One of the most unique horror movies in the remainder of the year is sure to be Good Boy, which will tell a haunted house story from the perspective of a canine protagonist!
Good Boy has been rated “PG-13” for “terror, bloody images and strong language.”
The film releases in theaters from Independent Film Company on October 3, 2025.
In Good Boy, “Our canine hero, Indy, finds himself on a new adventure with his human owner—and best friend—Todd, leaving city life for a long-vacant family home in the country.
“From the start, two things are abundantly clear: Indy is wary of the creepy old house, and his affection for Todd is unwavering. After moving in, Indy is immediately vexed by empty corners, tracks an invisible presence only he can see, perceives phantasmagoric warnings from a long-dead dog, and is haunted by visions of the previous occupant’s grim death.
“When Todd begins succumbing to the dark forces swirling around the house, Indy must battle a malevolence intent on dragging his beloved Todd into the afterlife.”
Ben Leonberg makes his feature directorial debut from a script he co-wrote with Alex Cannon. The film stars Indy, Ben Leonberg’s real-life canine best friend, with the cast also including indie horror stalwart Larry Fessenden,Shane Jensen, and Arielle Friedman.
A course correction for the franchise, Jurassic World Rebirth is now available on Digital at home ahead of a physical media release from Universal on September 9, and we’ve got an exclusive sneak peek at one of the film’s bonus features to share with you this week.
From the behind-the-scenes featurette entitled Jurassic World Rebirth: Hatching a New Era, the clip focuses on the creature design of the Distortus Rex, an all-new dino creation.
Whether or not the Distortus Rex is actually a “dinosaur” is up for debate – for what it’s worth, visual effects supervisor David Vickery calls it a “creature” and says he “can’t call it a dinosaur because it’s not” – it’s one of the most monstrous creations from the franchise to date, intentionally designed to look like a mix between a Xenomorph and a Rancor from Star Wars.
Director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla) told Empire, “It’s kind of like if the T-Rex was designed by H.R. Giger, and then that whole thing had sex with a Rancor. It’s a design that I was really happy with. I’d like to buy the toy of it when it comes out.”
Watch our exclusive featurette below to see how the D-Rex came to life on screen.
From executive producer Steven Spielberg, the seventh installment in the dinosaur franchise is directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla, Rogue One) and written by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible). The full Special Features package includes…
Audio Commentary with Director Gareth Edwards, Production Designer James Clyne, and First Assistant Director Jack Ravenscroft
Audio Commentary with Director Gareth Edwards, Editor Jabez Olssen, and Visual Effects Supervisor David Vickery
Alternate Opening
2 Deleted Scenes: “Raptors” and “Mutadon Attack”
Jurassic World Rebirth: Hatching a New Era
The World Evolves – Journey into a reimagined Jurassic World with Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, Mahershala Ali and the rest of the cast and filmmakers.
Off the Deep End – Dive into the thrilling ocean sequence and learn about the challenges of shooting on open water, the one-of-a-kind gimbal used to toss around the Essex and Mariposa, and the VFX wizardry that brought the Mosasaurus and Spinosaurs to life.
Trekking Through Thailand – Follow the cast and crew’s footsteps as they navigate the challenges of shooting in exotic jungles, beaches, and tall grass fields that become home to the Titanosaurs.
Rex in the Rapids – Brace for a T. rex encounter that’s different than anything experienced before with a nail-biting river chase recreated from Michael Crichton’s original Jurassic Park novel.
Don’t Look Down – Soar into the Quetzalcoatlus sequence with Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Bechir Sylvain as they train for and shoot their cliff rappelling scenes.
Mini-Mart Mayhem – Go inside the heart-stopping third act of Jurassic World Rebirth and witness the process of crafting sets that allow the movie’s mutant dinosaurs to step out of nightmare-inspired designs and stop on an exhilarating rampage.
Meet Dolores – Meet the animatronic Aquilops with an extraordinarily lifelike personality.
Munched: Becoming Dino Food – Get a victim’s firsthand view inside the frightening jaws of deadly dinosaurs that munch, chomp, and chew their way into creating unforgettable death sequences.
A Day at Skywalker Sound – Actress Audrina Miranda guides a personal tour of Skywalker Sound in California to meet the audio editors, foley artists, and mixers who design the movie’s wide array of sounds.
Hunting for Easter Eggs – Find out where to look for cleverly hidden Easter eggs that pay homage to everything from the first Jurassic Park film to other Steven Spielberg classics.
