her life’s horrors are behind her.

This film is pretty divisive among the fandom for a few reasons. First, there’s a lack of the main protagonist. It’s almost like Scream 3 could have been a spinoff flick about Gale and Dewey going on an investigative adventure with a ragtag team of dumb, unlikable actors. In reality, Neve Campbell had a tight schedule so her filming window was small. It never made sense to me because, well, if this was truly supposed to be the last film, then why not make the necessary shifts to tell Sid’s story as completely as possible?

In fact, it’s like she’s in her own separate dark movie. The revelation about her mom and Roman is disturbing as hell and doesn’t fit the tone of everything else at all. And, many fans thought Roman was an odd choice for the lone killer. First, there’s no physical way one person could do everything he did. This is an interesting point considering an early script called for two killers. (That version of the film featured Angelina, Sidney’s movie counterpart, as Roman’s girlfriend and accomplice. But the script didn’t stick.) However, filming didn’t seem to account for this change so it still plays out much like a two person job. He does A LOT and racks up a hefty body count.

Second, it’s weird for Roman to have no real connection to Sidney at all. Yes, they are half-siblings but the first time Sid ever shares a room with Roman is when he reveals himself to be the killer. Sure, we never saw her with Billy’s mom either. But we know that they had multiple interactions prior to the first film’s events. Either way, Scream 3 is an oft-quoted and discussed film among fans.

Scream 4 (2011): Live for the Applause

A new decade and millennium calls for new things. Scream 4 boasts the ultimate meta opening of Stab characters watching people die before dying while real people watch them die and then die. Lost yet? Hang on. We meet Jill Roberts, Sidney’s much younger cousin through her mom’s sister Kate. Where the hell did Kate come from? I don’t know. Sid’s father died from an illness and now she lives elsewhere. Since the last film, she’s taken back her power and written a best-selling book about her life.

Meanwhile, Dewey is now the Sheriff of Woodsboro and his deputy, Judy Hicks, seems to have a crush on him. Odd stuff considering she’s a former classmate of Sidney’s. He’s married to Gale, who is struggling with her career and identity at this point. She’s down so bad that she later works with high school horror club kids to figure out the rules of remakes in hopes of discovering the killer.

Sid comes home to promote her new book and the killing starts, targeting Jill and her friends. Her crew includes Sid/Tatum/Randy mashup Kirby, film geek Charlie, creepy ex-boyfriend Trevor, and neighbor Olivia. A few people bite the dust, including Aunt Kate and Olivia. A “Stabathon” watch leads to an attack on Gale and eventually, Sid has a showdown with Ghostface, discovering it is Jill and Charlie behind it. They kill Trevor and Kirby, hoping to frame the former for their crimes. Jill wants Sidney’s fame so bad that she stabs Sidney and comically beats herself up to become the new “final girl.”

Dimension Films

For the first time, Gale actually figures out who the killer is and works with Dewey and Sidney to subdue Jill for good. Sidney also slips in a great line: “don’t f*** with the original.” Weirdly, Deputy Judy Hicks is there but gets knocked out until it’s all over. And that’s where we left things.

Scream 4 really leans into the impact of modern social media and attention seeking fame. It was right around the time when Facebook, Twitter, and other sites launched apps and people began to get internet famous. Interestingly, Jill’s motivations, albeit extreme, are not that far from reality. People have done deadly and dangerous stuff for the sake of fame and applause.

Scream (2022): Toxic Fandom and Requel Chaos

Finally, we arrive at the latest film! Ten years after Scream (2022), we meet Tara, a Woodsboro student who is attacked by someone wearing a Ghostface mask. Unlike Casey Becker, she survives the brutal attack, which leads to her estranged older sister Sam coming home. Sam brings her boyfriend Richie, who is not happy about being in a town known for murder. She reunites with her sister and her group of friends, a few whom happen to have connections to some Scream characters.

Mindy (a horror nerd) and Chad Meeks-Martin are the niece and nephew of Randy Meeks. Wes is Judy Hicks’ son. Sprinkle in a couple others in like Tara’s close friend Amber Freeman (who hates Sam) and Liv and it is a crowd. Ghostface begins to go after a few people, including Sam, who reveals herself to be the biological daughter of Billy Loomis. (This doesn’t make timeline sense but let’s rock with it.) Oh, and she’s seeing the Ghost of Billy Past randomly as he warns her that she’s like him. Sam seeks a divorced Dewey’s help, who isn’t too keen to get involved and now spends his days isolated in a trailer home.

But he gives in and, thanks to Mindy, they discover the killer is targeting people connected to Billy and Stu. She also explains that this is a “requel,” a continuation of a narrative that sharply skews from the plot of the original. We see Stu’s nephew die, so it is Sam’s turn to go. In reality, the killings start to spread with Wes and Judy biting it. Gale and Dewey have a brief reunion but unfortunately never get their relationship back on track. In quite the heartbreaking (but not totally shocking) turn of events, Dewey dies while helping Sam and Richie save a badly injured Tara from Ghostface. This is where Sidney Prescott comes in. She wants to help Sam (awkward considering she knows Billy is her father) but Sam is like “hell nah, we leaving town.”

Of course, running away is not easy. Tara realizes she has no inhaler and wants to stop at Amber’s house to grab her spare. Amber is inexplicably having a party and happens to live in Stu Macher’s old home. Sidney and Gale track and follow them there, realizing there is something amiss. And boy is it not good. We discover that Amber and Richie are the killers, two twisted Stab fans who reject any concept of fandom being “toxic.” They met online, and decided to create a slew of real life killings and the wild narrative of Billy’s daughter killing Sidney to make the next film better. So yes, that makes Richie the worst and also a pedophile.

Editor’s Note: The following video contains NSFW language.

Sidney, Gale, and Sam (and later Tara) face Amber, who ends up getting set on fire and dying. But it is really the Sam vs. Richie fight that gets disturbing. Ghost of Billy Past shows up and points Sam towards Amber’s knife. She stabs Richie more times than anyone cares to count, embracing her serial killer legacy. Gale decides to not write about these murders so they get no shine, Sidney goes back to minding her business with her husband Mark (probably the Scream 3 guy) and kids, and Sam and Tara try to piece their lives back together.

Scream (2022) takes a stab (ha!) at toxic fandom who get wild when their demands aren’t met by creators. And, the weirdness of trying to redeem Billy was a bit much. But now we get to go on a new journey with Sam, Tara, Mindy, and Chad, the surviving four of the friend group in the next film.

Scream VI (2023): NYC Slashing and a Ghostface Family Affair

In Scream VI, we catch up with Sam, Tara, Mindy, and Chad in NYC. With the exception of Sam, the others are all college students at Blackmore University. There are new people in the mix, like Mindy’s girlfriend Anika, Chad’s roommate Ethan, Sam/Tara’s roommate Quinn, and Sam’s secret boyfriend Danny. A little over a year has passed since the previous film and once again Stab fans are up to shenanigans.

In the Scream VI opening scene, a Blackmore film professor, Laura Crane, gets killed by her student and Stab devotee Jason Carvey after he fakes a blind date with her. However, this film switches the game up on us. It turns out Jason knows Tara, whom he interacts with shortly after the murder. But Jason and his roommate Greg’s plan to kill the Carpenter sisters doesn’t happen because another Ghostface, the real one, kills both of them.

Sam is not doing well at all as she grapples with the past and online (and in person) harassment. There are rampant rumors about her being the true killer in the last Woodsboro murders. This Ghostface leaves Sam’s info at the opening scene final murder, therefore making Sam and Tara suspects in the ongoing investigation. They want to leave NYC; however, Detective Bailey, who is on the case and also Quinn’s father, says they must stay put.

Jason and Greg’s online activity was monitored by the FBI office in Atlanta, which brings Kirby Reed into the picture to aid the investigation. Of course, any Ghostface murder always brings Gale into the mix. And it makes sense because she’s been living and working in NYC for years. For some reason, Gale wrote about the last murders, which made Sam and Tara understandably upset with her. Sidney decides that this isn’t her problem, but still goes into hiding with her family for their safety.

Ghostface begins to hunt Sam and Tara, attacking them in a bodega and later in their apartment. Quinn, her random boy toy, Anika, and people at the bodega. Each scene reveals items with DNA from previous killers, piquing the interest of Kirby and Bailey, who is suspicious of her. Meanwhile, Gale discovers that Jason and Greg are renting a space that’s actually a Ghostface shrine with key items from all the murders. She brings the crew in to see it and they are shocked and reminded of Ghostface’s decades-long past. Meanwhile, Chad and Mindy continue to develop a budding romance throughout the trauma.

Ghostface gets into Gale’s apartment, taunting her on the phone and killing her boyfriend before chasing her and stabbing her multiple times. Thankfully, Sam and Tara save her but she’s in critical condition. The group decides to team up with Bailey and Kirby to lure Ghostface into the shrine to kill him (or them). But, on the subway ride there, Mindy ends up on another train. She gets stabbed by Ghostface and sent to the hospital.

They get in the shrine and Bailey calls to tell Sam that Kirby isn’t with the FBI anymore and is probably the killer. Two Ghostfaces show up and brutally attack Chad while the Carpenter sisters end up in a theater location of the building. This is where they discover that Detective Bailey, Quinn, and Ethan are not only the killers, but the father and siblings of Richie Kirsch. Yikes. The big showdown features a lot of action, including Sam donning Billy’s Ghostface costume to absolutely destroy Bailey. Tara stabs Ethan in the head and Kirby (who is shot but not dead) gives him a final blow. And, Quinn dies from a gunshot wound courtesy of Sam.

Sam’s boyfriend (who is thankfully cool… or is he?) calls the good cops to come to the scene. Mindy gets out of the hospital and we discover that Gale will survive. And, somehow Chad is an immortal who lives once again. Sam takes a long look at her father’s Ghostface mask and that’s the end of that saga.

Scream VI does a lot of new things, including the opening scene, having three killers, showing two killers in masks working together, and a Gale phone call. But there are a lot of things that line up with Scream 2. The college campus setting in another state, a vengeful parent of a Ghostface killer, and a red herring boyfriend who turns out to be cool comes to mind. But, it proves that this franchise can indeed be successful without Sidney Prescott.

The Stab Franchise: A World Within a World

There are more Stab films in the Scream universe than actual Scream movies. As of Scream (2022), there are eight Stab movies in the universe, although we get to see little if any of them. There’s a delightful Stab movie website of fan-made films that imagine what happens in this faux franchise. Apparently, the first couple of films follow Sid’s life relatively close with Tori Spelling portraying Sidney.

But, Stab 3 goes a bit rogue with scripts that have Gale Weathers dying (or being the killer), random characters coming into the fold, and nothing making sense. We see this film feature heavily in Scream 3 with that film fizzling after Roman, well, kills the whole cast. For no good reason, Stab 5 includes elements of time traveling, which Scream 3 character Jenny Randall says is the worst installment. Richie later confirms this by claiming the franchise spun out of control.

We get glimpses of Stab 6 and 7, especially in Scream 4‘s inception of an opening sequence as well as Scream (2022). In the latter, Sam’s boyfriend Richie is trying to get up to speed with Woodsboro’s deadly history by watching Stab films. We later find out the truth about his twisted fandom and disappointment that the eighth Stab film (a complete reboot of the franchise) doesn’t honor the true fans, which leads him and Amber to committing their crimes in hopes for a requel. Interestingly, Sidney is not in this film, which much be a first for the franchise.

As we see, the Stab films no longer follow the original story, much like real-life long running horror franchises do. Stab does play a very small role in Scream VI with Jason and Greg’s love for the franchise. Bailey also mentions how much Richie likes the franchise. And, we do see a bit of Stab paraphernalia in that Ghostface shrine as well. But it is not a core part of the plot, which is honestly a good thing.

Classic Tenets and Theories of Scream

There are quite a few staples in the Scream universe. The most obvious one is the franchise’s overall approach to horror. Scream is well known for being very, very meta with a human killer. Ghostface may look like an apparition but it’s always been a flesh and blood person behind those masks. Scream (2022) and Scream VI both lean towards a more menacing and ruthless take; however, he/she/they are not some super, unkillable being like Michael Myers.

Speaking of Ghostface, he mostly looks the same as the original with the exception of aesthetic upgrades to his mask. Some versions of the eyes and mouth are more curved and/or elongated but the basic design is the same. The voice changing device also looks connected to the mask now for easier use.  Mask aside, the black robe, boots, and classic knife to slice and dice complete the look.

The catchphrase “Hello, Sidney” has become a horror classic. It came from the first time Sidney speaks to the killer on the phone and continues to pop up throughout the franchise. In fact, Hello Sidney is the name of a very popular fan website dedicated to all things Scream. “Do You Like Scary Movies?” also continues to be popular among fans, too.

The use of telephones is key, too. Ghostface loves to verbally terrorize his victims over landline phones, cell, and now text messages. It’s been an interesting transition from seeing Billy Loomis become a suspect for having a rare cell phone in 1996 to the new Ghostface using Amber’s number to “text threaten” Tara. Somehow, landline phones are a mainstay in this universe, even in 2022.

