By Seth Metoyer | MoreHorror.com Directed by Shivaan Makker and released through Studio Dome, this psychological thriller stars Oscar Torre as Detective Angelo Matteo and features a supporting cast that includes Happy Anderson, Corin Nemec, Deborah Rennard and the late Tony Todd. The film also draws partial inspiration from real-life serial killer Robert Berdella, which adds another ugly little shadow over a story already steeped in trauma, obsession and ritualistic violence. Hate Thyself is the kind of indie horror film that quietly gets under your skin with slow burn precision. There’s no desperate need to hit you over the head every five minutes. No carnival ride of jump scares. No constant reminder that you’re watching A HORROR MOVIE. Instead, it builds this slow Southern-gothic sickness around trauma, obsession, family violence and the uncomfortable idea that some horrors feel almost inherited. And, strangely enough, it’s beautiful. That may have been the first thing that really caught me off guard. Hate Thyself deals with some ugly material, yet the film itself often looks almost painterly. There’s a deliberate elegance to the cinematography that gives the story another layer. The darkness has texture. The rural landscapes feel still in that particular way where you start wondering what happened there before you arrived. Probably nothing good. The story centers on a sadistic abductor whose violence traces back to a childhood spent watching his father commit horrific acts. He has grown into that history, repeating it with a ritualistic precision that makes the character more disturbing than a standard movie psychopath with a weapon and a cool mask. His father supposedly fed people to alligators. On the flip side is Detective Angelo Matteo, a deeply religious investigator whose pursuit of the killer begins grinding against his faith, sobriety, marriage and increasingly unstable moral center. That detail makes the character more interesting than the usual burned-out detective archetype. He isn’t simply chasing a murderer. He’s watching his own internal framework begin to crack under the weight of what he keeps seeing. The film spends a lot of time letting these two men orbit one another, and that becomes one of its strongest ideas. They both drag history behind them. One externalizes it through violence while the other carries it inward. The psychological push and pull gives the movie strength beyond the usual hunt-the-killer mechanics. The lead could have gone completely over the top with this character. He never does. There’s something fractured about the performance that feels more interesting than theatrical insanity. He often seems like a guy barely keeping the machinery inside his head running in the same direction. The instability creates some genuinely uncomfortable moments. The supporting cast works well too, including the victims. They bring enough vulnerability and humanity to the material that the story retains emotional stakes. Once victims become props, the tension disappears. Here, they feel like people caught inside somebody else’s nightmare. I also have to talk about the music. I’ve worked in music, audio and film scoring long enough that I inevitably listen to horror movies a little differently. Indie films sometimes bury the score so deeply under dialogue and effects that the composer may as well have stayed home. That doesn’t happen here. The score actually gets to breathe. You hear the textures. You feel the unsettling motifs working underneath scenes. The music becomes part of the killer’s fractured internal world, and the mix gives those ideas enough space to register. It never feels like somebody slapped “creepy music” onto the movie during post. The score becomes part of the architecture. That elevated the film considerably for me. What stayed with me most, though, was the atmosphere. Hate Thyself knows that dread grows extremely well in empty spaces. Quiet roads. Swampy stillness. Long stretches where the movie lets you imagine what might exist outside the frame. The film doesn’t need a mountain of gore to create horror (though, there's a decent amount of that to satisfy horror fans). The absence of bodies almost becomes more disturbing than seeing them. Once you hear what the killer’s father supposedly did with his victims, your brain handles the rest. Horror has always understood that trick. Show somebody everything and eventually they adjust. Give them one terrible idea and enough darkness around it, and they’ll build something worse on their own. That’s where Hate Thyself works best. It relies on atmosphere, leans on implication, and lets flawed characters carry scenes without constantly chasing spectacle. It also looks far more polished than I expected going in, with strong performances and a genuinely effective use of music and sound. Those elements give the film an identity beyond its familiar serial-killer framework. You’ve seen pieces of this story before. Horror has spent decades digging through childhood trauma, abusive fathers, damaged detectives and killers reenacting the sins of the past. Hate Thyself takes those familiar bones and gives them a grim Southern pulse. By the time the credits roll, you’re left with that damp, uneasy feeling that something terrible happened somewhere out in the darkness.

By Devin Smock | MoreHorror.com SPOILERS THROUGHOUT Never After Dark opens on a candle, then the remains of something awful. Blood. An axe. A house that looks like it has already survived the movie we are about to watch. The compositions are so controlled that I was invested before Dave Boyle bothered explaining a damn thing. That confidence carries through most of the film. It knows where to put the camera, how long to leave it there and, most importantly, when to leave us alone with whatever may be hiding in the frame. From there we meet Airi, played by Moeka Hoshi, a wandering medium who makes a living helping restless spirits move on. Her older sister Miku is dead, but death has not stopped the two from traveling together. Boyle reveals their situation with a small piece of dialogue and Miku appearing in the rear window rather than sitting us down for a supernatural family history lesson. Simple. Clever. We understand that Airi can see the dead, that Miku is one of them and that this has become normal life for both sisters. The movie trusts the image to do its job. Airi is hired by Teiko and her adult son Gunji to clear a former hotel they bought and hope to renovate and sell. Teiko has seen something in the house. Gunji is skeptical, or at least wants to look skeptical while the strange woman with the candles and mirrors walks around his investment. Airi sends them away and begins working. It is basically a ghost procedural at first, and I mean that as a compliment. She has rules. She has tools. She has done this enough times that the supernatural has become a job with travel, annoying clients and occupational hazards. Hoshi is perfect for that part of Airi. She does not walk into every room trembling because why would she? This is what she does. Her calm gives the movie room to build around her, and it means something when that calm finally starts to crack. Kurumi Inagaki gives Miku warmth without turning her into a cute ghost sidekick, and their scenes feel like sisters who still know exactly how to bother and protect each other even though one of them is no longer alive. Patrick Ouziel's cinematography is striking from the beginning. I kept waiting for a throwaway setup and there mostly is not one. Maybe 95 percent of the frames feel considered, but not in the suffocating way where a movie keeps pointing at its own beauty. Mirrors divide people, hide people and occasionally tell the truth before the characters do. The camera moves through the old hotel as if it knows the floor plan better than Airi and may not be interested in helping her find the exit. Even the wider shots have pressure in them. The mirror work is especially good because it is not there only to announce that we are watching a ghost movie. It establishes how Airi and Miku communicate, gives the spirit world its own visual language and later lets Boyle bend those rules without losing us. Much of it was achieved in camera, which makes sense. The reflections feel like they belong to the rooms instead of being pasted over them afterward. Anybody can toss a face into the frame and hammer the soundtrack. The harder trick is making an audience stare at an empty section of a room until it no longer feels empty. Boyle understands that. He holds back. Then, when the jump scare finally comes, it is truly terrifying because the movie has not been elbowing us in the ribs every thirty seconds asking if we are scared yet. The sound is just as disciplined. A clock, old wood and the small noises of a large house become part of the pressure. Natsuko Inoue's sound design makes the building feel occupied before we fully understand what is occupying it. Jonathan Snipes' score knows when to push and when to shut up. That restraint matters. So does the Gaping Mouth Man tugging at the cabinet doors. It is not some giant effects showcase. It is repetitive, invasive and deeply unnerving, like hearing something scratching inside a wall at three in the morning and realizing it has no intention of stopping. The first time Airi crosses into what the film calls ceremonial night, the sequence is eerie. The second time is worse. Good worse. Boyle and his crew have established the rules and this other side washed in teal, then start making that familiar space feel less dependable. The escalation is patient. Each trip gives Airi more information and takes a little more control away from her. Then Airi gets drunk, puts on a record and dances through the hotel. I love this scene. It is funny, strange and weirdly relatable, assuming the rest of us could also see dead people. Snipes wrote the song, "Silhouette," for the film, and the Gaping Mouth Man drifting into Airi's drunken night off gives the whole thing a little life without breaking the dread. Airi is good at her job, but she is still a person alone in a giant house with alcohol and music. Sometimes tomorrow's ghost can be tomorrow's problem. Going into its final stretch, Never After Dark changes shape so confidently that, on a first watch, I am not completely sure whether Boyle is working inside a traditional three-act structure or something closer to kishōtenketsu. Those structures can overlap anyway, especially in a movie like this, and I am not going to pretend I mapped the whole thing out while it was still coming at me. What I do know is that the turn works. Boyle builds a ghost story, teaches us its rules and then lets a home invasion thriller come crashing through it. The film changes genres without abandoning the story it was already telling. The dead are understandable. They have an injury, a need or a final piece of unfinished business. The living can lie about what they want. That makes them harder to read and, in this case, much more dangerous. Once that turn happens, the supernatural elements do not disappear. They become part of the fight. The forced tooth pulling is brutal, effective and exactly as unpleasant as it needs to be. No soft cutaway to save us. The violence feels like the physical release of everything Boyle has been tightening for the previous hour, and the movie earns it. Most importantly, the turn does not make the first half feel like misdirection for the sake of a twist. The beginning, middle and end are tied together. The mirrors, the sisters, the bloody opening and the rules of ceremonial night all matter. The movie has been telling us what it is from the start. We just did not understand the language yet. That is storytelling, not cheating, and the ending does not disappoint. Boyle clearly understands the J-horror tradition Never After Dark is working within, but he does not treat its familiar imagery as a shortcut. The patience, negative space, grief and fear hiding inside ordinary rooms do most of the work. Then the film turns nastier and more physical without feeling like it has abandoned itself. It feels fresh without acting embarrassed by the movies that came before it. I have not seen Boyle's earlier features, including Man from Reno, Surrogate Valentine or Daylight Savings. That will be changing. Here, working with a Japanese cast and crew, he delivers one of the better ghost movies I have watched in a while. Original but not desperate to prove it. Carefully made but still mean when it needs to be. A ghost story with blood in its mouth. 8.1/10 Never After Dark opens in U.S. theaters on September 25, 2026, from Magnolia Pictures. A screener of Never After Dark was provided to MoreHorror.com for review purposes.

