This week brings the release of Bloody Disgusting and director Marcus Dunstan‘s candy-colored slasher #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead, which sees a group of friends and influencers staying at an Airbnb being picked off one by one. It’s the latest entry in a growing subgenre of horror that centers around influencers, content curators, and social media addicts so caught up in their internet presence that it also shapes the horror.

This week’s streaming picks are themed around influencer horror movies that follow the terminally online as they encounter various threats, from serial killers to vengeful spirits.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Deadstream – AMC+, Hoopla, Shudder

The feature directorial debut from husband-and-wife filmmaking couple Vanessa and Joseph Winter follows a disgraced internet personality who attempts to win back his followers by livestreaming one night alone in a haunted house. It’s perfect for Halloween viewing; disgraced YouTuber Shawn (Joseph Winters) gets decked out in holiday gear as he introduces his latest stunt as a Halloween event. Messing with the supernatural during their most threatening time of year? Whatever could go wrong? The Winters channel Sam Raimi in their delightfully gonzo horror-comedy full of bodily fluids, gore, and ghostly creatures.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum – AMC+, Hi-Yah, Hoopla, Peacock, Prime Video, Tubi

In this Korean horror film, YouTubers plan a live stream event in one of the country’s most infamous abandoned hospitals. The host has rigged fake scares to spook his team for the sake of driving up ratings and going viral, but they prove unnecessary thanks to the sinister forces haunting the place. While this movie doesn’t reinvent the found footage wheel, it makes up for that with unrelenting terror. Turn the lights down low and prepare to get creeped out. A lot.

Scream 4 – Max

Surprise, Sidney! Wes Craven was once again ahead of the curve with this slasher sequel featuring a bloodthirsty killer eager to cut throats for internet fame. A book tour brings Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) home to Woodsboro, where she reconnects with old friends and family but finds the Ghostface Killer returning once more to resume the slaughter. This entry has it all: suspense, humor, meta-dissections of the subgenre, and a genuinely likable group of characters.

Sissy – AMC+, Hoopla, Shudder

Sissy follows Cecilia (Aisha Dee) and Emma (co-director/co-writer Hannah Barlow). They’re two teenage friends who were inseparable until mean girl Alex (Emily De Margheriti) arrived and bullied Cecilia, leading to a violent incident that drove a wedge between besties. Years later, Cecilia, a successful social media influencer, bumps into Emma and gets invited to reconnect at a bachelorette weekend excursion. But seeing Alex again reawakens past traumas and transforms a fun weekend with friends into murderous chaos. It’s a darkly comedic take on influencer culture, bullying, and more, with a gruesome body count to boot.

Tragedy Girls – Hulu, Peacock, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel, Tubi

Starring Brianna Hildebrand (The Exorcist TV series, Deadpool) and Alexandra Shipp (X-Men: Apocalypse) as two social media-obsessed teens with an ambition to achieve internet and modern horror legend fame, Tragedy Girls brings equal parts biting wit and a delightfully large, violent body count. Director Tyler MacIntyre does a great job playing with the tropes of slashers while upending the archetypical role of the final girl. It’s a witty, lethal horror comedy centered around aspiring influencers willing to cull their way to the top.

The post Five Influencer Horror Movies to Stream This Week appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Scream Factory has taken to social media to share a handful of upcoming 4K Ultra HD releases, including horror favorites from Wes Craven, George A. Romero, and Sam Raimi.

The lineup includes Death Becomes Her, Drag Me to Hell, Devil, Land of the Dead, Shocker and The Wolfman (2010), all of which are getting 4K upgrades this October.

Here’s the full roster with release dates:

• Death Becomes Her – October 22
• Drag Me to Hell – October 29
• Devil – October 8 
• Land of the Dead – October 15 
• Shocker – October 29
• The Wolfman – October 22

Scream Factory also announced today that the Paris-set 2014 found footage horror movie As Above, So Below is getting a Collector’s Edition Blu-ray release on October 1, 2024.

Learn more about the Halloween slate on Scream Factory’s Twitter account.

The post Scream Factory Announces 4K Upgrades for ‘Drag Me to Hell’, ‘Land of the Dead’, ‘Shocker’ & More appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Up next from The Girl with All the Gifts and Outcast (2010) director Colm McCarthy is Lionsgate’s supernatural thriller Bagman, which will release in theaters on September 20.