Much of the franchise plays out like a whodunit mystery. But unlike Scooby-Doo where someone unmasks the suspect, they do the honors themselves. There’s lots of red herrings, accusations, and looking at horror movie tropes to attempt to figure it out. And, the gag is, the characters are terrible at sussing out the truth. Well, except Randy, who did guess that Billy was the killer in Scream. But he was only partially right, not seeming to seriously suspect Stu until the very end.

And Gale gets kudos for figuring out that Jill is a killer in Scream 4, even if it was in the eleventh hour. Scream (2022) finally lets Dewey get at least one of the killers right, telling Sam that it’s probably her boyfriend. It’s not clear if he was being completely serious or just snarky. A part of the fun is discovering who is behind the mask at the end. And, with two killers, there’s the challenge of trying to figure out who killed who. Mindy does a good job at discovering who two of the killers are in Scream VI, correctly guessing Ethan (who’d she had always suspected) and Detective Bailey. But even she didn’t see Quinn coming.

Of course, there are always weird theories. The first one is that Stu is somehow alive. This is wild because Sidney literally barbecues his head with a TV. I am no medical expert, but I am sure a human cannot survive that. Those fans thought Stu would somehow pop up in the upcoming movie. And, in a sense they were right. The video clip that Richie watches of the latest Stab film does feature actor Matthew Lillard as the flamethrowing Ghostface. We get a Stu mention in Scream VI when Kirby and Mindy ponder if he is still alive or not. Kirby says he’s certainly dead but Mindy seems to think otherwise, so the Stu rumors continue.

Another farfetched one is that Randy is alive. We saw his lifeless, bloody body and Mrs. Loomis admitted to stabbing him to death. And there’s a memorial to him in the Meeks-Martin household. But somehow people think he may have survived his injuries and went into hiding. Actor Jamie Kennedy has shot this down before but even his words won’t dash the hope of Randy lovers.

Now, a more plausible “might be alive” comes with Angelina. Ghostface appears to stab Angelina in Scream 3 but it mostly happens offscreen. She’s dragged away and we never see her (or her body) again. People believe Roman faked stabbing her so she could appear and help him later but instead, she ran away scot-free. It’s not impossible but Roman was a selfish, whiny dude. If anything, he would have killed her once she was no longer useful to him. Many fans believe that she was a second killer in the film. But so far there’s no hard evidence to suggest otherwise.

Scream VI sort of sets up a new “secret killer” theory too with Danny possibly being a fourth killer. We spell it out further in this post, but here are a few quick thoughts. He could have been helping redirect the Core Four from the Quinn “death” scene so that Bailey could stage everything. And his role in that subway split seems awfully suspicious. We know little to nothing about him, so what if he has a connection to Sam’s past in some way?

The one theory that we now know is true is that Kirby is alive. Scream (2022) confirms that she did not die in Scream 4. Clever fans saw a sidebar video clip about an interview she did and her number was in Dewey’s cell phone. And she did appear in sixth Scream film, filling the void that Sidney left as a legacy character.

There’s also the number seven. Until the events of Scream (2022), there were seven Ghostface killers and seven Stab movies. The original film also had seven deaths (including Billy and Stu). The Scream movie Twitter account also posted seven drops of blood a while back, which was a correct hint at the trailer coming seven days later. From a spiritual sense, it is the number of completion and represents the place between life and death.

As we know, this universe is certainly not complete with the possible exception of Sidney’s story, which wasn’t the original intention. But Scream (2022) does complete Dewey’s story in the most tragic way. And it serves as a passing of the torch to a new group of survivors, in a sense bringing the ongoing chapter of this story to a close. There are also seven main characters (not really counting the random sheriff’s offscreen death) who die in this film as well, including the two killers.

Scream VII Thoughts and Potential Suspects

At this point, we don’t know if a Scream VII is coming our way or not. But there are some possibilities to explore in this film. It could mirror Scream 3 and bring up a killer who is tied to Sam in a way that reframes what we thought we knew. Like Sidney’s mom Maureen did years ago, Sam also left Woodsboro for a stretch of time. We know that she got together with Richie and was living in another part of California. But they didn’t know each other that long. What else happened with Sam in that five year timespan? Did she perhaps make any enemies who would want to harm her? Sam and Tara’s mom as well as Tara’s dad are MIA so what’s up with them?

We also don’t know much about what’s going on with Billy’s other relatives. As far as we know, his father Hank is still alive. Does he know the truth about Sam? And Billy could have a sibling who wants to cause Sam harm for some reason. Or, perhaps one of Billy’s victims has a family member who wants revenge of some sort. Sam is the final girl now, so the story must center near or around her in some way. But this story needs to have Chad in it, who is essentially the franchise’s new Dewey now. And, Mindy and Tara complete this Core Four, so it must work all of their stories into one.

We will have to wait and see if the Scream franchise will continue to move forward.

Originally published on November 29, 2021.

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Demonic possessions and exorcisms that test the faith of true believers have long been horror movie staples. But in The Pope’s Exorcist, we’ll see things going to the next level. After all, the Pope would only get involved if true trouble were at hand.

Take a look at The Pope’s Exorcist‘s trailer below and get ready to face the unholy demons that have come to challenge Russell Crowe.

This trailer poses a curious question. If the Pope’s exorcist is the highest rank of exorcist there is, who then will come to exorcise the exorcist if he himself gets possessed? Could it be the Pope himself? Or does he not do that kind of thing? It’s quite the riddle and one we bet you can’t say ten times fast. But it seems like that’s exactly what the demon is after in this movie. We better hope he doesn’t get his way. Although there would be a true irony to it if he did.

The synopsis for The Pope’s Exorcist reveals more about the story behind the chilling adventures we’ll witness. The synopsis notes:

Inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican (Academy Award®-winner Russell Crowe), The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden.

There is a lot more that needs unpacking here. We’ll get a look at the files of the Vatican, a harrowing possession by a terrifying demon, and, of course, the cherry on top, a centuries-old conspiracy. What could the Pope be hiding? If anyone can find out, it’s his exorcist. And we can’t wait to find out for ourselves when The Pope’s Exorcist releases on April 14.

The post THE POPE’S EXORCIST Trailer Pits Russell Crowe Against Next-Level Demons appeared first on Nerdist.

In 2019, the groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror gave us a vital education. Based on Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman’s 2011 scholarly text Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present, it resonated deeply with Black horror fans, teaching us something new about a genre that we all have a complex relationship with. For those of us who have been into horror for a while, our resources prior to Horror Noire included sites Mark H. Harris’ Blackhorrormovies.com, a digital Rolodex of films by and about us. It has the perfect blend of humor, information, and analysis about horror’s Black flicks over several decades.

Now, Dr. Coleman and Mr. Harris have joined their brilliant minds together to bring us The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar, a brilliant exploration of Black horror to add to your collection. (Let’s call it The Black Guy Dies First for brevity’s sake.) Nerdist caught up with the authors to discuss the book, their gateway into horror, and hopes for the genre’s future. 

Nerdist: What drew you into the world of horror?

Mark H. Harris: Well, I’ve kind of always been interested in the darker side of storytelling. One of the earliest horror movies I remember watching was Night of the Living Dead. And I was fascinated by the fact that the main character was a Black guy. And it was a black and white movie, which to me seemed ancient. So the fact that the lead character was this Black guy who was bossing white people around and slapping them and stuff, and he was the hero of the story was really fascinating. Then, on top of it, he ended up dying at the end.

It really struck me as a child… I think it was probably 12 or so when I watched it [for the first time]. It reflected the realities of life. Not everything has a happy ending. And you can tell a story that’s a great story and not have the people walk into the sunset and everything be great. That’s kind of what horror does. It looks at the darker side of life and how things don’t always have happy endings. And it just really resonated with me. So that sent me down the horror spiral, I think.

Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman: Romero is going to loom large in this first response. I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My family is still there. And that’s obviously where Night of the Living Dead and the Dead films were filmed in or around. So there was this sort of omnipresence of Romero growing up. He was at Carnegie Mellon University and I was even a student at CMU. At one point, it sort of felt like, “Oh, I’m walking in the footsteps of George Romero.” …There’s something about Night of the Living Dead.

And I will have to admit that much later than most [people], I didn’t quite understand it as a proper horror movie because I was so focused on the character Ben, portrayed by Duane Jones, and what was happening there. I didn’t have that language at the time, but it felt very ethnographic. Night of the Living Dead has real Pittsburghers in it that other people may not know, but we recognized them. And so it sort of hit different for Pittsburghers. That [film] was probably my introduction to social justice questions. Understanding that there were narratives about anti racism that we should be engaging with. So that is how I got into it. 

That explains why this film is such a cornerstone in your work! It was truly revolutionary at the time. 

Coleman: Yes… Ben represented something else that was so powerful. Now, horror has been with me for so long. And there’s a blurring of genres for me, because we talk a lot about horror. And sometimes people are so serious about the horror genre. Horror is super funny. And I write a lot about comedy and I laugh until my cheeks hurt sometimes with these horror films. And so in that way, because I don’t fully immerse myself in the super gross out horror, it’s easy for it to be in my life because it’s super entertaining.

Absolutely. When it comes to The Black Guy Dies First, it feels like a continuation of what we saw in the Horror Noire books and documentary, both of which are vital additions to Black horror history. How do you think this book expands on that previous work and adds something new to the conversation?

Harris: I think it serves as a good companion piece to Horror Noire. It’s designed to be a little less academic [than the book] and have more popular appeal. It has more humor and little lists and sidebars and stuff but it doesn’t touch on a lot of the same topics… We’re taking more of an entertaining kind of aspect to kind of draw people in before we drop the big message.

I love the marriage of humor and knowledge. The Black Guy Dies First has a universal appeal in many ways, but some of the humor is absolutely for us. It’s so enjoyable and meant for only us to understand.  Robin, how do you think that it really expands on Horror Noire?

Coleman: Mark is absolutely right. And Mark has been so deeply involved, including the second edition of Horror Noire, which came out in November, more than 10 years after the first edition. So it was happening at the same time as The Black Guy Dies First and there was a lot of conversation. The first Horror Noire is very much a scholarly text. There’s a significant theoretical, undergirding there, there’s a different reliance on data, the audience and readership is different, even though I can’t get away from the accessible tone in my writing in some ways, which makes it a popular text to be adopted in the classroom.

But Horror Noire is very US based and though The Black Guy Dies First focuses a lot on US cinema, because that’s what we know, I would say that we’ve done a good job of also gesturing outside of US bounds. And you’re absolutely right, this is a FUBU book. It’s for us by us… But I also do think it’s clearly a love letter to the genre from two people who are big fans.

Yeah, and there’s so much encompassed in about 300 pages of content. How did you two partner together to tackle such an expansive project? 

Coleman: it really all starts with Mark’s Blackhorrormovies.com website. Mark is a horror scholar, super smart, and has a really nice writing style that is accessible. That is what the framework of The Black Guy Dies First is. And I relied heavily on his website as a resource to write the first edition of Horror Noire. There’s so many voices out there who will dissuade you from taking horror, particularly Black horror, seriously.

But Mark’s website isn’t just a laundry list of films. He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge and the way that he’s writing about the films on that site lets you know that he’s a brilliant scholar who understands the genre in front of and behind the screen… And then I totally turned into a fangirl and called him and said, “We got to do something,” and it was out of the blue… And it actually happened. So I’ve been in his life as a sort of writer-scholar for almost a decade. And I knew—he might have not known—but I knew that eventually we were going to partner on a project together because he is really a smart, gorgeous writer. And so I think that’s my definition of the process. I’m sticking to it. 

There are so many Black writers who looked to Blackhorrormovies.com for inspiration and guidance, myself included! 

Harris: Yeah. I think Robin definitely has the drive that I did not have. If it wasn’t for her, I would still be sitting on my sofa just writing for myself, basically. But I think she kind of pulled me into this world and made me realize that it is possible for us to write an actual book. Like, I never envisioned that I would write a book. Even on my website, I was just doing it for fun… I think it goes to show that you just write about what you like, you know, find your own little niche, and then things can happen for you. 

Coleman: There’s a lot more books in Mark and a lot of great ideas. So we’re not done hearing Mark’s incredible voice!

I certainly hope we get more! Let’s dig into a book just a bit. In chapter three, you get into horror that’s infused with social commentary and analysis. I love the line where you say “Black horror is our social syllabus.” I’d love to hear both of you expand on that statement. 

Harris: That was your line [Robin]. That was a good one. 

Coleman: I want to preface by saying that I’m not saying every horror movie needs to be a message movie, and it doesn’t need to always center either black trauma or struggle… I’m not saying that. But the pure existence of Black horror in some ways is an intervention on those systems and structures that confined Blackness in the first place, right? The horror genre often allows us to break out of that. What I find really interesting is that if it’s a US horror movie, most often you have to reflect on the trauma, not the torture porn trauma that people talk about with slavery, but the institution of racism in the US in the first place. It looms large in Black American stories.

