Despite some of the bigger franchises in Hollywood having less-than-stellar years, 2023 has been outstanding for films. From arthouse hits to horror triumphs, you don’t need DC, Marvel, or Star Wars to have some fun at the movies. Below is a list of Nerdist‘s top 10 movies of the year, as decided upon by our great staff. This doesn’t represent anyone’s individual list, nor does it represent every good movie that came out this year. But it does have two movies based on Marvel properties. It’s still a geek website after all. Let’s start the countdown!

10. Evil Dead Rise

I have to admit, when I first saw Evil Dead Rise, I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it. It was a completely new take on the material, moving the action from a cabin in the woods to a dilapidated apartment building. Instead of hot teens out for some action, the curse of the Book of the Dead befalls a family just trying to get by. But at its heart, this new installment keeps much of the blood-soaked hallmarks of the original Sam Raimi movies, especially the hallowed Evil Dead 2. I’ve watched it several times since and I think it kinda rips.

9. Asteroid City

Another one that slow-burned its way onto this list. For a filmmaker already obsessed with artifice, Wes Anderson really outdid himself in Asteroid City. A story within a story within a story, layers and layers of separation between reality and fiction, and yet it’s entirely compelling from start to finish. The cast is outstanding, as per, and it might have the best use of Bryan Cranston since Breaking Bad. Anderson hides the real story under layers and layers of artifice and distance to give us a treatise on the American Theatre, UFO culture, and mid-century emotional stunting. It’s also super goofy and plays like a greatest hits of previous Anderson films. It’s a bafflement, but I can’t not applaud it for that.

8. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1

What a world we live in. Any other year, this latest installment in the unbelievably good Mission: Impossible series should have made a billion dollars, easy. But in 2023, it underperformed. That is by no means a reflection of quality. While it didn’t work quite as well for me as either Rogue Nation or Fallout, it’s still a tremendously enjoyable, exciting action adventure. The car chase through Rome with Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell handcuffed together would be enough to make it a good movie. Then we get to the end where they have to climb through a train that is simultaneously falling off a cliff. Just an incredible action sequence. These movies rule.

7. Talk to Me

2023 was actually a pretty amazing year for horror movies. The aforementioned Evil Dead Rise is but one. Possibly the best of the bunch is the indie Talk to Me, written and directed by Australian YouTubers-turned-filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou. A take on teenage drug use as a form of coping, replacing demonic possession for narcotics, the main character’s slow descent feels like you’re watching a movie about addiction more than a horror movie. And that’s what makes it all the scarier. I said it before, but it’s like Euphoria but with seances, in the best way.

6. Poor Things

A dark horse addition to the list, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest is a dark fairytale-esque look at women’s sexuality through the guise of a Frankenstein story. Emma Stone plays a newly revived experiment who quickly learns the wonders of life and lust only for “proper Victorian values” (which feel oddly accurate to today) try to keep her down. Mark Ruffalo gives a tremendously funny performance as the dandyish would-be lothario. It’s a very weird movie, as you’d expect from Lanthimos, but thoroughly engaging from start to finish.

5. Barbie

Surely you’ve heard of this one. It was only the biggest thing in the world this summer. It’s delightful, it’s gorgeous, it’s funny and touching. No one expected a movie based on a doll would be the year’s biggest success story, but here we are. The suits will takeaway that the public wants more Mattel movies, or more toy movies. The real lesson is give Greta Gerwig a budget and people will flock to the cinema in record numbers.

4. Oppenheimer

The other half of the one-two punch of the summer, Christopher Nolan’s surprisingly taut exploration of the man behind the atomic bomb is maybe the most engaging and resonant biopic we’ve seen in forever. A cast the size of the universe, and filmmaking prowess for miles, Oppenheimer proved Nolan’s more than gimmickry and tricksy narratives. If Cillian Murphy doesn’t win an Oscar, there’s a problem with the Academy. (Spoiler: there already is one.)

3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Look, we’re not going to mince words. Most of the recent Marvel Studios offerings have been lacking a bit of lustre. We were really hoping James Gunn would bring his trilogy of Guardians of the Galaxy movies home in a satisfying way, especially since he’s moving on to run DC. We needn’t have worried. The third installment is maybe not as raucous or expansive as the previous two, but it focuses on the characters and gives everyone a satisfying conclusion. Plus it has a good villain in the High Evolutionary. Plus plus, that corridor fight sequence in faux-one take is truly masterful.

2. John Wick: Chapter 4

While I appreciated the action prowess of the second and third John Wick movies, neither held a candle to the first in terms of compelling narrative. That all changed with Chapter 4, which goes full spaghetti western-meets-samurai-showdown. Donnie Yen’s blind swordsman, Shamier Anderson’s nameless gunfighter, and Skarsgård’s repugnant aristocrat make for some superb additions to the saga’s underworld. But at the heart, it’s John Wick trying to survive an onslaught of millions and that makes it work. No hyperbole, it’s one of the best action movies ever made. The entire third act in Paris—a riff on Walter Hill’s The Warriors—is perfect. If John never appears again, he got a fitting (and bloody) send-off.

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Look. I also didn’t think they’d ever match the glory of Into the Spider-Verse. How do you improve on perfection? You can’t. But you can do something different also perfectly. Expanding the roster of Spider-People by about 90 million and putting Gwen Stacy in the protagonist role changed things up in just the right way. Miles gets to be the catalyst for everything, and prove why uniqueness is good, while Miguel O’Hara shines as the de-facto antagonist. We cannot wait to see how the story concludes, but there’s enough in this entry to make it outstanding and rewatchable on its own forever. Also Spider-Punk is our new deity.

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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What are you afraid of? That question has countless answers. We all have different things that give us chills, whether it is a damp basement or leaving our bedroom door open while we sleep. One legit fear that I have is deep, dark waters. I do not want to go for a night swim nor do I desire to go far out into the ocean. Everything I cannot clearly see frightens me. I’m surely not alone in this because there’s an entire movie confirming this fear. The trailer for the upcoming supernatural horror film Night Swim introduces a lady pool demon that nabs those who dare dive into her waters. 

Here’s a quick synopsis of Night Swim to bring its trailer into focus: 

Based on the acclaimed 2014 short film by Rod Blackhurst and Bryce McGuire, the film stars Wyatt Russell as Ray Waller, a former major league baseball player forced into early retirement by a degenerative illness, who moves into a new home with his concerned wife Eve (Kerry Condon), teenage daughter Izzy (Amélie Hoeferle) and young son Elliot (Gavin Warren). 

Secretly hoping, against the odds, to return to pro ball, Ray persuades Eve that the new home’s shimmering backyard swimming pool will be fun for the kids and provide physical therapy for him. But a dark secret in the home’s past will unleash a malevolent force that will drag the family under, into the depths of inescapable terror. 

Ahh there’s nothing like moving into a home and finding out it is a haunted place. Night Swim will hit theaters on January 5, which may give some movie fans pause. Historically, January is notorious for being the place where bad films go to die.

But after the success of M3GAN last year, there’s a chance Night Swim will be a thrilling watch. In fact, Atomic Monster and Blumhouse—both producers of M3GAN—are behind Night Swim alongside James Wan. Bryce McGuire is writing and directing this watery adventure, which makes sense considering he helped create the original short film. Let’s see what this killer Pisces queen (please let her team up with Samara from The Ring) has in store for the Wallers.

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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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Stephen King’s IT has haunted us since 1986. But most recently, IT and IT: Chapter Two directed by Andy Muschietti really captivated popular imagination. The devious Pennywise and his red balloon caused a stir among die-hard horror fans and casual viewers. And now, we’re heading back to Derry for more of that specific world. The newly coined streamer Max (formerly HBO Max) has officially greenlit and ordered Welcome To Derry, an IT prequel series from Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs. And now we know who will star in Welcome to Derry and when it will arrive on our screens.

The platform recently revealed that Welcome to Derry‘s cast will include Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Chris Chalk, and James Remar. According to Deadline, Madeleine Stowe and Stephen Rider have also come aboard in recurring guest and series regular roles, respectively. Additionally, although the Pennywise series was slated for a Halloween 2024 release on Max, HBO CEO Casey Bloys now reveals that it will likely come in 2025.

According to TV Line, Andy Muschietti will also direct several episodes of the series, including its first. The publication reports the HBO IT series will be set in the ’60s. It will delve into the origins of Derry’s curse and, presumably, Pennywise the Clown. The HBO Max show will eventually lead to the first IT film.

It’s not clear whether we’d see Pennywise become the main character of the Welcome to Derry prequel show. But we wouldn’t mind seeing Bill Skarsgård step into the role once more. Though, for now, it doesn’t seem like he’ll have any involvement.

Skarsgård shared the following about the IT prequel with Jake’s Takes:

As of now, I’m not currently involved in it… If someone else gets to do it, my advice would be: Do it your own. Make it your own. Have fun with it… What I thought was so pleasurable about that character was how incredibly abstract he was.

We do, however, have a look at first look at the set of the series.

We’ll just have to see what else lies in store for Pennywise and Derry.

Originally published on February 23, 2023.

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The members of U.S. Outpost #31 might have been exhausted from fighting an extraterrestrial foe and not knowing who they could trust, but we’ll never get tired of watching John Carpenter’s The Thing. His seminal 1982 sci-fi horror film is still one of our favorites. It had always, and will always scare us. But while we’d normally be loathe to invite any of that arctic encampment’s personnel home (you really can’t be too careful when shape-shifting aliens are involved), we’re definitely going to make an exception soon. Mondo’s incredible new figure of Kurt Russell’s R.J. MacReady is ready to protect us with his flame thrower. And we’ll need him to. He’s coming with two of the movie’s most iconic monsters.

Mondo’s newest collectible (first announced by SyFy) brings a truly iconic character to life. The Thing‘s MacReady is getting a highly-detailed 1/6 scale figure designed by Joe Allard. It also features sculpts by Pichet Pitsuwan and Matt Black, painting by Viola Wittrocka, Hector Arce, and Ed Bradley, and clothing from Tim Hanson. And it comes with a ton of accessories to allow personalization. Here’s everything in included in the base figure:

• Fabric Faux Leather Jacket 
• Fabric Flight Suit 
• Fabric Under Shirt 
• Faux Leather Belt 
• Standard Head 
• Frozen Head 
• Shot Gun 
• Pistol 
• Pistol Holster 
• Flame Thrower Pack 
• Flame Thrower 
• Detachable Flame Accessory 
• Hand Sets – Fist, Trigger and C-Grip 
• Gloved Hands 
• Figure Stand 

Never has a figure looked so cold but also been so fire. Our bet, though, is not many fans of The Thing will opt to get the Regular Edition base figure ($235). Not when the limited Timed Edition version ($265) also comes with an articulated replica of the Spider-Head Creature as well as a mini-figure of the film’s Mutated Dog.

Click To View Gallery

Shh. No one tell Mondo we would have paid waaaay more to get those two monsters. And maybe don’t mention our fear they’ll come alive in the middle of the night is greater than zero.

Fittingly pre-orders for The Thing: MacReady Timed Edition will open at MondoShop.com on Halloween at 12 noon CT. It will be available for just ten days, with sales ending at Friday, 11/10 at 11:59 PM CT. Both editions are estimated to ship next summer in July 2024.

That’s not too long, and yet we’re already tired of waiting.

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The Fall of the House of Usher delivers plenty of gruesome deaths in its Edgar Allen Poe inspired tale of murder and revenge, but which member of the Usher family got it the worst? Kyle Anderson dives into the latest Mike Flanagan series to determine just which Usher fell the hardest!

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The traditional mascots of Halloween tend to be skeletons, witches, zombies and the like, but also, a handful of very specific horror characters. Namely Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, and the Wolf Man. Occasionally we get supporting appearances by the Mummy, Frankenstein’s Bride, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. We see them in Halloween decorations decade after decade, and on any and all kinds of Halloween merchandise. Now, most of these characters are technically in the public domain, as the trademark on those 19th-century novels they came from has long since expired. But it’s not just any versions of these characters that have become ubiquitous with spooky season. They’re the ones from Universal Pictures, who dominated Hollywood from the 1930s through the early ’50s.

But how did this happen? How did these specific versions of certain monsters become icons of a whole season? After all, most people under the age of 50 have never even seen those Universal Monsters movies. At least, not beyond clips used in other media. Even modern-day kids, for whom these films might as well be as old as the pyramids, know who these specific character archetypes are. Many still dress like them each Halloween. Ultimately, the story of how the Universal Monsters became synonymous with Halloween is about the power of the Hollywood dream machine, and how movies can create icons that transcend the big screen and enter the pop culture fabric. Decades after their supposed expiration date.

The Universal Monsters Become Hollywood’s First Big Franchise

The Universal Monsters as we know them launched in 1931, with the release of Dracula and Frankenstein. Both films were based on already celebrated novels, and had prior silent adaptations. But these versions were instant blockbusters, and the double whammy of Dracula and Frankenstein‘s massive success helped save Universal Studios financially that year. However, both versions deviated from their book incarnations. Dracula wearing a tuxedo and cape like a dapper gentleman? That was an invention of the 1924 stage play, popularized on screen by Bela Lugosi. Frankenstein’s iconic, lumbering look, with the flattop head and the bolts coming out of actor Boris Karloff’s neck? That was certainly not how Mary Shelley described him. No, that was the invention of makeup artist Jack Pierce. Once millions of moviegoers saw those versions, however, they imprinted on the mass consciousness. They became the definitive versions of Dracula and Frankenstein.

As many know now, Universal Pictures launched a whole universe of monster sequels coming from these films. There was The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, and eventually The Wolf Man. Starring Lon Chaney Jr., The Wolf Man was not based on any one werewolf story. But the idea of a werewolf, half-man/half-wolf hybrid who walks on two legs, was also Universal Pictures’ invention. By 1948, and after endless crossovers and sequels, the monster well had run dry. Dracula and Frankenstein had become parodies, mocked in comedic films like Universal’s own Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. That might have been the end of them, were it not for the advent of television in the 1950s. Combined with a post-war suburban surge in trick or treating, this confluence of events would keep these versions of the classic monsters cemented in the public consciousness for all time. And forever linked to Halloween night.

