In the wake of last year’s prequel movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Lionsgate has announced and dated the next installment in the hit movie franchise today.
The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arrives in theaters November 20, 2026, an adaptation of the just-announced novel that Suzanne Collins will release next year.
Frequent Hunger Games filmmaker Francis Lawrence is in talks to direct.
Deadline details, “While The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was set 64 years before the events of the original [movies], The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is set 24 years before the Jennifer Lawrence films in the world of Panem, commencing on the morning of the reaping of the 50th Hunger Games, also known as the Second Quarter Quell.”
The website’s report continues, “Those games are an important event in the canon as the victor was Haymitch Abernathy, the only winner from District 12 before Lawrence’ Katniss Everdeen and Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta Mellark’s tie win. Haymitch continues on to become a mentor, a character in the original movies played by Woody Harrelson.”
“Suzanne Collins is a master storyteller and our creative north star,” Lionsgate Motion Picture Group Chair Adam Fogelson said in a statement today. “We couldn’t be more fortunate than to be guided and trusted by a collaborator whose talent and imagination are so consistently brilliant. We know Hunger Games fans worldwide will be spellbound by where Suzanne has focused this next extraordinary story. The Second Quarter Quell is legendary and looms large over the history of the Games, even into the time of Katniss Everdeen a quarter-century later. Like fans around the globe, we are eagerly anticipating this exciting return to Panem.”
The upcoming film will be the sixth installment in the popular movie franchise.
Your Fat Friend, which tracks the rise of raconteur Aubrey Gordon and explores fatness in America, is a vital counterbalance to Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale.
Eagle-eyed viewers have noticed a dark mark on Noriko’s neck at the end of Godzilla Minus One. Here’s what the mark means and how it could factor into a sequel.
HBO’s The Last of Us TV show has released an episode count for its second season, as well as the promise it won’t go beyond the endpoint of its source material.
This week’s horror releases bring a killer shark onto Netflix and the feature debut of Ishana Night Shyamalan into theaters, and that’s only the beginning of the tidal wave of new horror.
Here’s all the new horror releasing June 3, 2024 – June 9, 2024!
The breakout Korean blockbuster Exhuma was released in theaters here in the United States back in March, and Well Go USA Entertainment brought it home to VOD this Tuesday.
Exhuma is directed by Jang Jae-Hyun (Svaha: The Sixth Finger) and stars popular Korean actors CHOI Min-Sik (Oldboy, I Saw the Devil), KIM Go-Eun (Hero, Little Women), YOO Hai-Jin (A Taxi Driver), and LEE Do-Hyun (Prison Playbook, Sweet Home).
In the film, “When a renowned shaman (KIM Go-Eun) and her protégé (Lee Do-hyun) are hired by a wealthy, enigmatic family, they begin investigating the cause of a disturbing supernatural illness that affects only the first-born children of each generation. With the help of a knowledgeable mortician (YOO Hai-jin) and the country’s most revered geomancer (CHOI Min-sik), they soon trace the affliction’s origin to a long-hidden family grave located on sacred ground.
“Sensing an ominous aura surrounding the burial site, the team opts to exhume and relocate the ancestral remains immediately. But as something much darker emerges, they soon discover what befalls those who dare to mess with the wrong grave.”
DeskPop Entertainment kicks off their summer slate with the North American VOD release of Insane Like Me?, which is now available on Amazon, Apple TV, and other outlets.
Director Chip Joslin’sInsane Like Me? is a supernatural thriller about a combat veteran who returns home after a tour of duty overseas. He becomes the lead suspect in his girlfriend’s disappearance and is subsequently wrongly convicted and incarcerated. Nine years later he is released from the mental asylum, he returns home to find the truth and settle the score.
The horror film is a Bankhead Productions feature from a script by Britt Bankhead. Bankhead stars and produces alongside Grace Patterson (Slotherhouse) as former lovers whose complicated past is nothing compared to what lies ahead when they reunite.
The supporting cast is rounded out by Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominee Eric Roberts, Samantha Reddy, Jack Maxwell, Paul Kolker and Meg Hobgood.
Indie director Bruce Wemple (Monstrous, Dawn of the Beast) is back with DREAD’s latest horror movie The Hangman, which was also released onto VOD outlets on Tuesday.