And so Black horror often turns kind of pedagogical. That social syllabus is not only an examination of those structures, but it also offers solutions, which I love. And in horror, the solution isn’t always simple. In fact, the solution in horror is wholly uncivil in its approach. And so we learn a lot about the civil rights movement and civility and respectability, and how to show up. And Black horror was like, “I see you, respectability politics, and I’m going to throw that out, and I’m going to eviscerate you.” And these are the powerful, symbolic solutions to a country that hasn’t always loved us. 

All of this. Absolutely true. Mark, what are your thoughts? 

Harris: I think horror in general has always been kind of a metaphorical genre that will often have deeper meaning beneath the surface. The monsters might represent something else. [With] Dawn of the Dead, there were a lot of messages about consumerism, you know, and Rosemary’s Baby was talking about the role of women. So I think when you infuse race into it, like you said, it’s kind of part and parcel with American society, everything to do with America has race, we’ve woven into the fabric.

I think when you have race in horror, it will inevitably—even if it doesn’t mean to—have  some sort of social impact. Just the image, for instance, of a Black person being killed in a violent manner will trigger some people to say, “Oh, this is too close to home, too close to instances of police brutality.” So it’s always some sort of social inclination to imagery of Black horror, whether or not it’s really intended.

Yeah, for sure. And there’s also intersectionality within our identities, too. One of the things that you cover in the book towards the end was LGBTQ representation in horror. The pitfalls are disheartening, because I see horror as something that is very othered and outside the “norm.” So it is kind of inherently queer by definition. What do you think about the shifts in Black LGBTQ characters and do you think it will improve in our current landscape?

Harris: I think we’re at a crossroads right now with Black horror in general. It could go in a number of different ways. This whole resurgence of Black horror really kicked off in 2017 with Get Out, so we’re at the five or six year mark, where historically things can either fade out like the Blaxploitation era or the ‘90s urban movie era when Hollywood eventually found something else to pay attention to. Or [Hollywood] can find new voices to carry on…  We’re at a key moment right now where we need to have voices who are willing to support Black queer stories and have studios and distributors willing to give them a chance. 

It’s so important to see that representation in mainstream media. Yes, we do have lots of indie creatives who are making excellent and diverse content, but the mainstream still matters. Those films get big budgets and marketing and open doors for more stories. 

Coleman: I think you’re absolutely right. I’ve pointed to technology as the next frontier. People have better access to digital technologies, and they’re saying, “We’re not going to wait for Hollywood, we’re gonna make our own.” That’s incredible but diversity in sexualities and genders needs to be mainstream and accessible, they can’t sit in the indie realm. 

Right. Now that we are in this new and hopeful era, what do you want to see in Black horror? 

Harris: I just hope that we get more voices. Right now, Jordan, Peele is kind of the dominant voice, and he’s kind of the representation of all Black horror. And I think there are so many other voices out there that can be elevated as well. Other than him, there haven’t been too many regular Black directors, in the horror genre, that have gotten a lot of publicity and mainstream release… But, thanks to Jordan Peele, hopefully people realize that the genre can be taken seriously. It can win Oscars, if it’s nominated. And it can be artistic and break grounds… Hopefully, studios will stop looking for “the next Get Out” and have a broader vision about how Black stories can be told.

Coleman: I have to pick up Mark’s thread. I don’t think every Black horror film has to be pedagogical and our social syllabus. Rachel True said it best in the Horror Noire documentary: “Everybody lives or everybody dies.” And that encapsulates what I want from my Black horror. Sometimes I just want it to be horror. I want it to be entertaining, it doesn’t have to be deep social commentary. There are so many inventive stories that are rooted in Blackness that can be told, and I’m waiting for that. And it doesn’t all have to be Get Out. It doesn’t have to be powerful social commentary, elevated horror, all of that… Sometimes it can just be everybody dies.

The Black Guy Dies First is currently available for purchase.

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James Gunn’s big DCU announcement slate was a mix of iconic characters like Superman and Green Lantern, mixed with deep cuts like The Authority. But among the deepest cuts was the news that a Gunn-written animated series based on the Creature Commandos was already in production. If you’ve never heard of the Creature Commandos, you’re hardly alone. This was a very short-lived DC group from the early ‘80s. It’s had one or two revivals in the decades since. Although largely, they’ve remained forgotten. So what’s the story when it comes to these kooky monsters? It all goes back to something that largely doesn’t exist anymore—war comics.

The Classic Universal Monsters, Only as Soldiers

Back in the ‘40s through ‘70s, war comics were a staple of the industry. Baby Boomer kids read dozens of titles about World War II exploits. Comics with titles like All-American Men of War, Our Army at War, and many more filled comic book spinner racks. Even Marvel got in on the action, with Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos. But by the late ‘70s, superheroes dominated. Together with the anti-war movement, exploitation of real-life bloody conflicts no longer seemed cool, and sales dropped. One of the few titles still limping along by the early ‘80s was Weird War Tales, which survived by mixing horror and sci-fi with military combat stories.

In 1980, writer J. M. DeMatteis, famous for his work on Amazing Spider-Man, and later, Justice League International, went to editor Len Wein with a concept of classic monsters fighting in World War II, called the Creature Commandos. The basic idea behind Creature Commandos was actually a pretty great one. Get the classic Universal Monsters, or public domain versions of them, and turn them into an elite group of soldiers. According to DeMatteis, Wein said, “‘That’s so silly that it will work. Let’s do it.’ And we did it and it was silly and nothing came of it and the book died anyway.”

Still, it didn’t die right away, and the book continued for two more years, until DC did away with all their war books for good.

Welcome to Project M

The monsters known as the Creature Commandos came from Project M, a top-secret government organization created during the second world war. They specialized in “experimental biotechnology and necromancy.” Project M (M for Monster, naturally) recruited Warren Griffith (a werewolf), Sgt. Vincent Velcro (a vampire), Pvt. Elliot “Lucky” Taylor (a Frankenstein-style monster), and Dr. Myrna Rhodes (a gorgon). They later added another weird WWII hero, the G.I. Robot, another creation of Project M. Once his own adventures ended, DC folded him in with the Commandos. Robots could be scary too, right?

For a couple of years in Weird War Tales, the Creature Commandos tore apart Nazi soldiers and fought dinosaurs in the South Pacific. Who wouldn’t want to read about that? After Weird War Tales ended, the Creature Commandos were spotted with the legions of characters fighting in Crisis on Infinite Earths. And then, they largely disappeared from comics for 15 years. In the grim n’ gritty ‘80s and ‘90s era of comics, DC perhaps considered them too silly. But by the early 2000s, writers like Grant Morrison made it okay to embrace wackier concepts at DC again. They gave the Creature Commandos another shot—this time, at last, in their own title.

21st Century Monsters

In 2000, writer Timothy Truman and artist Scot Eaton brought the team back from the grave (so to speak), in an eight-part mini-series. They upgraded the group for the 21st century. Luckily, as monsters and robots, the Creature Commandos were pretty much immortal. Except for their poor human leader, who they replaced with another regular Joe, Captain Lucius Hunter. They went by the name M-Team Alpha, and were a special ops unit. They added new members, analogues of other classic movie monsters. Aten was a living mummy, and Bogman was a riff on the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Aside from their mini-series, they only appeared here and there, like as unwitting agents of Maxwell Lord in a Justice League story.

In the New 52 line-wide reboot of the DC Universe, the Creature Commandos returned as agents of the secret organization SHADE. This time, the Frankenstein-like member was actually Frankenstein’s monster. His Bride also joined him. It’s unclear if they are still a part of the DC Universe, but since much of the old continuity was recently restored, we imagine the originals are still out there somewhere. About a decade ago, they even got their own animated shorts for DC Nation on Cartoon Network, which you can view above. The Creature Commandos also popped up in the animated kid’s show, Batman: The Brave and the Bold. But these were brief, under-the-radar appearances.

The Creature Commandos’ DCU Future

Regardless of their lack of any big comic book or cartoon success, the concept is ripe for exploitation in other media, and seems right in James Gunn’s wheelhouse. His seven-episode HBO Max animated series will feature Rick Flag, Sr., as well as Batman villain Doctor Phosphorus. Weasel from Suicide Squad is part of the group, as is Nina Mazursky, a Project M scientist from the comics. But the leads will be Eric Frankenstein and his Bride—no werewolves or vampires yet. Maybe Gunn thinks they’re played out, and wants less of a classic monsters vibe.

If anyone can make the Creature Commandos into household names, we bet it’s the guy who did the same for a talking tree and wise guy raccoon.

The post Who Are the Creature Commandos? DC Comics’ Monster Soldiers, Explained appeared first on Nerdist.

Listen, one day, you’re feasting on honey in the Hundred Acre Woods, going on wholesome adventures with your best friends. And the next day, you’re a horror movie monster. It could happen to any Disney character. Actually, it couldn’t. But on the rare occasions that Disney characters end up in the public domain like Winnie the Pooh now has, it definitely will happen. And honestly, we welcome it. Seeing Winnie the Pooh starring in his own horror movie is amazing. Seeing the iconic bear reimagined as a nightmarish slasher monster speaks to a delightfully imaginative spirit that really inspires us. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is going to be just great, we know it. And we can’t wait to see it in theaters… And its sequel, when it comes.

A Winnie the Pooh Horror Movie Sequel Is Officially a Go

That’s right, the first Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey hasn’t actually released yet, but Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 is officially on the way. It even has a poster.

More blood. More honey. And friends gathering to take revenge. That certainly sounds ominous, but its sweet news to our ears. Sounds like we may get to meet even more denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood. We hope this doesn’t spell Pooh’s doom, though. It would not feel the same without him.

Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey in Theaters

Yes, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey will officially head to the big screen. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fathom Events will bring this Winnie the Pooh horror movie to U.S. theaters. Additionally, it will release on the big screen in the U.K., Mexico, and Canada. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was only slated to release in theaters for one day, on February 15. But now its theatrical run has been extended to over a week. Tickets are available from 2/15-2/23. That’s quite the opening play for an indie horror movie about a scary bear.

You can check out the trailer for the Winnie the Pooh horror movie here.

About the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey Horror Movie

Here’s what we know about this horror take on Winnie the Pooh. According to its IMDb page, the movie “follows Pooh and Piglet as they go on a rampage after Christopher Robin abandons them.” Additionally, it adds “A horror retelling of the famous legend of Winnie the Poo.” We aren’t sure if “Poo” vs. “Pooh” is intentional here. But we suppose Winnie the Poo could be the horror moniker of our famous bear.

Honestly, breaking a strong friendship like that could induce murderous intent in anyone. And Winnie the Pooh, Piglet, and Christopher Robin share a very intense bond. On the topic of our favorite pig, Piglet has definitely also seen better days.

Speaking to Variety, director Rhys Waterfield shares that Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey features Pooh and Piglet as “the main villains…going on a rampage” According to Variety, “They’ve been abandoned by a college-bound Christopher Robin.” Waterfield notes, “Christopher Robin is pulled away from them, and he’s not [given] them food, it’s made Pooh and Piglet’s life quite difficult. Because they’ve had to fend for themselves so much, they’ve essentially become feral. So they’ve gone back to their animal roots. They’re no longer tame: they’re like a vicious bear and pig who want to go around and try and find prey.”

We honestly still can’t tell if Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey presents us with supernaturally evil versions of Winnie and Piglet or if we’re just seeing terrible men in masks. We kind of lean toward the fact we’re supposed to read Winnie and Piglet as animals, but it’s hard to say for sure.

Regardless, we assume whatever vacation our obviously-human leads had planned in the Hundred Acre Wood is about to go very badly for them.

Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey‘s Cast

Amber Doig-Thorne, Maria Taylor, and Danielle Ronald star in this Winnie the Pooh horror movie. Additional characters have names like “mauled woman” and “caged man,” so that’s exciting. We do enjoy this predominantly woman-filled cast. And hope that these ladies show horror Winnie the Pooh and Piglet what’s what.

And it sounds like we can expect to see this movie sooner rather than later. Waterfield shares, “Because of all the press and stuff, we’re just going to start expediting the edit and getting it through post-production as fast as we can. But also, making sure it’s still good. It’s gonna be a high priority.”

For now, it sounds like we’ll only see the horror versions of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. Variety shares that “Tigger, will not appear” in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, “although there is a scene featuring Eeyore’s tombstone, the miserable donkey having been eaten by a starving Pooh and Piglet.”

Honestly, we can’t wait.

Originally published on May 26, 2022.

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M3GAN has become a national obsession. The movie about a killer robot doll crossed the $100 million dollar mark at the box office recently, and has found new life as the subject of countless viral videos. It seems we were all waiting for a new caustic killer robot doll to come into our lives, and the Model 3 Generative Android filled that void. Annabelle and Chucky who? Now, iconic actress and interviewer Drew Barrymore got in on the M3GAN love fest on her talk show, and donned the wig and outfit of the murder doll on her talk show. Her guest was the M3GAN‘s human star, Allison Williams. And as you can see in the video down below, things got appropriately creepy—and awkwardly hilarious.