The Monster Craze of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s

These new television stations needed content. Lots of it. In 1957, those old Universal horror classics were sold as a package, and started to be rerun late at night, primarily on shows like Shock Theater. Baby Boomer kids became obsessed with the classic monsters, which their parents now discarded as silly camp. To them, they weren’t necessarily scary, they were cool, outsider figures to admire. This led to magazines celebrating those old movie boogeymen, like Famous Monsters of Filmland the very next year, and a ton of merchandise. Specifically, Halloween costumes. The chief producers of cheap, vinyl Halloween costumes from the ’50s through the mid-80s were Ben Cooper (pictured below) and Collegeville. They did their off-brand version of the Universal Monsters, and Frankenstein became their biggest seller. Suburban streets were flooded with pint-sized versions of the Universal Monsters on October 31, owning the night.

During this time, tons of other companies, like Dennison and even Hallmark, who produced Halloween merchandise used the images of the Universal Monsters, now beloved by American kids. However, not all had the official Universal license. In fact, most didn’t. But those other companies found a way to skirt around such pesky legalities. Their Frankenstein might be pale orange instead of green. Their Dracula might have more exaggerated features, so as to not be confused with Bela Lugosi. But everyone knew; these versions were the same monsters from those old movies. Changing little details was enough to not get sued by Universal, but every kid knew exactly who they were. And because they managed to do a dance around trademarks, they were used to sell everything from Colgate shampoo to Fritos chips, especially at Halloween. Off-brand or not, the Universal Monsters became the unofficial ambassadors of the holiday.

The Universal Monsters Become Rock Stars, Sell Cereal, and Star in Cartoons

The early ‘60s was when the “Monster Craze” peaked. During this time, model kits were all the rage so Aurora Plastics sold thousands of models of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, and the Mummy. These began in 1962, and they sold so briskly that the plant where they were made had to run overtime to keep up with demand. The same year, a novelty single cashed in on the fad, Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “The Monster Mash.” Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Wolf Man all got a namecheck. The song became a Halloween season staple, and has remained so for 60 years. The creatures that terrorized the Greatest Generation were now the cuddly Halloween season icons of their children. Just as Santa and his elves became the mascots of Christmas, versions of Universal’s monsters were now the same for Halloween.

The apex of this fad was the release of The Munsters on TV in 1964. In a Universal-produced show, Herman Munster’s makeup could legally look like the one made famous by Karloff. But it further ingrained the idea of these monsters as almost cuddly friends to kids, and representative of all things Halloween. They’d continue to become kid-friendly going into the ‘70s, and non-official versions turned into wholesome entertainment, with animated shows like The Groovie Ghoulies, the Count on Sesame Street, and the Monster cereals like Count Chocula and Franken Berry.

There was even Drac Pack, a cartoon that reinvented the classic monsters as teenage superheroes. And, of course, Scooby-Doo had fun doing their own versions of the Universal Monsters, although there was always some boring old man under the mask. Halloween was mainly a kid’s holiday, so naturally, the monsters kids like the most ruled it. Although this trend slowed down after the ’70, it reached all the way into the ’80s, with all the Universal Monsters together (again, off-brand) fighting Goonies-style kids in The Monster Squad. That film, of course, became a Halloween night tradition.

Why the Classic Monsters Will Always Rule Halloween

This trend of paying homage (but also defanging) these icons continues all the way to the modern day, with franchises like Hotel Transylvania. All of these versions of the Universal Monsters are tweaked ever so slightly, as to avoid copyright infringement. However, it’s unmistakable who they are to anyone who knows. Collectively, all these knock-offs have kept the Universal Monsters alive in the minds of one generation after the next. Audiences would take seriously characters like Dracula on film, but in every instance, they’d have to ditch the old Universal trappings to become scary once more. Sure, these days, modern horror icons are just as ubiquitous with the season. But no others really embody Halloween night like the originals. As these classic Universal versions slowly became the domain of young kids, they became the domain of the Halloween season itself. And we don’t foresee that changing anytime soon.

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It’s Halloween time once again, and as you pop in your favorite horror movies this spooky season, you might notice a few familiar frights repeat themselves. To celebrate the holiday, Kyle Anderson is diving in to break down a history of the genre’s most time honored tropes on today’s video!

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Halloween is about more than just secret rituals in abandoned forests and summoning demons from the netherworld. Those are great fun and obviously important. But there are also plenty of other pastimes to partake in during October. Some events and celebrations are so beloved by people of all ages they’ve become staples of the proverbial “spooky season.” Which one is the best, though? To help you plan your creeeeepy holiday festivities this year we ranked classic Halloween activities by how much fun they are! Or, in some cases, by how much fighting a werewolf during a full moon instead sounds like a better use of our time.

LAST: Bobbing For Apples

How in all that is holy was this ever a thing? We’ve known about bacteria since 1676, but we needed the last few years to piece together the contaminated puzzle of Halloween’s great germ swap? Forget ghouls and ghosts, is there anything scarier than the thought of putting your open mouth into a big tub of room temperature water full of partially chewed food after 17 people just did the same thing? I’d rather vacation in literal Hell on New Year’s Eve. We should call it “Bobbing for Infection.”

9. Pranks!

There are two types of people in the world. The first group thinks pranks are fun. The second consists of decent people who deserve happiness. No one has ever actually enjoyed having a prank pulled on them. If someone said differently they were simply being polite, because, again, they are decent folk. All prank lovers should be forced to live together on a remote island. We can call it Prank Isle. Or even better, let’s send them there and then never speak of it again! Happy Halloween to us, the good ones!

Note: Halloween pranks are different than “revenge,” a fun activity you can, and should, enjoy 365 days a year.

8. Visiting a Pumpkin Patch

Did you enjoy giving up a relaxing Sunday in September to spend way too much money and time picking your own apples at an overcrowded orchard? Did you love paying a farmer you don’t know to work for him in unseasonably warm weather just so you could end your day with an apple cider donut you remembered being a lot better? You did? Weird, but great news! You can enjoy that experience all over again in October by visiting your local pumpkin patch. It’s a place where instead of hurting your back by reaching up you can hurt your back by bending down. And don’t forget guests of all ages can also get tetanus for free by cutting themselves atop an old broken tractor that’s been rusting for thirty-seven years.

7. Attend a Halloween Parade

Imagine explaining a parade to aliens. Now imagine explaining Halloween to them. Now imagine explaining a Halloween parade. Feel silly? Don’t, it’s not like you’re currently at a Halloween parade*, an event that replaces the best parts of a Halloween party with formal start and end times, standing, not being able to see, and road closures.

*If you are currently at a Halloween parade please let us know if you’ve been kidnapped or just make bad life choices. If it’s the former we’re also curious why your captive is letting you browse the internet. Aren’t they afraid you’ll send an email or alert someone? Also, why aren’t you doing that already? You have our blessing to finish reading this later! So long as you keep this tab open and share it on social media with #ParadesAreWeird.

6. Carving a Jack-o’-Lantern

Nothing says Halloween like a carved pumpkin (except maybe a Dracula). That’s because everyone rightfully loves jack-o’-lanterns. And so long as you don’t pick your pumpkin at a patch, they’re affordable fun for the whole family. The problem is actually making one is no walk in the cemetery. The interior of a pumpkin is a vile realm of smelly mush and second-thoughts. There’s also the matter of actually carving them. No matter how much you think you’re going to slice up an amazing, unique pumpkin, most end up looking exactly alike for a reason. Artfully cutting a thick round gourd takes real skill most of us don’t possess. That’s why the majority of jack-o’-lanterns have wide eyes and big mouths. Those are easy to cut… but not as easy as cutting your thumb.

5. Visit a Haunted House/Castle/Maze/Location

Now we’re getting somewhere! (Literally and metaphorically.) A haunted locale—whether a real place people pretend is full of ghosts or a seasonal exhibition full of great costumes and local theater enthusiasts—offer plenty of excitement, as a terrifying romp full of scares truly captures the spirit of All Hallow’s Eve. Unfortunately that’s also the downside of these creepy spots.

They can leave young visitors with nightmares that haunt them long after they’ve left. They can also cause cardiac events in older guests who forgot how much Jason Voorhees jumping out of a closet can disrupt your normal heartbeat. A haunted “house” of any kind should be something you enjoy only while you are there. It shouldn’t follow you home. And it definitely shouldn’t lead you to an early grave.

(If it does they should bury you at the haunted house. You earned it.)

4. Wearing a Costume

Life is suffering. We, and everyone we will ever love, begin to die the moment we’re born. All any of us can truly hope for are a few brief moments of calm waters during a never-ending struggle to survive in a sea of sadness. But none of us truly survive. We’re all simply waiting for the waves of existence to carry us back into the waters of the cosmos’ infinite and cold black ocean. Don’t worry, though. Once there the universe won’t forget we ever existed, because it never noticed we lived in the first place.

…What better way to forget all of that than by getting creative and dressing up as a totally different person for a night? That’s right! Costumes.

3. See a Scary Movie

What kind of sales job do you need for movies? Movies rule. Horror movies specifically rule. Even bad ones can be super fun. That all seems sort of obvious, no?

So…uh….you ever see Poltergeist? That movie is soooo good. “This house…is clean.” Iconic line. You know some people think Steven Spielberg really directed it? I don’t. Even saying that is unfair to Tobe Hooper. Well, anyway…scary movies…highly recommend ’em.

2. Halloween Parties

Costumes? Candy? Cavorting? Halloween parties might be the best type of parties period. Whether family-oriented gatherings or adult-only soirees, they’re far less stressful than their equivalent Thanksgiving or Christmas events. And unlike weddings you won’t run into any Bridezillas, just maybe the Bride of Frankenstein! (We like to have fun here at Nerdist Dot Com.)

Also, what other type of celebration includes listening to “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” eight times in a single night? Check. Mate. Halloween parties are so good it’s incredible they aren’t number one on this list.

1. Trick-or-Treating

If you’re a kid trick-or-treating is the single greatest thing in the world. You get to dress up, go out at night with your friends, and strangers GIVE YOU FREE CANDY. And unlike Christmas, it’s no strings attached. No adult ever says, “If you want candy you better be good for goodness sake, because a magical elf is watching you while you sleep like a total creep.”

But here’s the thing. Trick-or-treating still rules even when you grow up. Either you take adorable kids out and see them experience true joy, or adorable kids come directly to you and think you’re the greatest person alive. Plus you can steal their candy. Kids are, like, super easy to outsmart. Everyone wins! It’s the best Halloween activity out of all the other activities. It might be the best activity of any month, not just October.

The reverse is true of bobbing for apples. What the hell were we thinking all these years?

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

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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.

New Nerdoween Posts That You’ll Love

If you can’t get enough of our new Nerdoween content, check out our latest posts:

12 Iconic Horror Villains and Their Zodiac Signs

The Best Final Scenes in Horror Movie History

When Evil Lurks (Review) 

V/H/S/85 (Review)

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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.

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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.

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There are lots of ways to make an effective movie trailer, but every good one has the same thing in common: they make you want to see the film. That’s it. That’s the entire reason for their existence. Trailers are designed to entice would-be viewers to spend their time and money on one particular movie rather than a near infinite number of other options. It doesn’t matter how much dialogue they include or how much they reveal about the plot. It doesn’t matter if they’re modern or retro in style. A trailer’s only job is to get us into a seat. And Mark Edward Fischbach, the YouTuber better known as Markiplier, has given us one that does exactly that. His fantastic new promo for his upcoming film Iron Lung is an unsettling and blood-soaked tease at a horror video game come to life.

Deadline reports popular online content creator Markiplier is currently in production on a self-financed film. He’s adapting David Szymanski’s 2022 submarine horror game of the same name. The “short” game lets players “pilot a tiny submarine through an ocean of blood on an alien moon.”

Yup. Sign us up for that premise in any medium you want.

While Fischbach has yet to reveal many official details about the film, he is both starring and directing in it. Deadline says Caroline Rose Kaplan (The Plot Against America) will also appear in the movie in currently unknown role.

This is obviously a big swing for anyone. But with more than 35 million followers on YouTube alone Markiplier already has a built-in audience for any project he undertakes. And with a trailer this good he’s going to draw in plenty more fans.

This creepy promo full of blood and the promise of war and death doesn’t actually feature a lot of specifics about what we can expect from the film, but it tells us plenty. Most importantly that we want to see it.

Iron Lung doesn’t have a set release date yet.

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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.

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Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix horror series, The Fall of the House of Usher, is a brilliant, modern-day adaptation of several Edgar Allan Poe stories, poems, and ideas. And, like Poe’s work, the show is incredibly brutal at times. We know from the very beginning of the series that bad stuff will befall the members of the Usher family. But some outcomes are much more viscerally upsetting than others. So, because we, too, are macabre weirdos, we’re going to rank the major The Fall of The House of Usher deaths (or outcomes) from least horrible to most disquieting. Here’s what befell the main characters of this Flanagan series and how gruesome a fate they suffered.

10. Lenore Usher – A Quick and Painless Death

Easily The Fall of the House of Usher death that feels the kindest (if one has to die at all) is the fate of the youngest Usher, Lenore. The forthright daughter of eldest, most moronic Usher child, Frederick. Verna clearly does not take any pleasure in collecting the final member of the Usher bloodline. She even offers the young lady the kindness of letting her know her mom will be fine and will set up a foundation to help others. This is really nice. And since Lenore Usher can’t hope to escape her grandfather and great aunt’s soul-selling, a quick, quiet death is the best outcome.