In The Hangman, “During a camping trip from hell, a father battles a murderous cult and a bloodthirsty demon, known as The Hangman, to save his kidnapped son.”
Lindsey Dresbach, Richard Lounello, Jefferson Cox, Daniel Martin Berkey and Mar Cellus star.
Here’s the full synopsis: “To mend their troubled relationship, a middle-aged door-to-door salesman, Leon (LeJon Woods), takes his teenage son on a camping trip into deep rural Appalachia. Little do they know of the mountainous region’s sinister secrets. A local cult has summoned an evil demon born of hate and pain, known to them as The Hangman, and now the bodies have begun to pile up. Leon wakes up in the morning to discover that his son is missing.”
“Leon must face the murderous cult and the bloodthirsty monster that is The Hangman.”
The latest from French filmmaker Xavier Gens (Frontiers, Cold Skin), shark attack horror movie Under Paris has premiered over on the Netflix streaming service today, June 5.
Following in the grand tradition of Jaws, a celebration turns into a PR nightmare when a hungry shark comes to Paris. One shark. A whole lot of tasty humans. That’s how we like it.
“Set in Summer 2024, the film unfolds in Paris which is hosting the World Triathlon Championships on the Seine for the first time. Sophia, a brilliant scientist, learns from Mika, a young environmental activist, that a large shark is swimming deep in the river.
“To avoid a bloodbath at the heart of the city, they have no choice but to join forces with Adil, the Seine river police commander.”
Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) and Nassim Lyes (Overdose) star.
A job at a marijuana farm turns nightmarish in director Ariel Vida’s Trim Season, and Blue Harbor Entertainment is bringing the film to select theaters and VOD Friday, June 7.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker and production designer Ariel Vida, Trim Season stars Bethlehem Million (Sick, “And Just Like That…”) as Emma, an adrift, jobless, 20-something seeking purpose. Along with a group of young people from Los Angeles, she drives up the coast to make quick cash trimming marijuana on a secluded farm in Northern California.
“Cut off from the rest of the world, they soon realize that Mona (Jane Badler) – the seemingly amiable owner of the estate – is harboring secrets darker than any of them could imagine. It becomes a race against time for Emma and her friends to escape the dense woods with their lives.”
The cast also includes “Scream” and Hell Fest‘s Bex Taylor-Klaus, Starry Eyes, “Midnight Mass” and Doctor Sleep‘s Alex Essoe, Ally Ioannides (Synchronic), Cory Hart (“Fear the Walking Dead”), Ryan Donowho, Marc Senter and Juliette Kenn De Balinthazy.
Based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), NEON’s horror drama Handling the Undead is expanding into more theaters in select cities on Friday, June 7.
Handling the Undead is a drama with elements of horror about three families, a story about grief and loss, but also about hope and understanding of what we can’t comprehend or control.
In the film, “On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them.
“Who are they, and what do they want? A family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have even mourned her death after a car accident; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she has buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the gravesite in a desperate attempt to get his daughter out of her depression.”
Thea Hvistendahl (Adjø Montebello) directed the film, with script by John Ajvide Lindqvist in collaboration with Thea Hvistendahl. Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bjørn Sundquis, Bente Børsum, Bahar Pars, and Inesa Dauksta star.
From producer M. Night Shyamalan and director Ishana Night Shyamalan comes The Watchers, headed to theaters courtesy of New Line Cinema on Friday, June 7.
The film follows Mina, a 28-year-old artist, who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.
The Watchers stars Dakota Fanning (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Oliver Finnegan (“Creeped Out”) and Olwen Fouere (The Northman).
South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan) is set to write and direct his first English-language film titled 35th Street for TriStar Pictures, Deadline reports today.
The film will be produced by Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way and WOW POINT.
Deadline notes that 35th Street is “being described as an action/horror film.”
Plot details, however, are under wraps. Stay tuned for more.
Yeon Sang-ho’s hit zombie movie Train to Busan took the world by storm back in 2016, and it was followed by animated prequel Seoul Station and later 2020 live action sequel Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula. Sang-ho returned to direct both follow-up projects.
More recently, Yeon Sang-ho has been behind a handful of horror television series’, including “The Cursed,” “Hellbound,” “Monstrous,” “The Bequeathed,” and “Parasyte: The Grey.”
Warning: the following contains major spoilers for In a Violent Nature.