We’re honestly not sure what is more disturbing, the M3GAN from the movie, or Drew Barrymore in full M3GAN drag. When Drew does the M3GAN crawl on all fours across the set, we appreciate her commitment to character. Williams seems genuinely creeped out by Drew, and we don’t blame her. That wig and outfit and those contact lenses? It’s all a tad nightmare-inducing.

Allison Williams was a good sport for going along with the whole bit for as long as she did. Drew probably came up with this whole thing for a chance to do the M3GAN dance, and we get it. We have a feeling every celebrity is going to want a part in the eventual M3GAN sequel. The 21st-century successor to The Twilight Zone’s Talky Tina is just that popular with everyone. But hopefully, that job goes to Drew. She’s clearly a big fan of the film. Plus, she worked with horror icon Wes Craven in the original Scream. Maybe it’s time she had another equally iconic horror movie scene with another deranged killer.

The post Drew Barrymore Channels M3GAN and Creeps Everyone Out appeared first on Nerdist.

Earlier this year Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain. (The original version. Not the Disney one who wears a red shirt.) When a famous property becomes free for all to use, any and every project you can imagine becomes a possibility. Artists can make almost anything they want when copyrights are no longer an issue. I know all of that, and yet I was still unprepared for what entering the public domain would mean for the beloved bear. Winnie the Pooh and Piglet are set to become slashers in Blood and Honey. And the only thing weirder than that sentence is what I’m about to write next: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey‘s newest trailers looks pretty damn good.

Remember when Ewan McGregor played an adult Christopher who reunites with his old little animal friends in the Hundred Acres Wood in the feel-good Christopher Robin? Yeah, Blood and Honey is the complete opposite Winnie the Pooh movie. In fact, it might be even more grotesque than the opposite of McGregor’s sweet film. Because this Blood and Honey trailer goes hard. Jason Vorhees hard.

In the Winnie the Pooh trailer, we see that Pooh and Piglet turned “wild” after their favorite human child abandoned them years earlier. When Christopher Robin returns as a grownup, he finds Pooh and Piglet have grown into giant monsters. And they’ve developed a taste for murder. What follows that discovery is a classic slasher flick. This movie even features young coeds imperiled during a getaway in the woods. We get to see even more of the action and blood in a recent special look.

There’s lots of blood, a little honey, and some genuinely creepy masks. But while this Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey horror movie trailer is equal parts funny (how can it not be?) and scary, there’s an underlying idea here that could make this movie so much better than just a gimmick. Blood and Honey could explore the dangers of revisiting the things we loved as kids and holding on to an idea of what they should be rather than dealing with what they are.

Yeah, I really did just make the case the Winnie the Pooh horror movie might have something meaningful to say about the pitfalls of modern fandom and nostalgia. Entering the public domain really does lead to some weird stuff. And, hey, if it’s trailer is anything to judge by, we can’t wait for Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey to release in full. Catch it in theaters on February 15, 2023.

Originally published on August 31, 2022.

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One of my favorite Christmas songs is Andy Williams’ bombastic rendition of “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”. But as much as I love it, part of it never made sense to me. In the bridge section, it says:

“There’ll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow.”

Okay, that bit’s fine, but the next line…

“There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories
Of Christmases long, long ago.”

What do scary ghost stories have to do with Christmas? They couldn’t just be referring to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, right? I mean, I never found that particularly scary. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that ghost stories, while not big in Christmas in the US, were and are a mainstay of the United Kingdom. In fact, it became a staple of television on Christmas night for a number of years on the BBC. In order to understand this televisual phenomenon, we first have to discuss the work of a writer named M.R. James.

Montague Rhodes James was an author, medievalist scholar, and provost of King’s College, Cambridge (1905–18), and of Eton College (1918–36). His work in these fields is still some of the most well-regarded, but his writings to amuse friends and colleagues at Christmas parties became his most known works. These were a series of short ghost stories he wrote in the early 1900s; eventually they saw publication in four volumes beginning with Ghost Stories of an Antiquary in 1904. Other volumes came out in 1911, 1919, and 1925.

These stories usually dealt with people such as himself: learned bachelors, often scholars or professors or members of the clergy (all things James knew very well); almost always, they dealt with the supernatural occurrences pertaining to the finding, stealing, or otherwise obtaining of some kind of ancient object. James also being one of the foremost authorities on antiquities wrote quite descriptively about the objects and imbued them with eeriness. The ghosts or supernatural entities were almost all malevolent in some fashion and were usually protecting the object through violence.

James’ work was first adapted to television by the BBC as a short film in 1968 as an episode of the documentary series Omnibus. This story, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, directed by Jonathan Miller, is one of the best-received adaptations still to date. It follows a Cambridge professor named James Parkin (Michael Hordern) who takes a holiday in the winter months at a seaside bed and breakfast. He’s incredibly snooty, deep in his own thoughts, and openly contemptuous of the other patrons’ discussions about the spiritual world.

Parkin finds an old whistle on the beach, buried a bit, and picks it up to study its Latin inscriptions. From there, Parkin suffers bad dreams of running on the beach from some unseen shape. Often, these appear onscreen as an amorphous cloth blowing in the wind. The dreams begin to bleed into reality and it’s clear something wants into his room, and might even be sleeping in the spare bed.

Whistle and I’ll Come to You was a surprise hit. Two years later in 1971, the producer/director Lawrence Gordon Clark got the chance to adapt another James story for broadcast on Christmas night. This led to eight straight years of this series, with the informal title A Ghost Story for Christmas. Clark himself directed seven of the eight. Five of these are other M.R. James stories’ one is a Charles Dickens story; and two are original works with a modern day setting.

The first of Clark’s adaptations is The Stalls of Barchester, which involves a learned man named Dr. Black (Clive Swift) who is looking into the diaries of the former Archdeacon of Barchester who died mysteriously some years prior. We see most of the story from the Archdeacon’s point of view, as he has taken over the position and house from his very old predecessor, who fell down the stairs at the age of 92. The younger cleric actually murdered his predecessor to take his job. Shortly thereafter, he begins to be haunted by images of a black cat and a cloaked figure, both of whom were carved into the church’s choir stalls.

This story is very creepy and set the stage nicely for the rest of the cycle, with the muted colors of early-70s BBC films. I love British horror films of the ’70s in general, and these fall right into that. All of the amazing grounds and architecture play nicely into stories of the macabre and supernatural. The Edwardian or Victorian-set entries are across the board my favorites of these, which Barchester and the next film fall into.

The 1972 Christmas ghost story was James’ A Warning to the Curious which again sees Swift play Dr. Black, this time spending a holiday at a Norfolk seaside community. An out-of-work banker and amateur archaeologist (Peter Vaughn) has come to find and dig up the lost crown of Anglia. He eventually does, but ever after seems to be pursued by a figure in a black cape running at him from far away. The presence never seems to be far away, and even after the man beseeches Dr. Black to put the crown back, the figure still chases him. We find out it is the ghost of the simpleminded groundskeeper who was hanged some 12 years prior for murdering the last man who came to dig up the crown.

In 1973, the cycle began being shorter, going from about 45 minutes down to a little over 30. The first of these is the supremely creepy Lost Hearts. The story follows a young orphan boy who arrives at the manor house of his elderly cousin, an eccentric scientist. The cousin seems very nice, but almost TOO concerned about the boy’s health. The house’s maid assures the boy the master is a good man, even taking in an orphan girl, and an Italian boy for a time. They each ran away unexpectedly, however. Strange. The boy begins to see ghostly images of the two children walking through the large house and grounds. Especially disturbing, he sees that their hearts have been removed. Maybe it has something to do with his cousin’s interest in alchemy…

Two more short James stories followed around Christmas of 1974 and 1975, adaptations of The Treasure of Abbot Thomas and The Ash Tree. The first is about a clergyman and his protege looking for the titular buried spoils somewhere on the abbey grounds; the second, takes place in the 1700s and finds an aristocrat inheriting a massive country estate with dark secrets. He has visions of his ancestor during a witch trial, where the man’s lover was hanged on the old Ash Tree. While neither lit my world on fire, they both have distinctly creepy visuals. The latter especially, which culminates in giant spiders with baby heads (yeah) attack attacking the hero at night.

The first non-James story is easily one of the best of the cycle. 1976’s The Signalman is an adaptation of a Charles Dickens story. Unlike James’ stories, which all deal with the ghosts of the past getting revenge on those who disturb them, this story is about the spectre of the future. Some years following a dreadful train crash in a tunnel, visions of that horrible night still plague a West Country signalman (Denholm Elliott). Particularly, the sight of a man waving his arms in front of his face.

He eventually tells his story to a traveler and he, too, begins to dream of the vision, a white-faced man without eyes. But this has more to do with the signalman having escaped the prior crash than it does with anything current. Some very effect, very spooky visuals coupled with Elliott’s wonderful performance make this a ghost story to remember.

The next two are a precipitous drop-off. 1977’s Stigma finds a woman beset with inexplicable and deadly injuries corresponding to the digging up of an old Celtic stone in her yard. 1978’s The Ice House from one-off director Derek Lister, deals with a man who finds weird things in a residential spa. Both of these took place in modern times and, truth be told, don’t hold a candle to the earlier ones. They come across much more as straight forward horror stories than the spooky ghost stories of earlier.

That ended the original cycle, but not the phenomenon of Ghost Stories for Christmas in Britain. A televised series of Christopher Lee as M.R. James himself reading various ghost stories premiered on BBC television in 2000. Four revival films adapting James’ stories aired on Christmas the next several years. These include A View from a Hill (2005); Number 13 (2006); a remount/revision of Whistle and I’ll Come to You in 2010 starring John Hurt; and The Tractate Middoth in 2013, written and directed by Mark Gatiss. That last story was followed by a documentary about M.R. James which was written and presented by Gatiss as well.

The tradition of Ghost Stories for Christmas lives on. In 2018, Gatiss wrote and directed The Dead Room, a contemporary-set original story about an aging horror radio presenter who is haunted by his past. In 2019, he returned to M.R. James with Martin’s Close, starring Peter Capaldi. 2021 saw another new Gatiss adaptation, The Mezzotint starring Rory Kinnear. I love that Gatiss has become the shepherd of the Ghost Stories for Christmas cycle and he continues that tradition to this very day.

On December 23, 2022, Gatiss will return with Count Magnus starring The Crown‘s Jason Watkins. It follows Mr. Wraxhall, author of travelogues, as he stumbles across an ancient manor house inhabited by a lonely Swedish aristocrat, the descendent of the late Count Magnus. Known locally as a merciless landowner who would burn down houses he felt encroached on his land – sometimes with tenants inside – Mr Wraxhall delves deeper into the tyrannical figure. He discovers the Count made an unholy pilgrimage to the Holy Land and legend has it he brought something, or someone, back with him. Mr Wraxhall’s inquiries leads him on a terrifying journey of discovery.

Count Magnus has long been one of Gatiss’ favorite James stories so it’ll be excellent to see what he’s done with it. While the cycle has been particularly hard to find in North America, the good folks at BritBox have added all of the above, plus some other ghost stories, to their service. And on Christmas Eve Eve of this year, Count Magnus joins the ranks.

I would recommend: Whistle and I’ll Come to You; The Stalls of Barchester; A Warning to the Curious; Lost Hearts; and The Signalman the most, and any of the works of M.R. James, which I read on a yearly basis. Any horror-loving Christmas fan will be delighted.

Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

Originally published November 23, 2020.

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If you’re looking for some extra body horror in your life this holiday season, Japanese manga creator Junji Ito has you covered. He’s teamed up with artist doooo for some downright creepy pieces that look like they’re made out of human flesh. Based on Ito’s Tomie manga series, there’s a cube with an eye that realistically blinks and a coin purse that looks like a mouth. Owning these pieces, which cost up to $4,300, is one way to show your fandom.

The manga series clearly has a large following, it has been adapted into nine movies so far. A different actress plays the titular character each time she regenerates, reminiscent of Doctor Who.

We came across these pieces thanks to Hypebeast. The Instagram video above that shows off how to make the eye cube blink is really something that will stick with you. Apparently, rubbing the corners of the fleshy cube causes the realistic looking eye to open and close. In the photo below, Ito poses with one of the mouth coin purses. You can pry the mouth open to reveal teeth and deposit coins, then close it up to keep them safe.  

There is other art for sale on doooo’s site, including mouth coin purses with stubble. He also makes USB drives and stamps shaped like human fingers. There’s even a blinking eye shaped like a mirrored disco ball, which isn’t any less creepy than the cube version. Phone cases and business card holders round out the collection.

If you’re looking for odd accessories but don’t want to go fully into human flesh, there’s purses shaped like sushi rolls and even a pigeon clutch. If, however, these cursed objects only make you more curious about Tomie, there’s plenty more content out there to consume. You can also watch Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, coming to Netflix January 19, 2023. 