THE NICE ONES Asks What Happens When Everyone Around You Becomes a Little Too Nice Peter Stylianou’s psychological horror-thriller turns kindness into something deeply unsettling when a countryside retreat begins changing everyone except one woman. MoreHorror.com There are plenty of horror movies built around the terrifying realization that the people around you have changed. THE NICE ONES takes that familiar nightmare and gives it a deceptively pleasant face. Writer-director Peter Stylianou brings psychological paranoia, cosmic dread and science-fiction horror together in THE NICE ONES, arriving On Demand September 29, 2026, from Level 33 Entertainment. The film follows Kate, played by Joelle Rae (“The Witcher,” Christmas in Notting Hill), as she joins her boyfriend and his friends at a remote countryside retreat. Old wounds already simmer beneath the surface when strange lights begin appearing in the sky. Then the people around Kate start changing. They become calmer. More agreeable. Kinder. A little too kind. As the transformation spreads through the group, Kate becomes convinced that something has happened to them. Her friends increasingly dismiss her suspicions as instability, leaving her trapped between two possibilities: she is losing her grip on reality, or she remains the only person who can see what everyone else has become. That setup places THE NICE ONES in familiar body-snatcher territory, though Stylianou pushes the concept toward something more spiritually unnerving. The film plays with the idea of “false light” — entities or forces that present themselves as benevolent, enlightened and righteous while committing disturbing acts in service of what they believe represents a greater good. Stylianou cites John Carpenter’s The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers among the film’s inspirations. The DNA makes sense. Both films turn trust itself into a pressure chamber. THE NICE ONES approaches that same existential anxiety through a different doorway: what if the clearest sign that something has gone horribly wrong is that everyone suddenly seems happier, calmer and impossibly nice? There is something wonderfully sinister about that premise. Horror traditionally teaches us to watch the shadows, listen for footsteps and distrust the stranger standing at the end of the hallway. Here, the threat smiles back. Alongside Rae, the ensemble includes Emrhys Cooper (Nosferatu), Ayvianna Snow (How to Kill Monsters, Bogieville), Nick Lavelle (“Never Let Me Go”), Daniela Norman (“Tiny Pretty Things”), Andrew Lyle-Pinnock (Drained), Tom Kelsey (My Bloody Galentine), James Akka (“The Sandman”), Ian Whyte (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, “Game of Thrones”) and Donna Preston (“The Sandman,” Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald). Stylianou filmed THE NICE ONES in Kent over 19 days, with much of the story unfolding inside a single large house. That contained setting gives the psychological pressure room to tighten as Kate finds fewer places to retreat and fewer people she can trust. Stylianou also produced the film alongside Andreas Olavarria, Taryn Procsal and Tony Currier. Running 89 minutes, THE NICE ONES mixes horror, science fiction, psychological thriller and drama into a story where kindness itself starts feeling like a warning sign. THE NICE ONES arrives On Demand September 29, 2026, from Level 33 Entertainment. Stay scary.

Heather Graham stars in Nick Simon’s supernatural horror film, making its world premiere September 20 at Fantastic Fest. The infamous Doris Bither case returns to the screen in a new supernatural horror film told from the family’s perspective Seth Metoyer | More Horror One of the most disturbing alleged paranormal cases in American history is heading back to the screen. WHAT HAPPENED TO DORIS?, a new supernatural horror film starring Heather Graham, will make its world premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 20. Directed by Nick Simon and written by Thomas Fenton, the film revisits the story of Doris Bither, the Culver City woman whose claims of violent attacks by an unseen presence became the inspiration for The Entity. The film stars Heather Graham alongside Mimi Rogers, Marcus Coloma, Kevin Keppy, Daniel Reed Ferrell and Margo Parker. According to the official synopsis: In 1974, single mother Doris Bither reported being violently assaulted by an unseen force inside her Culver City home. As the attacks escalated, investigators from UCLA documented a series of terrifying events that would become one of the most infamous paranormal cases in American history. Based on the true story that inspired The Entity, WHAT HAPPENED TO DORIS? tells the story through the eyes of the family who lived it. The Bither case entered paranormal folklore during the 1970s after investigators became involved with the family’s claims. Author Frank De Felitta later adapted the story into his 1978 novel The Entity, which Sidney J. Furie turned into the 1982 film starring Barbara Hershey. WHAT HAPPENED TO DORIS? approaches the material from a different angle, placing the family at the center of the story and examining the human consequences of living through an experience others struggle to believe. That perspective gives the material an especially grim edge. Paranormal horror often builds its mythology around the question of whether something supernatural actually happened. Here, the deeper horror comes from what happens to a person when their account of trauma collides with disbelief. Entity Returns LLC produced the film. The Fantastic Fest premiere arrives alongside the release of a first-look clip and official key art, offering audiences an early glimpse at Heather Graham’s descent into one of horror history’s strangest real-world stories. WHAT HAPPENED TO DORIS? makes its world premiere September 20 at Fantastic Fest. More Horror will continue following the film as additional release information becomes available. Directed by: Nick Simon Written by: Thomas Fenton Starring: Heather Graham, Mimi Rogers, Marcus Coloma, Kevin Keppy, Daniel Reed Ferrell, Margo Parker Genre: Horror Production Company: Entity Returns LLC

By Damian Hex | MoreHorror.com Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil Reimagines Survival Horror for a New Generation As I mentioned in a previous article, I received an invitation to see the first 30 minutes of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil (director of Barbarian and Weapons). So, needless to say, Umbrella Corporation called me to report for duty and watch the rest of the film. So get cozy, lock your doors (you never know when a hungry zombie might roam by), and join me on this mild spoiler journey. By making the protagonist, Bryan (Austin Abrams), a normal civilian with zero zombie-killing experience, the film gives Raccoon City a rawer, more nerve-wracking feel. Learning that Bryan has a pregnant girlfriend raises the stakes even further. I can’t imagine being a medical courier, facing an upset pregnant partner (upset with my negative reaction to the pregnancy), and battling frigid outdoor conditions while heading to Raccoon City. Honestly, I would just quit. I know that the nurse offered our homeboy double pay, which is why he accepted the gig, but no thanks. This is one of the many reasons you’ll find yourself yelling at the main character the whole time. Bryan literally seeks out trouble. His gift for making questionable decisions is unreal. The glaring danger is glaring, yet the main character remains oblivious. Like, my guy, why do you keep interacting with the undead you encounter instead of running away? And why do you insist on being loud at the worst possible moments? I want to clarify that the film wouldn't engage the audience as much if Bryan weren't so flawed. The film’s storytelling adapts video game elements well. As I mentioned in a previous article, you discover things alongside the protagonist, including which weapons are available, how many bullets he has left, and a vague sense of where more ammo lies. Spoiler incoming: when Bryan opens a door in someone’s house and reveals a typewriter, it reminded me of Resident Evil 2. I totally fanboyed out. I know typewriter save points appear in other Resident Evil games, but RE 2 is burned into my memory. The film includes easter eggs throughout. Another mild spoiler: keys and locks play an essential part in the movie. Without keys, the already dire situation worsens. Just like in the game, you have to unlock things, or you can’t move forward, bruh. I literally pointed at the screen (along with other viewers) when I saw herbs in an abandoned car while the protagonist tried to make his way into a tunnel full of abandoned, crashed vehicles. Like, eat your greens! One surprising aspect was that I grew to care for Bryan. He’s obviously flawed, avoids unresolved personal issues, and is just trying to survive (figuratively and literally). This makes it more meaningful to watch him improve at navigating insane situations—like escaping a sewer, trying not to fall from a building as zombies charge at him, creatively problem-solving his way from point A to point B, and becoming quicker at killing zombies. Extra points for never losing sight of that courier bag. This parallels us as gamers: we start clueless about weapons or where to go in new levels, but we gradually learn the rules and mechanics. Sure, the gameplay gets tougher, but we level up along the way. I know I haven’t touched on how the zombies are portrayed. Well, I have mixed feelings. I walked in expecting the standard RE undead, but instead, I got something that reminded me of the video game Parasite Eve. Picture monstrous mutations, splicing, and creatures merging into one enormous organic thing of hell. I wasn't entirely disappointed, as Cregger's take on RE zombies made the scenes gorier and cooler. Either way, I’d probably choose to use the gun on myself when faced with both animal and human zombie threats. The undead rats reminded me of the rats I encounter at night on the NYC subways while trying to get home. No way a civilian could survive all that. The music and silence served as powerful tools, used effectively. The audience screamed in unison when loud sounds violently shattered the silence. The film delivered comedic breaks from insane moments, earning an A+. I think the audience laughed almost as much as they screamed, which sets this RE film apart from all the others. Here’s a tip: watch the movie without expecting strong ties to the games or past films. You’ll enjoy the ride more and appreciate the video game references. The movie feels like a car speeding down a road without slowing down, even as it navigates hard, curved bends with no protective barriers. You dive deep into Raccoon City, and by the time you reach the end, you’ll find yourself holding your breath because you have no idea what to expect. We’re proud of our boy Bryan for making it to his destination, but let me tell you, the ending is quite something. Resident Evil infects theaters on September 18th, so snatch those tickets and that Medical Courier Popcorn Bucket Bag as if your life depends on it. Damian Hex is a horror-themed performer, video game tester, and media personality. As a proud queer person of color, he uses his voice to amplify marginalized voices. You can find him at screenings, nightlife events, conventions, and ghoul gatherings. When he is not outside striking terror into the hearts of innocents, you can catch him spreading the unholy word to audiences on Twitch. Speaking of Twitch, he has several favorite game titles, including Cult of the Lamb, Hollow Knight, Mortal Kombat, Parasite Eve, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Follow Damian on Instagram @damianhex