Watch the official trailer for Lionsgate’s Bagman below.

Sam Claflin (Last Night in Soho), Antonia Thomas (“The Good Doctor”), Sharon D. Clarke, Steven Cree, William Hope, Adelle Leonce, Peter McDonald, Henry Pettigrew, Caréll Rhoden, and Will Davis star in the supernatural thriller.

In Bagman, a family finds themselves ensnared in a nightmare as they are hunted by a malevolent, mythical creature.

“For centuries and across cultures, parents have warned their children of the legendary Bagman, who snatches innocent children and stuffs them into his vile, rotting bag—never to be seen again. Patrick McKee (Claflin) narrowly escaped such an encounter as a boy, which left him with lasting scars throughout his adulthood. Now, Patrick’s childhood tormentor has returned, threatening the safety of his wife Karina (Thomas) and son Jake (Rhoden).”

The supernatural horror movie was written by John Hulme.

The post ‘Bagman’ Unleashes a Malevolent, Mythical Creature in Theaters This September [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s been a couple years since we’ve heard a peep about The Collected, the planned third installment in the horror trilogy that began with The Collector and continued with The Collection. The hotly anticipated film had briefly entered production before shutting down back in 2020, you may recall, but it sounds like it’s getting a second chance at life here in 2024.

Chatting with YouTube’s David Clair-Bennett, director Marcus Dunstan (The Collector, The Collection, #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead) offers up an exciting update this week.

Dunstan tells the channel, “After five years of Gordian Knot untangling, The Collector is free. The Collector gets to come back. And it is something that… Josh Stewart… we’re pumped… Emma Fitzpatrick… we’re thrilled. We want to come back and do it right.”

“What are the next steps? Well, really we’re at the nascent stage,” Dunstan continues. “So we’re gonna get together and we want to take advantage of the time [between 2020 and now] and also acknowledge it. So can we just go and do exactly what we were gonna do before? No, that might ring a little false. That was a reflection of a different time. If we’re going to do it now, what’s the smartest play? We are very protective of these characters.”

“We are gonna honor the opportunity to bring the Collector back, so it is a burning freight train of fright,” he adds.

Josh Stewart is set to reprise the role of Arkin in The Collected. with Emma Fitzpatrick also coming back. The cast was to also include Randy Havens (“Stranger Things”, Godzilla: King of the Monsters), Dot-Marie Jones (“American Horror Story”, 3 From Hell) and Navi Rawat (Feast, The Collection), as well as horror legend Tom Atkins (The Fog, Halloween 3).

Marcus Dunstan will be seated in the director’s chair for The Collected, which was co-written by Dunstan and his Collector/Collection collaborator Patrick Melton.

At the end of The Collection, Stewart’s Arkin quite literally collected the Collector, so the third film’s title is pretty perfect. Stay tuned for more on The Collected as we learn it.

The post ‘The Collected’ – Marcus Dunstan Teases New Life for Third Movie appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Picture the mid-80s. The United States are halfway through the Reagan era and Sylvester Stallone has just set his sights on Paramount Pictures’ upcoming Beverly Hills Cop. Hellbent on starring in a crime thriller, the Rambo and Rocky veteran goes so far as to rewrite the script in order to replace most of the humor with even more extravagant action scenes. Rather unsurprisingly, Paramount ends up rejecting Stallone’s costly version of the film – a decision that would ripple throughout time and lead to the production of one of the most infamous B-movies ever made.

Often referred to as the dumb man’s Dirty Harry, 1986’s Cobra is mostly remembered as a humorous misstep in Stallone’s vast filmography. However, with modern cinema’s disappointing (albeit understandable) lack of over-the-top crime thrillers that pit rogue cops against sensationalized threats pulled directly rom the headlines, I think this is the perfect time to look back on an oddball production and possibly reevaluate it as a genuinely entertaining piece of horror-adjacent fiction.

Now back to our story, Sly Stallone was only emboldened by Paramount’s rejection, deciding to rework his unused script into an original project while also incorporating elements from Paula Gosling’s crime novel Fair Game. He then recruited Greek-Italian filmmaker George Cosmatos (father of Mandy director Panos Cosmatos!) to bring his vision to life, having already worked with the director on First Blood: Part II.

