Now streaming on Max, the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s horror classic Salem’s Lot is a feature film produced by horror master James Wan, and Wan has taken to social media this week to reveal his own personal list of the best vampire horror movies ever made.

James Wan’s Vampire Watchlist includes classic like Nosferatu (1922) and Dracula (1931) alongside 1980s favorites including Fright Night and Near Dark, as well as vampire movies directed by the likes of Mario Bava, Neil Jordan, and Francis Ford Coppola.

Here’s the full list of James Wan’s personal favorite blood-sucker movies…

• Bram Stoker’s Dracula
• The Night Stalker (1972)
• Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
• Vampire Circus
• Vampire Lovers
• Horror of Dracula
• Salem’s Lot (1979)
• Dracula (1931)
• Nosferatu (1922)
• Interview with the Vampire
• Near Dark
• Fright Night
• Blade
• Subspecies 2
• Planet of the Vampires

While James Wan has dipped his toes into various horror sub-genres over the years, from the extreme torture of Saw to the creepy dolls of Dead Silence, the supernatural frights of Insidious and The Conjuring, and the giallo-inspired stylings of Malignant, he has to date never directed a vampire movie of his own. But we’re thinking he’s probably got a great one in him.

In the meantime, check out the Wan-produced Salem’s Lot on Max now.

 

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With Halloween right around the corner in just a few days, we have reached the final new release roundup for one of the craziest Octobers of all time. And the spooky fun isn’t over yet…

Here’s all the new horror releasing from October 28 – November 3, 2024!

For daily reminders about new horror releases, be sure to follow @HorrorCalendar.

Lionsgate heads back to Amityville with Amityville: Where the Echo Lives, a brand new indie horror movie that will debut On Demand and Digital beginning on Tuesday, October 29.

Carlos Ayala directed Amityville: Where the Echo Lives, which doesn’t look to actually be set at the infamous Amityville Horror house. Instead, it looks to be another in-name only installment in the saga, which has become one of the strangest “franchises” of all time.

In the film, “When Heather West, a paranormal investigator, receives a call from a terrified woman who claims her house is inhabited by a ghost, she discovers the building has a horrifying history. After a presence from beyond our world reaches out to her, Heather begins to feel a pull to the other side of the spirit plane. Can this hunter of specters deliver an innocent soul to a place of peace and discover an eternal truth in time to save her own life?”

Sarah McDonald, Breanna Rossi, Adela Perez, and Nicholas J. Barelli star.

Carlos Ayala and Simona Curkoska wrote the screenplay.

Described as “Back to the Future meets Scream,” the time-traveling slasher movie Time Cut is coming to Netflix on October 30, just in time for Halloween and Halloween Eve viewing.

Hannah Macpherson (“Into the Dark”) directed the film, written by Macpherson and Michael Kennedy (Freaky, It’s a Wonderful Knife) from a story by Michael Kennedy.

In Time Cut, which calls to mind last year’s Totally Killer, “A teenage girl travels back to the early 2000s to stop a vicious killer from murdering her sister.”

Madison Bailey (Outer Banks) and Antonia Gentry (Ginny & Georgia) star.

The cast also includes Michael Shanks, Griffin Gluck, Rachael Crawford, Jordan Pettle, Megan Best, Samuel Braun, Sydney Sabiston, and Kataem O’Connor.

Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) produced the upcoming slasher.

Cinemark’s Fear of Missing Out (“FOMO”) series will see creepy classics and thrilling new releases on the big screen through October 31, with both Bride of Chucky and John Carpenter’s original Halloween headed back into Cinemark theaters this final week of October.

Andy Muschietti’s IT (2017) also brings Pennywise back to Cinemark for Halloween.

Here’s the lineup for Halloween Week…

• October 29 – It (2017)
• October 30 – Bride of Chucky
• October 31 – Halloween (1978)

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Cinemark’s official website.

Everyone’s talking about The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror masterpiece starring Demi Moore as a fading celebrity who injects herself with a cell-replicating green substance that makes her give birth to a younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley).

If you’ve been dying to experience The Substance but haven’t been able to get out to your local theater, the good news is that Fargeat’s new movie is coming home for Halloween!