By Seth Metoyer | More Horror I Have Proof Heads to Fantastic Fest as James Cullen Bressack Revisits His Horror Roots James Cullen Bressack wants his new horror film to feel like a tape you were never supposed to find. Having known James for about fifteen years, going back to More Horror’s coverage of My Pure Joy and Hate Crime, that sounds like a conversation worth having. His career has taken him through action films, thrillers, and an expanding slate of producing work. Now I Have Proof brings him back to the raw horror that first connected us, with a VHS-C approach and a particular interest in how quickly an audience decides what it believes. The film is scheduled to make its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin on Monday, September 21, 2026, at 5 p.m. CT, according to the publicity information supplied to More Horror, a schedule also reported by ComingSoon. Bressack wrote and directed it, and the official synopsis keeps its mouth reasonably shut: “Alex has proof. He needs you to see it. I HAVE PROOF is a psychological descent where reality is never quite what it seems.” I appreciate a synopsis that leaves something for the actual movie to do. James’s comments to More Horror offer a much fuller sense of the thinking behind it without walking us through the plot. “I HAVE PROOF is probably the most personal horror film I’ve ever made,” Bressack told More Horror. “I wanted to strip away everything that makes modern horror feel polished and safe and instead create something that feels like you found a tape you were never supposed to see.” What grabs me most is that final point. A movie comes right out and says it’s entertainment, even if it’s about someone having a really terrible night. But a recording that seems like it slipped out of someone’s hands brings a whole different vibe. You start wondering who made it, why they held on to it, and if watching it makes you a witness—or just an asshole with a working VCR. Photo courtesy of Sandaled Kid, JCB Pictures and Robotic Donut “There’s something inherently unsettling about the imperfections of VHS-C, the moments where the camera keeps rolling when it shouldn’t, and the feeling that what you’re watching might actually be real,” he continued. “I wanted the audience to feel like they were discovering something rather than simply watching a movie.” Conventional editing can give us the relief of moving on. Let a moment hang around beyond its apparent purpose and the viewer starts searching it for an explanation. I like the unease in that idea: the camera is still running, and we have to decide why. I covered and helped promote those early films, and the friendship developed alongside the work, which is how a surprising amount of independent filmmaking happens. You start by talking about somebody’s movie and eventually find yourself involved in conversations that change the direction of your own career. James helped open those doors for me. He gave me my first film composing opportunity and helped get Blood Harvest (2023) made, a film I co-wrote, produced, and scored. That is part of why this particular return to horror means something to me. There is also a record of the early days sitting in the More Horror archive. In 2012, our correspondent Dawna Lee Heising interviewed James at Shriekfest, and the conversation catches him with several projects already behind him and more taking shape. Asked how many features he had directed, he begins with “three features,” then corrects himself: “No, four features. Jesus.” He goes on to include his segments in two Theatre of the Deranged anthologies in that count, alongside My Pure Joy and Hate Crime. The moment still makes me chuckle. He is trying to answer a fairly straightforward question and has to stop for an internal production meeting. He also talks about preparing to shoot Pernicious in Thailand, describing a budget larger than anything he had previously handled. “I’m being modest,” he says. “It’s much bigger than I’ve dealt with.” He discusses the country’s folklore and spirituality before adding that the film will be “extremely violent.” He has a new location, more resources, and an opportunity to expand his filmmaking, and he still makes sure everybody knows the violence is coming. Some priorities survive an increase in budget. Watch More Horror’s 2012 Shriekfest interview with James Cullen Bressack. Near the end of that interview, James recommends Hate Crime to viewers with a strong stomach and brings More Horror into the conversation. “A lot of websites, including More Horror, said it’s one of the most disturbing movies made in the past, you know, couple years now.” He is recalling the response to a film he describes in the same interview as a found-footage home-invasion film concerned with racial tension. More than a decade later, his new comments return to recorded images and the uneasy relationship between seeing something and deciding what it means. Between those conversations came films including Survive the Game and Darkness of Man, and work with actors such as Bruce Willis and Jean-Claude Van Damme. His career as a director and producer moved well beyond the early horror projects More Horror had covered. What interests me now is his decision to work again with a form that depends so heavily on imperfection. Experience can give a filmmaker the confidence to take things away, even the things that normally help a movie look accomplished. “The film is about perception, bias, and how quickly we decide what we believe,” James told More Horror. “I wanted to put the audience in the position of someone who’s been handed a collection of tapes and has to figure out what happened. There isn’t a traditional narrator telling you what’s true or how you’re supposed to feel. You’re looking at evidence and forming your own conclusions.” That gives the title some backbone. Calling something proof is already an argument. Alex wants us to see what he has, but the act of showing us cannot automatically settle what we should believe about it. Photo courtesy of Sandaled Kid, JCB Pictures and Robotic Donut The idea has a long literary ancestry in stories presented as recovered letters, diaries, and documents. Those forms invite readers to behave like investigators, assembling a reality from whatever somebody has left behind. A camera adds the seductive feeling that we can check things for ourselves. We saw it happen, therefore we understand it. Except the frame has edges, the recording has a beginning and an ending, and somebody decided where to point the damn thing. That is familiar territory outside the movies, too. Give people an ambiguous clip and a sufficiently confident caption, and somebody will have the case solved before the video finishes buffering. We tend to enjoy the feeling of recognizing the truth, particularly when it confirms something we already thought. I am curious about what James does with the space between the material Alex presents and the story a viewer constructs from it. The possibility of an audience confidently getting something wrong gives that premise an uncomfortable edge. The next part of his explanation caught my attention as a composer. “I didn’t want to manipulate the audience,” he said. “If you’re watching something that was actually recovered or submitted as evidence, there’s no composer coming in to tell you when you’re supposed to be scared or when you’re supposed to feel sympathy for somebody. I wanted the audience to have to sit with the footage and decide for themselves what they’re looking at.” Having spent time doing exactly the job he is talking about, I appreciate the reasoning, even if he is politely explaining why somebody like me should stay the hell away from this particular movie. Music can establish an emotional interpretation before an audience consciously arrives at one. Put something tender under a face and you invite sympathy; let something sour creep beneath the same image and that person starts looking suspicious. I enjoy that work. Of course, a filmmaker still shapes our experience through framing, editing, and what we are allowed to see. Taking away the score leaves one less emotional instruction, and that can make the task of interpreting a scene considerably less comfortable. The publicity materials list Larsen Deane, Lilly Van der Meer, Augie Duke, B.J. Hendricks, Kelly Lynn Reiter, and David Josh Lawrence in the cast, with Sandaled Kid, JCB Pictures, and Robotic Donut as the production companies. James has given us plenty to consider ahead of the Fantastic Fest premiere while leaving the experience itself for audiences to discover. His description has my attention; the film will have to do the rest when it reaches the screen. What stays with me personally is the distance between that Shriekfest conversation and this one. Back then, More Horror was still fairly new and covering a young filmmaker working through his early projects and looking toward a bigger production in Thailand. Since then, James’s work has expanded, our friendship has continued, and his help became part of my own life making movies. I can be interested in the choices behind I Have Proof and proud of the person making them at the same time. After this many years, pretending those things exist in separate rooms would feel ridiculous. There is one final moment in the 2012 interview that makes me smile. As the conversation wraps up, James points to the More Horror banner behind him and says, “I plugged you, Seth.” Fourteen years later, here we are again, with another horror film about to meet its audience and quite a bit of life having happened in between. I’m happy to keep helping people find his work, and after all these years, there’s something else I want to say: I’m proud of you, James.

