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Stephen King spends a lot of his time writing ... and by a lot I mean a lot, judging by the Jenga-like towering pile of novels, novellas, and short stories the King of Horror has written over his lifetime. And when he's not writing, he's probably got his nose in a book somewhere, be it a surefire future best-seller by Liane Moriarty or some niche tome that's piqued his interest. But when he's not doing either of those things, King is likely either streaming that critically-acclaimed TV show your dweebiest sibling won't shut up about or renewing his cineaste card by watching one of the year's most buzzed-about indie or non-franchise genre flicks.

The man didn't spend 2024 slacking on that front, either. Whether he was singing the praises of Jeremy Saulnier's tense "First Blood"-esque action-thriller "Rebel Ridge" or marveling at the many subversive twists and turns that Jt Mollner...

Barring the occasional doorstep TMZ video or red carpet event appearance, the public hasn’t seen much of 34-year-old actor Jonathan Majors lately. The Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania star was sentenced in April to a 52-week domestic violence intervention program after being convicted of reckless assault in the third degree and harassment in December after an altercation with his then-girlfriend. The performer was ordered to continue mental health counseling and therapy and provide the court with updates on treatment.

Majors’ Sundance 2023 film Magazine Dreams, initially considered an awards contender, was dropped by Searchlight Pictures, as was his supervillain character Kang the Conqueror from the continuing Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Robert Downey Jr. was rehired by Disney’s comic book movie behemoth to step in as Dr. Victor von Doom for “significantly more than $80 million” over two films.)

But don’t count Majors out yet. On Sunday, Sept. 15, two days after his first treatment compliance date,...

Eminem has dropped a grisly music video for “Tobey,” his latest Death of Slim Shady single with Big Sean and BabyTron.

The Cole Bennett-directed clip finds the three Michigan MCs digitally duplicated, delivering their verses and interacting with their doubles as the camera roams through a variety of settings, like a warehouse, hotel room, and club. When it finally gets to Eminem’s verse, the setting switches to the front of a house that looks a lot like the one on the cover of The Marshall Mathers LP.

From there,...

"Friday the 13th" might be the best example of a flagrant copycat birthing a franchise whose place in cinema history is almost as significant as the thing it knocked off. Sidestepping the debate over what does and does not qualify as the first full-on slasher, it's generally agreed that 1978's "Halloween" set the mold for the horror sub-genre as it exists today. Blood-thirsty killing machines with penchants for pointy weaponry; horny teenagers and early 20-somethings with little to no sense of self-preservation; the unusual young woman who emerges as the "final" survivor in the battle with said monster — they're all present and accounted for in director John Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill's spooky classic.

They can also be found in director Sean S. Cunningham and writer Victor Miller's 1980 hit "Friday the 13th," but with some major asterisks. For starters, the film that paved the way for Jason Vorhees...

The director of Shudder’s unique 2024 horror film In a Violent Nature sat down with The Direct to discuss bringing that viral yoga kill to life and exploring a slasher from the killer’s point of view.

The story follows Johnny, a restless spirit and vengeful force of nature who is awakened from his slumber after a group of young adults disturb a golden locket lying around a collapsed fire tower where his grizzly death occurred decades before.

Little do they know of its importance, which leads them to fall into the brutal gaze of the Jason Vorhees-esque killer.

Read full article on The Direct.

In “Sting,” a giant-spider-grows-in-Brooklyn thriller that’s cheeky, bloody, and (most important) very gooey, Sting is the name given by Charlotte (Alyla Browne), a precocious tween, to the elegant two-inch-long black spider that becomes her pet (she keeps it in a jar and feeds it bugs). Yet given how much slaughter is caused by this omnivorous arachnid, which grows bigger and bigger with each feeding, the moniker turns out to be a major understatement. It’s as if Jason Vorhees were named “Paper Cut.”

“Sting” is a wee sliver of a horror film that’s tongue-in-cheek but also quite matter-of-fact about its creature-feature jokiness. It’s the monster-bug thriller as light dessert. The spider, it turns out, is an alien — after a gruesome prologue with lots of whooshing “Evil Dead” camera movement, the movie cuts to four days earlier, when a fiery meteorite crashes through an apartment roof in South...