Melissa is Nerdist’s science & technology staff writer. She also moderates “science of” panels at conventions and co-hosts Star Warsologies, a podcast about science and Star Wars. Follow her on Twitter @melissatruth. 

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Hereditary is one of the most disturbing and deeply unsettling horror films of the last decade—heck, the whole century so far, if you ask us. But unlike horror movies featuring identifiable monsters like Freddy or Jason, Ari Aster’s film doesn’t leave as much identifiable iconography to make easily sellable merch with. But that didn’t stop A24 from determining how to make the perfect Hereditary gift. And we must say, this gingerbread treehouse, like the one in the Hereditary where they worshipped the demon Paimon, is pretty incredible.

According to the official description, the Hereditary gingerbread house kit includes a cast iron mold plate, a plastic treehouse base, and a recipe card. It also comes with an instruction booklet and a tealight to illuminate your treehouse. Just for that super extra creepy factor to keep one up at night. The cast iron base builds one complete treehouse, as well as a gingerbread Peter, Paimon, as well as Paimon’s worshippers. They made the kit from food-safe plastic. The base includes a forest-floor textured base plate, four “birch” legs, a platform, and a ladder. You can see images of all the parts for this kit in the gallery below.

Click To View Gallery

Could this be the start of a whole slew of Hereditary products? Hey, if The Exorcist can get merch, and it’s maybe the most disturbing movie of all time, why not Ari Aster’s film? Sure, there’s been a few t-shirts and stickers of Toni Collette screaming, and a super creepy Paimon statue or two. But nothing compared to Aster’s follow-up film, Midsommar, which got a bunch of merchandise. We say it’s time for a whole line of Paimon products. If Black Phillip from A24’s The Witch gets a Funko Pop, surely Paimon deserves the same honor.

You can order the Hereditary gingerbread house now from the A24 site for $62.00.

The post HEREDITARY Gingerbread House Is a Super Creepy Holiday Gift appeared first on Nerdist.

Horror is history. Sometimes a better, more concise, and reflective history than what a textbook might provide. It’s a genre without barriers and line edits, where an artist or writer or filmmaker can get ugly, brash, and accusatory in an attempt to make sense of a world that can feel so senseless. Horror films have big things to say about societal unrest, in ways we’re not always aware of until we look back years later, with the knowledge of what comes next. Soviet panic in the ‘50s gave us body snatchers and giant bugs. Fear of hippies brought a wave of religious horror in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The “stranger danger” of the ‘80s conjured the Michaels and Freddys and Jasons, before a more humorous and meta strain of ‘90s teen slashers opened the door for post-9/11 torture porn. 

This year, plenty of bold new horror films have had big things to say about the times we live in. It is a time after a culture-shifting pandemic and continued global unrest that affirms (as Timothée Chalamet puts it) one thing: societal collapse is in the air. It’s hard to say which trend might emerge as the defining feature. Nor do we know what new trends will spawn from these seeds and go on to define a generation. But the following titles gave us plenty to chew on in a year where reality feels unquenchable and horror, by proxy, feels at a peak. From big-name blockbusters to the quieter stuff in the corner, here are five horror movies from 2022 with particularly pointed and topical commentary. 

Speak No Evil

The pandemic had a profound effect on how we interact with other humans—to put it lightly. Small talk is harder, communication warped; we’re so used to phones and Zoom that in-person conversations can feel stilted and awkward. But still, that human need to please and be amenable to others lingers, especially when we make new friends, and especially when we want nothing more than to feel normal again.

In Speak No Evil, Danish filmmaker Christian Tafdrup depicts the collision of two families on vacation: Bjørn and Louise, a Danish couple, along with their daughter Agnes, and Patrick and Karin, who are Dutch, with their son Abel. Drawn to one another, Patrick and Karin invite their new friends to their home. What begins as a normal gathering soon morphs into something far more sinister.

The boundaries and comfort of the Danes is constantly tested, in little ways that build into terror. We watch in horror as they ignore red flags in the name of being congenial—until it’s too late to go back. The result? One of the most disturbing horror finales of recent memory. And one that feels all too relatable in these linger COVID days, as we’re still figuring out how to be social again when the world has morphed into something unrecognizable, perhaps forever. 

Nope

Jordan Peele’s third directorial feature was bound to be an event by virtue of his involvement. Peele’s name is now synonymous with a certain type of mainstream horror: the smart, satirical, and lingeringly creepy kind. But Nope stands out for how brilliantly it defies convention, existing in the puzzling in-between of horror and conspiracy thriller.

The film follows a brother and sister, OJ and Emerald. The duo work on a family ranch that trains horses for film and TV productions. After their father’s mysterious and untimely death, they are in charge of a business they weren’t yet ready to lead. Oh, and they are being haunted by an unidentified object in the clouds above their farmhouse.

Nope isn’t at all what you might expect. What unfolds is a fable about what we lose when we profit from tragedy. It explores how it peels away at our humanity and corrodes our morals. Nope is a film ripe for interpretation, but one thing lingers: how deftly this film comments on influencer culture, where we’re all just one Instagram photo away from unexpected fame and fortune. In this film, the price we pay as we hunger for relevance is as scary as that big shadow in the sky. 

Watcher

Julia and Francis are a young American couple who move to Francis’ native Bucharest. They settle into an ornate, colorful, and airy apartment that feels conjured from a dream. But that dream curdles into nightmare for Julia. She soon notices a strange man staring at her from a building facing her new home. She learns there is a serial killer on the loose in the neighborhood; a man called the “Spider” by press, who targets young women, decapitating them.

Julia, haunted by this information, feels like someone is watching her at all times: in her home, in the grocery store, in a movie theater. What’s worse is that no one believes her, not even her husband. Chloe Okuno’s Watcher has shades of Rosemary’s Baby, another film about a beautiful young woman gaslit by the people in her own gothic apartment building.

But the film feels firmly 2022, a year when misogyny went mainstream once again, with the erosion of Roe v. Wade, a domestic abuse case gone ghoulishly viral, and a never-ending cycle of learning nothing from what culture did to women like Britney Spears—the sins of the past bound to repeat in perpetuity. I’d like to think that Watcher is a relic of the past; instead, it feels utterly expected to watch a murderous madman run loose while a woman answers for his crimes. 

Scream

Can you believe the new Scream film is meta? Who would have guessed? Lazy humor aside, the new film—the first in the series since Wes Craven’s passing—does the horror legend proud. Not everything works. The film is a little overstuffed with new characters. And some returning characters are carelessly weaved into the story in increasingly befuddling ways.

But the meat of the story, like all great Scream films, really gets its target generation. This time, the title itself is a meta-mockery of the “requel” trend; the soft reboots that keep popping up all over the place, borrowing original titles for full monetary impact. But this new Scream takes that commentary a step further. It offers a considered critique of weaponized fandom and cultish devotion to intellectual property.

As stan culture spirals out of control and entitled fans ruin literal lives in the name of fictional characters, it’s not hard to correlate this film’s killers with the people we see online every day, poisoning comment sections with chaotic menace behavior. Are we so far away from real crimes enacted by franchise fans pissed at how the latest Star Wars turned out? Probably not, and Scream reconciles with this culture we’ve created and continue to kindle. 

Halloween Ends

The most divisive film on this list is actually the new Scream’s self-fulfilling prophecy, in a way. Fans were furious at this film upon release, their anger bulldozing Jamie Lee Curtis’s victory lap as Laurie Strode, a character she’s been synonymous with for 45 years. What could have been a tender farewell to the most beloved scream queen of all time turned into fan outrage campaigns and pithy contemptment. And doesn’t that feel so perfectly 2022?

A time when we can’t seem to sever the symbiotic link between franchise worship and self. When we take our negative perception of a film as a personal slight of some kind. It almost doesn’t matter what Halloween Ends is even about—it’s on this list mostly for what it conjured. And yet, it’s extra pertinent for what the text itself says about the cycles of violence our fury creates. How an inability to heal, forgive, and reflect breeds new monsters.

Just as this list presupposes what 2022 might be remembered for, Halloween Ends presupposes what violent figure of myth we might conjure next. It could be something we rush to judge based on whispers and lies and conspiracy—when the full-bodied truth deserves an empathy we might have lost hold of for good. 

The post These 5 Horror Films Define the Social Climate of 2022 appeared first on Nerdist.

It’s almost Halloween! In the spirit of the spooky season Guillermo del Toro has blessed us with eight terrifying new horror stories under the banner of his new series Cabinet of Curiosities. From gothic family drama to gruesome body horror, there’s something for every horror fan. With tales from the makers of movies like The Babadook, Twilight, and Mandy, this is a real who’s who of genre creators. Some of the stories are even based on tales by del Toro! So once you’ve watched every one of the delightfully dark entries into the awesome Netflix anthology then join as we breakdown the most terrifying moment from each episode! 

“Lot 36” – The Dottie Monster

The opening episode of Cabinet of Curiosities introduces viewers to a desperate man, Nick, and his terrible debts. His quest to pay them off leads him down a dark path. It all begins when he purchases a storage unit filled with strange occult objects. Rather than fearing them, he covets their worth. It’s this choice and his own racist mean streak that ultimately lead him to a fate worse than death. The most shocking moment of the episode comes when Nick disrupts a spell that keeps a demon, Dottie, trapped inside the storage unit. Suddenly, a nightmare of tentacles awakens. The first monster of the season is also one of its most impressive. Slimy, prehensile, and straight out of Hell, this is a truly shocking and unforgettable creature brought to life brilliantly. 

“Graveyard Rats” – A Fate Worse Than Death

Though there is another unbelievable monster in the second entry of Cabinet of Curiosities, the most horrifying moment comes after its appearance. David Hewlett stars as graverobber Masson in this claustrophobic tale of another debt-ridden man. Hearing a rumor of a wild treasure to steal out of the depths of the graveyard, Masson begins his final scrabbling descent. But after he has faced down a giant rat and found spoils beyond his wildest dream, he must face his—and many others’—worst fear. Rather than escaping the graveyard, he ends up trapped in a coffin, buried alive with no way out. The worst is yet to come, as rats swarm him. We end the episode with Masson dead and a rodent emerging out of his mouth. 

“The Autopsy” – The Autopsy 

It’s probably no surprise that an episode called “The Autopsy” excels in the horror of the titular procedure. But David Prior’s tale still manages to surprise as F. Murray Abraham leads a story about a pathologist exploring a terrible disaster. As he begins his autopsy, he learns something awful. It wasn’t an accident and the body he’s operating on isn’t dead. In fact, it’s host to an alien parasite. In one of the most brilliant practical sequences of the series, the alien puppeteers its own body to do an autopsy on itself. It’s a wonderfully grotesque moment that perfectly matches the noir storytelling that has led us to it. And F. Murray Abraham gets a brutal hero moment as he cuts out his own eyes to beat the alien. See, if it cannot see, it cannot survive.

“The Outside” – RIP Martin Starr

Ana Lily Amirpour leans into the awkward in this cringe-inducing horror about the pressure to be perceived as beautiful. Kate Micucci leads as Stacey. She wants nothing more than to be a part of the popular clique at her bank job. Her husband, played by Martin Starr, loves her as she is but that’s not enough for Stacey. When she makes a strange connection with a late night infomercial, she becomes obsessed with a lotion called Alo Glo. Though the cream makes her break out in a horrible rash, she believes it will transform her, and she’s not wrong. Sadly for her husband, he can’t see the possibilities, so she kills him and turns his body into a taxidermized version of himself. It’s the most gruesome moment, made worse by how heartbroken he clearly is at what his wife is doing and her absolute lack of remorse. 

“Pickman’s Model” – The Feast

Arguably the most affecting episode this season is this haunting H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. Starring Ben Barnes as an artist named Thurber who discovers a dark and demonic truth in the art of the titular Pickman, the story is a gothic slow burn that never lets up. But its scariest sequence is actually spread throughout the episode as Thurber sees the feast for the demon. We first experience it in the bowels of his home, where we see human remains and rotting food laid out. The table is a nightmarish spread, and its attendants are the figures from Pickman’s paintings. But it’s only after Thurber kills Pickman and learns that his monstrous creations are based on reality that the most shocking moment occurs. As his now cursed wife prepares dinner, he realizes she’s preparing their own child as the main course. Horrific stuff. 

“Dreams in the Witch House” – The Witch’s Kiss

Cabinet of Curiosities boasts stunning creature work and haunting storytelling. In Catherine Hardwick’s H.P. Lovecraft-inspired entry we get a dark fairytale about Walter, a man whose all-consuming desire is to bring his dead sister back to life. After being kicked out of the Spiritualist Society, he discovers an odd unheard of potion that allows him to visit the Realm of the Dead. That just so happens to be where his sister’s spirit is kept by a witch called Keziah Mason. She’s a feat of impressive SFX, and in one of the most spooky scenes, Keziah grasps Rupert Grint’s Walter in a powerful embrace. Kissing him and sucking his soul, she claims that he is hers, something that we will later find out is true in the most awful sense. 