9. Rufus Griswold – Walled Up in a Building

The ostensible villain of the flashbacks of the series, Rufus Griswold, the a-hole CEO of Fortunado Pharmaceuticals, gets his just desserts in the last episode. Turns out, screwing over Roderick and Madeline Usher has its consequences. And while I would never say it’s a good way to meet your end, compared to some of the other deaths in the show, Griswold got off light. Yes, he’s going to suffocate in the dark, chained to a wall. At least that’s it. Once he wakes up and realizes he can’t talk the Ushers out of their revenge, has a chuckle. He has time to think about what he did, which sounds pretty rough, but he also has time to make peace with himself. If Grisowld’s is the second least brutal The Fall of the House of Usher death, that just tells you how bad the rest are.

8. Napoleon Usher – Falls to His Death Off a Penthouse Balcony

Napoleon is one of the more likable members of the Usher clan, despite being a drug-dealing philanderer. Still, that’s not always an indication that you’ll go nicely. He has the unfortunate fate of Verna driving him mad via his guilt over killing his boyfriend’s beloved cat in a drug-and-drink-fueled stupor. The replacement black cat is a nasty piece of work and attacks Leo pretty much non-stop and leaves dead animals in his bed. Eventually, Leo snaps and tries to crush the cat with a hammer. In his crazed state, he doesn’t stop to think that running at full speed toward a high-rise balcony is maybe not the smartest thing. He goes over the side and lands in a dead pile on the pavement below. Compared to his siblings, he got off light.

7. Victorine LaFourcade – Stabs Self in Heart

One of the hallmarks of Poe’s doomed protagonists is going mad before you meet your cruel fate. Leo obviously did. So, too, does another of Roderick’s adopted children, Victorine, who has become obsessed with getting her artificial heart-pumping machine to work. Having killed loads of poor chimpanzees, her partner wants to wash her hands of the whole thing. Not good for Victorine, who needs this to work to get into her father’s good graces. She doesn’t even realize she killed Alessandra until it’s way too late, with Roderick finding the dead woman’s corpse with the heart-beater pumping nothing. Victorine briefly comes to her senses, but in her grief, she uses a pair of scissors to stab and disembowel herself before piercing her own heart. It’s not a quick death, and it’s definitely not painless, but it is better than some of the other The Fall of the House of Usher deaths that we witness.

6. Camille L’Espanaye – Mauled to Death by a Chimpanzee

Camille is the Usher family’s PR person and also not a very nice person, all told. She treats her assistants-slash-employees-with-benefits quite poorly and generally has bad things to say about everyone. Camille is also convinced her sister Victorine is the mole selling family secrets to the U.S. Attorney’s office. As such, she goes to the R.U.E. facility late one night to find some evidence. Verna, impersonating a security guard, tries to talk Camille out of going into the lab, but Camille cannot be deterred. Unfortunately, this leads to Camille discovering lab-tested chimpanzees, one of which—powered by Verna—gets out of its cage and proceeds to literally rip Camille apart. There aren’t many deaths, even on The Fall of the House of Usher, that are as terrifying as this, and it probably lasted long enough for her to really feel it. Yeesh.

5. Tamerlane Usher – Impaled by Many Shards of Glass

Tam has an identity crisis. Her self-esteem is quite low, and she has trouble connecting with people. This is evidenced by paying sex workers to pretend to be her in very normcore domestic scenes with her husband Bill. Slowly, her carefully constructed world begins to fall apart when one of these impersonators—it’s Verna, naturally—begins popping up everywhere. Tamerlane believes Bill is carrying on an affair with her, only Tam can’t quite seem to stay awake long enough to prove it. Eventually, she starts seeing Verna everywhere, even in the mirror. Tamerlane begins smashing mirrors all over her home and ends by jumping on her bed and smashing the ceiling mirror. Those shards fall on her, cutting her to ribbons.

Now you might wonder why that death is worse than a chimpanzee mauling. Well, as the episode shows us in slow motion, Tamerlane has a moment of dread clarity right as it’s too late. She sees what she’s done, that she’s just caused her own death and now only has moments to live. Not long enough to do anything about it, but long enough to reflect (ha) on all that transpired in her miserable life.

4. Roderick Usher – Crushed to Death by a Falling House

Roderick Usher, the patriarch of this brood and perpetrator of many ill deeds, does not receive the show’s worst death. In fact, having a house fall on you, in this show, seems pretty light punishment. However, what puts it this high on this list is that Roderick has had to suffer the knowledge that all of his children will die horribly, that his poor granddaughter has died but still taunts him via a Chatbot, and that he has just had to kill his sister. He could have spared all of this, and probably had a happy life with Annabel Lee, had his greed and thirst for revenge not gotten the better of him. This is all in addition to suffering the beginnings of dementia and seeing his empire crumble. Hard to feel too sorry for him, but it’s a pretty bad time.

3. Madeline Usher – Crushed by House After Brother Poisoned Her and Removed Her Eyes

Madeline is Roderick’s unscrupulous sister who more or less acts as his personal shoulder devil throughout the show. She’s the one who pushes him into the Fortunado scheme and has a rather ruthless approach to just about everyone and everything in the Usher family. To that end, she might “deserve” her demise more than a lot of other characters. But. Having your eyes gouged out and replaced with jewels while still alive is tremendously gruesome, and then to top it all off, she had to dig her way out of her makeshift grave only to try to find Roderick via sound and ultimately die under a toppling house. Yeesh, we say. Yeesh. It’s dramatic irony, but good heavens.

2. Frederick Usher – Slowly Bisected by Swinging Steel Girder While Immobilized

Frederick, being the eldest child of Roderick Usher, was always going to die last. At least once we saw the pattern of deaths Verna was playing with on The Fall of the House of Usher. The beginning of the show made him seem like a vapid, spoiled dummy. He gets everything handed to him and he quickly kowtows to Arthur Pym’s orders. However, once he begins indulging in loads of cocaine, Freddy shows his true colors. He tortures his bedridden wife for her perceived infidelity and refuses to get her the help she needs. He also turns to the mafia to cover up his poor real estate filings. Freddy is a putz but also a real piece of crap.

That’s why when he ends up on the floor of a building under demolition, dosed with the paralytic he had been giving his wife, unable to save himself, it’s a horribly fitting finale. As the pendulum of debris ticks down to his eventual end, Freddy has to stare his behavior right in the face. And the show doesn’t save him, or us, from the worst part of it, as the swinging metal cuts him in half across the stomach. Horrific.

1. Prospero Usher – Melted to Death Via Acidic Sprinkler System

In many ways, the first death on The Fall of the House of Usher is the worst. Young, vapid influencer Prospero wants to prove his father wrong by making an exclusive sex club for the city’s elite. He also wants to spy on all of them and hold the richos to ransom. He never gets to do that, however, because he chose to hold this orgy in one of his family’s ought-to-be-condemned factory buildings. Perry doesn’t do his due diligence on pretty much anything, and his evening’s coup d’état is a wet-and-wild dance-off via the building’s massive sprinkler system. Except Prosepero Usher didn’t check the water in the roof tank and was unaware, it was full of deadly corrosive chemicals. As the water comes down, all the naked debauchery becomes a sizzling mass of flesh and viscera. This death is slow, painful, and inescapable, and for that reason, I’m out.

The Fall of the House of Usher and all of its many deaths are on Netflix now.

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 Ranking the Deaths in THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER in Terms of Gruesomeness appeared first on Nerdist.

The Fall of the House of Usher is here in time for Halloween, but it did not come alone. It’s apparent from The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Midnight Club that Flanagan loves incorporating other works from an author. So, it should shock no one that The Fall of the House of Usher does not draw its tale solely from Edgar Allan Poe’s aforementioned story. Stories, poems, and folks from personal conflicts appear in this dastardly tale of monstrous people and wealth. The episode’s titles clearly state the story the episode pulls from. But there’s more here besides that. So, here’s your spoiler warning. 

“The Raven”

Poe’s most famous poem, “The Raven,” published in 1845—I prefer “The Bells”—papers the eight episodes. Besides the literal raven flitting about in episodes, there is also Roderick Usher’s granddaughter’s name, Lenore, which draws from the lost love in the poem. Two of the episode titles also come from that poem. The first episode, “A Midnight Dreary,” is the first line of Poe’s narrative poem, “Once upon a midnight dreary,” while the last episode takes the poem’s title. 

“For Annie”

Another morbid yet beautiful poem, “For Annie,” published in 1849, gets a nod in the first episode. While in church to mourn the loss of three of his children, Roderick Usher is distracted by paranormal guests. Meanwhile, the priest’s words, “and the fever called living is conquered at last,” pull directly from this poem about blessed death. 

“Spirits of the Dead”

“For Annie” isn’t the only poem referenced by the priest at the funeral. He transitions from that poem to how those who pass away remain around one in death as they were in life. That comes directly from this poem, published in 1884. The poem even appears literally with all the dead lingering around Roderick Usher. 

“Lenore”

The name Lenore does not just appear in Poe’s “The Raven,” but the lady gets her self-titled poem. Originally published under the title “A Pæan” in 1831, the poem’s title changed to “Lenore” in 1843. Besides the granddaughter, Lenore, in the show, an older Roderick recites lines from the poem as a young Roderick and Madeline bury their dead religious mother, Eliza, in the backyard. 

“Tamerlane”

While Tamerlane Usher is not ruling on the scale of the narrator in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tamerlane” poem, published in 1827, she exudes the qualities discussed within. She is proud and seeks power, wanting to climb to the top of her small Goop-like empire and gain recognition from her father, Roderick. This comes with the price of lost love, save as the poem’s narrator. 

Murders in the Rue Morgue

Camille’s death mirrors the one in this short story, though the series takes an additional supernatural spin. Auguste Dupin is in three of Poe’s short stories, the first of which is Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1829. In the series, RUE means Roderick Usher Experimental, which his offspring called “RUE Zoo” as kids before realizing the animal cruelty and changing it to “RUE Morgue.”

Dupin is a recurring character in three of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. In the stories, he is a detective rather than a prosecuting lawyer whose relationship with the Ushers goes back decades. 

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

In the show, Arthur Pym is the Usher family’s lawyer, hitman, cleaner, etc. But in Poe’s works, he’s from Poe’s only novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published in 1838. Before meeting Pym in the series, during the funeral in “A Midnight Dreary,” a part of this novel makes its first appearance when Roderick sees apparitions only he can see at the church. 

His granddaughter, Lenore, questions him, using the nickname “Grampus,” which is the name of the ship Pym boards in the story. It’s referenced again in “The Masque of the Red Death” episode when Lenore and her father, Frederick, complete a boat in a bottle for Roderick and discuss naming it “Grampus.” 

Lastly, in the series’ sixth episode, “Goldbug,” Pym mentions a dinner date with Richard Parker. In the novel, the crew of a whaling ship winds up lost at sea and eats a young crewmate named Richard Parker. Also, think about the fact that the 1938 book prophetically came true decades later.

“The Spectacles”

Napoleon Usher’s first name comes from the short story published in 1844, “The Spectacles,” about a man who learns a valuable lesson about wearing his spectacles to see what’s there. It’s loosely similar to what Napoleon experiences in the series during “The Black Cat” episode, as what he and others see differs. 

“Morella”

Frederick’s wife, Morelle Usher, ties in with the “Morella,” a short story published in 1835. But it goes deeper than that. The story is about a narrator who wishes for his wife’s death, going on to dislike his daughter as she begins to resemble his late wife. In the series, Frederick resents Morelle because he believes she had an affair, and that anger builds to where he takes it out on their daughter, Lenore. 

“Eleanora”

A short story about a man obsessed with his cousin—if you know about Edgar Allan Poe, then you know—a quote from the short story “Eleanora,” published in 1842 surfaces during Tamerlane’s “Goldbug” episode. After Roderick accuses his sister of spouting nonsense, she responds, “Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.” It is fitting that a woman like Madeline, who does not want a man to control her but also has an unnaturally close relationship with her brother, says this.  

“William Wilson”

Yes, even a spouse or two get in on the action. Tamerlane’s husband is William “Bill-T” Wilson. “William Wilson” is a short story published in 1839. It’s about the narrator, William Wilson, encountering another William Wilson, who shares countless similarities, including date of birth. A doppelganger-style tale that devolves into narrator Wilson trying to kill the other. Though Tamerlane’s husband bears the name, Tamerlane herself goes through this ordeal, which comes to a head in the “Goldbug” episode.

“The Premature Burial”

Usher’s daughter, Victorine Lafourcade, gets her name from “The Premature Burial,” published in 1844. In the short story, the narrator’s mind incites terror not of death but of burial while still alive. Though not in The Fall of the House of Usher, that terror and paranoia is a staple of Poe’s works and appears in Victorine’s episode “The Tell-Tale Heart.” 

“The Imp of the Perverse”

Roderick and Madeline Usher’s arc in The Fall of the House of Usher series shares similarities to Poe’s tale, published in 1845, about someone who murders to inherit a man’s estate. Though, arguably, Fortunato is the Usher birthright, they still kill to claim it. Additionally, quotes from the short story, “The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague,” and “We stand on the brink of a precipice,” appear in the first episode.

“The Cask of Amontillado”

Fortunato is a company in the series. But in Poe’s short story published in 1846, Fortunato is a person. A friend murders him by chaining him to the wall and bricking him in alive, precisely how Roderick and Madeline murder CEO Rufus Wilmot Griswold to seize control of Fortunato. The murder merges “The Imp of the Perverse” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Another connection is the costume Griswold wears of a carnival jester, as in the story, the murder takes place during Carnival season, and the 1925 bottle of Amontillado wine Madeline hands Rufus. 

“The Bells”

Given the bells jingling throughout the series, it may connect to “The Bells,” Poe’s poem published in 1849. The poem talks about hearing the sound of different types of bells and the subsequent emotions their differing sounds engender. The bells in Griswold’s Carnival mask can easily fit the bone-chilling “brazen bells” or “iron bells” in the poem. Now, about Griswold…

Rufus Wilmot Griswold

Griswold was a colleague of Poe’s who became a foe after Poe gave a less-than-stellar review to a poetry anthology Griswold put together. As soon as Poe died, Griswold wrote articles criticizing him and went on to write a biography, further painting Poe in a negative light.   