Most seasoned horror fans have seen their share of slashers. From massive franchises to indie gems, this particular brand of scary movie follows a final girl and her friends as they’re terrorized by a masked killer with an ax to grind. Arguably originating from classics like Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the sub genre was codified in Carol Clover’s “Her Body, Himself” which opens Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, an academic study of the genre. This landmark essay coined the term “final girl” while identifying four additional slasher components. Clover summarizes “the killer is the psychotic product of a sick family, but still recognizably human; the victim is a beautiful, sexually active woman; the location is not-home, at a Terrible Place; the weapon is something other than a gun; the attack is registered from the victim’s point of view and comes with shocking suddenness.”
For decades horror creatives have taken stabs at these ingredients with unique variations of the tried and true formula. From unkillable monsters and legacy characters to meta commentary on horror itself, new slashers live and die by their ability to reconceive these five essential elements or make up for the lack thereof. Director Chris Nash goes back to the source with In a Violent Nature, a classic slasher film flipped on its head. Told from the killer’s point of view, Nash explores the side of Clover’s formula usually kept offscreen.
With a shifting point of view, this gory peek behind the curtain humanizes the slasher killer and posits that he may be one notable piece of a cruel and violent world.
THE TERRIBLE PLACE
Every slasher begins with an inciting evil. Whether the abandoned Myers house or a gas station doubling as a barbeque stand, the story’s violence stems from a sinister location that has seen the face of evil. Clover dubs this the Terrible Place and argues that its corrupting force comes from a history of sinister occupants or horrific injustice. Nash begins the film in his version of the Terrible Place: a tiny shack in the White Pines woods.
Seventy years ago, this wilderness was inhabited by loggers from a nearby camp who took out their rage on a price-gouging grocer by tormenting his mentally challenged son Johnny (Ry Barrett). After a cruel prank gone dreadfully wrong, officials covered up Johnny’s death and killed his father when he wouldn’t go along with the outrageous story. Legend has it that Johnny then rose from the dead and murdered everyone at camp while wearing the fireman’s mask that had been placed on his corpse. To conclude the story, a college-aged camper named Ehren (Sam Roulston) warns his friends that this powerful killer may still roam the woods searching for new victims.
As the site of his untimely demise and grisly revenge, the fire tower grounds have become a Terrible Place. After re-emerging ten years ago, a local Ranger (Reece Presley) buried his body in a shack deep in the woods marked only by a nondescript pole. A locket that once belonged to Johnny’s mother now hangs above the grave, sealing the restless spirit within the earth. When Ehren and his friends explore the makeshift graveyard, they take the locket and reignite the curse. Johnny claws his way out of the ground and embarks on a quest to recover this precious relic.
THE KILLER AND HIS WEAPONS
Ehren’s campfire story depicts Johnny as an unfortunate child, but the creature we see emerge from the ground is a hulking beast. Large and muscular, Nash’s killer wears tattered flannel over a rotting shirt and filthy jeans. He eventually dons the firefighter’s mask, completing the look of his legendary persona. At a nearby visitors center, Johnny also retrieves his signature weapon – a drag chain bookended by two powerful hooks. Clover notes that traditional slasher killers reject guns for stabbing weapons, blunt objects, and the occasional machine, describing them as “personal extensions of the body that bring attacker and attacked into primitive, animalistic embrace.”
True to form, Johnny never discharges a gun. When confronting the first victim, he grabs a rifle out of his hands, but discards the weapon a moment later. Several guns will be fired over the course of the story, but never by Johnny. His weapons include remnants of the logging camp – a long blade, a hatchet, and a gas-powered log splitter. Whether killing with a rock, a tool, or his bare hands, Johnny exemplifies Clover’s theory. Each murder is an intimate attack necessitating close proximity to the victim.
This formidable killer stalking the woods stands in sharp contrast to the man behind the mask. Distracted by a toy car on a keychain, Johnny plays with the tiny figurine and reveals his face for the first time. His eyes have the milky foam of death and decay while his lips have begun to rot after years buried in the earth. This bold choice humanizes the monster and signals a major shift in the film’s point of view. In this intimate moment, Nash expands the scope of the story and asks us to consider whether Johnny is the only villain in this cycle of violence.