Unfortunately, the partnership wouldn’t go as smoothly this time around, with Cobra’s production becoming fraught with frequent delays, squabbling actors as well as hastily rewritten set-pieces. In fact, there’s a long-standing rumor (which has all but been confirmed by multiple crewmembers at this point) that Stallone directed the majority of the film himself, with Cosmatos merely taking on producer’s duties when he found himself unable to deal with the actor’s inflated ego.

We’ll never know what Cosmato’s original vision of Cobra would have been like, but the finished film (which was released in May of 1986) tells the story of Zombie Squad veteran Lt. Marion “Cobra” Cobretti as he investigates a Los Angeles murder cult led by the sadistic Night Slasher (Brian Thompson). While this premise doesn’t sound that outrageous on paper, words can’t describe just how batshit crazy the film can get despite such a simple setup.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

I’ll admit that you need to have an acquired a taste for offbeat media to really appreciate the Cobra experience (which most critics didn’t have, judging by the film’s 18% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but as a fan of Troma films and Syfy originals, I can confidently claim that very few motion pictures can compete with this quintessential piece of ’80s schlock when it comes to sheer entertainment value.

A genuinely captivating collection of dopey one-liners and trope-heavy action, the film feels more like the exaggerated memory of a balls-to-the-wall action flick from the ’80s than the real thing. From the Night Slasher’s custom-made murder-knife to Cobretti’s love of badass vehicles, every decision here seems to have been made while abiding to the rule of cool, with the production focusing more on developing a unique style than a solid narrative.

That’s why I consider this to be one of the all-time best hangout movies despite its billing as a hyper-violent crime thriller – though that might have something to do with the fact that Stallone himself removed several plot-heavy scenes involving side characters in order to shorten the runtime and guarantee more daily showings in theaters.

Of course, there’s plenty evidence that the film’s near-self-conscious reliance on macho aesthetics and cartoony stereotypes seems to have been planned from the get-go. Thompson (who famously wasn’t invited to the film’s premiere) actually asked Stallone for guidance surrounding the Night Slasher’s backstory and motivations, with the movie star replying that the Slasher was ‘simply evil’. A straightforward explanation for a straightforward movie.

At the end of the day, Cobra has the same appeal as that microdosing artist friend that you can only stand to see once a year but think about frequently – a quirky character that you love precisely because of their memorable faults. That’s why cinematic oddities like the iconic pizza-scissors scene just make me enjoy the film even more.

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

It may sound silly to modern audiences, but Cobra’s central conflict about a badass cop hot on the trail of a murder cult has clear connections to the Satanic Panic, with Stallone tapping into widespread fears that were intensified by the advent of the heavily publicized serial killers of the ’80s.

The Night Slasher himself is obviously based on Richard Ramirez, and the only reason his murderous antics don’t come off as downright disturbing is the fact that the movie surrounding these horrific moments is so damn silly with its outdated morals and childish bravado. However, taken at face value, this is a story about a serial killer convincing disenfranchised youth to partake in homicidal eugenics, so it stands to reason that his scenes are easily some of the scariest in the genre.

You can even forgive Cobra’s bizarre editing when you realize that a significant amount of footage is missing here due to the MPAA originally slapping an X-rating on the first cut. And while fans would later come across a bootleg edition of the movie which restored about an hour’s worth of material (including more graphic deaths and added character moments), it’s understood that this still isn’t quite the film that Stallone and company originally set out to make.

Of course, regardless of which version you choose to see, the movie remains a highly rewatchable gem precisely because of its juxtaposition of extreme brutality and hip visual design. Hell, even celebrated directors like Nicolas Winding Refn have cited Cobra as a source of inspiration, and that’s not even mentioning the countless video games that have clearly been influenced by its gritty aesthetics.

Sure, the film is by no means a masterpiece, but movies don’t actually have to be good in order to provide us with a good time, and I can’t think of a better time than watching Sly Stallone punching his supervisor in the face before riding off into the sunset like a leather-clad cowboy. So if you’re ever in the mood for a serial killer thriller starring a ridiculously cool loose canon cop with nothing to lose, why not revisit one of the coolest (and silliest) action flicks ever made?

The post Stallone vs. The Night Slasher: ‘Cobra’ Is a Quintessential Slice of 1980s Action-Thriller Schlock appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.