William Wadsworth Longfellow

Roderick and Madeline’s father, who refuses to acknowledge them as his own, William Longfellow, in “A Midnight Dreary,” connects to Poe and fellow writer and poet William Wadsworth Longfellow. Though initially cordial, Poe later attacked Longfellow’s works, even going so far as to accuse him of plagiarism.  

John Neal

Another contemporary writer who gets a nod in the series is American author, critic, and editor John Neal. In The Fall of the House of Usher, John Neal becomes Judge John Neal and oversees the trial against the Usher family. Although, he seems predisposed to show favoritism to the defendants—the Ushers—over the prosecutor, Dupin.  

Eliza

Roderick and Madeline’s mother, Eliza, share the same first name as Poe’s mother. Though with just a first name, it’s hard to be sure. But given the amount of detail in Flanagan’s previous works, I will say the choice of name is intentional. 

With all the interconnectedness between Poe’s works, did we miss something? Let us know! The Fall of the House of Usher is on Netflix now.

The post The Many Edgar Allan Poe References in THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER appeared first on Nerdist.

Some horror movies employ a slow burn. They start quietly and carefully build tension scene by scene until they crescendo with a nightmare finale. But other horror movies grab us immediately with a truly terrifying opening. Before we’ve even had our first Raisinets, they let us know what we’re in for with beginnings that set the tone for the film and stay with us long after it ends. There are many horror movie openings but a select few have done it better than anyone. And those films hold a special place in cinematic history. To celebrate them, Nerdist staff picked the best opening scenes in horror movie history.

Get Out (2017)

Tai Gooden: Get Out is a brilliant examination of the discomfort that Black people feel outside of our safe spaces. The legitimate fear that being the “only one” or “out of place” puts us in imminent danger. Andre’s kidnapping plays into this brilliantly, allowing him to be the audience surrogate in this brief yet effectively terrifying opener. The quick shift from hoping he will find his way to safety to seeing him attacked and dragged into a man’s car while Flanagan & Allen’s “Run Rabbit Run” plays is unnerving and nauseating. For a Black person, it’s our worst fear. For others, it is a window into the unprovoked hostility and attention we often feel while simply existing. And for all of us, it sets the stage for a film that examines racism, subjugation, fetishization, and more in a body horror narrative.

Jaws (1975)

Eric Diaz: Although I think of Jaws as an adventure film with horror elements, without a doubt the opening scene is one of the scariest ever in film history. Without a single mechanical shark in sight, Spielberg finds a way to create pure terror as nighttime swimmer Chrissie meets her fate in the form of a hungry Great White. To this day, her unheard screams for help in her final moments send chills down my spine, in a way very few horror scenes do, because it feels so damn real. If there was an Oscar for “most believable death,” it should have gone to Susan Backlinie.

It Follows (2014)

Mikey Walsh: It Follows’ monster isn’t terrifying because it wears a scary mask or carries a deadly weapon. It’s a true nightmare because it slowly and relentlessly tracks its prey. All while often taking on the appearance of a normal stranger or loved one only a future victim can see. But that ghoul is at its scariest before we ever learn what it really is. The movie opens with a perfectly paced, hauntingly scored shot of an otherwise peaceful suburban street. A girl we do not know, yet instantly care about, runs from her house in undergarments and heels from an invisible monster. Her fear is palpable as she assures her family of her safety. All while we know something terrible is coming for her.

While we never see her death following a sad farewell message to her parents, made from a beach where the tide rolls in endlessly like the killer she knows is coming. Her mangled body lets us know exactly why she was right to be so scared. This incredible opening scene lets us know what will follow for the rest of this unsettling film.

Suspiria (1977)

Kyle Anderson: Even when it’s just showing credits over a black screen, Dario Argento’s Suspiria starts to ratchet up the tension. The main theme from Goblin is equal parts music box and industrial saw. Rattling the nerves and creating dread. The colors pick up immediately as Suzy makes her way out of the airport and into Argento’s nightmare world. But that’s just mood and color, the stark red and blue of gels over lights. What makes the beginning of the movie the best in horror is the dream-logic deaths of two characters we only meet briefly.

The girl Suzy sees running away in the rain, meets her fate by a pair of disembodied eyes outside her window, along with a sudden, violent thrash of a hand. Stabbed in the heart, thrown through plate glass, and hanged via telephone wire in a matter of seconds, this death is brutal and vibrant. And her friend’s demise, impaled with pieces of the plate glass, just proves the maestro of horror isn’t messing around.

Smile (2022)

Tai Gooden: Parker Finn’s Laura Hasn’t Slept (2020) is one of the most effective and intense horror shorts in recent history. So I expected greatness from Smile, which mostly delivered on its promise to expand the tale of an unseen and transferable evil. The film is rife with jump scares and disturbing imagery but there’s nothing quite like its captivating, disturbing, and lengthy opening scene. Caitlin Stasey stuns as Laura Weaver, a student experiencing a mental health crisis after witnessing her professor’s suicide. Her ebb and flow from agonizing paranoia to unbridled panic before settling into that stoic and menacing smile sets this scene as a new horror opening classic. The chilling exchange between Laura and Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon) lays a strong foundation for a relentless curse, a harrowing inheritance, to creep its way to the next victim. 

Scream (1996)

Meaghan Kirby: It goes without saying, really, that Scream has one of the most iconic opening scenes in all of cinema. But for this list, I’ll reiterate that particular stance. The scene is the stuff of legend: The increasingly menacing phone calls; the abandoned Jiffy pop roasting on its foil in the background; Drew Barrymore giving us an iconic scream queen performance in just 10 minutes!

It’s an homage to When a Stranger Calls with a delightfully brutal twist, signaling the many tributes to beloved horror films and tropes to come. Casting one of the biggest movie stars, sticking her front and center on all marketing materials, and brutally murdering her at the top of the film—what a move. So many others have since tried to pull off similar stunt casting shenanigans. But few have come close to sticking the landing.

Jurassic Park (1993)

Amy Ratcliffe: Leaves rustle amid filtered light. Strange animal noises permeate the air. A team of wranglers looks nervous AF. Jurassic Park may not be a pure horror movie, but the 1993 film’s opening scene sure causes terror. The few minutes showcasing the transport of a deadly velociraptor set the movie’s tension and hints at the danger ahead. It makes sure the audience knows from the beginning that the dinosaurs John Hammond shows off so proudly are not cute pets. Just beneath the wonder of these creatures’ existence lies danger and a longing for human-flavored snacks. The chilling raptor screams, Robert Muldoon’s desperate “shoot her,” and John Williams’ ominous music with its increasing tempo etched this scene into my memory.

The Hitcher (1986)

Rosie Knight: A young man (C. Thomas Howell) drives down a rainy highway, his eyes closed as he tires from the long drive. He’s awoken by a massive truck that almost runs him off the road. It’s a terrifying moment, but nothing compared to what’s coming. After his brush with death, he picks up a hitchhiker, played with devastating ferocity by Rutger Hauer. Two people inside a car in a storm shouldn’t be able to instill the kind of fear that Hauer and Howell do. But as the former torments the latter by playing a demented game of mind control, there might not be a scarier sequence in cinema. However, it’s when Hauer says, “That’s what the other guy said,” as Howell asks, “What do you want?” that you know you’re really in trouble. Hauer might never have been better than playing this cinematic sociopath.

Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021)

Tai Gooden: The opening scene for the first film in Fear Street‘s trilogy is a combination of R. L. Stine book nostalgia, homage to the heyday of shopping malls, and a neon soaked tribute to ’90s slashers. Mall bookstore worker Heather Watkins lengthy struggle against a skull masked killer and her heartbreaking death at the hands of a friend is chilling and intriguing. But what really makes this opening scene stand out are the intricate details you notice upon subsequent viewings. Ryan hearing the whisper of the Shadyside curse calling his name. Stephen King’s Insomnia on the bookshelves. Casting Maya Hawke only to kill her off, just like Drew Barrymore in Scream (1996). Heather desperately saying “It’s me…” to Ryan as blood oozes from her mouth is truly haunting.

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Kyle Anderson: How do you top the horror grandeur of George A. Romero’s magnum zombie opus? Well, for one, you make it faster-paced and generally funnier (thanks screenwriter James Gunn). For two? You open it with lengthy short film that introduces your main character, the escalating zombie outbreak, and the imminent chaos that unfolds because of it. After we meet nurse Ana and her husband Luis, we see their seemingly blissful life get turned upside down when they wake up to a neighbor girl in their house.

She looks hurt, but it’s worse than that. She’s dead. She bites Luis who bleeds out quicker than Ana can save him. Then he gets up just as quickly. As Ana runs outside she sees the entire neighborhood has gone to hell, running undead feasting on everyone. Ana drives away only to see it’s more than just the neighborhood. It’s everywhere! This is one of the most impressive shorthands for zombie outbreaks ever put to screen, and still might be Zack Snyder’s crowning achievement.

Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Rotem Rusak: Though Hannibal’s presence looms over the film, The Silence of the Lambs belongs to Clarice. Throughout the movie, the scales fall from her eyes, as it were. As she faces evil in its most overtly horrifying and most quietly mundane forms. And while she purportedly has allies as she heads into these battles, at the end of the day she is solitary in her fight. The opening scene of The Silence of the Lambs perfectly conveys this uneasy tension. As Clarice runs alone in the woods, a sense of crawling dread fills the screen. We feel she is being watched because we are watching her. And something, it seems, is about to go very wrong.

Despite this, Clarice runs on, unbothered by her position alone and vulnerable as we perceive her to be. She forges on, confident in herself and her strength, even as the ominous music picks up its pace and birds and wild animals chatter in the trees. The opening sequence concludes with the iconic shot of Clarice entering an elevator full of men. Overtly othered but determined nonetheless to carry on. No safer within the halls of the FBI than she is without.

Halloween (1978)

Tai Gooden: Everything about this opening scene (and its scary score) confirms why John Carpenter’s Halloween is the foundation of slasher films. It transpires through the POV of what we believe is a voyeuristic stalker, lurking in the darkness and waiting for the optimal time to attack a young couple. But the Pandora’s box of horror opens quietly, revealing the shocking hand of a child grabbing a butcher’s knife. Those terse minutes stretch on with you knowing where this will likely go, but endlessly curious about how it will get there. The clown mask slipping over his face, obscuring the most heinous parts of Judith’s murder, and his heavy breathing as he trudges back downstairs is a chilling, unforgettable masterpiece.

But, it’s the last shot of a small blond Michael Myers wearing a bright Halloween costume, staring listlessly and holding the knife with his sister’s blood on it, that packs the biggest punch retrospectively. We witnessed the birth of a silent, relentless, and enduring killer.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Eric Diaz: A lot of horror sequels are pale imitations of their predecessors. But not A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. We’re introduced to young Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette), who, as soon as the credits roll, dreams herself into Freddy’s nightmare world. We get all the Freddy tropes in the opening scene. The Elm Street house, the creepy little girl, and the basement filled with murdered teens. But long before Inception, this scene introduced us to “the dream within the dream,” concept. As Kristen wakes up (or so she thinks) only to find her bathroom faucet handles are an extension of Freddy’s clawed hand. When he uses them to cut open her wrist, it’s hard to not feel queasy. And all of this is just in the movie’s first five minutes.

Final Destination 2 (2003)

Mikey Walsh: Every Final Destination movie opens with a terrifying “what-if.” But it’s the second and best installment of the franchise that delivers an all-time opening horror scene. The vision of a deadly highway pileup reminds us that a normal drive can instantly end in tragedy. But what makes Final Destination 2‘s first scene worthy of inclusion on this list is how it will stay with you for the rest of your life. It’s impossible not to think about that crash when you find yourself driving alongside a massive truck ferrying something large and terrifying (trees or anything else) that you’re not fully confident it can handle. Even a small pickup with something tied up in its bed can conjure the memory of that scene.

Final Destination 2 forever made every trip on a highway a potential drive full of genuine dread. It truly is—fittingly for a car crash scene—nightmare fuel.

The Ring (2002)

Kyle Anderson: I can’t think of a modern horror movie that had as effective an opening scene as either version of The Ring, based on the Japanese film Ringu. Talk about a way to sell your premise as concisely and impactfully as possible. The concept, of a cursed VHS tape that kills anyone who watches it a week later, is pretty out-there, and so you need to show it. Two teenage girls talk about the tape as a modern urban legend, like a Bloody Mary thing, about what happens when you watch the tape. One of the girls has already watched the tape and her blood runs cold as her friend describes exactly what happened. Just through dialogue and moody music, we get a sense that the end is possibly nigh, even despite a fake-out scare halfway through. When the TV turns on all by itself, even before we see the tape itself or the ghost girl, we’re scared to death. Literally in the girl’s case.

Evil Dead Rise (2023)

Tai Gooden: The Evil Dead franchise often leans into the sillier and splatter-loving side of horror. However, the latest installment, Evil Dead Rise, is an excellent marriage of horror tropes, humor, and a downright disturbing sequence of events. We’ve got young adults in a creepy lakeside cabin, including the jerky/annoying boyfriend and the girl who doesn’t want to be there. Things go awry as we realize that there’s something wrong with Jessica. Her back turned as she reads words from wuthering heights, her voice getting deeper and warbling lets us know that we are in for something disturbing. And boy do things get demonic, leaving us with a harrowing shot over the lake before the film brings its title to visual fruition. 

Originally published October 20, 2021.

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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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If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: anthology horror movies live and die by story quality. That seems fairly obvious, but you’d be surprised how many coast along doing very little, relying on one segment to do the heavy lifting. I caught the most recent entry in the long-running, newly revived V/H/S series at Beyond Fest 2023. V/H/S/85, certainly maintains a consistent level of quality throughout. Each segment feels of apiece with the others, even having the obligatory framing story be more of a story in its own right than previous ones. However, while each segment is impressive, almost all of them is way too long and drags as a result.