In fact, The Substance heads home ON Halloween. The film will be available to watch at home on Thursday, October 31, exclusively on MUBI’s very own streaming platform.

Yes, there’s a MUBI streaming service. And yes, you’ll have to sign up to be able to watch the movie on there next week. The good news? You can grab a 7 DAY FREE TRIAL right now!

Don’t miss The Substance on MUBI this Halloween, and catch it in theaters now.

Fifteen years after the film’s initial release, Henry Selick’s 2009 stop motion film Coraline is once again headed back to theaters for the Halloween season. In the wake of Coraline scaring up $53 million at the global box office this past summer, the film returns to the big screen nationwide for another limited-time engagement in newly remastered 3D and 2D formats.

From Fathom Events, Coraline comes back to theaters on October 31 & November 1.

Tickets for the spooky season re-release are up for grabs now.

Based on the novel by beloved author Neil Gaiman, Coraline is a wondrous, thrilling, fun and suspenseful adventure. A young girl walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life – only much better. But when this wondrously off-kilter, fantastical adventure turns dangerous and her counterfeit parents try to keep her forever, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to save her family and get back home. 

Coraline boasts stunning stop-motion animation, handcrafted puppets, and meticulously-designed sets—freshly re-colored and remastered for 2024.

Written and directed by stop-motion auteur Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach), Coraline stars Dakota Fanning, Ian McShane, Teri Hatcher, Keith David, and British comedy duo Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, with animation by the award-winning studio, LAIKA (ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls).

A slasher throwback that pays tribute to the horror cinema of the ’80s and ’90s, Director’s Cut opens in select theaters on Thursday, October 31 before arriving on VOD at a later date.

Director’s Cut, from filmmaker Don Capria, stars Louis Lombardi (“The Sopranos”) as a mysterious, murderous sociopath preying on a punk band’s desperate desire for fame.

“A Long Island punk band meets a mysterious director through social media who generously offers to shoot their first music video for free. Desperate for fame, they drive deep into the Pennsylvania woods in hopes of making a killer music video. But after a long night of drinking with the gregarious director, the band wakes up to find a very different version of him on set.

“Egos and opinions clash, with the director unveiling a terrible anger and uncompromising need for total control. As his professionalism breaks down, so does his sanity – with the unhinged director and his assistant turning the band members into the unwitting stars of his very own snuff film.”

Written and directed by Capria, the film stars Louis Lombardi, Lucy Hart, Danielle Kotch, Tyler Ivey, Haley Cassidy, Louis Rocky Bacigalupo, Brandy Ochoa, Greg Poppa, and Darin Hickok.

Thommy Hutson, the producer behind comprehensive horror documentaries Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy and Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th, is back, this time helming Doc of Chucky, a documentary exploring the killer doll’s legacy.

Doc of Chucky will debut on the streaming service on Friday, November 1.

The new comprehensive documentary “tells the story of the cult horror empire through interviews with cast, crew, and horror icons such as Don Mancini, Brad Dourif, Jennifer Tilly, Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, John Waters, Fiona Dourif, Perrey Reeves, Gerrit Graham, David Kirschner, and dozens more.

“This is the ultimate account of the Child’s Play film franchise, and Chucky with clips, photographs, archival documents, behind-the-scenes footage, and more.”

Hutson said in a statement, “After exploring the terrifying and fascinating worlds of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, and Return of the Living Dead, it felt like a natural progression to explore Chucky’s iconic and enduring legacy. Doc of Chucky is truly a love letter to a film franchise and character that’s been scaring, thrilling, and making us laugh for decades. It was also a privilege to meet and talk to so many wonderful cast and crew who helped bring to life the incredible story—across seven films—that Don Mancini and David Kirschner started 36 years ago. I think it’s safe to say viewers will learn why, in the most entertaining way possible, you really can’t keep a good guy down!”

In celebration of Godzilla’s 70th anniversary, the critically acclaimed Godzilla Minus One will be re-released in theaters nationwide starting on Friday, November 1, 2024.