Film historians are in a perpetual debate about what constitutes the first slasher film, but "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," "Black Christmas," "Halloween," and "Friday the 13th" all have one thing in common — they were scary as hell. 50 years later in the case of the former two, Leatherface with his chainsaw and Billy's obscene phone calls still manage to terrify new viewers straight out of their skin. Slasher films dominated the horror genre. But as time went on the perspective began to shift to keep things interesting. There were always audiences who showed up to see how the final girl would survive the madness this time, but more and more horror fans were turning in to support their favorite killers. Kills got more inventive, human characters became little more than bodies ripe for slaughter, and successful slasher icons were able to sustain long-running franchises, many of which continue today.

In...

Jason Blum and James Wan have carved out a nice little partnership with some successful mid-budget horror movies. The two have collaborated with their production companies, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster, for recent projects like the latest film in the Insidious series, which also had Patrick Wilson make his directorial debut, Insidious: The Red Door and the killer doll movie, M3GAN. Recently, it was revealed that Blum’s dream project is to revive the Friday the 13th franchise. The classic slasher series hasn’t released a film since the 2009 Platinum Dunes reboot.

The rights to Friday the 13th are currently tangled up with director Sean Cunningham and writer Victor Miller disputing who has the rightful possession, but Blum is brainstorming a way to usher in the new series if he’s able to acquire the property. Collider asked Blum what movie he’d greenlight right now if he could and he answered,...

Like droids, the live-action "Star Wars" films rarely pause to explore the inner lives of clones and their larger place in a galaxy far, far away. It's what makes "Star Wars: The Bad Batch" such an essential piece of storytelling to the franchise's greater mythology. The spinoff of the "Clone Wars" animated series focuses on the adventures of the titular clone squad (aka. Clone Force 99), a small band of clones with unique genetic or physical traits that was introduced during its parent show's final season. However, for as much as it operates as a small-scale story about a family struggling to survive, "The Bad Batch" also addresses much bigger issues concerning clone rights and allegiances in the wake of the Clone Wars.

"The Bad Batch" season 1 begins, as it must, with Emperor Palpatine issuing Order 66, activating the inhibitor chips built into all the clones' brains and forcing them to execute any Jedi on sight.

Thanksgiving is a horror slasher film directed by Eli Roth, from a screenplay by Jeff Rendell. The film is based on Roth’s mock trailer of the same name from the 2007’s Grindhouse, after many years of discussions and nearly going into production, the much-awaited Thanksgiving film is finally here and it is set during the Black Friday 2022 in Plymouth, Massachusetts as many people are crushed to death during the riot, despite the intervention of police and town sheriff Eric Newlon. Thanksgiving stars Patrick Dempsey, Addison Rae, Gina Gerson, Rick Hoffman, Nell Verlaque, Tim Dillon, Jenna Warren, and Milo Manheim. So, if you loved Thanksgiving here are some similar movies you could watch next.

You’re Next (Max & Prime Video Add-On) Credit – Lionsgate

Synopsis: One of the smartest and most terrifying films in years, You’Re Next reinvents the genre by putting a fresh twist on home-invasion horror. When a gang of masked,...

If you subscribe to JoBlo Horror Originals (which you should!), you’ve probably caught our series 80’s Horror Movie Memories. In this show, we highlight all of our favourite horror movies from arguably the greatest decade for horror, with tons of very special guests. The decade started with a bang, with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the first instalment in the Friday the 13th series, John Carpenter’s The Fog, and more. Check out our feature-length examination of 1980 here, but this week, we’re looking at 1981.

While some may think the year pales compared to 1980, they might be underestimating what’s a pretty significant year for horror. Arguably, one would call it the year of the werewolf, with the year dominated by the best werewolf movies of all time, John Landis’s An American Werewolf in London and Joe Dante’s The Howling. While those might have been the biggest...

