Board 8 > 2025 Horror Topic - Happy Nosferatu Day

(+) Yeah! (+)

Also, Weapons may end up being the best horror movie coming out this year. Apparently the bidding on it went up to $38 Million and Jordan Peele fired his managers for failing to win the bidding on it. It's by the creator of Barbarian so it's actually impossible to know where this movie will go, but the new trailer is so fascinating. Probably my most anticipated horror movie now, with Bring Her Back extremely close to it.

https://youtu.be/OpThntO9ixc?si=Tmt6MWJOG_DVseay

Yea, I hesitated clicking to watch the trailer because I didn't want to learn too much and the initial teaser was perfect for that, but this is also a good trailer. Very excited for it.

Loved the trailer, can't wait for that one. Not watching anymore on that movie until it comes out. Fear Street trailer was also pretty good.

I personally think it'll be hard to top Sinners, but I'm certainly looking forward to films that want to try.

There are already so many more movies in my top tier than there were last year. 2025 has been a great year for horrors and thrillers.

Rosario is out this weekend and I've been looking forward to that one because it co-stars David Dastmalchian, the star of last year's best horror film (in my book at least). Nic Cage's new thriller is also out in limited capacity. I'm not positive it's a true horror film, but I'll probably include it anyway because it looks like Cage at his most deranged and has been described by some "Mandy, but at the beach".

Finally watched Drop! I was extremely happy with it! A little thriller mystery that kept me intrigued throughout the whole thing, although I wish the trailers didn't spoil so much of it. Still, it was loads of fun and Christopher Landon continues to make some really creative and fun films that I don't think I'll ever get tired of.

Unfortunately it looks like Slasher won't be returning on Shudder.

But the creators have put out a new show about a slasher killer called Hell Motel! It comes out in June on Shudder! I think this might be a good idea. I felt the last season of Slasher wasn't nearly as strong, and this feels like they're given more budget, and I think getting away from the Slasher formula, which I liked a lot, might benefit them with this show.

https://twitter.com/BDisgusting/status/1918003333547085941

Ooooh anthology show

Just got back from Sinners and goddamn I was completely blown away.

I think that might be my favorite vampire movie? (not sure if that's even worth having in spoilers; it was made pretty clear in the trailers). The only one I can think of offhand that competes is Let the Right One In and I might've liked this more. The cross-generational blues dance scene in particular is legitimately one of the best sequences I've ever seen in a film, I was just stunned how good that was.

Great performances across the board, Jordan and Steinfeld in particular, but the integration of music into both the culture and the horror was what really stole the show

I got to see a horror movie a few months early. Sequel. Invited to a pre-screening. Third act VFX wasn't finished and it was a bit of a sloppy mess at times. big tone problem and people were laughing when I think they weren't supposed to be

it kinda sucked and I told them it sucked. I did not get invited to the post-movie focus group after because they had too many people who said it sucked

hope they fix it. it had shades of being good. i will be seeing it again when it comes out later this year

Oh no not looking good for M3gan 2.0!

it wasn't megan 2.0, that movie is finished and they aren't looking for feedback. this one is further out. i will not confirm any guesses but there aren't many it could be I'm pretty sure

Have to wonder what that is... hope it's just Strangers because that will suck no matter what and I do not care if it does.

Honestly could be Five Nights at Freddy's 2

...i guess there are more horror sequels this year than I thought

Looking at a brief list, The Conjuring sequel coming out later this year?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/eec13e98.jpg

here's the card they made me fill out. they let me in right away because of one of the movies I checked off here

i encourage everyone to sign up for previewfreemovies.com, that's how I got invited to this

Oh Black Phone 2

I never saw the first one, didn't overly interest me

I'm still going to see it because I love horror movies and I like to form my own opinions, but I hope the feedback they received from the focus group will be enough to improve it before its official release. Then again I'm also of the opinion that The Black Phone was a very good standalone film that really didn't need a sequel. Yeah I'll still see it if only to get tipsy and point and laugh at it, though hopefully there won't be any need to do so!