Directed by Academy Award® Winner Takashi Yamazaki, the film’s re-release honors the King of the Monsters’ 70th Anniversary, timed to Godzilla Day, celebrated on November 3.

Tickets are on sale now for both Godzilla Minus One and the film’s remastered black and white rendition, Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color.

In celebration of the groundbreaking film’s return to theaters, each screening will showcase over 13 minutes of exclusive behind-the-scenes content.

Godzilla Minus One is the highest-grossing Japanese film in US box office history and the #3 top-grossing foreign film in US Box Office History, earning more than $115 million at the global box office. Winner of the Academy Award® for Best Visual Effects, it’s the first film in Godzilla’s 70-year franchise history to be recognized by the Academy with a nomination or win.

Check your local listings for showtimes and locations.

A film about the power of home in the face of despair, Academy Award® Winning Godzilla Minus One is from renowned director, screenwriter, and VFX visionary Takashi Yamazaki.

In postwar Japan, Godzilla brings new devastation to an already scorched landscape. With no military intervention or government help in sight, the survivors must join together in the face of despair and fight back against an unrelenting horror.

The next killer Santa horror movie is headed our way this week, with the indie He Sees You When You’re Sleeping slashing straight into VOD outlets at home on November 1.

In the holiday horror movie from director Charlie Steeds (The Barge People), “Chester returns to the home of his estranged and hideously over-privileged family at Christmas, only to find an unknown killer disguised in a Santa outfit is stalking and killing family members one by one, in order to claim the huge family fortune. Which one of them is the killer?”

Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2), Lauren-Marie Taylor (Friday the 13th Part 2), Nicholas Vince (Hellraiser), Cedric Gegel and Christopher Kahler star.

David Lenik wrote the screenplay for He Sees You When You’re Sleeping.

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Get ready to revisit Shadyside next year. Netflix officially kicked off production earlier this year on brand new Fear Street movie Fear Street: Prom Queen and has announced today that it’ll arrive next year.

Fear Street: Prom Queen will debut on Netflix in 2025!

If the artwork accompanying the announcement is any indication, Senior Prom might get extremely bloody in 1988.

In Fear Street: Prom Queen, “Welcome back to Shadyside. In this next installment of the blood-soaked Fear Street franchise, prom season at Shadyside High is underway, and the school’s wolfpack of It Girls is busy with its usual sweet and vicious campaigns for the crown. But when a gutsy outsider is unexpectedly nominated to the court, and the other girls start mysteriously disappearing, the class of ’88 is suddenly in for one hell of a prom night.”

The ensemble cast includes India Fowler (The Nevers, Insomnia), Suzanna Son (Red Rocket, The Idol), Fina Strazza (Paper Girls, Above the Shadows), David Iacono (The Summer I Turned Pretty, Cinnamon), Ella Rubin (The Idea of You), Chris Klein (Sweet Magnolias, American Pie), with Lili Taylor (Outer Range, Manhunt) and Katherine Waterston (The End We Start From, Perry Mason). Matt Palmer (Calibre) is directing the franchise’s fourth installment.

Fear Street: Prom Queen will be nestled between the events of Fear Street: 1994 and Fear Street: 1978. Matt Palmer (Calibre) is directing the franchise’s upcoming fourth installment.

The Prom Queen was book #15 in R.L. Stine’s teen franchise, originally published on March 1, 1992. If you’d like to read it before the movie comes out, you can always find copies on eBay.

In a first for Netflix and for the horror film genre, the Fear Street Trilogy was released as an epic summer movie event over three consecutive weeks in July 2021. The acclaimed films – Part 1: 1994, Part 2: 1978, and Part 3: 1666 – spent 12 collective weeks on the Netflix Top 10.

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The Legend of Boggy Creek. Cannibal Holocaust. Man Bites Dog. These are the usual suspects whenever someone brings up the origins of modern-day found footage. However, it was a long road full of cinematic experiments before these films would give rise to the movie that popularized the genre – The Blair Witch Project. After all, before Myrick and Sanchez’s film, most proto-found-footage productions were more interested in emulating documentaries and news footage than recreating amateur recordings that just happened to capture something creepy.