Stars: Sarah Alexandra Marks, Eric Roberts, Colin Baker, Dani Thompson, Meghan Adara, Amber Doig-Thorne, Chrissie Wunna, Karl Kennedy-Williams, Judson Vaughan, Anna Tammela, Daisy Boyden | Written and Directed by Richard Anthony Dunford

Originally entitled Minacious (which means ‘of a menacing or threatening character’), British horror The Caller is part horror and part wish-fulfilment. Why? Well because for those working in a call centre, having someone come to your place of work after getting frustrated with the response they got is [probably] terrifying but for those on the end of the line, who can’t get the help they need, who Are the ones frustrated… well, that’s where the wish fulfilment comes in! Go to the office, confront someone, get a straight answer. Only here writer/director Richard Anthony Dunford takes things to extremes – as in the frustrated customer becomes a scary stalker-come-attacker!

The Caller opens with a brutal prologue in which...

Stars: May Kelly, Danielle Scott, Harry Boxley, Lila Lasso, Mark Sears, Charlie Esquire, Gillian Broderick, Gaston Alexander, Christine Ann Nyland | Written by Harry Boxley | Directed by Jason Arber

May Kelly, who has starred in a number of low-budget British horror films from producer Scott Jeffrey including seasonal horrors The Killing Tree and Nutcracker Massacre, and taken the lead in such diverse genre fare such as Graphic Desires and Mega Lightning, follows up her appearance in Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey with Another “fairy tale” fear flick in Mary Had a Little Lamb.

Based on the nursery rhyme of the same name, the plot of this film is pretty simple. A radio host (Kelly) and her crew set out to discover the truth behind some disappearances for a true crime show. They will soon learn that there is far more to discover when they meet Mary and her [not-so-little] lamb… Yes,...

The dispute over ownership of the Friday the 13th is one of the most storied in horror movie history. And while things have settled over the last few years, there’s another studio that wants in on the action. Blumhouse — the studio behind the new Halloween trilogy and this month’s The Exorcist sequel Believer — is interested in making Friday the 13th the focus of their next big project.

Speaking with Inverse, Blumhouse producer Ryan Turek said that Friday the 13th is definitely in the studio’s crosshairs (perhaps via a speargun?). “Jason [Blum] and I are definitely in agreement that Friday the 13th is the thing we would love to get our hands on. I really want to go back to the basics. You don’t need too many ingredients for a Friday the 13th film. You need summer camp, you need campers, and you need Jason Vorhees in a mask.

Stars: Corin Clay, Kyle Corbin, Danielle Grotsky, Paul Ignatius, Will Bunk, April Clark, Brady O’Donnell, Michael Thyer | Written and Directed by Kevin Ignatius, Nick Psinakis

On the surface it’s believed to be another urban legend – a supernatural being from the afterlife is violently killing anyone who cheats on their significant other in the small college town of Silvercreek, Pennsylvania. But the town’s unusually high suicide rate is finally convincing both locals and college students that everything is not as it seems. When Maeve – a female college student – sleeps with Charlie, the married man of the host family she is staying with, both sense the deadly curse is closing in on them. Unable to get anyone to believe them, Maeve and Charlie seek out a local history student to help find answers and figure out a way to defend themselves. It all comes undone, however, as several people are...

If you don't know him by name, you almost certainly know Vernon Wells by his face if you're a fan of '80s movies. He was Bennett, the Aussie villain with the chainmail tank top and Freddie Mercury mustache in "Commando," and he scared the pants off kids as Mr. Igoe, the sinister hitman with an interchangeable hand in "Innerspace." Or you may remember him as Lord General, the crazed leader of a mutant biker gang that crashes the party in "Weird Science."

Wells' career as one of Hollywood's go-to bad guys at the time was made possible by his ferocious performance as Wez, the psychotic henchman in "The Road Warrior," George Miller's sequel to his low-budget smash, "Mad Max." This time around, a bigger budget enabled the director to go bigger, faster, wilder, and weirder than his original vision. This time, our hero Max Rocktansky is battling a...

Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” is one of the band’s most famous classic rock songs. Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar” reuses the bassline of the song. Subsequently, Talking Heads’ David Byrne revealed what he thought about Gomez’s track.