THE VICTIMS
Following an initial kill, the slasher body count continues to grow. Though plenty of outliers exist, Clover describes noticeable patterns in these periodic deaths divided by gender. Older slashers frequently see male victims die quickly or offscreen while female victims are more likely to experience protracted suffering and perish under the male gaze. At first Nash appears to be following suit. The first male victim dies offscreen while the second is killed before laying eyes on Johnny – though his dismembered corpse becomes a grotesque tool. Nash next gives us two female campers who die in extended and horrifying sequences. Aurora (Charlotte Creaghan) in particular seems to bear out Clover’s theory. Not only does she see the killer before he strikes, she watches him pull her body apart. It’s a slow and methodical kill allowing the frightened girl plenty of time to witness the horror of her destruction.
However, Nash breaks with convention in the film’s most brutal sequence. When Johnny reunites with his old foe, the Ranger, he quickly gets the upper hand. Johnny breaks the man’s back and leaves him lying helpless on the ground while he sets up an unthinkable death. With the killer momentarily gone, we hear a motor start somewhere nearby. Johnny then reappears and drags the Ranger to an ominous shed. For the next few minutes, we watch as Johnny first tests a log splitter’s powerful blade then dismembers the unfortunate Ranger who remains alert and aware until the machine severs his head.
THE FINAL GIRL
The final element of Clover’s theory clicks into place with Kris (Andrea Pavlovic), the film’s final girl. Her androgynous name hints at Clover’s assertion that this archetypal character bridges the gap between feminized victims and the masculine killer. Kris is the first to sound the alarm – spotting Johnny in the background of a group selfie – and the only one pictured mourning the victims. Clover notes, “she is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror.”
Nash also plays with Johnny’s motives and implies that they are much more simple than previously believed. Rather than fixating on Kris, Johnny is solely concerned with finding his mother’s necklace. He is not a maniacal force hellbent on destruction, but a wounded man simply trying to retrieve what is his. Yes, he may kill those who cross his path, but each victim has some connection to the original evil of the Terrible Place. The Ranger not only buried him at the conclusion of a previous cycle, he is a descendant of the massacre’s sole survivor and a genetic link to the loggers who caused Johnny’s death. The college campers not only steal the locket, they pass on his story, perpetuating the legend of a masked villain stalking the woods.
Now the only one left, Kris abandons her plans for a showdown. As Johnny pulverizes the face of her last remaining friend, Kris slowly puts down her makeshift weapons. She also severs any link between herself and the killer by unclasping the necklace and leaving it behind. The film then shifts completely to her point of view. Kris may have “dropped the knife,” but she’s picked up the focus of the camera. Nash follows his final girl through the forest as we once followed Johnny. We continue to hear the ominous footsteps of an approaching monster, but have no way of knowing if he’s actually around. We have fully joined Kris’s perspective and cannot differentiate between her overwhelming fear and the actual sounds of an approaching threat.
THE POINT OF VIEW
Though the finale feels like an abrupt change, this shift has been building since the film’s second act. Nash humanizes the killer by showing his face and we begin to conflate the man with his victims. The next time Johnny attacks, the camera shifts to an overhead shot that removes our view of where he is going. We’re still following him, but we can no longer see his intended victims. As the story concludes, we briefly rejoin this powerful man, but will no longer solely consider his point of view.
During the next upsetting kill, we remain with the incapacitated Ranger as Johnny prepares his demise. In the shed, we stay with this frightened man, only glimpsing the killer’s hands and lower appendages as he operates the machine. A more traditional POV sequence, we focus on the victim as if seeing the death through Johnny’s eyes. But perhaps our empathy is still with the killer. If the Ranger’s plan is to once again put Johnny down, is he simply continuing the same decades-old injustice? Rather than killing an innocent victim, are we watching Johnny protect himself and relish in well-deserved revenge?
Nash’s final act is both frustrating and revelatory. Once Kris removes the locket, the camera begins to follow her. She is no longer transgressing and has regained her status as a victim. In a similar fashion, we stay a few feet behind her as she runs through the woods. Though her pace is more rushed, she has taken Johnny’s place as the narrative focus. Nodding to a multitude of classic slashers, Kris receives help from a passing motorist – played by Lauren-Marie Taylor from Friday the 13th Part 2. As they drive out of the forest, Nash flashes through serene footage of the surrounding woods, indicating the many places Johnny could be hiding. Kris continues to look out into the woods expecting to see a masked killer approach at any moment, but a final shot reveals that he has taken back his mother’s necklace. His mission accomplished, Johnny has reverted to another element of the natural world.