GenesisSaga posted...

I'm still going to see it because I love horror movies and I like to form my own opinions, but I hope the feedback they received from the focus group will be enough to improve it before its official release. Then again I'm also of the opinion that The Black Phone was a very good standalone film that really didn't need a sequel. Yeah I'll still see it if only to get tipsy and point and laugh at it, though hopefully there won't be any need to do so!

Yeah this is my opinion on it. I don't know that we needed a second one of these. Really quality film that didn't need franchised.

Capitalizing on an Ethan Hawke horror that didn't need a sequel is how we ended up with Sinister 2, which was horrible and actively worked against the original.

Capitalizing on an Ethan Hawke horror that didn't need a sequel is how we ended up with Purge 2, which was horrible and actively worked against the original.

Tbh I liked The Purge 2 a lot and felt it was more entertaining than the original. Diminishing returns though. But it's a decent series to turn off your brain and watch because it's all so stupid.

The Purge was something easy to create a series out of though. I have no idea what Black Phone 2 could even really be about given the fact that the film didn't for a second scream to me "this will be a franchise". Some films that are great lend themselves to sequels and beyond; recent examples of success would be something like Smile. It remains to be seen if M3GAN will be able to follow it up the same way, but it was obvious that it would always be getting a sequel.

The Black Phone having a sequel to me is like if another film on that card, Hereditary, suddenly was going to have a sequel. It would just make so very little sense. I liked the first one a lot, so I wanted to believe there was some vision for it I wasn't seeing but if people were laughing at it... yikes.

Theater movies this week:

Rosario: I was really looking forward to this because the trailer made it look like a fairly traditional cultural horror piece. But something was off with this one. Tonally, it just seemed to make very odd decisions throughout the course of the film. If you've seen this trailer, then I feel you'd say it looks a lot like Evil Dead (the newer one) or something similar. While as a series Evil Dead has been known to have some humor to it, I feel like the newer one sort of steered the series back in a darker direction and I was hopeful this movie would be in that sort of vein. While there's gore and blood, and the effects look nice, it's just like they used a different writer for certain parts. There are weird one-liners from the main character sprinkled throughout, and they totally wasted Dastmalchian. Not even sure why they hired him to play this part. Not a bad movie I guess, but the longer it went the less sense the plot made and the main character became very annoying after a while.

The Surfer: This is a psychological thriller film, so it's fringe but I tend to just include things I feel like fit well enough for me. There's a definite feel of uneasiness and uncomfortable moments that are sure to please you, especially if you are itching to see Nic Cage just go batshit crazy. This film has that, so unlike Rosario the trailer didn't lie! But yeah this was a good one, there are a lot of themes it tackles and it tells the story of pretty complex characters in an unsettling way. This film has the amount of Cage in I wanted from Longlegs, and again he's pretty unhinged through most of the movie. Good stuff.

Just watched Until Dawn. I thought it was a fun movie inspired by the game. It's not nearly as bad as some reviews make it seem I don't think. I thought the kills were intense and really got pretty grotesque at times.

The plot was good enough, and it was really carried by big action scenes and it delivered in the last act. I recommend it though!

Just saw Until Dawn

Ehhhhh

Cool premise but I really feel like they kinda went nowhere with it. Flat characters, mostly bland setups and the time skip to day 13 with convenient memory loss felt extremely cheap.