I say “most” because there is one notable exception. An infamous film so dedicated to its DIY presentation that many viewers were originally unaware that it was meant to be a film at all. Naturally, I’m referring to Dean Alioto’s iconic UFO Abduction (also known as The McPherson Tape), a misunderstood classic that I believe started all the familiar tropes of contemporary found footage over a decade before we met the Blair Witch. And with Bloody Disgusting’s own V/H/S series shining a light on extraterrestrial frights with the release of this year’s V/H/S/Beyond, today I’d like to look back on the alien abduction that started it all.

A lover of genre cinema from a young age, indie filmmaker Dean Alioto wanted to be the first director to craft the cinematic equivalent to Orson Welles’ infamous radio adaptation of War of the Worlds. Inspired by the Hopkinsville Goblins Case – which had previously influenced movies like Critters and E.T. – Alioto decided that a sci-fi horror thriller shot from the perspective of a desperate family facing otherworldly invaders could very well be his dream project.

Shot over the course of a single night on an insanely low budget of $6,500, UFO Abduction follows the Connecticut-based Van Heese family as they get together for a birthday party only to have their remote home come under siege by alien invaders. What follows is a realistic portrayal of how a regular family might react to incomprehensible terror, with the invasion ultimately culminating in a chilling close encounter.

What makes UFO Abduction unique isn’t its story, but how Alioto tells it, with the narrative starting off as a compilation of barely edited candid party footage and only gradually introducing horror elements as the family investigates strange lights in the sky – something that our cameraman realistically believes is worth recording. This may sound like a run-of-the-mill found footage project today, but the amateur set-up was revolutionary back in ’89.

While most of us take constant video recording for granted these days, it used to be that only those who could afford expensive production equipment (and precarious 8mm film cameras) were able to record non-commercial moving pictures. It was only with the rise of dedicated home video devices during the late ’70s that this would change. Not only could audiences now rewatch their favorite movies without having to wait for a theatrical rerelease that might never come, but they could also shoot their own home movies in the same manner that families engaged in amateur photography.

Worst. Birthday. Ever.

By 1989, however, home video had become so ubiquitous that it was only a matter of time before clever filmmakers realized that audiences no longer required studios and familiar cinematic formulas in order to appreciate a chilling story. That’s why it makes sense that Dean felt ready to ditch the conventions of both traditional film and documentary formatting when the time came to craft his faux-reality opus.

This brave new format was also much more forgiving when it came to budgetary issues, with Alioto being able to get away with little-to-no professional lighting as well as simple effects work. The aliens themselves (which barely appear in the finished film) were actually just children in rubber costumes, with the low-quality visuals making everything seem much more believable than it really was.

Personally, I feel that the movie is more effective as a simulation of alien contact (and as a time capsule of the late ’80s) than as a proper film, though its speculative elements only work because of the lack of a traditional narrative. Any additional explanations or story beats would ruin the immersion, with this precarious narrative balancing act still being one of the biggest challenges faced by modern found footage filmmakers.

Of course, UFO Abduction is much more than just a movie, and its journey towards becoming an urban legend began when the completed film’s master tape was allegedly destroyed in a warehouse fire soon after Alioto secured a distributor. While the initial plans for a wide release could have made this the original Blair Witch Project in terms of mainstream success, the tragic loss of the higher quality footage (which was actually found back in 2020) meant that the only way to watch the movie was through janky copies sold by Alioto himself.

Unbeknownst to the director, these copies were then acquired by bootleggers who removed the title screen and credits in order to distribute the film at UFO conventions as an example of real found footage. This is when UFO Abduction began to be referred to as “The McPherson Tape” despite there not being anyone by that name in the video.

To this day, there are viewers who swear that the 1989 tape is the legitimate article, with some accusing Alioto of being part of a government cover-up regarding the existence of extraterrestrials. There are even rumors about an ultra-rare 6-hour variant of the footage that supposedly shows what happens after the initial abduction. So while he didn’t get the chance to profit off of his work, Alioto arguably fulfilled his dream of recreating the 1938 War of the Worlds hysteria.

This would be a lot less scary in HD.