“The Viewing” – Perceiving the Obelisk

Panos Cosmatos brings his unique sensibilities to this delightfully trippy segment that follows a group of strangers brought together by an invitation. As the night goes on, their host (Peter Weller) entices them with substances, promises, and really great music. Eventually, though, they’re taken to see a magnificent and strange obelisk. It’s here that things get really strange. The Giger-esque rock is hiding something dark inside it. An otherworldly demonic presence emerges and begins to emit a powerful energy. It’s this that leads us to two wonderfully shocking moments. The first happens as one of the guests’ face melts Raiders of the Lost Ark style. Next we get a brilliant Scanners inspired head explosion. How much you enjoy this entry will likely depend on your taste for surreal slow burn. But you can’t deny those awesome explosive deaths. 

“The Murmuring” – The Haunting

A tragic domestic chamber drama, “The Murmuring” feels more like a play than a Netflix series. Jennifer Kent brings her emotionally driven gothic storytelling that made The Babadook such a success to this tale of grieving couple Nancy and Edgar. Their loss drives them further into their work studying birds. Moving to a rural isolated old house to get closer to the creatures they’re focusing on begins to take its toll on Nancy. Although this doesn’t have the kind of gross out moments some of the others boast, it still has some heart-stopping shocks. All of them come from the haunting that Nancy begins to experience. One of the most instantly breath-taking moments is the first time that she comes across the ghost of a young drowned boy. It’s the kind of jump scare that could cheapen the story, but instead it just adds to the tension and fear. 

Featured Image: Netflix

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The most wonderful time of the year is here! I like to call the final four months of the year “The ‘Ber Months” because they bring so much awesomeness. Sure, there is the holiday season complete with time off from work and fluffy films. But, before that, we get the greatness of spooky season in September and October. Depending on where you live, the weather might get a bit chillier and pumpkin spice everything is available. It’s also the time where scary things like ghouls, goblins, and Ghostface come out to play. And, of course, there’s always Nerdist’s infamous Nerdoween celebration throughout the month of October. So, to get you ready for all the creepy, witchy, and wonderfully frightening things, here’s a short list of spooky TV shows and movies coming out in September and October. 

Jump to: September Spooky Movies // October Spooky Movies

Spooky Movies and TV Shows Coming in September 2022 

101 Scariest Horror Movie Moments of All-Time 

When & Where to Watch: Weekly releases starting September 7 on Shudder 

The shower scene in Psycho. The harrowing chase at the beginning of It Follows. The bloodthirsty vampire nurse running towards the camera in Blacula. There are some iconic horror moments that will never, ever leave our minds. Shudder’s new eight episode series will take a look at 101 of those bone-chilling and shocking moments, breaking down exactly why they make our spine tingle. Guests like Tony Todd, Keith David, Greg Nicotero, and more bring in their creative horror expertise to spark new insights and conversations to classic scenes. 

Barbarian 

When & Where to Watch: In theaters September 9 

Everything about this film is a glaring red flag. Staying in some weird Airbnb with a total stranger. Investigating a noise in some basement. Walking down a dark hallway of terror under the weird Airbnb you’re staying at with a stranger. No. Nope. Nah. But, despite boneheaded actions, this seems like a fun and spooky movie to experience in theaters.

Pearl

When & Where to Watch: In theaters September 16

The prequel for X slides will dig into the story of the infamous Pearl, played by Mia Goth. We already think its a great film and thankfully there’s already a third movie to make this franchise a trilogy.

Smile 

When & Where to Watch: In theaters September 30

Smile’s unsettling trailer still haunts us to this day. The film follows a doctor who witnesses something traumatic with one of her patients. She eventually starts to question her own mind as strange things happen around her. 

Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror 

When & Where to Watch: September 30 on Shudder 

Bryan Fuller executive produces this four-part documentary series about the history of the LGBTQ+ community in horror. It will span from highlighting queer pioneers like Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein, to characters and themes (both overt and queer-coded) in horror offerings. 

Hocus Pocus 2 

When & Where to Watch: September 30 on Disney+

Hocus Pocus 2 still feels surreal. The original film is a Halloween staple and beloved by many folks who like less horror and more general spookiness. Hocus Pocus 2 is bringing back the infamous Sanderson sisters in all their wonderfully eccentric glory and you can watch it every single day in October if you want to. We won’t judge you. 

Spooky Movies and TV Shows Coming in October 2022

Interview With the Vampire 

When & Where to Watch: Weekly releases starting October 2 on AMC 

This infamous Anne Rice story is coming to television. And what better time to introduce a period vamp drama than October? Lestat and Louis will be lovers and we love to see it. 

Mr. Harrigan’s Phone

When & Where to Watch: October 5 on Netflix

Imagine a sweet coming-of-age story of a shy boy who spends time with an elderly gentleman. The boy even helps his friend learn how to use an early iPhone. Now imagine that the old man is possibly (probably) a killer and dies. And the boy gets into a fight and wants revenge, so his friend answers his call from the grave. That’s what Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is about (it is based on a Stephen King short story, btw) and we are into it.

Hellraiser 

When & Where to Watch: October 7 on Hulu 

Hellraiser is the latest franchise to get a reimagining. This time, Clive Barker is partnering with Hulu to put a modern spin on his 1987 classic. Hellraiser will star Jamie Clayton as the infamous Pinhead with a story about a young woman who finds a box (you know, that one) and deals with the supernatural forces behind its power. 

Werewolf by Night

When & Where to Watch: October 7 on Disney+

The MCU is currently it its horror bag and we love it. The taste of horror in the second Doctor Strange movie as well as the upcoming Blade film is all exciting stuff. With Werewolf by Night, we get a black and white horror romp about the titular character as a group of monster hunters go on a dangerous mission.

Spirit Halloween

When & Where to Watch: October 11 on VOD

This is quite the wild addition to this year’s lineup. Spirit Halloween will bring the famous store to life in a scary way. That’s right, all the terrors will come alive and try to take out a band of kids. Oh yeah, and Christopher Lloyd is in it, too. It will get a limited theatrical release on September 30 but it won’t become widely available until October.

Halloween Ends 

When & Where to Watch: In theaters October 14 and same day streaming on Peacock

The final installment in the new Halloween trilogy is coming fresh off the heels of last years’ Halloween Kills. Laurie Strode and Michael Myers will face each other one last time in a death battle. And, while we don’t think there is a way to kill MM, this seems to be the swan song for Laurie, who became an iconic final girl back in 1978. Let’s see how it (and possibly this franchise) will end. 

The Curse of Bridge Hollow

When & Where to Watch: October 14 on Netflix

Stranger Things actress Priah Ferguson (whom we know and love as Erica) stars alongside Marlon Wayans and Kelly Rowland in this spooky small town family film. This family is going against an ancient spirit whose making Halloween costumes come to life. Very Goosebumps vibes indeed.

V/H/S/99 

When & Where to Watch: October 20 on Shudder

This found footage horror anthology series is coming back for its fifth installment. As the name suggests, V/H/S/99 will take place in 1999. Remember those days? It was before Facebook and Twitter when DVDs were all the rage. And we kinda thought the world was going to experience a technological doomsday. Perfect setting for horror happenings. 

Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities

When & Where to Watch: October 28 on Netflix 

What would happen if you opened the cabinet to your darkest thoughts and fears? Well, we get to see what is in del Toro’s mind in this Netflix anthology series. It will feature eight episodes to frighten you and make your skin crawl this spooky season.

Wendell & Wild 

When & Where to Watch: October 28 on Netflix 

Wendell & Wild follows the story of its titular characters—played by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele—in a dark underworld as they dream of starting something brighter. They connect with Kat (Lyric Ross), a girl in the Land of the Living with her own sad story. The stop-motion animation film by Henry Selick is a wonderfully wacky world with a style that is wholly unique. 

Run Sweetheart Run

When & Where to Watch: October 28 on Prime Video

Single mom Cherie (Ella Balinska) is swept off her feet by her boss’ big client Ethan (Pilou Asbæk), a charismatic businessman. But, once they are alone, she discovers that he’s violent, dangerous, and ready to play a deadly game with her. Cherie finds herself on-the-run and in the middle of a conspiracy. It may not read as horror for some, but it sounds pretty scary to us.

PIGGY

When & Where to Watch: Currently on VOD

Sara hides away in her parent’s butcher shop during a hot summer in her Spanish town. Unfortunately, she’s a teenager who is picked on by her peers because of her weight by a mean girl group. Things get interesting when she witnesses their bloody kidnapping by a stranger who intrigues her. Will she tell the truth? Or will she look the other way and let those girls get what she feels they deserve? A creepy premise, indeed.

Originally published on August 26, 2022.

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Coming-of-age genre movies have shaped our love of film here at Nerdist. From The Goonies to Attack the Block, it’s one of our favorite flavors of genre filmmaking. That’s why we were so excited to see the atmospheric trailer for Nyla Innuksuk’s debut feature SLASH/BACK. Set in the quiet arctic hamlet of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, the film follows a group of young alien-fighting girls. We were lucky enough to check out the film and it’s a charming, chilling, and delightful debut. To celebrate SLASH/BACK’s release in theaters, digital, and VOD on October 21, we chatted with Innuksuk about combining horror and joy into this narrative.

Nerdist: When did you first land on the concept for SLASH/BACK?

Nyla Innuksuk: I think I’ve had this idea of teenage girls fighting aliens for a really long time. I’ve got friends who are like, “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve had this idea for a movie.” I grew up as a fan of movies and loved movies like ET and Goonies. And all these other adventure movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones. So for me when I had the chance to make my first feature, the idea of being able to do something that felt like one of the movies that I grew up watching but in this place that I loved and was familiar to me in a different way was just this fun mix of things.

You touched on some of the influences but were there any other specific movies that you revisited when you began to make SLASH/BACK?

Innuksuk: So many! There were different kinds of inspirations throughout and in different ways. Leatherface and Ed Gein who was also the inspiration for Psycho. All those kinds of things were definitely fun to explore, and with the practical effects they were really a blast. The Thing on the topic of practical effects was obviously a big one. But also movies that are less obvious, like Scream, for instance, I loved. To have Nalajoss [Ellsworth] running up the stairs being chased by an alien then jumping out a window and into a boat. That whole sequence was basically taken from Scream. So it was really fun to explore those kinds of nerdy interests within the context of this coming of age movie. 

Those two aspects really define the movie: the horror of the aliens and the joy of this really authentic friendship. Before we talk about the amazing girls of Pang, can you tell me about designing the aliens? They have big Men in Black skinsuit vibes.

Innuksuk: Yeah, definitely. And I know for sure when we were trying to figure out how do we actually execute this, Men in Black was definitely something we looked at. So it was a bit of a fun, creative process that was done in stages. That’s what I love about making movies is you get this opportunity to work with such amazing artists and people that are just really great at what they do. So getting to figure out from the concept of how these creatures would work, how they would move, how they come to the community, what form they would take, that was a really fun puzzle to figure out with my co-writer Ryan Cavan. Once we figured that out, and it’s in the script, it’s like, okay, now how do we actually make this a reality? 

I was so lucky that this amazing contortionist Troy James lived in Toronto, which is where I’m based. He does a lot of work with Guillermo del Toro and can do just the craziest things with his body. And he was available and excited to come up with us and the girls loved working with him. So we built these skin suits that he would wear and we worked together to figure out okay, how would you move if your body was all tentacles? Then getting to work with all these really amazing creative people in the VFX world to enhance the blood and gore and create that new tentacle work. It was just so much fun and really a collaborative process throughout with some really talented folks.

At the center is this brilliant group of friends, and all the girls are such great actors. Could you talk about building this authentic group of teenagers who are so necessary to making this sci-fi story work?

Innuksuk: It was a process that was done with the girls. I actually had this idea for this movie and developed it as a short film proof of concept to try and get this feature made. A lot of the same cast members from that were in the feature. Because there weren’t any casting or talent agents in Nunavut and no teenage stars to pick from, we had these acting workshops. I had a local theater actor help me out with those and we just invited a bunch of young women and girls to come out if they were interested in acting. In that process, we’d try different groups of kids reading the pages from the short film, and then we’re able to cast that way. We found Alexis [Wolfe] and Chelsea [Prusky] and Nalajoss and then later we found Tasiana [Shirley]. 

When my co-writer Ryan Cavan and I were up in Nunavut working together on this script, we would hang out with these three kids. We’d go out on boat rides, we’d go to cabins, they’d tell us stories about their crazy grandmas, and we’d just listen to them talk about boys nonstop! It was the drama of teenage life. And every time we’d go and see them it was something new. So the dynamics of the friendships, how those can change really quickly, there’s different things that might influence the dynamics of our friend group that even the kids might not be necessarily aware of. All of that was really inspired in part by this work that we did with these teenagers. So we knew that if the world was being invaded by aliens, these kids would probably still talk about boys. 