As the title implies, this one’s conceit is that every thing is 1985. The outdated format of VHS for home movies means the Shudder era of the franchise has had to go time traveling. 1994, 1999, and now 1985. Aside from clothes and hair, plus digital tape hiss and distortion, a couple of the segments veer into the realm of “Analog Horror,” which is all the rage with the YouTube kids these days. The one that does that the best—and incidentally is my favorite—is the movie’s framing story. “Total Copy,” from director David Bruckner, is a VHS copy of weird documentary about scientists finding a very strange humanoid figure and trying to communicate with it, showing it old tapes along the way. Rarely is the framing story even a story much less the best in the movie, but series staple Bruckner nails it.

The other big name among the directors is The Black Phone director Scott Derrickson and the story “Dreamkill.” It’s sort of two layers of found footage. First we see a grisly murder from the killer’s point of view. Then we follow a police detective (Freddy Rodriguez) and a forensic videographer (James Ransome) as they go to that selfsame crime scene…days after someone mailed them the video tape. This happens a few times, with the tapes arriving before the murders take place. Eventually the cops find the mysterious mailer, and that kicks the story into another gear. I enjoyed this one for the most part, well made and performed.

The other stories are fun, but I think in every case go on too long. Mike P. Nelson’s story is split in two halves. “No Wake” finds a group of 20-somethings in a boat on a lake at the mercy of a sniper on the shore, while follow-up “Ambrosia” features the sniper afterwards. The central twist of both parts, which I won’t spoil, doesn’t really pay off the way it ought. The brutality of the deaths helps it but it didn’t do much for me beyond that.

Gigi Saul Guerrero brings us “God of Death,” in which a Mexican news program suffers an earthquake. The crew find themselves buried in a sinkhole and have to find their way out as they happen upon strange artifacts of Aztec deities. “TKNOGD” from director Natasha Kermani is the one that had me scratching my head the most. It starts as a taped performance art piece about technology becoming the new religion. Later, the artist on stage enters a very cool retro-looking VR space only to find something terrifying inside.

So, obviously consistency is good, but I do think the fact that the tone and style of each segment is so samey, nothing stands out. It’s all equally impressive, the effects and gore are great. But, aside from “Total Copy” which has to feel like a documentary on some level, we don’t get the super weird or atypical entry. V/H/S/94, for example, has a news report with a rat monster in a sewer that looks way different from the others. Similarly, V/H/S/99 ends with a segment which necessitated the filmmakers create their version of the landscape of Hell. Yes it’s true 85 has no bad segments, it also has no truly great segments.

Still, for fans of this kind of movie and this franchise, V/H/S/85 is yet another fun Halloween season romp. And hey, I hope they keep making these every year! It’ll be on Shudder on Friday, October 6.

V/H/S/85 ⭐ (3 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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I will never, in my life, be more right about anything than I was in the early morning hours of April 6, 2007. I had just left a very late screening of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s new Grindhouse double feature. While I wasn’t a fan of either director’s film, I loved the fake trailers that played throughout. They were so good that as I left the theater, I predicted with absolute certainty somebody would eventually turn them into real movies. (I didn’t say it was a very bold prediction! Just that I was right!) That already happened with both Machete and Hobo With a Shotgun. Now my favorite faux Grindhouse trailer, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving, is finally getting the feature film treatment. The trailer for Roth’s complete slasher movie isn’t super gory but it gives us a little more brutal action than the previous teaser.

Talk about serving some good old fashioned slasher horror, this Thanksgiving trailer features lots of blood and death at the hands of a masked pilgrim killer. The film’s official logline also reveals when this nightmare is taking place. Turns out a terrible, unofficial American “holiday” is also a part of this feast of terror.

After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts – the birthplace of the infamous holiday.

This trailer and the previous teaser are a gazillion times less brutal than the fake one. The original is so over-the-top it’s hard to describe it without crossing lines of basic decency. However, if you watch both you’ll see why this new trailer might be hiding some of its most graphic moments. From the return of the turkey mascot and the cheerleader on the trampoline, Roth might have something sinister up his sleeves. He also might have stayed as true to his Grindhouse idea as possible without garnering an NC-17 rating.

The version of the horror movie he teased in Grindhouse would be worthy of an NC-37 rating, honestly. (Especially if it includes a very unique type of turkey stuffing scene.) That would be fine by me, though. I’m of age and would see any and all versions. Just as I always knew someday I would.

Written by Roth and Jeff Rendell, Thanksgiving stars Rick Hoffman, Gina Gershon, Addison Rae, Milo Manheim, Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque, and Patrick Dempsey. It cuts its way into theaters this November.

Originally published on September 7, 2023.

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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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Is that a terrific or horrific time we’re alluding to in the headline? Why not both? Netflix’s latest (and final) limited series from creator Mike Flanagan promises yet another exquisite turn that lands somewhere between art-piece and terror. We’ll honestly be sorry to see this collaboration go. But it certainly looks like The Fall of the House of Usher will leave us with a bang. The Fall of the House of Usher trailer starts off strong and then only gets wilder. Check out character descriptions and our first good look at Mike Flanagan’s Poe-inspired series below.

The Fall of the House of Usher‘s Trailer

Speaking to The Wrap, Mike Flanagan said of The Fall of the House of Usher, “It’s crazy. It is unlike anything I’ve ever done, but in the other direction… My favorite way to describe it to people is like ‘Hill House’ is kind of a string quartet, and ‘Bly Manor’ is this delicate, kind of beautiful piece of classical piano music, and ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is heavy metal. It’s rock ‘n’ roll.”

And this The Fall of the House of Usher trailer shows us exactly why. It feels like every string is being pulled hard, and in the end, the guitar is getting smashed. The amount of blood, gore, and fear we see in the trailer alone is certainly indicative of what’s to come.

Of course, we’re also happy to see some of Flanagan’s frequent collaborators in this The Fall of the House of Usher trailer. We can’t wait to see them crush this series.

The Fall of the House of Usher Official Clip

Netflix also released a new clip from the series. Entitled “Meet the Ushers,” this scene around the family’s massive banquet table introduces the entire cast. It was probably a nightmare to shoot. The family’s lawyer, Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill), whom they call “The Pym Reaper,” hands out contracts for everyone to sign. If any of the signees later reveal themselves to be snitches, they’ll get more than stitches. Not just out of the will, as Madeline (Mary McDonnell) explains, they’re dead.

The Fall of the House of Usher‘s Synopsis

The trailer’s description offers us a synopsis that shares more about The Fall of the House of Usher. It notes:

In this wicked series from Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) and based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth.

Fortunato, you say. Well, that’s surely a reference to Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado,” if there ever was one. And, we feel there will be many more Poe Easter eggs for us to uncover. Of course, we hear the famous refrain “Nevermore” echo through The Fall of the House of Usher‘s trailer and even see a raven.

The Fall of the House of Usher Character Descriptions

But who are all The Fall of the House of Usher characters that we get to meet in the above trailer? Well, Entertainment Weekly, via ComingSoon.Net revealed more information about the various Ushers, friends, and foes we’ll meet in the series. You can catch a few more Poe-Easter eggs in these Flanagan creations if you look carefully enough. Beware, do give quite a bit of information about each person.

Here are The Fall of the House of Usher‘s main characters:

Bruce Greenwood’s Roderick Usher is the family patriarch and CEO of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. He is described as an ambitious and driven man, who has high expectations of his six children. While he gives them access to every resource imaginable, fatherly affection isn’t necessarily one of them.

Mary McDonnell’s Madeline Usher serves as the brains behind the operation at Fortunato. If he falters, she picks up the slack. But a downside to all that drive and ambition is the fact that she would step over her brother if she had to, regardless of the love she has for him.

Carla Gugino’s Verna is a shape-shifting demon, who made a deal with twins Roderick and Madeline when they were younger. Decades later, she returns at the height of Fortunato’s power to massacre the heirs to the Usher fortune.

Henry Thomas’ Frederick Usher is the eldest son of Roderick. Despite being the natural heir to the company, he’s described as the least capable person to take over the business out of all his siblings.

Samatha Sloyan’s Tamerlane Usher is one of Roderick’s children, who starts a health and wellness company of her own in an attempt to step out of her father’s shadow.

T’Nia Miller’s Victorine Lafourcade is Roderick’s daughter out of wedlock. She’ll do everything she can in order to gain her father’s most coveted approval and affection, even at the expense of her life’s mission to help people.

Sauriyan Sapkota’s Perry Usher is the youngest of the Usher children. Rather than inventing new medical tools or running the family empire, he wants to make life one big party.

Kyliegh Curran’s Lenore Usher is the daughter of Frederick, who’s described as a kind and empathic young woman.

Rahul Kohli’s Leo Usher is a video game patron and a socialite playboy with an intense drug habit.

Kate Siegel’s Camille L’Espanaye is described as extremely cunning and biting. She handles the PR for the Usher family, which has made her an expert at turning bad behavior into good press.

Katie Parker’s Annabel Lee is Roderick’s first wife and the mother of Frederick and Tamerlane. With a warm and trusting nature, she always sought to find the best in Roderick, but that might have left her blind to the dangers encroaching on her family.

Carl Lumbly’s C. Auguste Dupin is a brilliant attorney, who’s determined to take down the Usher family.

Mark Hamill’s Arthur Pym serves as at Usher family’s enigmatic lawyer, who remains an unfailingly loyal employee and enforcer for the Ushers.

The Fall of the House of Usher‘s Release Date

In “The Raven,” Poe remarks, “Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December.” But we guess October is close enough. And it is the best month for this kind of spooky limited-series to premiere. The Fall of the House of Usher will release on Netflix on October 12. It will be eight episodes long.

Originally published on September 12, 2023.

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A24 has released several iconic scary movies over the past few years. Films like Hereditary have cemented the studio’s reputation as a high-quality house of horrors. And A24 had another sleeper horror hit this summer with Talk to Me. As a way of celebrating Talk to Me’s digital release, A24 has released a life-size ceramic replica of the evil “Party Hand” from the film that you can buy. Talk to Me‘s for-sale hand is actually a smoking device or an incense burner. But absolutely nothing is stopping any fans from just displaying this hand as a piece of creepy art. And, who knows, it could be a portal to the spirit world. You can check out images of the Talk to Me hand in our gallery down below:

Click To View Gallery

In Talk to Me, the movie reveals that the mysterious prop is the severed, embalmed hand of a powerful deceased medium. The characters in the film then use it to summon up spirits. The idea is that someone holds the hand and speaks the words “talk to me” out loud. Thus, inviting in whatever entity from beyond the grave that heeds your call. After someone says the words on Talk to Me, the participant lets go of the hand. This allows for the spirit to enter inside of them. In the film, they equate it to getting high off drugs. Hence the entire thing becoming a party game for bored youth. As you can imagine, all kinds of hideous chaos ensues.

A24’s already sold out of their first production run of the ceramic Talk to Me “Party Hand.” But more are going to be produced in the near future, so you can pre-order now for the price of $110.00. The estimated shipping for this purchasable Talk to Me hand is in late December. However, A24 does not guarantee a holiday delivery. Talk to Me is already out on digital but will be hitting Blu-ray on October 3.

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After the financial success of the remake of Pet Sematary in 2019, some sort of continuation was inevitable. Even if Stephen King’s original novel had no continuation to speak of. That certainly didn’t stop the makers of the original 1989 film from making Pet Sematary II back in the day. But this time, for Pet Sematary: Bloodlines, instead of a sequel, they’re going the prequel route. We have our first trailer for the film, which premieres at this year’s Fantastic Fest, before dropping on Paramount+ in October. You can check out the creeptastic trailer for Pet Sematary: Bloodlines below:

This prequel takes place in the year 1969. It focuses on a younger version of the Jud Crandall character from the novel. Fans probably remember Jud Crandall as the old man who gives all the information about the burial ground to the original story’s lead, Louis Creed. Jud also utters the original movie’s most famous line, “Sometimes, dead is better.” In this prequel, Jud is still a young man, and dreams of escaping his hometown of Ludlow, Maine. That is until he discovers the dark secrets of what lies buried in a nearby ancient cemetery. Jud will come face to face with the family legacy that connects him to Ludlow. This sets him up for his future in the original Stephen King story.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines is directed by Lindsey Anderson Beer, who co-wrote it with Jeff Buhler. Buhler wrote the 2019 remake film. The movie stars Jackson White as the younger Jud Crandall, as well as Jack Mulhern, Natalie Alyn Lind, Forrest Goodluck, and Isabella Star LaBlanc. A few notable veteran actors in the film include Pam Grier, Samantha Mathis, Henry Thomas, and David Duchovny.

Pet Sematary: Bloodlines hits Paramount+ on October 6, just in time for the spooky season.

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Sometimes, a word scramble of monikers means a movie will simply be too much. And a slasher horror, time travel, ’80s-comedy movie sounds like it could get chaotic. But the trailer for Prime Video’s Totally Killer hits all the right notes. Even in the short space of the trailer, Totally Killer delivers more than one jump scare, some solid ’80s moments, and a compelling time travel narrative to boot. Additionally, the movie comes from Prime Video’s partnership with Blumhouse Television and promises “horror’s newest slasher.” Let’s get totally excited! Here’s our first good look at the Kiernan Shipka-starring Totally Killer.

We have to say, Totally Killer‘s Sweet Sixteen Killer does give us chills in their trailer scenes. But we can see how they might become an iconic horror villain. A release notes that this masked menace joins The Black Phone‘s The Grabber, Freaky‘s The Butcher, Happy Death Day‘s Babyface, The Purge: Election Year‘s Lady Liberty, and Into the Dark: Pooka!‘s Pooka in Blumhouse’s horror canon. Those bad apples are quite the storied bunch. So, we can’t wait to see how this new slasher fits in among the rest.

A synopsis shared along with the trailer reveals more about the plot of Totally Killer. It notes:

Thirty-five years after the shocking murder of three teens, the infamous “Sweet Sixteen Killer“ returns on Halloween night to claim a fourth victim. Seventeen-year-old Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) ignores her overprotective mom’s (Julie Bowen) warning and comes face-to-face with the masked maniac and, on the run for her life, accidentally time travels back to 1987, the year of the original killings. Forced to navigate the unfamiliar and outrageous culture of the 1980s, Jamie teams up with her teen mom (Olivia Holt) to take down the killer once and for all, before she’s stuck in the past forever.