I was happy to see Peter Stormare reprise his role, at least something actually came from the game

Yeah, I think I would have loved it a lot more if we got a montage of all of the deaths leading up to that rather than phone cam. Like just total nonsense kills leading up to the final night. They could have had a lot more fun with it! They were close, but the phone cam thing should have just been them recounting different deaths each.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfw56AlXtYM

Trailer for the last Conjuring movie is out and it looks good, actually! It can't be worse than the third one, right?

https://x.com/BDisgusting/status/1920509159079891409

Even though it was easily the weakest of the main 3 films and one of the weakest period in the Conjuring Universe, Genny and I did in fact visit Zak Bagans' Haunted Museum while in Las Vegas on vacation last month. The chair from the case that inspired that film is one of the artifacts there, and though I love horror and all that sort of spooky stuff I wouldn't exactly call myself any sort of believer in the supernatural or paranormal. It's just something I think is "cool", but nothing I am like into actually believing. However... and I'm not sure if it's just being in the place or the power of suggestion, but we had a special access pass that allowed us to get closer to the chair than most of the rest of the tour group. I was leaning in looking at the chair and I swear something tapped me on the shoulder a few times. Never had any sort of experience like that before in my entire life, but again I'm not really sure if it was anything more than the aura and because we were told many times that people had had reactions to things in the museum.

It was cool though, if anyone visits Vegas it's definitely worth checking out. One of the best memories I'll have from that vacation for sure.

Oh man I hope you went to Area 15 and visited the Omega Mart. I adore that place as a living horror story.

(My parents live in Vegas so I'm there once a year)

Heart Eyes is on Netflix now! Big recommend! Check it out!

Of course yeah. We did the Haunted Museum, Criss Angel and Hell's Kitchen on the first day. Area 15 we spent 2 days at, did all the stuff there basically. Omega Mart was a whole day itself basically, very great and has me interested in seeing other Meow Wolf stuff.

Theatrical movies this weekend include Clown in a Cornfield of course; curious to see how good it is, the RT score has slid a fair bit from where it debuted at (which was over 90 so no way it was staying there). In addition to that, showings are available of the Vietnamese vampire movie Daydreamers so we'll be seeing that as well. Neither happening until Sunday though.

Just watched The Surfer! I thought this one was great. The atmosphere of this movie always feels so oppressive and uneasy and I thought they just nailed it, especially with the contrasting visuals which are beautiful. Nicholas Cage steals the show by slowly deteriorating during the movie, and I feel like the plot ended up intensely satisfying with a great conclusion.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Nicholas Cage steals the show by slowly deteriorating during the movie, and I feel like the plot ended up intensely satisfying with a great conclusion.

I had a few various theories when I was watching this, including The Surfer was just The Bum and this was a weird mindtrip he was going on. There was the one shot with the bathroom mirror plus the fact that the old man seemed to disappear for a long period of time and people were thinking the Surfer lived in the car even though he had only been around the area for a couple of days. The conclusion of the film was somewhat more simple than I was thinking it might have been, though I'm also not saying it was a bad thing that's what happened.

v_charon posted...

I had a few various theories when I was watching this, including The Surfer was just The Bum and this was a weird mindtrip he was going on. There was the one shot with the bathroom mirror plus the fact that the old man seemed to disappear for a long period of time and people were thinking the Surfer lived in the car even though he had only been around the area for a couple of days. The conclusion of the film was somewhat more simple than I was thinking it might have been, though I'm also not saying it was a bad thing that's what happened.

I thought it was made pretty clear that he wasn't the Bum at all with the scene with the Photographer where he breaks down seeing the picture of him and his car. The thought being that he believed he might actually be the Bum but wasn't really. I think it was definitely meant to show his mind deteriorating, which I thought was a good story to get us even believing it at that point when he is slowly stripped of everything nice he has.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

I thought it was made pretty clear that he wasn't the Bum at all with the scene with the Photographer where he breaks down seeing the picture of him and his car. The thought being that he believed he might actually be the Bum but wasn't really. I think it was definitely meant to show his mind deteriorating, which I thought was a good story to get us even believing it at that point when he is slowly stripped of everything nice he has.

Oh no definitely, I agree with that. We were the only ones seeing it so we openly talked about it, particularly that scene as proof he wasn't The Bum. That was just a theory I had earlier on and up until that happened as proof that at least some of what he was experiencing was real and not the result of dehydration or heat sickness. It's less common to see these sorts of real world hallucination inducers get some attention in films, I liked the use of them.