By Devin Smock, MoreHorror.com SPOILERS THROUGHOUT Hope opened in U.S. theaters September 9 through Neon. This review is based on the U.S. theatrical cut screened at AMC. Na Hong-jin has not directed a feature since The Wailing ten years ago. That is a long time to sit with high expectations. For roughly the first hour of Hope, I was ready to say the wait had been worth every day of it. The movie is beautiful immediately. Cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, who also shot The Wailing, gives Hope Harbor the weight of a real place before anything arrives to tear it apart. The compositions are controlled without feeling stiff. The camera knows when to take in the entire village and when to stay close enough to catch somebody thinking, lying or realizing they may be completely screwed. Hope Harbor is a remote South Korean fishing village near the DMZ, but the feeling is familiar. It has some Amity Island and Widow's Bay in its blood, along with every weather-beaten town sitting on a cold northeastern coastline where fishing, trade, gossip and old grudges keep the place alive. Everybody knows everybody. The police chief is not some distant authority. He is the guy people bother because a cow is dead in the road. That cow has been ripped apart by something large enough to make the locals joke about a tiger wandering down from North Korea. Police chief Bum-seok sends his cousin Sung-ki and a group of hunters into the woods while he heads toward town. Communications are down, most outside help has been diverted to nearby wildfires and what begins as a strange animal attack starts getting much bigger. Na lets it build. The opening forty or fifty minutes, I did not have a watch on it, are as good as anything I have seen in a while. The movie takes time with the people, their work and the way they talk to one another. It does not treat characterization as dead space before the monster arrives. The character building is the suspense. We understand what this town feels like on a normal bad day, which is why it matters when something impossible comes through and makes the day considerably worse. The dialogue may be the strongest part of the movie. It is funny, plainspoken and full of the interruptions, insults and unfinished thoughts that make people sound as if they knew each other before the screenplay started. The rhythm reminded me of good American small-town movies, not because these Korean characters have been flattened into Americans, but because Na understands the same basic truth. In a small town, affection and aggravation are usually sharing a cigarette. People argue while working. They make jokes at the wrong time. They know exactly which nerve to hit because they have been hitting it for years. Even the exposition tends to arrive through personality instead of a character walking into a room and explaining the plot to the slowest person there. Considering how large and strange the movie eventually becomes, that grounding is not a small accomplishment. Hwang Jung-min is outstanding as Bum-seok. He makes the police chief funny without turning him into a clown and frightened without turning him useless. Bum-seok begins as a recognizable small-town authority figure, cynical, foul-mouthed and comfortable enough in his position to seem half asleep inside it. Then he finds wrecked buildings, mangled bodies and vehicles being tossed around by something he cannot see. Hwang plays the fear honestly. Bum-seok is not a movie cop who becomes an action hero the second danger appears. He looks overwhelmed because any sane person would be. He keeps moving anyway. That difference is where the performance gets its humanity, and much of its comedy. The jokes come from a real person trying to hold onto a normal reaction after normal has packed up and left town. Hoyeon is also very good as the rookie officer Sung-ae. She gives Bum-seok somebody capable to work against and keeps the police side of the story from becoming a one-man panic attack. There are a lot of characters moving through this 157-minute movie, yet most of them register as people instead of future bodies. That matters once the creature begins cutting through them. Eum Moon-suk nearly walks off with every scene he gets as Yang-bae, the town's offbeat carpenter. He is the sort of man who can turn a dead animal in a freezer into a business plan before anybody else has finished asking what it is. Every small town has some version of this guy. Maybe not with an alien corpse next to the frozen food, but close enough. Then there is Zo In-sung as Sung-ki, Bum-seok's headstrong cousin and the hunter leading the men through the forest. Zo is good early, when Sung-ki still thinks he understands what he is tracking. He gets much better as that confidence is stripped away. By the final stretch he is outstanding, especially during the horseback action and the desperate fight through the woods. He sells the physical work, but more importantly, he sells how quickly bravery becomes survival when the hunter finally understands he is the smaller animal. Michael Abels' score knows when to push and when to leave the village alone. It builds tension without announcing every incoming scare, then settles down long enough for the quieter character scenes to breathe. A lesser score would spend two and a half hours screaming that something terrible is nearby. Abels understands that calm can make the next burst of violence hit harder. When the creature is finally revealed, the CGI works better than I expected. There are moments when its digital nature is obvious, but this is also a massive creature throwing cars and ripping through a town. At some point, I understand that a suit and a clever shadow are not going to do the entire job. More importantly, Na and Hong build a physical world around it. The actors have wreckage to move through. The streets have weight. The camera gives us scale, geography and a believable sense of where the creature is in relation to the people trying not to die. Good visual effects are not only about the surface of the monster. They are about whether the rest of the scene convinces us it is there. For most of Hope, I believed it. The first major attack is exciting because the movie has earned the chaos. It spent nearly an hour teaching us the shape of Hope Harbor, then lets the creature smash that shape apart. Cars fly. People fire at something they barely understand. Bum-seok scrambles through the damage. The action remains funny in places, but the humor does not cancel the danger. That balance is hard, and Na keeps it under control for an impressively long time. The movie also understands that a monster story becomes less interesting if the creature exists only to be shot. The late revelation that Yang-bae killed an infant alien and stuffed it in his freezer reframes the destruction. The enormous creature was not randomly attacking the village. It was a mother looking for its child. That is a good twist. It is cruel, sad and not entirely expected, at least not in the way Na delivers it. It forces the humans to reconsider the story they have been telling themselves. They thought an invading monster had attacked innocent people. In reality, human ignorance and greed started the bloodshed. The creature is still killing people, but the word monster suddenly has more than one address. If Hope had stayed with that idea, this review probably would have a score beginning with an eight. Instead, the final half hour begins dragging a different movie through the door. Sung-ae reveals that three more adult aliens are loose. Sung-ki and the hunters find a spacecraft filled with infant creatures. Another ship falls through a portal and crashes into a mountain. Then the film cuts to J'aur, an alien empress played by Alicia Vikander, and her bodyguard Ma'veyyo, played by Michael Fassbender. Ma'veyyo tears out his own beating heart as part of a plan to resurrect the dead child. That is a lot of mythology to throw at us after more than two hours spent with a police chief, a hunter and a town trying to survive one creature. The reversal itself is great. The expansion around it is where the movie loses me. Suddenly there are alien titles, royal relationships, new ships, new rules and a much broader cosmic story arriving just as the story I cared about should be coming to a close. It feels less like the end of Hope and more like the beginning of whatever movie might follow it. The CGI also becomes more distracting during these final alien scenes. Earlier, the effects had a filthy physical world and frantic human behavior holding them in place. Here the imagery becomes cleaner, stranger and more sentimental. It reminded me of Avatar, and I do not mean that as a compliment. The grounded, funny creature movie gives way to earnest space opera in a hurry. Lord, we were doing so well. There are still great moments in the final stretch. Sung-ki's horseback escape and his fight beside the police vehicle are huge, ridiculous and fun. Zo In-sung rises to the scale of it. Bum-seok and the remaining villagers still matter. The film does not completely abandon the people who got it there, and the mid-credits scene confirming Sung-ki survived gives the audience one welcome bit of relief. But the emotional center has shifted. Hope Harbor stops feeling like the whole world and becomes one location in a larger alien story. Maybe that expansion is the point. Na has certainly made something ambitious enough to keep growing. I just liked the smaller movie more, even when that smaller movie included a giant creature throwing automobiles. That frustration should not erase how much Hope gets right. Hong Kyung-pyo's cinematography is consistently beautiful. Michael Abels gives the film a patient, responsive score. The dialogue is funny and alive. Hwang Jung-min gives the movie a police chief worth following, Eum Moon-suk turns the village oddball into something memorable and Zo In-sung owns the late action. For most of its runtime, Hope is a confident, character-driven monster movie that understands people are more interesting before the screaming starts. Its final turn does not ruin it. It does pull me away from the town, the people and the beautifully simple question that had carried the film: what happens when ordinary people encounter something too large and strange for their world? The answer was already working. Then the movie looked toward the stars and started explaining the next question. 7.7/10