As we said, the trailer and synopsis for Totally Killer offer us a rich text, but it might just be a great one. We certainly aren’t expecting complete realism from this horror movie, but we are expecting complete ’80s immersion. Totally Killer will release globally on October 6, exclusively on Prime Video.

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BoxLunch’s Horror Collection is putting a couple more killer pieces on the board. The pop culture collectible company’s latest sports-style uniforms celebrate the Ghost With the Most and Haddonfield’s iconic killer. You can now show of your Beetlejuice fandom with a strange and unusual hockey jersey from BoxLunch. And Halloween supporters can back their favorite slasher franchise with a Michael Myers Halloween baseball jersey.

It’s “showtime” this week at BoxLunch. Beetlejuice backers can now order a store exclusive embroidered Snake Beetlejuice captain’s hockey jersey ($59.90). It features lettering with the team name and a snake design on the front. On the back is the notorious ghost’s unspeakable name with a jersey number warning opposing fans not to chant his name “3” times. The sweater (that’s hockey parlance, nerds) also comes with stripes across the top, bottom, and sleeves. There’s also an embroidered patch on one arm.

Halloween diehards (or horror fans who want a little lighter shirt) can also grab the all-new Haddonfield Slashers Michael Myers Baseball Jersey ($54.90) at BoxLunch. It sports the team’s name in italics and a jolly roger Michael Myers logo. On the embroidered backside there’s an “M. Myers” and the jersey number “78.” That comes from the year the original film hit theaters.

The jerseys are the newest sports-inspired uniform pieces in BoxLunch’s Horror Collection. The previous selection items include a hockey jersey for Good Guy Chucky’s Child’s Play. And, of course considering the mask he wears, there’s also a hockey sweater for Friday the 13th‘s Jason Voorhees.

Unlike with sports, it’s totally normal to be a fan of more than one scary movie. So unlike sports fans don’t worry about wearing your horror jersey to any venue you like. Only, don’t be surprised if you have to explain to someone you’re simply a fan of the film and not the actual sociopaths they feature. It’s not totally normal to wear a jersey for a guy whose most impressive stats are total kills.

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It doesn’t matter how many home invasion movies we watch in our lives. They will ALWAYS scare us. The same is true of alien invasion films. Each is an established horror movie trope for good reason. They play on the fear of seeing the place we feel safest turned into the scene of our worst nightmare. There’s something uniquely awful about having our personal sanctuary violated. Now Hulu is going to try and deliver something truly horrific by combining both in No One Will Save You, a film from 20th Century Studios called a “sci-fi psychological thriller.” We don’t know if we’ll be thrilled by something so unsettling, but the creepy first trailer for No One Will Save You proves it’ll certainly frighten us.

No. No, I don’t like that. By “that” I mean how upsetting this premise makes me feel. As for the No One Will Save You trailer and premise, I like both a lot. This feels like Signs crossed with a Jordan Peele movie, The Strangers, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That’s a pretty good recipe for a story that will have us cowering under our blanket the first time we hear a creak in the night.

This is the second film from writer-director Brian Duffield (Spontaneous). It stars Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart) as Brynn. In a press release Disney describes Brynn as a “formidable fighter when it comes to her unwelcome and unearthly intruders.” Her gumption standing up to supreme beings will confuse her new space enemies. But monsters from another world aren’t the only thing she’ll be battling. The film’s official synopsis says the horror movie “is an action-packed face-off between Brynn and a host of extraterrestrial beings who threaten her future while forcing her to deal with her past.”

Facing both intergalactic invaders and your regrets? Forget combining two classic horror tropes. Dealing with our past might be even scarier than an alien home invasion.

No One Will Save You arrives on Hulu in the US on September 22, 2023. That’s also when it debuts on Star+ in Latin America and Disney+ everywhere else.

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In 1973, The Exorcist shifted horror on its axis. The seminal horror film delivered a frightening tale about a girl possessed by a demonic entity. The Exorcist hit pop culture hard, almost singlehandedly changing public opinion about the Ouija board. Its clever scenes like the “spider-walk” and the infamous head-spinning sequence are oft-duplicated in countless films. The Exorcist is undoubtedly one of the best and most influential horror movies of all time, one that still holds up in our current era. If you claim to be an American horror fan, this movie has to be a part of your viewing experience. Fifty years later, the film’s franchise continues with The Exorcist: Believer, a fresh chapter with a delightfully sinister trailer (actually, two) featuring two girls possessed by a familiar evil force. We meet again, Pazuzu.

What a chilling clip, indeed. The ending with the girls saying “drip drop” and staring up at the ceiling is phenomenal. It could become a moment that will stick in fans’ minds for years to come. A detailed synopsis of The Exorcist: Believer gives us more insight into what’s going down in its first trailer: 

Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom, Jr.) has raised their daughter, Angela (Lidya Jewett) on his own. But when Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia O’Neill), disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before: Chris MacNeil. 

It’s thrilling to see Ellen Burstyn reprise her role as Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist: Believer. Chris is still haunted by what happened to her daughter Regan five decades ago. And she better not die in this movie because she is a legend. In fact, another trailer gives us more insight into her role in this film as well as how scary this demonic duo will be.

The Exorcist: Believer hits theaters just in time for Halloween on October 6.

Originally published July 25, 2023.

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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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There is perhaps no “game” that sparks as much curiosity and fear as a Ouija board. The flat board with numbers, letters, a few words, and a planchette (aka the board’s moving device) is generally synonymous with breaking the veil between the living and dead realms. Many see it as a tool to open horrifying portals while others use it to curiously commune with “the other side.” It is also a staple in horror stories, pop culture, entertainment, and certain spiritual practices. But, despite being such a looming part of our culture, most people don’t know the complex history behind Ouija boards.

The Spiritualism Movement and Talking Boards

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the Ouija board stems from Spiritualism, a belief that the dead can communicate with the living. Of course, this idea is something that has existed on a global scale for thousands of years. But, it became quite prominent in the United States during the 19^th century when childbirth, war, and disease among other things led to shorter life spans and frequent deaths. Many people desired a pathway to connect with lost loved ones and get answers to unresolved issues and questions.

The concept of contacting the dead was seen as socially acceptable and even wholesome in many circles. Of course, this is likely because the prominent faces of Spiritualism were white people. For example, in 1848, people became enraptured by Maggie and Kate Fox. They were two young sisters who claimed to get messages from spirits through taps on their walls. Their abilities made them household names and further sparked public interest in reaching out to deceased people.

This led to the birth of “talking boards,” the precursor to the Ouija board, in the late 1880s. It had letters, numbers, and a small cursor to point towards its script. It’s not clear who came up with the first talking board. But technically that person should get credit for laying the groundwork for Ouija boards. Today, Ouija board, talking board, and spirit board are all interchangeable terms to describe the same tool with a rich history. Now buckle up because it’s about to get wild.

The Ouija Board, Séances, and a Very Messy Origin Story

It wouldn’t be the American way if someone didn’t try to further capitalize on the popularity of séances and personal pain, right? And, like most American origin stories, there is a lot of messiness behind the Ouija board’s beginnings and very early history. Charles Kennard of Baltimore, Maryland didn’t care about the Spiritualism movement but he did see a profitable business opportunity. The (allegedly) shady businessman teamed up with coffin maker/undertaker E.C. Reiche, a Prussian immigrant, to start producing their own wooden boards. But, when Kennard starting looking for investors, he took credit for the invention.

There’s some debate over Reiche’s actual involvement. As reported by MyEasternShoreMD, information about Reiche’s life is spotty at best. There are little official records and no real credit to him being the Ouija board creator. This makes sense if Kennard simply took credit for Reiche’s handiwork. But, if that is the case, then why didn’t Reiche at least try to put up a legal or verbal fight for his creation? However, leading talking board expert Robert Murch told Baltimore Magazine that Reiche was indeed involved with early productions only to be cut out by Kennard. Ouch.

After Kennard’s many failed attempts to secure funding, attorney Elijah Bond became interested. They formed Kennard Novelty Company in 1890 along with other investors like William H.A. Maupin, Colonel Washington Bowie, and John F. Green. Bond’s sister-in-law Helen Peters also played a key role in creating the Ouija board’s handle and possibly the name. Kennard and his colleagues claimed that the board named itself after they asked it. The board said Ouija is an ancient Egyptian phrase which means “good luck.”

There’s also a popular albeit nonsensical belief that Ouija is a combination of the French and German words for “yes” (oui + ja). Peters later said she wore a locket with a picture of a woman with the word “Ouija” over it. It is also possible that the name on the locket may have been misread. This is plausible considering there was a prominent author and activist named Ouida at that time. So, even the name itself boasts a history of (potential) magic and mystery.

However, Peters did convince the patent office to approve the Ouija board’s application. She did this through a demonstration that spelled out the officer’s supposedly unknown name. It’s unlikely that they wouldn’t already know the officer’s name but it’s another interesting addition to the origin story. A patent file confirms she did a demonstration and the patent was issued on February 10, 1891.

The company soon brought Bond’s employee William Fuld into the fold and they began to produce boards. The Ouija boards became a hit, which led to the company quickly opening additional factories before Kennard and Bond’s unceremonious booting out of the business. Fuld took over but he strangely died in 1927 after falling from the roof of a new factory. Wildly, he claimed a Ouija board told him to build this factory.

The “Ouija, the Wonderful Talking Board” game became a cultural staple when it hit shelves for $1.50 in 1891. It was a direct path to ancestors but also a bit of intriguing and escapist Friday night fun amid a tumultuous world. People would gather with family or friends and experience the rush of asking questions as the (then) wooden planchette jumps around to provide an otherworldly answer. Their intentions were by all accounts what many would consider pure. The Ouija board began to appear in sketches for major newspapers and grew in popularity throughout the disparity of the Great Depression.

Writers like Pearl Curran and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill all began to use the board for creative inspiration. There were people from certain religious and spiritual backgrounds who saw the board as a form of divination (seeking information from spiritual forces), which their beliefs condemn. It fell under the umbrella term of witchcraft that was associated with ungodly deeds.

Decades later, TV shows took a jovial approach to using a Ouija board. I Love Lucy episode “The Séance” (1951) depicts Lucy faking a séance to find favor with a businessman.

However, several stories began to surface about Ouija boards and murder. In 1930, Clothilde Marchand was killed by Lila Jimerson, who was having an affair with Marchand’s husband. Jimerson used a Ouija board to convince an associate, Nancy Bowen, that Marchand was a “witch” who caused Bowen’s husband’s death. Jimerson and Bowen later pled guilty to manslaughter. Despite dark stories involving the Ouija board, many people did not see it as an inherent void of evil. In fact, forty years after Fuld’s death, Ouija boards outsold Monopoly games.

The Exorcist Effect Changes the Ouija Board Forever

Interestingly, the sharp collective change in attitudes towards the Ouija board stems from none other than The Exorcist in 1973.

The supposedly “based on a true story” (which has its share of debatable and murky details) seminal horror flick about a girl who is possessed by a demon after playing with a Ouija board scared the fear of Hell into people. It also didn’t help that The Exorcist‘s release came at an already uneasy time in America. People were still reeling from the Manson cult murders of the late 1960s. The rise of serial killing sprees by culprits like the Zodiac and Alphabet killers who seemed to use ritual patterns in their murders.

The USA was also witnessing the beginnings of modern Satanism through Anton LaVey, who wrote The Satanic Bible and founded the Church of Satan in 1966. People like John Todd and David Hanson began to plant ideas that evil witchy cults run the world. So, a film with spiritual possession and green vomit spewing all over the place absolutely played into those fears.

But The Exorcist isn’t the first film in history to depiction of a Ouija board as a gateway to possession. The Uninvited (1944) features siblings who host a séance to find out the truth behind a death in the home. It apparently isn’t same level of disturbing as The Exorcist.

Suddenly, people forgot about the Ouija board’s relatively pure history and deemed it an evil and demonic tool. Satanic Panic came shortly after in the 1980s after a group of Californian kids told their community that their school was a location for rape, prostitution, and Satanic activities. These unproven allegations led to yet another wave of fear among the American public.

So, anything that could be even remotely associated with Satanism or the occult like the Ouija board, Dungeons & Dragons, and certain types of music became evil. Naturally, this made the Ouija board more interesting to rebellious youth who would use them in secret for some possible thrills and scares. Parker Brothers later became acquired by Hasbro, which still sells Ouija boards and owns the trademark for the name.

Ouija boards remain in more recent public consciousness as stories about demonic possession continue to thrive. In November 2014, 35 Bolivian students were hospitalized because of trances, sweating, and rapid heartbeats after playing with a Ouija board. There have been stories of mass fainting and spirit possession in Mexico, hysteria, and even the rise of a 2015 viral game called ‘Charlie Charlie.’ Players would create a make shift version of a Ouija board with “yes” and “no” on a piece of paper. The game uses two pencils to supposedly chat with a demonic spirit.

Ouija Boards Reign Supreme in Film and TV

The Ouija board’s notoriety as a symbol of evil took over the horror genre. In 1986, the first movie in the Witchboard franchise hit theaters. The story follows Linda and Jim, who become haunted by a ghost after a Ouija board session with Jim’s friend/Linda’s ex Brandon. Linda begins to act unusual and people predictably start to die.

Sorority House Massacre II (1990) taps into the “Ouija board as sleepover entertainment” trope with a group of sorority sisters who use the board to contact a deceased murderer. What Lies Beneath (2000) shows the main character, Claire, using one to contact a missing/possibly dead neighbor. In 2007, Paranormal Activity took Ouija boards to found-footage territory with a paranormal houseguest gaining power from the board.