Why Talking Heads’ David Byrne was alright with Selena Gomez sampling ‘Psycho Killer’

During a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone, Byrne was asked if he was upset with Gomez for decontextualizing “Psycho Killer.” “No, no, not at all,” he responded. “I mean, I would have an issue if somebody took, say, ‘This Must Be the Place,’ which is a very personal love song — if somebody repurposed that and made it into some kind of horrible violent thing, I would probably say, ‘No, you do not have permission to do this.’

“Other than that, yeah, repurpose the stuff,” he added. “That’s totally fine. And, you know, we get paid for it too.

Better be careful, or the Boogeyman will get you!

If you ask kids what they’re most afraid of, they’ll probably all say “The Boogeyman,” which is kind of a generic term you can use for any scary figure. Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger are Boogeymen of some form or another. Stephen King himself made up his own version of The Boogeyman in his famous short story of the same name, which was part of his iconic collection of short stories, Night Shift. This short story is getting a feature-length movie adaptation from 20th Century Studios and Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps, best known for producing Stranger Things.

The Boogeyman film has been given a prime June 2 release date from 20th Century Studios, and the fact that they’re going exclusively theatrical for this one shows they must have faith in how it turned out. The horror genre has been good for them lately,...

Love him or hate him, no one can deny that Roland Emmerich is a connoisseur of the disaster movie. The German-born filmmaker has destroyed major cities around the world with volcanoes, floods, aliens, giant monsters, and, most recently, the Moon. Out of all of his on-screen global destructions, the deep freeze of "The Day After Tomorrow" might be his most iconic, if only for the sheer audacity of Emmerich's approach to climate change. The director knows that a satisfying disaster film doesn't need to adhere to the laws of physics or environmental science as long as his audience gets a theatrical experience, and the literal killer cold front of his new Ice Age blockbuster is the prime example of that.

Emmerich has been obsessed with global disasters ever since the student film he made in 1984 while attending the University of Television and Film Munich. Entitled "The Noah's Ark Principle," the...

Seemingly out of nowhere, M3GAN looks like it might be the next big franchise in horror. The film has received rave reviews and broke through on TikTok before it was even released. The film’s ending hints at a sequel, and with the film raking in 30.2 million in its opening weekend, it looks likely that M3GAN will be here to stay.

The movie’s viral dance scene speaks to its campier elements, which have made M3GAN both an internet sensation and an unlikely queer icon. Here are 10 more campy horror movies to watch if you’re still riding high on the M3GAN hype train.

Freddy vs Jason (2003)

Ronnie Yu’s supremely stupid Freddy vs. Jason from 2003 is way more entertaining than it has any right to be. Pitting Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees against each other in a horror icon battle for the ages via an inane, inexplicable plot, the...

When author A. A. Milne and illustrator E. H. Shepard created their 1926 children's book "Winnie-the-Pooh," one assumes it never crossed their minds that the titular character and his neighbors in the Hundred Acre Wood would be re-imagined as sadistic killers nearly 100 years later.

Inspired by the real-life teddy bear and other toy animals owned by A.A. Milne's son Christopher Robin Milne, the "Winnie the Pooh" franchise was synonymous with wholesome family entertainment up until 2022. Spanning books, stage plays, radio shows, films, and TV series both animated and live-action, "Winnie the Pooh" centers on the daily activities of the titular honey-loving bear. A naive yet gentle creature, Pooh spends most of his time learning valuable life lessons while getting in and out of trouble with his friends. Their ranks include the plucky Piglet, anxious Rabbit, downbeat Eeyore, boisterous Tigger, and their sole human companion: An ever-patient, soft-spoken boy by the name of Christopher Robin.

"Barbarian" is a movie teeming with nasty twists. Zach Cregger's slow-burning tale is one of the best horror movies this year; it induces palpitations and anxiety and fear that is so inherently relatable — because this isn't a movie where characters are making bad decisions just to further the plot. You can understand why they're choosing to do what they're doing. "Barbarian" stars Georgina Campbell as Tess, a woman traveling to Detroit for a job interview, who books a rental home on Airbnb and discovers the house is double booked.

When you throw in a normal-seeming Bill Skarsgård, a monster who lives in the basement, a hilarious Justin Long, and twist after twist, "Barbarian" truly becomes the stuff of nightmares. Justin Long is the movie's comedic relief. He's a man dealing with a career-ending accusation and is seen desperately measuring the undiscovered basement of his house so he may sell it at a higher price.