Also if anyone failed to catch Ugly Stepsister in theaters, it is now on Shudder. Not your run of the mill fairytale horror stuff, unique story and worth a watch.

I watched the Ugly Stepsister last night actually! I thought it was great as well. It's an extremely twisted take on the Cinderella-like story, focusing on one of the stepsisters instead. God this one was uncomfortable to watch a lot of times. It legitimately made me squeamish when things like Terrifier don't make me flinch. I thought it was an excellent story though and they really did a good job with this new and incentive take on it. I recommend this one a lot!

Daydreamers: This is a Vietnamese horror drama/action/romance? about vampires. I'm not sure how many, if any, films I've seen from this particular country but as a region Southeast Asia has really been putting a lot of horrors out stateside lately. I liked this one; it was competent and told a compelling story with several interesting characters. There's a lot of inspiration from Blade here I think, the fight sequences are quite stylized and pretty fun. There's plenty of good blood and gore as well. The synopsis of the film revolves around a group of vampires who believe they can break their curse by abstaining from human blood for long enough, and one in particular whom is the film's protagonist. He ends up leaving the commune with his brother to venture into the city life, where some vampires have decided to blend in with humans and quell their desires without locking themselves away. The protagonist, Nhat, ends up quickly falling in love with a human that leads to the film's main conflict points.

Clown in a Cornfield: I was not familiar with the book this was based on, so I'm not sure how faithful the adaption is but I was pretty surprised because it ended up not being the film I had expected at all. I will say it reminded me a lot of Founder's Day and Thanksgiving. I didn't expect there to be a big town conspiracy element to the film, as from the trailers it sort of made it look like a more standard slasher horror featuring a villain and teenagers. I won't say that it's a bad thing, but I know others don't really like those movies but I got that vibe a lot with this one based on the environment and the characters. It's completely serviceable though, good even. Just not really great as I had been wanting I guess. I'd still rate this movie very fairly highly all things considered, there are a lot of fun effects and the kills are really over the top madness sometimes. But I guess this was just a case of having a film too hyped up when it was only just standard "good" at the end of the day.

See, I thought Clown in a Cornfield was great. I had a ton of fun with this one and the lead, Katie Douglas, was outstanding. I read half of the book (I didn't get time to finish) and I feel like it was pretty accurate. I thought the dialogue and a lot of the themes were really well done, but obviously done better with the freedom of a book fleshing them out.

The kills were wild and outstanding, and I really appreciate how they didn't hold back at all. And it helps that the movie never took itself too seriously and was really funny.

I'd say check it out on Shudder when it releases there if you don't get a chance to in theaters!

For those who haven't watched it, Channel Zero is now on Amazon Prime! It's a high quality anthology series.

Does anyone else remember Candle Cove?

Finally saw The Monkey - very funny, some great dark humor. Not a lot of competition but my favorite of the year so far.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Does anyone else remember Candle Cove?

Was it about pirates?

Oh hey that was one of my favorite shows from my childhood. I had forgotten all about it!

Heading into Final Destination Bloodlines now... this movie has a 95 on RT with 70+ critics in... can't be real, can it?

It's real. Fantastic film, probably the best of the series. Just a great, fun and absolutely brutal ride. This movie never lets up and I was surprised when it ended because I didn't realize i had been watching that long. The chaos and death are series trademarks, but this movie also manages to create some fun and likeable characters to boot.

Even almost cried at a particular scene.

Hearing Hurry Up Tomorrow is extremely bad. Too bad.

Got tickets for that one over the weekend, as well as The Ruse.

I feel like HUT is questionable horror content, but probably passable enough to include. If someone had told me critics would rave about Final Destination and Hurry Up Tomorrow would be the dud I'm not sure I'd have believed it.