That same year, the board finally got a film bearing its name. Ouija shows a group of kids who use a board and end up dealing with a stalkerish (and murderous) spirit. The film became a franchise with its latest installment releasing in 2016. And the Ouija board continues to make appearances in film and TV, affirming that is a vital part of pop culture history.

It made an appearance in HBO’s Lovecraft Country (2020), which takes place back in 1955 during pre-Satanic Panic and Exorcist times. A group of teens (including Emmitt Till) get some sinister foreshadowing while playing with the board in a basement. It’s a small scene that speaks to the Ouija board’s firm place in pop culture as a vehicle for spooky and sinister happenings. Netflix’s The Curse of Bridge Hollow (2022) addresses the Ouija board through a horror comedy and very modern lens. In the flick, teenage Sydney uses a Ouija board app to contact a spirit that’s allegedly in her creaky old home. Looks like this mysterious board is here to stay, evil rumors be damned.

Ouija Boards as a Modern Spiritual Tool

The Ouija board is still an available and controversial game. But there are people who use it for their own spiritual work and/or to guide others. Popular astrologer, witch, apothecary owner, and YouTuber BehatiLife made an in-depth video about using a Ouija board safely. She says she doesn’t use it for connecting with spirits but rather leans into her abilities for spiritual connection.

She warns against using it if a user is afraid of the Ouija or lacks grounding and personal protection. BehatiLife believes that mainstream media and YouTube feeds into the idea of demonic possessions through using one. A quick YouTube search proves her point with countless videos about people sharing their Ouija board horror stories.

In fact, the general attitude among people who identify as occultists and/or witches is that a person who uses a Ouija board should be cautious, respectful, and use common sense. This is a sentiment in the board’s official description: “Handle the Ouija board with respect and it won’t disappoint you!” Many people believe it can be a source of connection and enlightenment but can perhaps become dangerous with the wrong intention. And some people still use it to connect with their ancestors or find answers from the other side.

Of course, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that Ouija boards can contact the spirit world. Scientists have attributed the planchette’s movement to the ideomotor effect: the unconscious mind’s ability to direct motor activity. But, science certainly can’t and doesn’t explain every single phenomena on Earth, so perhaps there is something taking place. It’s all rather subjective depending on the user’s beliefs about spirit world, the afterlife, and demons.

The Ouija board continues to survive and thrive even after a history of public panic, technological advances, and several generations of users who claim its everything from a connection tool for good to the work of a devil. It sits in the upper echelon of horror plot devices to tap into our deepest fears of losing control over our bodies or allowing an evil entity to slide its way into our space. And, whether its Halloween night, a girl’s sleepover, or a quiet séance searching for answers, this iconic tool will likely remain a staple existing on society’s fringes.

Originally published October 22, 2020.

The post The History Behind the Ouija Board Is Both Pure and Evil appeared first on Nerdist.

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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Horror movies based on true stories have a special place in shaping contemporary anxieties. Because cinema is an art form closely associated with verisimilitude, adding in an extra element of “truth” to horror films makes their scares all the more provocative. However, despite film’s best attempts, it is built on illusions with pictures rolling at twenty four frames per second. 

Filmmakers frequently skew or embellish the true story, thanks to creative license for entertainment purposes. Regardless, the discrepancy between truth and fiction can be just as telling as the content of the films themselves. And people do gravitate towards these offerings, with some films becoming bonafide franchises.

Here are seven horror films that are based (perhaps loosely) on real stories.

Editor’s Note: This post contains references to real life events that involve extreme physical violence. Please proceed with caution.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

One of the most iconic horror movie villains is Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper. The 1974 film featured a hulking killer wearing a mask made from human skin, preying on hitchhikers with his family. Leatherface transformed the look of what a horror movie villain could be. 

There isn’t a direct Leatherface analogue in history. However, screenwriters Kim Henkel and Tobe Hooper credit serial killer Ed Gein as an influence in creating Leatherface. Ed Gein was known for, among other horrific crimes, fashioning masks out of human faces. 

The Amityville Horror (1979)

The Amityville Horror adapts the eponymous book by Jay Anson, chronicling the reported hauntings of a house on Long Island. Stuart Rosenberg’s film portrays the Lutz family after they move into a home where a family was murdered the year before. The house soon exhibits demonic activity, with a disembodied voice telling a local priest to “get out.” Over the course of the film, the Lutz family unravels a sinister history about the house they’ve moved into, one that begins before murders occur. 

The veracity of the supernatural elements in The Amityville Horror have been contended for years. Succeeding owners of the Lutz house claimed that no supernatural activity occurred. However, the real horror at the source of the story is absolutely true. Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered his entire family in their home in 1974. 

Ghostwatch (1992)

Ghostwatch terrorized an entire generation of viewers in the United Kingdom when the BBC special aired on Halloween in 1992. Presented as a live broadcast, Lesley Manning’s Ghostwatch followed a team of paranormal investigators and journalists to an allegedly haunted London house. The family—a single mother and her two daughters—explained that there was an entity haunting the basement and the daughters’ bedroom. Complete with presenter Michael Parkinson hosting the show from a BBC studio set, Ghostwatch fooled thousands of viewers into believing that the footage and broadcast were real. 

Ghostwatch’s premise is inspired by the Enfield Poltergeist, which reportedly haunted the home of a single mother and her two daughters in London in the late 1970s. Like the BBC special, the Enfield Poltergeist possessed one of the daughters, causing her to speak in an unnatural voice. If this scenario sounds at all familiar, it’s also the basis for The Conjuring 2, directed by James Wan. Ultimately, Ghostwatch birthed an entire generation of found footage horror films, like The Blair Witch Project. Arguably, no descendant ever came as close to the effectiveness of its progenitor. 

Scream (1996) 

Wes Craven’s takedown of the slasher genre changed American horror films forever in 1996. The film follows a teenage girl named Sidney Prescott as she grieves the loss of her mother, who was murdered the year before. At the same time, a masked killer known as Ghostface starts murdering teenagers and adults in the town of Woodsboro. As Sidney realizes that she is being targeted by Ghostface, she must uncover the relationship between her mother’s murder and her town’s new serial killer. 

While Scream engages with the mythology and tropes of fictional slasher films, the basis for its story is all too real. Screenwriter Kevin Williamson drew inspiration for his serial killer screenplay after learning about the Gainesville Ripper in Florida. The Gainesville Ripper murdered several University of Florida students within the first few weeks of the fall semester in 1990. Like Ghostface, the Gainesville Ripper used a knife to stab his victims to death. 

The Conjuring (2013)

It’s difficult to imagine the state of demon possession movies today without The Conjuring. James Wan’s 2013 film about paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren shook up what had been a stale subgenre of horror, resuscitating it back to life with his distinctive directing prowess. The film depicts the couple investigating a house haunted by a witch in early 1970s Rhode Island.  

The film’s credits roll with real photographs of the Warrens, as well as the Perron family, who lived in the “haunted” house. And while Ed and Lorraine Warren were real people, their work as paranormal investigators has been disputed for decades. Regardless of the veracity of the Warrens’ work, their careers have formed the basis for one of the biggest Hollywood horror franchises. 

Verónica (2017)

Referred to as the “scariest movie of all time” when it hit Netflix, the Spanish film Verónica is another story about demon possession. Director Paco Plaza’s film, set in 1991 in Madrid, tells the story of a teenage girl haunted by a malicious spirit after playing with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse. While its reputation as “the scariest movie” is debatable, there’s no question that Verónica is a highly effective horror film. 

Verónica is based on the only case in Spanish police history where a detective claimed that something paranormal occurred. In reality, a teen girl named Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro died after playing with a Ouija board at school. After her death, the police claimed to experience paranormal activity in the home that her family lived in in Madrid. 

The Pope’s Exorcist (2023)

The Pope’s Exorcist is perhaps the silliest film about demon exorcisms on this list. From director Julius Avery, the film follows the Catholic priest, Fr. Gabriele Amorth. He goes on a special assignment to Spain from the Vatican. Unlike the traditional image of an exorcist, Amorth has a sense of humor about this job. He even gets around on a scooter. Amorth’s chief objective is to determine whether a person is dealing with a mental illness or a true demonic possession. Therefore, he remains skeptical of demonic activity when assessing each case.

However, while treating a boy in Spain, Amorth encounters his wildest case yet.  The film packs in outlandish, self-aware moments. But it is based on the life and work of Fr. Gabriele Amorth, who wrote dozens of books about his work as an exorcist. Amorth’s sense of humor in the film stems from his real life counterpart. It’s unclear to what extent the exorcism shown in The Pope’s Exorcist matches one of Amorth’s cases. However, the film accurately shows the priest’s beliefs, personality, and experience as a lawyer, journalist, and member of the Italian resistance during World War II.

Of course, there are many more horror films that draw inspiration—both directly and indirectly—from real people and events. But, you can re-explore (or discover) these seven films and see how knowing the true stories behind them changes your perception of their narratives.

The post These 7 Horror Movies Are Actually Based on True Stories appeared first on Nerdist.

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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It’s been far too long since we got a new horror series from Mike Flanagan. His last show, The Midnight Club, arrived on Netflix back in October 2022. That might not seem that long ago, but it could have premiered last week, and it would still be too long for us. We’re big fans, which is why we can’t wait for his next release. Now we know when that will finally happen. Netflix has announced The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan’s Edgar Allan Poe-inspired limited-series, will debut just in time for Halloween on October 12. And to celebrate The Fall of the House of Usher‘s release date, the streaming site also shared a brief teaser and first-look photos of the star-studded cast.

Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher Teaser, Synopsis, and First-Look Photos

Yup, that’s Mark Hamill himself joining Flanagan’s troupe of actors. He plays Arthur Pym, one of the many people caught up in a deadly story of a rich family haunted by their past. Along with first-look images, which you can spot above and below, Netflix also revealed the show’s first teaser. Take a look at the haunting footage.

Additionally, here’s The Fall of the House of Usher‘s official synopsis from Netflix:

From Mike Flanagan, the creator of The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, a wicked horror series based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth.

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The Fall of the House of Usher‘s Cast and Crew

Bruce Greenwood and Mary McDonnell play Roderick and Madeline. Joining them and Mark Hamill in The Fall of the House of Usher‘s cast are: Carla Gugino (Verna), Carl Lumbly (Auguste Dupin), Michael Trucco (Rufus Griswold), T’Nia Miller (Victorine Lafourcade), Paola Núñez (Dr. Allessandra Ruiz), Henry Thomas (Frederick Usher), Kyliegh Curran (Lenore Usher), Samantha Sloyan (Tamerlane Usher), Rahul Kohli (Napoleon “Leo” Usher), Kate Siegel (Camille L’Espanaye), Sauriyan Sapkota (Prospero “Perry Usher”), Zach Gilford (Young Roderick), Willa Fitzgerald (Young Madeline), Katie Parker (Annabel Lee), Malcolm Goodwin (Young Dupin), Crystal Balint (Morelle “Morrie” Usher), Aya Furukawa (Tina), Daniel Jun (Julius), Matt Biedel (William “Bill” T. Wilson), Ruth Codd (Juno Usher), Annabeth Gish (Eliza), Igby Rigney (Toby), and Robert Longstreet (Longfellow).

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In addition to writing the show with Emmy Grinwis, Flanagan also directs four episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Michael Fimognari directs the eight-part series’ other four installments.

The Fall of the House of Usher‘s Release Date

As mentioned, Mike Flangan’s The Fall of the House of Usher will release on October 12, right in the middle of the year’s eeriest month.

Now that we know that, all that’s left to do is wait for the show to premiere… Although we eagerly await The Fall of the House of Usher‘s full trailer as well. That’s the only thing we hate about seeing these images. It makes waiting even harder.

Originally published on August 10, 2023.

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The folks at TUBBZ have been creating adorable rubber duckies based on beloved pop culture properties for years now. We’ve seen characters from Star Trek, Ghostbusters, and even The Lord of the Rings. But our favorites are definitely their horror-themed duckies, created by Numskull Designs. Recently, they’ve added characters from movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, It, The Exorcist, The Lost Boys, and even Chucky as a Ducky.

And now, TUBBZ has a new batch of rubber duckies based on iconic characters from some legendary fright fests. This year, they’re giving us rubber duckies featuring Stephen King’s Carrie White, Hannibal Lecter, the Bride of Chucky herself, Tiffany, and adorable little Carol Anne Freeling from Poltergeist. You can check out the first images along with their official descriptions right here, along with an announcement video:

Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs

Yikes! it’s the Silence of the Ducks as this serial killing madman disguises himself as a cosplaying duck. We can see through that mask and we’re not sticking around for him to invite us for a glass of chianti. No. Thank. You!

Stephen King’s Carrie

Oh, those other ducks are so mean. Carrie was hoping they would be more friendly in their duck form, but oh no, it’s not just her hair that’s red, once again she finds herself covered in pig blood–gross!

Carol Anne Freeling from Poltergeist

Fancy a quiet night in, watching the TV? Not if you’re sitting with Carole Anne, she might look cute in her satin nightdress, but things are about to get jumpy!

Tiffany from Bride of Chucky

The Bride of Ducky! She has one thing on her mind… murder. She’s dressed to kill, black biker jacket, ‘Tiff’ necklace, and the perfect lipstick, and is also declaring love for Chucky with her tattoo.

Each of these first edition TUBBZ comes in a bathtub featuring the movie logo, great for display purposes. Plus, ‘First Edition’ is stamped on the base of the actual duck with a ‘First Edition’ sticker on the packaging. Each of these stands at approximately 3.54” (9cm) tall. They are priced around $24.00 USD, and you buy them via the official Numskull Designs site.

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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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Pretty much no monster has had more opportunity in the spotlight in the history of cinema than Dracula. Bram Stoker’s vampire has had a number of guises, mostly handsome and debonair in film and television. But in the novel, and especially in F.W. Murnau’s classic unauthortized adaptation Nosferatu from 1922, the count is a pretty horrifying, monstrous figure. That aspect, along with a whole chunk of the novel not often adapted to film, makes its way to cinemas again in The Last Voyage of the Demeter.