At this point, it's safe to say that "Terrifier" and the brand-new, just-released "Terrifier 2" have both found a comfortable place within horror fandom as relentlessly gory odes to the very edge of the slasher genre. As much as the "Terrifier" films revere the B-movie splatterfest, however, they also take advantage of their position as a squarely modern horror movies, unbeholden to the limits on violence that plagued the slasher heyday of the '80s. Part of director Damien Leone's mission in creating "Terrifier" was to envision what an uncensored "Friday the 13th" film would look like if there were no sudden cuttaways from the gruesome kills.

Modern audiences often think the slaughters conducted by Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and their are bloodier than they actually were. The MPAA butchered many of these slashers' kills more than the slashers butchered their victims, especially as the films became...

Almost 50 years on, there are few films that immerse the viewer so viscerally in terror as effectively as "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." It's not so much what Tobe Hooper shows, because the film is nowhere near as gory as its title or reputation suggests. It is more the sweltering atmosphere of all-encompassing insanity that frays the nerves.

Loosely based on the ghoulish crimes of murderer and graverobber Ed Gein, the film hit theaters in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the disastrous U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In response to the grim political landscape at the time, Hooper wanted his film to reflect the general cynicism many people felt. Unlike the vampires and ancient mummies of the Hammer horror movies he loved in his youth, he realized that man was the real monster. In the hulking figure of Leatherface, all Hooper had to do was give his villain...

It's a balmy summer evening, the stars are out, and something strange just dropped out of the sky and landed in the woods near your hometown. What should you do? Warn the sheriff, knowing he never really listens to punk kids like you anyway? Investigate and poke it with a stick? Or ignore it and carry on making out in the back of your Convertible? 

All the above answers are viable and correct if you're a stock character in a B movie horror involving hostile visitors from outer space, who like parking up on the edge of a small town where the hicks are too dumb to realize what is going on until it's almost too late. The premise was a staple of the atomic-era science fiction of the 1950s, and many directors who grew up with fond memories of those movies made their own versions in the 1980s.

It...

Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each creator has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments here.

Do you ever wonder if, a hundred years from now, someone trying to get their Ph.D. as a meme historian will go trawling through thousands of pages of digital archives to write a thesis explaining Tumblr sexymen and Pikachu face and “oh my god they were roommates” and why Katy Perry’s 2010 song “California Gurls” killed Jason Vorhees?

Yeah, me too.

Thankfully, Lessons in Meme Culture exists even though it is not a hundred years from now, and that channel offers what is essentially a mini thesis on top current memes at least five times a week.

The professor behind the lessons prefers to keep his identity concealed, but...

While we're waiting for the next installment of the "Ghostbusters" film franchise to pick up after the events of "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," the game developers at IllFonic have something to hold you over. 

"Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed" is a new video game from the creators of the "Friday the 13th" slasher game that let players either slice and dice through camp counselors as Jason Vorhees or forces them to survive the deadly advances of the hockey-masked killer. That same multiplayer formula is being applied to the "Ghostbusters" franchise with plenty of video game thrills and chills that will have you bustin' all over. If this is the first you're hearing of "Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed," we've got everything you need to know about the new video game right here.

What Is Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed?

"Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed" is described as a four-on-one hunt or haunt action-packed asymmetrical multiplayer. If you're not familiar with the game variant,...

The long-awaited return to the Pretty Little Liars universe is nearly upon us.

Although Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin admits a connection to Rosewood, Millwood's story stands on its own.

Executive produced and written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and co-executive produced and written by Lindsay Calhoon Bring (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), the pedigree is a dark take on A's torment across two generations.

Twenty years ago, the blue-collar town of Millwood was torn apart by a series of tragic events, and the women at the core of that nightmare have daughters the same age now.

If they thought they had shed their mistakes and taken a brighter path into the future, Original Sin reveals that there is still a bill to pay, and it's coming due with new blood.

The former TV liars were not angels, but they weren't eager to get their hands dirty either. Our new liars lead...