By Devin Smock, MoreHorror.com SPOILERS THROUGHOUT Goody Goody begins streaming exclusively on Shudder September 18. Goody Goody understands something a lot of demon baby movies forget. Childbirth does not need a demon to become body horror. The demon is almost rude for showing up. I have a wife and children. I have stood on the other side of that room while somebody I love did the bleeding, breathing, pushing and hurting. There is a particular kind of uselessness to it. You can hold a hand, say the reassuring thing and try not to look as scared as you are. None of that gives you any control over what the body decides to do next. So, yes, the opening of Goody Goody hit me pretty hard. Writer and director Raymond Creamer does not offer a polite introduction. Goody is in labor, the pain is real and something feels wrong before the supernatural part has even clocked in. The movie got anxiety out of me early, and it did it honestly. That is a good place for a horror movie to start. Goody and her husband, Jayson, have chosen a home birth in an isolated house during a winter storm. Sarah, the midwife, warned them about the location and the distance from a hospital. Goody wants the birth she imagined, though, and Jayson's sister Candace is there to help. It probably sounded beautiful when it was still a plan: warm water, quiet woods and the people they chose nearby. Then the snow comes down, the power goes out and a medical professional says they need to leave. I do not think the movie is arguing that every home birth is reckless. It is more interested in the point where an ideal hardens into something dangerous. Goody wants this experience so badly that every warning begins to sound like an obstacle instead of information. There is something painfully human in that. People do it all the time. We fall in love with the version of life we planned, then get angry when reality refuses to read the script. The film has already established most of that before the title sequence. An early conversation between Sarah and Goody is staged around a mirror, keeping the women visually connected while separating them inside the frame. I like that shot because it has an opinion. They are looking at the same birth from two different realities. Goody sees the experience she wants. Sarah sees all the things that can go wrong and knows she will be the one standing in the blood if they do. One composition does work that a worse movie would hand to a page of dialogue. Tristan Noelle's cinematography is probably the strongest part of Goody Goody. Limited location movies can start showing their budget pretty quickly. The same wall comes back, and the same hallway walks into another scene wearing a fake mustache. Everything gets covered in close-ups because there is nowhere left to put the camera. That does not happen much here. The house keeps changing as Goody's condition gets worse. Rooms that initially feel private and warm begin to feel small, airless and very far from help. Then the power dies and the movie somehow gets prettier. Candlelight is a cinematographer's dream until somebody actually has to photograph it. Faces need to stay readable, shots need to match and the darkness has to feel like darkness without turning the movie into a black rectangle. Noelle pulls it off. The candlelit interiors and the exterior work in the snow look pretty darn good, especially for a film spending most of its time trapped in one house. Some of its prettiest images arrive while a woman is going through absolute hell. Movies are funny that way. That control carries into the exterior work after the outage. Shooting a dark winter exterior beside candlelit interiors is the kind of problem that can make separate parts of a movie look as if they wandered in from different productions. Noelle keeps them together. The location never feels like a cheap house the production happened to have access to. It feels like the worst possible place these people could be. Colleen Foy is the anchor as Sarah. She gives the character professional focus without turning her into one of those movie experts who always has the answer until the script needs her not to. Sarah knows enough to be terrified first. You can see her trying to keep doing the job while the job mutates into something with no training manual. Foy is especially good when Sarah has to swallow her fear and give the next instruction anyway. Panic is a luxury when everybody else has decided you are in charge. Zoe Renee gets a nice early monologue as Candace, Jayson's sister, and becomes more important as the situation collapses. Her work with Foy gives the final stretch its desperation. They keep searching for one more practical thing they can do even after the birth stops behaving like anything practical. Love and good intentions are not a hospital, but they are all these women have left. Samantha Robinson is a little more uneven as Goody. Early on, some of the softness feels put on, almost as if Goody is still performing the calm, beautiful version of motherhood she planned for herself. A few lines come across cheesier than I think the movie intends, and the dialogue does not always help her. I wanted a little less serenity and a little more person. Once the contractions intensify and the power fails, Robinson is outstanding. The performance becomes frighteningly physical. Pain strips away the version of Goody she was trying to present and leaves somebody trapped inside a body she no longer understands. Then something appears to crawl beneath her stomach. Oh boy. The effect works because it does not replace Robinson's performance. It corrupts it. The pain was already difficult to watch, and now the body itself seems to be keeping a secret from the woman living inside it. That is where Goody Goody finds its best horror. The creature is not frightening only because it is demonic. It is frightening because Goody cannot get away from it. It is under the skin, behind the pain and on its way out. Goody's monologue in the birthing pool gives Robinson another strong moment. By then, the movie has made it pretty clear that this is not a normal baby, and I started wondering whether Goody and Jayson knew more than they had admitted. I do not think the film ever gives us enough reason to believe they did. Jayson is no longer there to help by the time Sarah and Candace face the worst of it, and his absence leaves a hole beyond the obvious practical one. I did not need somebody explaining the mythology to death, but I wanted a little more about why this family, why this birth and whether any choice beyond the location brought them here. The final twenty minutes are hard to watch, and not because they are boring or because the movie has fallen apart. I mean I physically caught myself bracing for it. By that point I was no longer sitting there admiring the composition or thinking about where the camera was placed. Sarah and Candace are trying to save Goody, the room has become a mess of pain and fear, and the movie has earned the right to make the audience uncomfortable. The effects team does strong work when the baby finally comes out. The image of the creature being pulled from Goody is the one that stays with me. Wow. Sometimes the honest critical vocabulary runs out and that is what is left. The thing is nasty, sad and unreal, but the human desperation around it keeps the moment from becoming a simple monster reveal. Then Sarah bites through the umbilical cord. That was a little much for me. The extraction had already done the damage. The baby was enough. Believe me, the baby was enough. The film had gotten the reaction and then reached back into the wound for one more. I do not mind gross, but by then it felt extra. Some viewers will probably love that moment. I was already sold before the teeth came out. The ending is surreal and leaves several questions lying around the room. I am fine with ambiguity. Horror should not always hand us a folder explaining the demon, its childhood and what it hopes to accomplish in the next five years. Still, there is a difference between mystery and a missing piece. I was not always sure which one Goody Goody had given me. The dialogue has a similar problem in a few of the quieter scenes. It is not awful, but it occasionally sounds written in a movie that otherwise feels sweaty and immediate. Once the labor becomes dangerous, the actors have something physical to fight and the words matter less. Earlier, when the movie needs conversation to build character, some of those lines sit there waiting to be acted. Demonic pregnancy is not fresh territory, and Goody Goody does not completely reinvent it. What separates the movie is its interest in the labor itself. A cheaper, dumber version would treat childbirth as a delivery system for the monster and spend eighty minutes waiting for the creature. Creamer understands that the body, the isolation and the terrible distance from help are already the movie. The demon just makes the situation official. This is an effective limited location horror film with strong cinematography, committed performances and a final act that made me cringe more than once. The mythology could use another piece, some of the dialogue needs another pass, and Robinson takes a little time to find the version of Goody that works. None of that erases what the movie does well. I did not love Goody Goody. I did feel it, sometimes in places I would have preferred not to. For this movie, that counts for quite a bit. 6.3/10 A screener of Goody Goody was provided for review purposes.