Fortunately for Alioto, this infamy would later allow him to team up with much of the same crew that created the original project in order to remake the film with a larger budget in 1998. Not only would this made-for-TV version of the story finally allow him to monetize his creation (which was now renamed to either Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County and The McPherson Tape, depending on the region), but it would also include documentary-inspired inserts where so-called “experts” comment on the footage.

The added production value made the remake much easier to follow, but I’d argue that something vital was lost in translation as the film began to look more like a scary movie than genuine “found footage.” The flick also suffered from plenty of improvised padding (with the original script only accounting for about 45 minutes of footage), though one could argue that this just makes the homemade recordings feel that much more believable. Regardless, it’s still an incredibly chilling picture, with Alioto even receiving a letter from a viewer blaming him for a miscarriage that she attributed to shock from viewing the film.

Funnily enough, the remake would spawn even more conspiracy theories as some folks insisted that it was only produced in order to further obfuscate the “genuine” footage in the original tape – all this despite Alioto having always been upfront about his cinematic intentions.

Of course, the legacy of UFO Abduction reaches far beyond the realm of Ufology, with the film having been instrumental in the development of numerous horror flicks as well as a handful of similar hoaxes like the infamous Alien Interview video. Personally, I think Alioto’s greatest achievement was in proving that – in this brave new world where everyone is familiar with the concept of home movies and recording devices are easily available – audiences care more about story and emotion than they do about production value.

That’s why I believe it can be argued that most modern found footage owes an enormous debt to this 1989 experiment. From viral internet videos (like the Mountain Devil Prank Fails Horribly video which launched Radio Silence’s career) to horror ARGs that emulate the same faux DIY approach (like the iconic Marble Hornets), it’s amazing how a 35-year-old film can still be so relevant.

So as the Found Footage genre continues to innovate by incorporating new forms of media into the filmmaking toolbelt, I think it’s worth looking back on an underappreciated classic that can still scare the hell out of you if you’re willing to engage with it on its own terms.

You can grab a copy of The McPherson Tape on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

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Inspired by horror classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, the upcoming international creature feature Orang Ikan is set to premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival, and Deadline has shared the official trailer this week. Preview the gill-man horror movie below.

Dean Fujioka (“Fullmetal Alchemist”) and Callum Woodhouse (“All Creatures Great and Small”) lead the cast of Orang Ikan, set during World War II and centered on a fish monster.

Here’s the full official synopsis…

May, 1942. WWII rages across a world divided.

A Japanese Hell Ship transports prisoners of war to occupied territories for slave labor. Onboard the ship is Saito, a traitor to the Japanese who is being sent back to the motherland to be sentenced to death.

As further punishment, Saito is shackled to another POW, a British soldier named Bronson who holds nothing but hatred for Saito because of his Japanese nationality.

When the Hell Ship is torpedoed by Allied submarines, Saito and Bronson are thrown overboard and wash ashore on a deserted island. But they are not alone. Bronson and Saito are hunted by a monstrous creature – the Orang Ikan – who will stop at nothing until both men are dead.

Bronson and Saito must put aside their hatred for one another to survive the island and kill the creature before it kills them first.

Mike Wiluan (“Buffalo Boys,” “Grisse”) wrote the script and directed Orang Ikan.

Producer Eric Khoo tells Variety, “I grew up on a steady diet of horror movies which ranged from the supernatural to monster flicks. One of my childhood favorites was the classic 1954 monster movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon. During the pandemic I came across Hell in the Pacific, a 1968 war film about a Japanese soldier and an American serviceman marooned on an island trying to kill each other off. This was the lightbulb moment for me – what if an orang ikan had come ashore in that scenario? In order to survive, the two mortal enemies would have to team up to battle this terrifying beast! What an exciting premise!”

“Orang Ikan is an origin story with a horror survival theme set in the context of a realistic tragedy during the Second World War in Asia. Using both studio settings and the wonderful wild landscapes of Indonesia- I am excited to capture both the tension, horror and beauty of this concept in various exotic locations,” said writer/director Mike Wiluan. “We have assembled a wonderful cast, talented artists and the best crew to undertake this incredible adventure.”

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