This shifting point of view not only allows us to identify with the killer but suggests that his victims are not so innocent. Nash bookends the film with the implication that the people Johnny encounters may be just as violent as the animalistic monster that haunts the White Pines woods. The story begins with campers robbing a grave and disturbing Johnny’s eternal slumber. They have no concept of the destructive cycle they will spark, but their viscous natures emerge as they bicker with each other throughout the film. The Ranger may be seeking to protect residents of the area, but he is still perpetuating a horrific crime and continuing to punish Johnny for his uncontrollable nature.
Before Johnny encounters humans, he finds the evidence of their destruction. Moments after emerging from the ground, he notices the pink markers of planned deforestation and an animal left in a trap to rot. The disturbing image foreshadows the motorist’s concluding monologue describing a violent animal that almost killed her brother. While surveying the woods, this former game warden discovered an animal solely interested in the thrill of destruction. Rather than hunt to feed, it would tear prey apart then simply move on. She may be unknowingly referencing Johnny’s previous cycle of violence, but she could also be describing Johnny’s first victim – a poacher who leaves animals to slowly die in painful traps. Perhaps Johnny is not the only murderous hunter in the forest. Throughout the film, Nash gives us several violent characters all seeking to escape or uphold this Terrible Place. Maybe Johnny is just trying to restore the natural order. By refusing to exclusively follow the killer, Nash updates the slasher to highlight the violent nature in us all.
In a Violent Nature is now playing in theaters nationwide.
Like the experimental “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch” before it, upcoming horror movie The Runwill be taking an interactive approach, allowing YOU to decide the outcome of events.
Deadline reports today that Roxanne McKee (“Game of Thrones”) and George Blagden (“Vikings”) will star in The Run, which will be directed by Paul Raschid (Ten Dates).
The site details, “The interactive element will involve the viewer being asked to make high-stakes decisions for the protagonist at various points throughout the story that will affect the direction of the narrative and in some cases, result in early death.”
Here’s the plot synopsis for The Run: “The story is set on a remote running trail, where a famous fitness influencer’s morning run becomes a race for survival when she is hunted by seemingly motiveless killers. She meets local farmer Matteo along the way and the viewer’s choices determine whether they live or die.”
Seth Michaels, Sara Sometti Michaels, and Reece Foster of Benacus Entertainment & RNF Productions said, “We have been following the career of Paul Raschid after meeting him in the Film Festival circuit back in 2018 with his film White Chamber. The interactive aspect excites us. Following the success of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch, we feel that this medium hasn’t been explored much, and making a Horror/Thriller on top of it, gives the audience the power to control the outcome and future of the characters with a wonderful twist at the end.”
A couple unwittingly allows dark and sinister forces into their home when their son begins behaving strangely in Starve Acre. The new trailer and poster unveiled today teases cryptic folk horror ahead.
Brainstorm Media releases Starve Acre in theaters and On Demand on July 26, 2024.
Starring Matt Smith (His House) and Morfydd Clark (Saint Maud) in the lead roles, Starve Acre is written and directed by Daniel Kokotajlo based on the book by Andrew Michael Hurly.
About Starve Acre, set in “1970s, rural England. Richard and Juliette’s seemingly idyllic family life is thrown into turmoil when their son starts acting out of character. At Starve Acre, their remote family home, archaeologist Richard buries himself in exploring a folkloric myth that the ancient oak tree on their land is imbued with phenomenal powers. While Juliette turns to the local community to find some kind of peace, Richard obsessively digs deeper. An unexpected discovery soon occupies the couple’s attention and dark and sinister forces, unwittingly allowed into the home, offer a disturbing possibility of reconnection between them.”
“We are very excited to bring this stellar addition to the folk horror canon to American audiences. Starve Acre is masterfully made and unsettling in all the best ways,” Michelle Shwarzstein, CEO, Brainstorm Media said previously in a statement.
Check out the trailer and poster below, where Starve Acre draws comparisons to horror classics Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man.
Producers include Tessa Ross, Juliette Howell, Derrin Schlesinger, Emma Duffy.