Night Tide Brings a Mysterious Hellbox and Demonic Terror to the Drive-In Writer-director Devon Commons brings demons, a cursed family history and a deadly night at the drive-in together in this supernatural horror film. MoreHorror.com Independent horror filmmaker Devon Commons is currently in production on Night Tide, an upcoming supernatural horror feature built around a mysterious hellbox, a long-buried family secret and demonic forces that emerge when night falls. The film follows Mark Willard, a man whose connection to the supernatural reaches back to his father, Swan Willard. Years earlier, Swan encountered dark forces associated with a mysterious box and creatures known as the demons of the tide. He eventually escaped their world, though the darkness continued to follow the Willard family. By 1996, Mark has grown into adulthood carrying a history that his friends know very little about. He joins Beth, Windows, Sharon, Charles and Roger for what should be a simple birthday celebration at a drive-in theater. Their night takes a darker turn after they encounter an older woman named Barbara, who appears possessed and warns them about an approaching tide. The warning soon becomes reality as demonic forces descend on the drive-in and turn the celebration into a fight for survival. The survivors eventually flee into the woods and seek shelter inside an abandoned house connected directly to Mark’s past. The house once belonged to his family, and his father’s involvement with voodoo and the mysterious box apparently opened a gateway to something beyond their world. From there, paranoia, possession and bloodshed begin tightening around the group. At the center of Night Tide sits the film’s biggest question: What exactly is the mysterious hellbox? Commons wants that mystery hanging over the film as audiences begin encountering the first teaser footage. The box connects Mark’s present to his father’s past and appears tied directly to the demons emerging from what the story calls the “tide of night.” The production also brings veteran actor Clifton Powell into the film as its narrator. IMDb currently credits Powell in that role, alongside Kyle Leatherberry as Mark, Ali Burch as Barbara, Greyson Huneycutt as Beth, Caleb Schulman as Charles and Emma Byrd as Sharon. IMDb CLIFTON POWELL: According to Commons, Powell told him during production that he had never taken on this kind of in-person narrator role before, something that helped shape the casting choice. Commons has also told More Horror that John Kassir, forever embedded in horror history as the voice of the Crypt Keeper, is set to join the cast. Kassir does not currently appear among the film’s public IMDb credits, so for now that casting news comes directly from the filmmaker. The demonic side of Night Tide is beginning to take shape as well. IMDb credits Gwen Walker as Lead Demon Gladys and Donald Morgan as The Tosser, two of the creatures Commons has singled out as figures to watch as the mythology of the tide develops. IMDb Commons sees those creatures as part of a larger mythology built specifically for Night Tide. The combination of demons, supernatural bargains and Kassir’s planned involvement will naturally bring certain genre associations to mind, though Commons has described the film as his own take on demonic horror, centered around the hellbox, the Willard family and the mysterious forces that return with the tide. The footage currently circulating offers an early look at a production that remains underway. Commons told More Horror that some of the teaser material functions as test footage rather than finished scenes intended for the completed movie. That makes the teaser below exactly what an early indie-horror glimpse should be: a door cracked open just wide enough to see something moving on the other side. So we’ll throw Devon Commons’ question directly to the horror crowd: What do you think the hellbox is—and how deep into the Night Tide would you dare to go? Night Tide is currently in production. IMDb lists Devon Commons as writer and director, Terror Vision Pictures as the production company, Atlanta, Georgia as the filming location and a 90-minute runtime. IMDb Follow writer/director Devon Commons on Instagram at @authordevon25 for updates on the film. NIGHT TIDE TEASER TRAILER:

MoreHorror.com Horror fans who have spent years memorizing kill counts, final girls, obscure sequels and the kind of trivia that makes everyone else at the table quietly reconsider inviting them back finally have a game show built for them. Better Luck Than Chuck, a new horror-comedy trivia series created by Meredith Tummillo and Tony Wash, premieres Thursday, September 24 on YouTube, bringing together horror fandom, game show chaos and a lineup of familiar genre names. The six-episode series stars Alexis Allotta as The Widow and Adam Michaels as Charlie, her undead husband. Together, they preside over a weekly competition where horror fans battle through questions about iconic films, characters and memorable moments from across the genre. The format leans directly into the culture surrounding horror fandom. This is a community where people can debate obscure franchise continuity, identify a movie from a single practical effects shot and remember who played the third victim in a slasher they saw once on VHS in 1993. Turning that collective obsession into a game show feels almost inevitable. Better Luck Than Chuck also brings some serious horror-world credibility to the table. The season features guest question readers including Mike Flanagan, Chad Villella, Brea Grant, BJ McDonnell, Gary Sherman, Rebekah McKendry, PhD, and Anthony Cousins. Their involvement gives the show an added connection to filmmakers and creators working across contemporary and cult horror. Each episode mixes traditional game show energy with horror comedy and genre-specific trivia, while contestants compete for prizes supplied by horror brands. Scotchworthy Productions and The Line Film Company produced the series, with new episodes scheduled to arrive every Thursday throughout the Halloween season. Horror has always thrived on participation. Fans argue over rankings, test each other on movie knowledge, trade recommendations and carry entire cinematic universes around in their heads. Better Luck Than Chuck takes that impulse and puts it under the lights of a game show set, complete with an undead co-host. The season premiere arrives Thursday, September 24. Watch Better Luck Than Chuck on YouTube at YouTube.com/@BetterLuckThanChuck and learn more about the series at BetterLuckThanChuck.com.