In the below featurette from the riff on the classic story, filmmaker Andre Ovredal and actor Javier Botet discuss how they brought this bestial version of Dracula to life. Well, undead-life.

Ovredal mentions that he wanted this Dracula’s blood addiction to come to the fore, and hence cast Botet, a supremely tall and slender creature performer. You might have seen Botet as the titular haunter in Andy Muschietti’s Mama or the horrifying Tristana Medieros in the [REC] franchise. Dracula here is more a creature than a person, and actually resembles very much Kurt Barlow in the 1979 miniseries Salem’s Lot. Truly as if a bat had taken on human characteristics.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is an adaptation of a portion of Bram Stoker’s epistolary novel. Most people remember Jonathan Harker going to Transylvania and meeting Dracula, and later Dracula arriving in London. But how did he get there? Well, wouldn’t ya know it, he took a ship. It was called the Demeter in point of fact. Many adaptations skip this section, but Murnau didn’t, and it’s in fact one of the best parts of Nosferatu. We hope The Last Voyage of the Demeter‘s full-length exploration of it does the silent movie justice.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter hits theaters August 11.

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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Despite the whimsical nature we associate with fairies, a fairy tale is often dark at its core. Disney gave us the animated gifts of The Little Mermaid and Cinderella but their actual origin stories involve death, sliced tongues, and a severed toe. They are, in fact, horror stories with social observations and not-so-happy endings. Author Victor LaValle didn’t shy away from this disturbing model with his best-selling book The Changeling (2017) and its story about a couple’s dark journey following the birth of their child. That story is coming to life with The Changeling, an Apple TV+ series starring LaKeith Stanfield and Clark Backo. The first trailer for The Changeling is here and it captures the essence of its source material to sinister perfection. 

For those who aren’t familiar, the book follows Apollo and Emma Kagwa, who are new parents to a baby boy. Emma begins to act strangely before she does something exceptionally heinous and disappears. This leads Apollo down a rabbit hole that opens up new avenues to him. The Changeling trailer’s use of “Stormy Weather” and its striking imagery is enough to count me in. Plus, it is horror with Black leads, which is always refreshing to see. 

Here’s a quick synopsis of The Changeling TV show to bring its trailer into clearer focus: 

Based on the acclaimed bestselling book of the same name by Victor LaValle, “The Changeling” is a fairytale for grown-ups. A horror story, a parenthood fable and a perilous odyssey through a New York City you didn’t know existed. 

As we all know, parenting is scary as hell without strange portal happenings and such. We already feel sorry for poor Apollo. Stanfield is also an executive producer for The Changeling alongside Kelly Marcel, who takes on double duties as its showrunner.

The Changeling series will hit Apple TV+ on September 8 with its first three episodes. The remaining five episodes will drop each Friday through October 13. This year’s Nerdoween is going in the right direction.

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In news that isn’t shocking, Scream 7 (which may be styled Scream VII) is on the way. But what is surprising is that Radio Silence is reportedly handing director duties to Happy Death Day’s Christopher Landon. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who make up the filmmaking team, revived the franchise with Scream (2022) and followed up with Scream VI in March. The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Radio Silence is focusing on an original horror movie for Universal Pictures instead. However both of them along with another Radio Silence member, Chad Villella, will be executive producers for the next Scream film.

Of course, it will be a long time before Scream 7 hits our screens. The ongoing strikes are the rightful focus at the time and, pending a fair deal for writers and actors, perhaps we will learn which cast members will return. It seems a given that Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrerra will return as Tara and Sam Carpenter, respectively. I’d love to see this film dig into those mysterious years when Sam left Woodsboro, much like Scream 3 did with Sidney’s mom Maureen Prescott. Maybe we will discover something that will completely turn her story arc on its head. We have a theory about Sam’s new boyfriend Danny that could check out in this next installment.

Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown will likely reprise their roles as Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin. We need the Core Four back together again. Writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick penned Scream (2022) and Scream VI. We don’t yet know if they will return for Scream 7. 

The last two Scream films got a lot of critical and commercial praise. Hopefully the next film will continue to meet fans’ expectations. For now, we can only wait and see how Ghostface will slice and dice his next set of victims.

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One of the best things about film festivals is you can step into a theater with absolutely no knowledge of what you’re about to see and at the very least leave entertained. Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal is maybe the best I’ve ever been to in this regard. I had a gap in my schedule and decided to step into a new South Korean horror/dark comedy called New Normal and got a cynical, truly brutal experience that feels perfectly torn out of the hell of modern city living. The loneliness, the awkwardness, and the chance that at any moment someone could murder you. It’s fun!

Writer-director Jung Bum-Shik clearly has a point of view with this movie. That is: “the world sucks, and you can’t do anything about it.” Indeed, it’s rare to see a movie with such a sense of downbeat inevitability. The movie depicts snapshots in a four-day stretch of time in Seoul as six different vignettes playout, intersecting and leading to shocking conclusions. I confess that after the first couple stories, the movie’s cynicism put me off. As it went along, it started sinking its teeth into me. The sheer style, exuberance, and seething rage on display—well, I won’t say it “won” me over, but I definitely started to vibe with it.

The stories all run the gamut of the hell of modern society. A single woman contends with a pushy smoke alarm inspector amidst reports of a serial killer. Elsewhere, a middle-school boy decides to help an old lady in a wheelchair for a lot longer than he planned. App-dating proves especially nightmarish on one terrible evening. A hopeless romantic follows a series of clues to hopefully find his perfect match. Then, a creepy loser is obsessed with his hot neighbor and does very dumb things. Finally, a fed-up convenience store clerk kills time posting about murder on a message board. Each has a wicked bite to it, each increasingly more brutal than the last.

New Normal takes familiar public spaces—city streets, gas stations, crowded restaurants—and turns them sinister or accentuates their already sinister aspects. The movie revels in making the situations cringingly funny before hitting us with growing tension and finally the swerve to horror. It never feels rote or perfunctory, and each vignette has its own ambience befitting its lead character. A real standout is the second story, which finds the middle-schooler’s journey into an increasingly foreboding part of the city. This all happens with the orchestral strains of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf underlaid. The final story, too, is exceptionally tragic, even for this movie. The young would-be musician leads her mundane, frustrating life only to decide to turn off the road at the last minute.

It seems a bit like the ethos of the movie isn’t just “F*** the World” (which the movie literally puts on screen several times) but “never take risks,” in any sense of the word. Don’t do things that put you in danger. This can include going down a dark alley or meeting a person for a blind date. It’s not a movie for the faint of heart, and you have to be in the mood for something very dark that plays the darkness for laughs more often than not. But it’s an undeniably effective movie in this regard. I think it showcases the skill and energy of Jung Bum-Shik (whose previous film was the found-footage creeper Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum) exceptionally well. Just, I guess, be careful literally everywhere you go.

New Normal ⭐ (3.5 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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With the recent naming and surge of folk horror in the movies, we’ve gotten many examples from all over the world. I eat this stuff up with a big ol’ spoon. There’s a reason these movies feels so viscerally creepy. They show us fears that have lasted centuries. Bengali filmmaker Nuhash Humayun has taken this one step further by crowd sourcing Bangladesh’s most prevalent and scary superstitions and fables. The result is Pett Kata Shaw, a four-story anthology of modernized dramatizations of them. I saw it at Fantasia International Film Festival 2023, and it absolutely blew me away. This anthology is a creepy, darkly funny, and profoundly disturbing look at tales passed down in the oral tradition.

What makes these stories work so well is that Humayun depicts each as realistically as possible while still making the otherworldly thing suitably unnerving. The key to any good horror anthology is the pacing and the order. Pett Kata Shaw provides an ebb and flow of styles and stories for maximum effect. And even though the stories come from a culture I knew nothing about, they remain exceedingly relatable and engaging.

The first story relays the fable that jinn, or demons, visit sweet shops late at night. So we find a forgetful sweet shop owner who comes across such a creature—shown mainly as a bearded older man. The poor shop owner’s terror and confusion becomes something entirely else when the jinn grants him a wish. He wants to remember things. But, as jinn are not the most trustworthy, he begins to remember everything. Everything he’s ever seen, read, or lived. Knowing everything isn’t much good if you can’t stop it. This is a wicked little tale with a really upsetting ending.

Second is a very fun and macabre story concerning the legend of the fish-hag, a grotesque creature which resembles a human woman with backwards feet and sharp fangs. She has followed a lonely young man back to his apartment after he catches a big fish. Through his inner monologue we follow his tense struggle with what amounts to a wild animal locked in a room with him. He can’t take his eyes off of the fish-hag, not even to cook her the fish. Supremely enjoyable.

The third story is perhaps the most ambitious. We find a young couple with relationship issues stemming from rumors backpacking in a remote village where an elderly couple relay various local superstitions and how they came to be. For example, if you don’t take two helpings of food, you’ll drown in the river. Or not to wear your hair down at night. We see each of their mini-stories as marionette plays, both gorgeous and disturbing. Each of the superstitions begins to coagulate into a greater meta fable about the grain of truth in each.

And finally we have the saddest of the stories. A young man still reels after his girlfriend’s death by suicide a year before. At the same time, displaced children begin disappearing after visiting the sea. This leads our central character to learn about the myth of the Call of the Night. Some sea spirit calls to people, beckoning them to join it. As we quickly learn, this spirit—if it exists—has a way to exploit its victim’s guilt.

I absolutely adored Pett Kata Shaw, and I’m thrilled Humayun will soon make a feature film (once the strikes are over, of course) with producer Jordan Peele. He has an eye for what maximizes scariness without ever relying on a jump-scare or leading musical cue. I cannot wait for this to inevitably make it to wide release because every horror fan should see it.

Pett Kata Shaw ⭐ (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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The game that literally no one wants to play is back once again. The Saw franchise will grow again with Saw X, a film that will continue the story of John Kramer. Tobin Bell’s creepy stare and Billy the Puppet, the creepier Jigsaw clown puppet, are both etched into many horror fans’ minds. Just when we thought we were free from watching the relentless torture of people, Saw X drops a trailer that shows John’s newfound and very personal mission.

This clip hearkens back to the early days of the franchise, including the return of Amanda. She’s unlike many final girls because, well, she becomes the killer’s ruthless apprentice. Some fans may be wondering what the hell is going on in the Saw X trailer. Well, Saw X is actually a direct sequel to Saw, even though it is the tenth film in the franchise. 

Here’s a Saw X synopsis to help you better understand what’s going on with the timeline and in the above trailer. 

John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is back. The most chilling installment of the SAW franchise yet explores the untold chapter of Jigsaw’s most personal game. Set between the events of SAW I and II, a sick and desperate John travels to Mexico for a risky and experimental medical procedure in hopes of a miracle cure for his cancer – only to discover the entire operation is a scam to defraud the most vulnerable. Armed with a newfound purpose, John returns to his work, turning the tables on the con artists in his signature visceral way through a series of ingenious and terrifying traps. 

This synopsis and trailer for Saw X are quite interesting. Like John, I truly despise a scammer, especially when they take advantage of vulnerable people. But, unlike John, I don’t believe that torture traps are the right way to stop their schemes. Perhaps there’s something in between that doesn’t involve murder. But alas, he is psychotic, so that’s the only option for him. Saw X will hit theaters on September 29, which is just in time for the season of thrills and chills.

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Talk To Me directors Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou sit down with Nerdist’s Kyle Anderson to discuss the origin of the film’s cursed hand, their early horror shorts, and their favorite modern horror classics on today’s episode of Nerdist Now!

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You just can’t keep an iconic killer down. At least not forever. After the Saw franchise saw a reboot recently with Spiral, the iconic franchise is back with a new movie. Saw will slice back into theaters with its tenth installment from Lionsgate. The movie was initially supposed to release on October 27th, but will now release on September 29. Kevin Greutert will be directing the next chapter. The very same director helmed both Saw VI in 2009 and later Saw: The Final Chapter in 2010. He’s also edited Saw I-V, as well as Jigsaw. So this is someone well qualified for the job. Additionally, Tobin Bell will return in Saw X, reprising his role as John Kramer, a.k.a Jigsaw. And we have our first look at this reprisal below.

Lionsgate also announced a few more new cast members who will be in on the action. Synnøve Macody Lund, Michael Beach, and Steven Brand will be in the tenth Saw movie in undisclosed roles. Will they fall victim to the clutches of Jigsaw? Let’s see if they can play the game correctly.

The synopsis for the new Saw movie shares:

John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is back, and it’s the untold chapter of Jigsaw’s final games. Set between the events of Saw I and II, a sick and desperate John travels to Mexico for a risky and experimental medical procedure in hopes of a miracle cure for his cancer – only to discover the entire operation is a scam to defraud the most vulnerable. The infamous serial killer returns to his work, turning the tables on the con artists in his signature visceral way through devious, deranged, and ingenious traps.

In a statement, Saw producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules said the following. “We have been listening to what the fans have been asking for and are hard at work planning a movie that Saw aficionados and horror fans alike will love. And part of that is giving the reins to Kevin Greutert, director of Saw VI, which is still one of the fans’ favorites in the entire series. More details revealed soon.”

The last film in the franchise, Spiral: From the Book of Saw, was the first film in the franchise not to feature actor Tobin Bell in some capacity. This Saw movie did not even showcase the Jigsaw character. We don’t know what Lionsgate and the producers have planned exactly. But we have a feeling we’ll see a return of some of the iconic Saw iconographies to the franchise. Tobin Bell said he’d be interested in returning for a prequel that explored the origins of Billy the puppet. Could Saw X explore that? Right now, it’s all a mystery. But we’re glad to know that, at the very least, Tobin Bell will be back to play his iconic role in the next Saw movie. Saw just doesn’t feel the same without Jigsaw.

And beyond that, we just hope that with Saw back, as well as Scream, Halloween, Child’s Play, and The Exorcist, someone remembers to give Freddy and Jason a wake-up call soon too.

Originally published on December 8, 2022.

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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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