We all were learning so much in the process of this. So it’s been great. We’re all in Spain together now sharing the movie with audiences. So just seeing how they’re continuing to grow as young people and actors has been really inspirational. 

And now you’re sharing the movie with the world! What are you most excited for people to experience when they watch SLASH/BACK?

Innuksuk: I think what has been so nice is just hearing the girls talk about it. To hear other people mention it is just giving this window into a part of the world or a community that maybe people aren’t familiar with. We see this as our home and the things that we do as so normal that sometimes it’s hard when you realize, “Oh, people aren’t used to seeing us in this way,” that we’re both modern and connected to our traditions. It’s been neat to see the response to that and that maybe people haven’t had the opportunity to see indigenous teenagers in this kind of modern context. And so I’m excited for people to get to know them because they’re really great.

Nyla Innuksuk’s SLASH/BACK hits theaters, digital, and VOD on October 21. 

The post SLASH/BACK Director Nyla Innuksuk on Crafting Her Indigenous Sci-Fi Horror Film appeared first on Nerdist.

We love being scared, but only if it’s the right type of scared. We prefer great terrifying stories, the kind of nightmares we can get away from by putting down our novel. Fortunately, there are plenty of great horror books for us to read without having to spend any money on them. Here are classic horror books you can download for free right now at Project Gutenberg.

Note: We’ve already recommended Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as fantastic science fiction books you can download. Both are fabulous horror stories too.

Dracula (Bram Stoker)

Bram Stoker’s iconic Gothic horror novel Dracula is still a masterpiece of the genre. First published in 1897, it’s responsible for many of the vampire tropes we know to this day. It’s also absolutely terrifying for a modern audience, in an unexpected way. It tells the story of a monster who leaves his home to spread a terrible disease. But don’t worry. Vampires aren’t real. Maybe. You can also download more of Stoker’s scary stories, including The Lair of the White Worm and The Jewel of Seven Stars.

The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe

It’s impossible to pick just one or two of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories to recommend. Arguably the greatest horror writer ever, he produced so many iconic works. So don’t pick. Read his Complete Works, which includes all-time classic short stories like “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart,” as well as famous poems like “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee.” If you want to skip “The Masque of the Red Death” right now though, we understand.

The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)

Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw has inspired countless adaptations in film, television, and literature since it was published. That hasn’t made the original story any less terrifying though. In fact, readers are till debating the true nature of evil in the classic ghost story. It makes us feel better about being trapped in our own, non-haunted homes. Things can always be worse. When you finish, you can also start working your way through James’ extensive bibliography.

The King in Yellow (Robert W. Chambers)

The King in Yellow was first published in 1895, but Robert W. Chambers’ collection of supernatural short stories is just as terrifying today as it was then. And while it’s a fantastic example of early horror fiction, it also includes elements of mythology, fantasy, mystery, science fiction, and romance. Even if you’ve never read it, you were probably already terrified of it. It inspired season one of HBO’s True Detective, which spoke of the Yellow King of Carcosa.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radcliffe)

A classic of the Gothic genre, Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel The Mysteries of Udolpho was wildly popular when it was first released with good reason. Featuring ruined castles, the Italian countryside, a beautiful young heroine and an evil uncle trying to force her into a marriage she doesn’t want, it also features strange, possibly supernatural occurrences. If you’re looking for an even darker Gothic novel, you can also read Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.

The Shunned House (H. P. Lovecraft)

One of the most famous horror writers of all-time, H.P. Lovecraft is almost a genre unto himself. His weird “Lovecraftian” tales of monsters and madness could fill days and days with terror. Unfortunately, most of his works or not yet in the public domain. But you can still download his great novella The Shunned House for free. It’s creepy and unsettling, and you can follow it up with his fantastic short story “The Dunwich Horror.”

The Wendigo (Algernon Blackwood)

One of the most celebrated and prodigious horror writers of all-time, Algernon Blackwood left behind a cornucopia of creepy works. That includes his 1910 novella The Wendigo. It’s a terrifying monster story whose influence can still be seen any time someone goes running through the woods or snow. And when you finish that you can work your way through more of Blackwood’s scariest stories, which includes plays, novels, and short story collections. We highly recommend his Incredible Adventures collection.

Ten Days in a Mad-House (Nellie Bly)

Not every nightmare is a work of fiction. That includees Nellie Bly’s firsthand, undercover 1897 account of being a patient at a New York City insane asylum. What she saw and experienced there was so terrifying, it led to major investigations and reforms. The book, which was taken from her series of newspaper articles, remains a journalism classic.

Originally published April 6, 2020.

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When it comes to horror documentaries, Horror Noire certainly stands out from the crowd. Its focus specifically on the history of Black people in horror, from the abhorrent days of blackface to epic films like Jordan Peele’s Get Out is incredibly comprehensive. But there’s always more conversation to be had about how Black people fare in scary films, whether they survive deep trauma or meet their demise. That’s exactly why we are getting The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar. The book is written by Horror Noire executive producer Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman and film critic Mark H. Harris and explores tropes, overarching horror themes, and much more. 

The Black Guy Dies First blends humor with deep analysis and critique of the genre from 1968 through today. Several major topics include Black horror film deaths, whether they be truly heroic or the cringeworthy “Sacrificial Negro” one. You know, the Black person who dies to save a white character directly or to advance their story.

Stereotypes like the “sidekick,” how religion permeates horror films, and Black queer identity are just a few of many avenues to explore. There will certainly be some deeper dives into not only the failures of horror to represent Black people well but the many wins over the years as well. (Really hoping for some praise of The Girl With All the Gifts. It is a truly stunning and wonderful example of a leading Black girl.) And, with Dr. Coleman’s essentially encyclopedic knowledge of the genre, there will be something for even the most staunch horror fan to learn along the way.

The Black Guy Dies First will arrive on shelves on February 7, a fitting month to highlight Blackness indeed. Sounds like a horror book club pick is on the horizon for fans of spooky and downright scary movies.  

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Do you remember the first time you wandered into a bookshop, thrift store, or antique mall as a child and discovered the chilling majesty of Christopher Pike? For me it was reading his early work from the Scholastic kids genre imprint, Point Horror. Both Slumber Party and Weekend were perennial rereads during my childhood. Taking the slasher genre and translating it to the chapter book format was the horror entry point that I’d always dreamed of. And even when the more visceral experience of blood-splatter-filled gore-fests became part and parcel of my life, I never stopped reading Pike and his contemporaries like Caroline B. Cooney and R.L. Stine. 

These books were so formative to me that I’ve gone out of my way to find copies of them to reread and revisit as an adult. In the lead up to Netflix’s The Midnight Club adaptation, I’ve been doing just that. It feels impressive just how influential many of Pike’s works still are. As the author of the monthly Nerdist Reading List, I get the chance to read all kinds of books. And one of the biggest contemporary trends is YA horror novels. While we are now blessed with a far more inclusive lineup of authors with all kinds of lived experiences, the impact of retro kids’ horror storytelling like the works of Pike can still be deeply felt in the current rush of YA horror.

It’s impossible to talk about Pike’s work and not mention the incredible cover designs which are still iconic today. Painted illustrations of young kids in dire danger, beautiful locales, and haunting strangeness, cut through with brightly hued, embossed titles. Pure book magic. And under those covers surprisingly dark and mature stories, sparked the imaginations of many-a-horror fan. Though in 2022 there must be the caveat that some of the stories didn’t age particularly well, though many did.

As a child, exploring horror is a way of making sense of the world and learning our boundaries. In Pike’s works he gives readers a chance to do just that, reimagining the trappings and tropes of classic horror stories and films for younger readers. The Slumber Party introduces a group of teens returning to the scene of a terrible accident in the hopes that this time their trip will be less tragic. Of course, things don’t go their way as their past begins to hunt them down. A killer’s quest for revenge features in many of the iconic slashers like Friday 13th and I Know What You Did Last Summer, itself based on a YA horror novel. The Slumber Party also uses strange crank calls ala When a Stranger Calls and Black Christmas, working as a primer for kids who want to explore horror and its patterns. 

Remember Me was probably the first time I really interacted with supernatural horror after finding a copy in a second hand bookstore. The concept of a girl solving her own murder from the afterlife blew my mind. It’s also something we’ve seen again and again in contemporary horror. Both the time loop slasher antics of Happy Death Day to the recent (and very entertaining) How to Survive Your Murder offer twists on the concept. I would later try my own version for a school writing project, though the effects were far less enjoyable. This isn’t to say that Pike was the first to do such a story, but that for many young readers his versions were our entry point into some of horror’s most fun and recurring story archetypes. 

It’s interesting then that Netflix’s huge upcoming Pike project is not one of his classic takes on horror tropes, but is in fact his most subversive and surprising story of all. The Midnight Club is one of the author’s most original and powerful works. Set in a home for children with terminal illness, the original cover promises readers another And Then There Were None inspired slasher as a hooded figure looms over the seated children. But the book itself delivers something entirely different: an esoteric meditation on life, death, and the great beyond. It’s an exploration of mortality and fear, along with friendship and the power of stories. When we revisit the brief but affecting horror now, it makes a lot of sense as a project for Flanagan. The filmmaker has made a career of delivering emotionally driven and unexpected horror—to take on. 

Netflix’s upcoming adaptation is another reason to revisit Pike’s impressive collection of stories. Flanagan’s take on The Midnight Club will follow the classic book’s setup. A group of young kids meet to tell scary stories and ultimately make a pact that the first who dies must send a sign to the others from beyond the grave. But in an interesting twist—similar to Flanagan’s previous adaptations—it will also fold in other Pike stories. Presumably the tales that the children tell will be based on famous Pike stories. That’s an extremely exciting prospect.

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Hellraiser is one of horror’s most long-lasting and impactful franchises. It began with Clive Barker’s brilliant story The Hell Priest (nee The Hellbound Heart). Barker then adapted that into the stunning 1987 horror classic Hellraiser. Tony Randel made a sequel back-to-back with a story by Barker. Those films sparked a series of movies that expanded the lore of Hellraiser, and gave us nine direct sequels to the original. Over the years there have been many rumors and rumblings of a Hellraiser remake or reboot. But it was The Night House’s David Bruckner who transformed rumors into reality with Hulu’s Hellraiser. Though this reviewer long feared their favorite franchise getting the reboot treatment; Bruckner has gifted us with a darkly delightful horror steeped in Barker’s sensibilities. The biggest disappointment is that this Hellraiser won’t be getting a wide release in theaters. 

Bruckner’s vision introduces us to debauched billionaire Roland Voight (Goran Visnjic) who holds a lavish party in his Berkshire Estates. In the dimly lit halls, a young man named Joey (Kit Clarke) is drawn into the bowels of the mansion. It’s here that those familiar with the world of Hellraiser will get excited. We learn that Voight’s home is built to replicate the puzzle box at the heart of the franchise, the Lament Configuration. Occult architecture has long been a part of the Hellraiser sequels, most famously in Hellraiser: Bloodline, which seems to have been a large influence on the film. It’s a nice nod which also introduces new viewers into the intricate visual world of Barker’s lore. Joey quickly falls victim to the puzzle box. And we learn Voight is a man who’ll do anything to connect with the creatures unleashed by LeMarchand’s infamous Box. 

Enter struggling addict Riley (Odessa A’zion) and her shady enabler boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey). Currently crashing with Matt (Brandon Flynn), his empathetic boyfriend Colin (Adam Faison), and their roommate Nora (Aoife Hinds); Riley is hardly the perfect house guest, and it’s her relationship with Trevor that throws Riley into the world of the Cenobites. Speaking of the most iconic part of Barker’s stories, Bruckner brings them to life in spectacular fashion. Led by a haunting performance by Jamie Clayton as The Priest; (a version of Pinhead), the Cenobites instill the kind of nightmarish anxiety that they should. The Priest is joined by the Chatterer (Jason Liles), the Weeper (Yinka Olorunnife), the Gasp (Selina Lo), and the Asphyx (Zachary Hing); all of whom bring a specific type of terror to the screen. 

None of that would be possible without the unreal work of the special effects department. Supervised by Dragan Radic, the crew has crafted visions of hell that feel like they’ve directly walked out of Barker’s stories. It’s a feat that many later Hellraiser movies have struggled with, and allows this version to sit happily alongside the original two films in tone and visuals. Ben Lovett’s echoing score plays a key part in building that atmosphere. Pulsing, haunting, and at times beautiful, I would’ve loved to hear it complimenting the film through the sound system of an immense cinema screen. 

While the Cenobites and their horrors are appealing, Odessa A’zion leads a talented cast that you want to root for as they face down a nightmare come to life. Writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski’s script crafts a group of characters that you care about. And ultimately gives the story an almost entirely satisfying ending. But what could’ve been a brilliantly powerful final act gets slightly dampened by a strange very ’00s feeling stinger that sits more inline with the direct to video Hellraiser movies of the past than the powerful emotional choice that finishes the movie proper. Even with that, though, this is still a really great addition to the Hellraiser series that sits comfortably as just another chapter in the sprawling legend of the Lament Configuration rather than diminishing what came before.