How Horror Journalists, Influencers and Creators Are Reshaping Horror Media By Seth Metoyer, MoreHorror.com I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what exactly a horror media outlet is supposed to be in 2026. For years, the structure made sense. A filmmaker made a movie. A publicist contacted the press. A writer reviewed it, interviewed somebody involved or published the announcement. Readers visited the website or bought the magazine, and maybe they discovered something they otherwise never would have heard about. Horror had magazines, zines, websites, message boards, blogs, convention coverage and all the other little ecosystems that grew around people who loved this stuff enough to spend ridiculous amounts of time talking about it. A lot of that still exists, but something else has grown around it. The horror journalist has increasingly become the horror creator, and there are now thousands of us. When the Outlet Was the Destination I’ve been running More Horror in one form or another since 2008. I remember when the primary goal of social media was fairly simple: get somebody to click the link. You posted something on Facebook, Twitter or whatever platform mattered at the moment, and ideally the person ended up on your website. The site was the destination. Social media functioned as the road leading there. That arrangement has almost completely inverted. More Horror now has around 65,000 followers on Instagram, along with audiences across Facebook, Threads, X, TikTok and YouTube. We built much of that Instagram audience organically over years, including during a period when growing a page through consistent posting felt considerably more achievable than it does now. Today I can put a piece of horror news on Instagram and thousands of people may see it without ever visiting MoreHorror.com. They’ll comment on the movie, tag somebody, argue about whether the remake sucks, tell me the original is better and inevitably declare that horror died sometime in the 1980s. They are clearly engaging with horror media. They simply never left Instagram. That dynamic has changed the job. The Person Became the Publication Traditional horror journalism usually separated the publication from the personality. You knew Fangoria. You knew Rue Morgue. You knew Bloody Disgusting. Writers certainly developed recognizable voices, and horror journalism has always had personalities, but the masthead carried enormous weight. Social media pushed the individual forward and made the person increasingly inseparable from the publication. Now somebody can build a horror audience entirely around themselves. They review movies on TikTok, tour conventions with a phone and microphone, post horror trivia, show off VHS collections, rank slashers, interview filmmakers on YouTube, photograph haunted attractions, cosplay, react to trailers and report from premieres. Some creators make short-form videos that reach more people in six hours than a traditional horror article may reach during its entire lifespan. At some point, we have to acknowledge that many of these people are performing functions that once belonged almost exclusively to horror publications. The vocabulary gets messy. Are they journalists, influencers, creators, critics, correspondents or simply horror fans who figured out how to build an audience around what they love? I find that less interesting than the work itself. If somebody attends a film festival, interviews a director, provides accurate information about the movie and gives an audience useful context, I care far more about the quality of what they produced than whether their press badge says JOURNALIST in sufficiently serious capital letters. Everyone Has a Broadcasting Station Now There is something genuinely exciting about this. Horror no longer needs permission from a handful of gatekeepers to exist publicly. A filmmaker in rural Illinois can release a trailer tonight and have someone in Los Angeles talking about it tomorrow. A horror fan in Dallas can build an audience around obscure slashers. Someone in New York can walk out of an advance screening and immediately tell thousands of people what they thought. A creator can cover a convention that a traditional outlet lacks the budget or staff to attend. That democratization fits horror especially well because this genre has always grown through outsiders. Fanzines, tape trading, convention tables, independent video stores, late-night television and message boards all gave people ways to tell each other about strange things they had discovered. Horror has always spread sideways, through people who found something cool and felt compelled to pass it along. Now everybody carries the distribution system in their pocket. That creates another problem, because everybody else carries one too. The Feed Is Getting Loud Spend fifteen minutes looking through horror Instagram or TikTok and the sheer volume becomes obvious. There are horror reviewers, collectors, actors, filmmakers, makeup artists, haunt performers, monster kids, poster collectors, Halloween historians, physical-media obsessives, cosplayers, podcasters, convention personalities and theme park creators. There are true-crime creators who wander into horror, horror creators who wander into true crime, and people opening mystery boxes while dressed like Ghostface. Some of these people are exceptionally good at what they do, and there are a lot of them. This creates a strange contradiction where horror may have more people creating horror-related media than at any point in its history while individual creators can simultaneously feel harder to discover. I’ve watched this happen beyond More Horror too. People who built audiences five or ten years ago sometimes become frustrated when growth slows dramatically. They still make content. Their existing audience may still enjoy it. New followers arrive much more slowly, and eventually the creator starts wondering whether anybody is listening. “Shouting into the void” has become one of those exhausted internet phrases, but it describes the sensation pretty well. You spend an hour putting something together, post it and watch the algorithm stare back at you like a dead-eyed studio executive who has already moved on to the next pitch. Followers Don’t Mean What They Used To Follower counts once represented something much closer to distribution. Someone followed your page, and there was a reasonably good chance they would see what you posted. Modern social platforms increasingly function as recommendation engines where following an account becomes one signal among many, and the platform decides what it believes somebody wants to see at that particular moment. That creates situations that would have seemed absurd years ago. Someone with 100,000 followers can publish something that barely moves, while somebody with 1,500 followers can post the right video at the right time and reach a million people. That unpredictability creates opportunity, but it also turns content creation into something resembling a slot machine where everybody keeps pulling the lever. Post another Reel. Try a shorter caption. Use trending audio. Post at 7:00. Apparently 11:30 works better now. Make a carousel. Upload the same thing as a Short. Put it on TikTok. Maybe Threads wants it. Check the analytics. Check them again. Apparently fourteen people unfollowed because you posted about a movie they don’t like. This is a very strange way to participate in culture. Horror Has Always Had a Favor Economy Horror operates heavily through relationships, especially at the independent level. A website shares somebody’s Kickstarter. A podcaster interviews a director. A reviewer covers an independent film. A filmmaker sends a screener. A creator posts a trailer. Somebody reposts somebody else’s Reel. A convention provides access. A publicist connects a journalist with talent. The entire underground horror ecosystem survives partly because people amplify one another. I like that about horror, and I’ve participated in it for years. Some of the best opportunities I’ve had came through people helping each other, passing along contacts, sharing work or simply saying, “You should talk to this person.” The Favor Starts Becoming Labor This is where the old favor economy starts to get tricky. Writing an article takes time, as does editing a video or creating graphics. Watching a movie eats up a couple of hours before anyone has even written a word about it. And conducting an interview means scheduling, preparing, recording, editing, and promoting. Independent horror media often performs all of this work with very small staffs. Sometimes one person does everything: writer, editor, graphic designer, social media manager, video editor, photographer and then, after all that, publicist for the thing they just spent several hours creating. I know that job pretty well. At some point the line between supporting the horror community and becoming an unpaid marketing department gets blurry. Collaboration is still enormously important, but the sheer volume of requests changes the nature of the relationship. Reciprocity starts to become even more important. Maybe We Don’t Need Another Megaphone All of this started changing how I think about More Horror. For years, growing a media outlet meant accumulating a bigger audience. More followers, more traffic and more reach were the obvious goals, and they still matter. I want More Horror to grow. I want our articles to get read. I want our posts to reach people. If we cover an independent film I believe deserves attention, I want that filmmaker to feel an actual effect from the coverage. Lately, though, I’ve become increasingly interested in another idea. Maybe the next useful step involves connecting audiences rather than endlessly trying to collect them. That thinking eventually became the More Horror Network. The idea started fairly simply. There are already talented horror creators everywhere. Some live in Los Angeles and regularly attend premieres. Some live in New York. Others are in Texas, Nashville, Las Vegas or places we haven’t reached yet. Some are excellent on camera. Some write. Some photograph events. Some make strange, funny horror videos. Some have large audiences. Some have smaller audiences with incredibly strong engagement. What happens when those people start connecting? Building Connective Tissue Instead of treating every horror creator like another competitor for the same limited pile of attention, I started wondering what happens when the infrastructure begins linking them together. A correspondent attends an event. More Horror amplifies their coverage. They introduce their audience to us. Our audience discovers them. A filmmaker gets additional visibility. Another creator discovers the filmmaker. Something moves sideways through the community instead of waiting for an algorithm to randomly bless it from above. That interests me much more than building another isolated social media kingdom. Horror already has plenty of people holding megaphones. What it increasingly needs is connective tissue. That is also where I think the distinction between journalist, influencer and creator becomes less useful. A person can wear several of those hats depending on what they are doing that day. Someone might write a review in the morning, shoot convention footage that afternoon and post a ridiculous horror meme that night. The work has become hybrid because the media environment itself has become hybrid. The person doing the work has adapted along with it. A Network of Microphones I think that may be where horror media heads next. Traditional publications will continue to be important.Websites still have a role. Long-form criticism gives ideas room to breathe. Journalists document, investigate and preserve. Creators bring personality and immediacy. Influencers can move attention quickly. Podcasts build intimacy. YouTube gives horror coverage a visual life. And yes, that quirky person on Instagram who’s seen every direct-to-video slasher from 1987 to 1994 probably knows things the rest of us don’t. Each reaches people differently, and the challenge increasingly involves connecting those points. One person covering Los Angeles cannot cover everything happening there. One website cannot watch every independent movie. One creator cannot attend every convention. No single audience will ever see everything. A network changes the equation. Instead of everybody screaming louder, you build a network of microphones. Horror Never Really Worked Alone Anyway The funny thing is that none of this feels particularly new when I look at horror history. The technology changes constantly, but the behavior underneath it has remained remarkably familiar. Someone discovered a strange movie and told their friends. Someone made a fanzine. Someone mailed a VHS tape across the country. Someone recommended a bootleg at a convention. Someone posted about a movie on a message board. Someone embedded a trailer on MySpace. Someone tweeted about it. Someone made a TikTok. Someone posted a Reel. The transmission method keeps mutating, but the impulse remains almost primitive. Horror people find strange things in the dark, then turn toward somebody else and say, “You need to see this.”

Beyond Fest 2026 Slate Bringing 81 Feature films to Its Roster MoreHorror.com Los Angeles’ massive celebration of genre cinema has unveiled its complete Beyond Fest 2026 slate, bringing 81 feature films, major premieres, restorations, anniversary screenings and an extraordinary roster of filmmakers and actors to theaters across Los Angeles. Opening-night events begin September 23, with Beyond Fest programming continuing through October 6 at the Egyptian Theatre, the MUBI Theatre at the Aero, Directors Village and the MUBI Theatre at Los Feliz 3. Presented by MUBI and programmed and produced in partnership with the American Cinematheque, the 2026 festival includes 10 World Premieres, four North American Premieres, seven U.S. Premieres and 28 West Coast Premieres. And for horror fans, this year's lineup gets appropriately feral. V/H/S/MIXTAPE Leads a Massive Horror Slate One of the biggest genre events on the schedule will be the World Premiere of V/H/S/MIXTAPE, the latest entry in the long-running horror anthology franchise. The new installment assembles an eclectic group of filmmakers and artists including RZA, Flying Lotus, Ernest Dickerson, Tobias Forge, David Moreau and Renee Zhan. Beyond Fest will also host a special screening of Crystal Lake, the new series taking audiences back into the mythology surrounding Jason Voorhees and Friday the 13th. Brad Caleb Kane will attend the event, which pairs naturally with a repertory screening of the original Friday the 13th. Mike Flanagan will arrive with members of the cast of Carrie for the West Coast Premiere of the first two episodes of his new Prime Video adaptation of Stephen King's novel. The horror continues with the West Coast Premiere of Mike P. Nelson's giant-snake nightmare Beware Boiúna, with Jessica Rothe appearing in person. Maika Monroe returns to increasingly strange territory with Zachary Wigon's Victorian Psycho, while Raviv Ullman and Greg Yagolnitzer bring the bloody Drag to Los Angeles accompanied by Lucy DeVito, Danny DeVito and Greg DeVito. Joshua Giuliano's slasher reinvention River receives its West Coast Premiere, while Adam Egypt Mortimer brings Pathetic Fallacy, starring Kid Cudi and Jessica Rothe. Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, the filmmaking duo behind Starry Eyes and 2019's Pet Sematary, return with nature horror film The Swallow. Jordan Downey's mystery-horror The Cycle, Samjad's vampiric action-gore film Half, Rebekah McKendry's vampire tale Sundown, Óscar Martín's nuns-and-vampires nightmare Upiro, Koji Shiraishi's occult horror Kinki, Alison Eve-Hammersly's found-footage film Erie, Sean Hogan's supernatural true-crime nightmare The Dark Gets In and Britt Falardeau's Hinter further expand an already enormous genre lineup. Robert Eggers Celebrates a Decade of Darkness Robert Eggers will take over the Egyptian Theatre for a day-long retrospective tracing his first decade as one of contemporary horror cinema's most distinctive filmmakers. Beyond Fest will screen The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman and Nosferatu chronologically, with Eggers appearing in person to discuss his work. The event will also give audiences an exclusive first look at material from Eggers' upcoming film Werwulf. For horror fans who watched The Witch quietly crawl out of the woods in 2015 and then watched Eggers build an entire cinematic language around folklore, madness and historical obsession, that's one hell of a victory lap. M. Night Shyamalan Takes Over Beyond Fest Beyond Fest is also mounting a major retrospective devoted to M. Night Shyamalan, with the filmmaker appearing in person during screenings spanning his career. The program includes The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Visit, Split, Glass, Knock at the Cabin and Trap, among others. Few filmmakers have spent nearly three decades generating this much argument, admiration, reevaluation and cultural conversation around genre cinema. Beyond Fest is giving Los Angeles audiences the chance to revisit that evolution where Shyamalan's movies work best: inside a packed theater. The Devils Finally Arrives One of the festival's great cinematic excavations comes courtesy of Ken Russell's The Devils. The controversial 1971 masterpiece will screen simultaneously in 35mm at the Egyptian and Aero theaters, presenting a newly restored and reconstructed version created according to Russell's specifications. For cult-film devotees, The Devils has spent decades occupying almost mythical territory — a film infamous for censorship, mutilated releases and the difficulty of seeing Russell's full vision properly presented. Beyond Fest appears ready to open the cathedral doors. Lynch, Begotten, The Host and More Return in 4K Restorations also play a major role in this year's festival. The North American Premiere of the 4K restoration of David Lynch's Wild at Heart joins a special screening of Mulholland Drive. E. Elias Merhige's transgressive 1989 nightmare Begotten receives the West Coast Premiere of its new 4K restoration with Merhige attending. Bong Joon Ho's creature classic The Host celebrates its 20th anniversary with the World Premiere of a new 4K restoration. Beyond Fest will also host the theatrical premiere of the 4K restoration of Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx, introduced by Bob Odenkirk, along with restoration premieres for Crowley and Michele Soavi's The Goodbye Kiss. Michael Mann will appear for the World Premiere of his new 4K cut of Miami Vice, commemorating the film's 20th anniversary. Don't Breathe and Green Room Turn 10 Somehow, an entire decade has already passed since two of the 2010s' nastiest pressure cookers hit theaters. Fede Álvarez returns for a 10th-anniversary screening of Don't Breathe, joined by Rodo Sayagues, Stephen Lang, Danny Zovatto and Dylan Minnette. Jeremy Saulnier brings Green Room back to the big screen for its own anniversary celebration. Babak Anvari's Under the Shadow also receives a 10th-anniversary screening with Narges Rashidi appearing in person. Jamie Lee Curtis, Al Pacino, Danny DeVito, RZA and More The guest list stretches well beyond horror. Jamie Lee Curtis will attend the West Coast Premiere of Sender alongside David Dastmalchian and Rhea Seehorn. Danny DeVito joins multiple events, including a rare 70mm screening of Hoffa, while director Martin Brest participates in screenings of Beverly Hills Cop and Scent of a Woman, with Al Pacino attending the latter. Dolph Lundgren appears for the documentary Dolph: Unbreakable paired with Universal Soldier. RZA premieres an episode of his new series Saturday Afternoon Kung-Fu Theater – Born Invincible before a new 4K restoration of Master of the Flying Guillotine. Other filmmakers and guests scheduled to appear include Michael Mann, James Gray, Bruce Dern, Conor Oberst, Matt Berry, Duncan Jones, Sung Kang, Fede Álvarez, Stephen Lang, Jessica Rothe, David Dastmalchian, Rhea Seehorn and many more. Beyond Fest Head of Programming Evrim Ersoy describes this year's festival as a celebration of cinema capable of bringing major filmmakers, emerging voices, restorations and repertory events together under one roof. That philosophy has always made Beyond Fest interesting. Genre cinema never lived inside one neat little coffin. Horror bleeds into exploitation, science fiction collides with arthouse cinema, cult movies become canonical, and films once treated like radioactive contraband eventually receive immaculate 4K restorations. Beyond Fest 2026 begins with opening-night screenings September 23 and continues through October 6 across multiple Los Angeles venues. Tickets and complete scheduling information are available through BeyondFest.com and the American Cinematheque.