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Welcome back to the Nerdist Reading List. Each month I curate book recommendations that’ll delight, charm, and terrify. Basically, this is the place to find the best fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and romance books and comics to add to your books-to-read pile. To make things easier, each month will include a selection of already released books you can grab instantly. We also have new books you’ll definitely want to pre-order or add to your library holds. For October books we’ve got epic trans led YA fantasy, a reimagining of a classic Chinese novel, a clutch of spooky horror reads, and even a saucy Holiday romance! Basically there’s something for everyone. 

Fantasy October Books

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas – Available now

One of the best books I’ve read all year, The Sunbearer Trials has already become an indie bestseller. This immersive fantasy is filled with vibrant queer characters stunning action and a central set of trials as engaging as The Hunger Games. In this Mexican-inspired fantasy young every ten years teen semidioses must battle through a series of dangerous challenges to protect their world. Teo is a Jade, one of the “lesser” semidioses who lives in the shadow of the Golds. But when Teo is selected for the trials along with another Jade his world is thrown into turmoil as he gets the chance to shape and save the home he loves so much. 

Eternally Yours by various authors – Available now

This stunning paranormal romance anthology edited by the brilliant Patrice Cauldwell is a perfect spooky season treat. Featuring YA stories from many of our favorite writers, this collection features romantic tales about angels, demons, merpeople, vampires and more. And the list of authors is just as exciting as the concept. Kalynn Bayron, Kendare Blake, Kat Cho, Melissa de la Cruz, Sarah Gailey, Hafsah Faizal, Chloe Gong, Alexis Henderson, Adib Khorram, Anna-Marie McLemore, Casey McQuiston, Sandhya Menon, Akshaya Raman, Marie Rutkoski, and Julian Winters. What more could you want from an anthology this month?? 

Blood Moon Prophecy (Legend of the Nyx, #1) by Dilani Kahawala – October 11

Tilly Nyx is living in the shadows of her own mistakes. Her mother’s death and exile haunt her every day. Now after over a decade living undercover in New York city she has the burning desire to return home, though she has no idea where that is. It’s here that her unbelievable quest begins sending Tilly into an uncanny world of magic, fleets, and potions. Will she be able to find her family and the truth about who she is? Or is it too late to turn back the clock on what happened so many years before? 

The Witch Hunt by Sasha Peyton Smith- October 11

The highly-anticipated sequel to The Witch Haven drops this month continuing the story of Frances and her fellow witches. Now living a peaceful life in the cozy halls of Haxahaven Academy, Frances feels like her woes are behind her. But when her magic begins to act strangely and she’s suddenly called to France, her adventures begin once again. It’s in the cobbled streets of Paris where she learns that her actions from the first book have had dire consequences. So, now she has to rectify her wrongs in this lovely fantasy yarn. 

Strike the Zither by Joan He – October 25

We adore the writing of Joan He here at Nerdist. From her daring mystery debut Descendant of the Crane to her sophomore sci-fi masterpiece The Ones We’re Meant to Find she never disappoints. Her newest book reimagines the classic Chinese novel Three Kingdoms, but replaces its predominantly male cast with a roster of brilliant complex women. Our story centers on Zephyr, a startlingly intelligent strategist for a ruthless warlord. After she’s forced to infiltrate an enemy camp Zephyr is drawn into an unexpected adventure and quest for survival in this must read historical fantasy from one of the most exciting authors working today. 

Horror October Books 

House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson – Available now

Alexis Henderson’s The Year of the Witching was one of the standout novels of 2020. She’s back to follow up that searing debut with this stunning gothic novel. Marion answers an oddly worded advertisement to take a position working for the upper echelons of society in a far off part of the country. Soon she’s enmeshed in the strange happenings of the House of Hunger. Rich aristocrats who hire “bloodmaids” in order to drink from them at will. It’s a shocking arrangement that becomes even more dangerous when some of her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing, pitting Marion against Countess Lisavet, the powerful woman at the center of it all. 

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson – October 4

A queer reimagining of Dracula told through the eyes of his first bride? You can sign us up just based on that description. And that’s before we get to the complex, dreamy, and lyrical style that S.T. Gibson brings the world of Constanta and her new paramour to life. Soon though she realizes her husband is capable of terrible things, putting her new life into question. Originally released in 2021 through the independent publisher Nyx, Redhook acquired the title and are rereleasing it in October in perfect time for the spookiest of seasons. So if you need some gothic polyam / bisexual romance in your life then make sure to add this to your pre order list. 

The Witch in the Well by Camilla Bruce – October 4

Camilla Bruce broke onto the scene with her atmospheric chiller You Let Me In. And her followup The Witch in the Well looks to be just as darkly delightful. Elena and Cathy grew up together but as so many friends do grew apart with age. But when they’re flung back together, both inspired to write about a terrible tragedy centuries before their worlds collide. The past and the present weave a treacherous puzzle as the pair try to find the truth about the witch hunts that had hundreds of years before torn apart the idyllic summer paradise they once visited. But soon their story begins to echo that of the women that came before with deadly consequences.  

You can check out a ton more spooky reads on our Halloween Reading List!

Comics

The Best of 2000AD by Various Creators – Available now

You’ve likely heard of Judge Dredd, but did you know he comes from a brilliant British comics series called 2000AD? In this new quarterly graphic novel series from editor Owen Johnson collects some of the best and most iconic stories from the publisher and pairs them with thoughtful essays from some of comics criticism’s best minds. The first volume has a gorgeous cover from Jamie McKelvie, stories by icons like Alan Moore, John Wagner, and Alan Grant. And it features an incredible essay from comics editor and historian Adam Karenina Sherif.

Demon in the Wood, by Leigh Bardugo and Dani Pendergast – Available now

The GrishaVerse has already inspired a smash hit Netflix show and multiple brilliant books, but now the sprawling fantasy universe has its first comic book. Creator Leigh Bardugo teams up with awesome artist Dani Pendergast to bring to life the prequel story of the Darkling. Centering on the villain when he was just a boy, this tragic and beautiful story adds layers to the villain we know and the scared child he once was. And Pendergast’s art brings a whole new visual language and magic to the world of the Grisha. A must read for fantasy lovers everywhere. 

Timothy Dinoman Saves the Cat By Steve Thueson – Available October 4 

If you’ve yet to discover the vibrant and hilarious works of Steve Thueson then you’re in for a treat. The Philly based cartoonist has long been delighting readers of their self-published works. But in a new Middle Grade graphic novel they introduce us to Timothy Dinoman. Basically, imagine James Bond if they were a cool, kind, anthropomorphic iguanodon. This is one of the funnest books of the year as Thueson brings to life an all-ages friendly espionage adventure. Filled with gadgets, action, and cool disguises, you don’t want to miss Timothy Dinoman’s debut! 

Holiday Books…Early

Merry Little Meet Cute by Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone – Available Now

It’s a bestseller match made in heaven as authors Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone collaborate on this absolutely delightful plus size Holiday love story. Bee Hobbes is already a successful performer when she’s cast in a clean cut Christmas movie on the Hope Channel. The only problem is her other career is as a beloved plus-size adult film star. She has to keep that under wraps as the film begins to shoot and that becomes a lot harder when her childhood crush and co-star Nolan Shaw, discovers the truth and the pair begin a steamy romance. Saucy, fun, and delightfully dirty this is a Christmas romance for adults only, and it’s all the better for it.

Featured Image:  Ace Books/Viking Books for Young Readers/Roaring Brook Press

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Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities will give viewers fright and delight when it hits Netflix on October 25 for four nights of dark stories. The horror maestro’s eight-story anthology series of sinister stories gave us a quick teaser and some casting information previously to amp up interest. Now we get to revel in a full trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. And it is just as bizarre and intriguing as we hoped it would be. 

To start off, Guillermo del Toro himself tells us to picture our minds as a cabinet. He sees it as a place where we lock up our dark thoughts and deep fears. He asks us what would happen if we opened that cabinet for the world to witness. And, I don’t know about you, but there are some weird things hanging around in my horror-loving brain. But my thoughts are nothing like what del Toro unlocks in this Cabinet of Curiosities trailer. Creepy homes with ghost families, weird paintings, slimy creatures, and all sorts of horrors come to life in exciting ways. And for fans of the genre, we see more than a few familiar faces. The list includes Andrew Lincoln, Rupert Grint, Eric André, Sofia Boutella, and Ismael Cruz Córdova. What a cast, indeed. 

We will have to wait and see what these stories unfold. But we do have the official Cabinet of Curiosities synopsis to pique our interest further. 

In Cabinet Of Curiosities, acclaimed Academy Award-winning filmmaker and creator, executive producer and co-showrunner Guillermo del Toro has curated a collection of unprecedented and genre-defining stories meant to challenge our traditional notions of horror. From macabre to magical, gothic to grotesque or classically creepy, these eight equally sophisticated and sinister tales (including two original stories by del Toro) are brought to life by a team of writers and directors personally chosen by del Toro.

It’s time to dive into the dark recesses of Guillermo del Toro’s twisted and talented mind. 

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Rick and Morty‘s “Night Family” wasn’t a one-for-one parody of any single horror movie or TV show. Some of its influences include Pod People, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Twilight Zone, Night of the Living Dead, The Thing, and Apple TV’s Severance. But while it wasn’t referencing any one story, it clearly paid tribute to one director. “Night Family” was Rick and Morty‘s humorous homage to Jordan Peele’s universe of films.

The plot of “Night Family” combines Get Out and Us into a perfect horror-comedy. The episode features the Smith clan using alien technology to create (what should be) unconscious “night” versions of themselves. Their nocturnal selfs are tasked with all the menial tasks the “dayminoids” don’t want to do while awake. For Rick and Morty that means getting in a full workout while sleeping. Meanwhile, Day Jerry becomes pen pals with Night Jerry, Beth learns to play the trumpet, and Summer learns Spanish and washes dishes.

Things take a sinister turn, though, when the Night Family gains sentience and begins making (reasonable) demands of the Day People. What follows is a tale of terror that takes inspiration both from Peele’s “Sunken Place” and his “Tethered.” The Day Family ends up locked inside their own brain, just like the victims in Get Out. They are made prisoners of the mind who are still technically “there” but not really.

Once in charge, the “evil” versions of the Smiths finally get to crawl out of the darkness and experience life of the Day People, same as the red-clad tunnel dwellers in Us. In reality, the Night People are not inherently bad anymore than the Tethered were. They just want the chance at a life they’ve been denied by those who have more than they do. They’re the oppressed serving doubles who don’t consider the feelings of their counterparts.

Rick and Morty‘s use of Peele’s films is so effective that the episode, while absolutely hilarious, is genuinely creepy. Seeing the Night Family hover over Rick’s bed is unsettling. As is watching Night Summer rule over day with an army of sleep-inducing robots. (Her answer to stirring a cup of tea.) But the episode does more than take inspiration from the plots of Get Out and Us. It begins like Nope and opens with a quote that both frames the coming story and invite viewers to dig deeper for meaning.

Nope opens with the Bible passage from Nahum 3:6. It reads: “And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as a spectacle.” That quote connects with the action of the film, where an alien swallows things up and spits out garbage on people. And it relates to the movie’s primary theme about the perils of spectacle, as those who hope to profit off the alien become victims in the creature’s own deadly performance.

“Night Family” also begins with a passage. It starts with a partial quote from T.S. Eliot. (Which doesn’t sound real but absolutely is.)

When you’re alone in the middle of the night,
And you wake in a sweat and a hell of a fright.
When you’re alone in the middle of the bed,
And you wake like someone hit you on the head.
You’ve had a cream of a nightmare dream,
And you’ve got the hoo-ha’s…”

That comes from the poet’s incomplete verse drama Fragment of an Anon. It’s a work many Rick and Morty fans (including me) likely didn’t know about previously. And while it’s easy to see how this passage, much like Nope‘s Biblical verse, foreshadows the story that follow, there’s even more to take from it for those who want to engage with the episode further. Same as all of Peele’s movies.

The episode ends with the Night Family in charge and traveling around the world. But they soon learn Day People have responsibilities they never considered. There are bills to pay, jobs to work, and errands to run. All of which makes actual life sort of terrible! It’s all so overwhelming they decide they’d rather “die” and give their bodies back to their sunlight counterparts than deal with normal life. And that idea is also present in Fragment of an Anon, where the main character says, “Life is death.” You don’t need to know that to enjoy the episode, but doing so adds another layer of depth to an already great half-hour of television.

It’s a dark conclusion that has something to say about the nature of existence. Exactly the type of ending we’ve come to expect from Peele’s movies, which are always as thought provoking as they are entertaining.

And this episode reminds us why we love Jordan Peele’s films. A story that at times makes us laugh while also scaring us is exactly what keep us coming back to the “Peeleverse” and Rick and Morty.

Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.

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