Gag Reel
The beloved franchise, which has immersed audiences in a world of dinosaurs for over three decades and grossed more than $6.7 billion dollars at the global box office and counting, evolves in an ingenuous new direction with Jurassic World Rebirth. A new era is born. A covert extraction team races to the most dangerous place on Earth, an island research facility where dinosaurs too deadly for the original Jurassic Park were left behind. Their mission: collect DNA from three colossal creatures to unlock a drug with huge benefits for humanity. In a terrain populated by perils, they will make a shocking discovery that has been hidden for years.
Jurassic World Rebirth introduces a new world of characters, brought to life by a cast led by action superstar Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow, The Avengers), Jonathan Bailey (Wicked, “Bridgerton”) and two-time Oscar® winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Green Book).
Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman may have officially passed the mop to The Toxic Avengerfilmmaker Macon Blair at SDCC last month, but Blair’s gonzo reimagining more than speaks for itself when it comes to its reverence for the original Troma cult classic.
In The Toxic Avenger, Primetime Emmy-winning actor Peter Dinklage stars as Winston Gooze, a struggling janitor who’s instantly transformed into an unlikely hero by a freak toxic accident. Winston’s rise from outcast to savior is paved with buckets of blood and radioactive insanity, of course, but the new Toxic Avenger never forgets its Troma roots.
Expect Easter eggs and references aplenty, especially when it comes to the fictional fast food joint Miss Meat. An early scene sees Winston Gooze honing his new skills against a group of thugs, but it also doubles as a massive love letter to the original 1984 film.
That was, of course, by design.
Macon Blair tells Bloody Disgusting, “Toxie fucking up bad guys in the fast food place in the original was one of the scenes that always stuck with me, and so of course we wanted to nod to that a little bit. But it’s also like our version of that scene that exists in most of the Batman variations, where he appears in his suit for the first time and confronts some villains, and nobody knows what to make of him, and it’s all very disorienting and chaotic.
“We wanted to do our version of that ‘I’m the Batman!’ kind of scene.”
It’s one scene of many in the new Toxic Avenger movie that’s absolutely loaded with nods to Troma and the original film, so much so that even its creator lost count.
“Oh, jeez, I have no idea what the total number is, but we had some set design that references Belgoody Bail Bonds, which was meant as a nod to Mayor Belgoody (played by Pat Ryan) in the original,“ Blair explains. “The backdrop of the newscasters commenting on things throughout the movie is the original Troma cityscape. The font used in the restaurant signage was a font used in some Troma things. We wanted to drop these little winks in throughout just as a way of saying hello to the old school fans.”
Those old school fans will immediately register the significance of seeing a kid on a bike; Macon Blair is counting on that when it comes to his wry wink in The Toxic Avenger.
Blair teases not to expect references to the original to play out the same way, however.
“We didn’t really have a place in the script or schedule to specifically crush a kid’s head– and honestly that was okay with me because you can’t top that moment from the original–but we did put a kid in a helmet in the background of the scene, again as a way of winking at the fans.”
Speaking of a gory kill, the Miss Meat scene is also just one of many ways that The Toxic Avenger cuts loose with the gore.
The director breaks down his approach to the violence, “We wanted the gore to have a kind of lo-fi feeling.”
“So, for example, when the guy gets his head knocked off, we had a dummy hung upside down with basically a bucket of blood inside his chest, and we swung the mop across the frame, and the head came off, and the blood just spilled downwards. When you see it in the movie, the movement of the blood looks a little bit off–it’s not being pumped, it’s being pulled by gravity–and that was the kind of slightly janky quality we were hoping for.“
“I was lucky enough to get to work with an amazing production designer named Alex Cameron and a great set dec named Liz Boller, a great graphic designer named John Pundt, and all of the artists who worked with them; it was just a killer team,“ Blair says of the detailed production design in this scene. “So much of it was a matter of me giving them a general set of ideas about how these spaces could look and function, and then they would drill down on the specifics, the wallpaper and tiles and napkin holders and everything.
“It was a really delightful part of the process because it felt like they would take these broad concepts and refine them in ways that hadn’t even occurred to me. My favorite part of getting to do this is being in collaboration with brilliant people and getting to take their ideas and run with them.”
A member of the /Film staff just watched the 1996 Mission: Impossible movie for the first time. Here’s what they thought of Tom Cruise’s debut as Ethan Hunt.
Perhaps the weirdest anime currently airing, Dan Da Dan has paid its respects to Back to the Future with one of its most gonzo and visually stunning scenes yet.
There’s no understating the impact that John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian had on the film industry when it released back in 1982. Not only did this existential epic single-handedly revive the Sword & Sorcery genre, but it also influenced everything from comic-books to tabletop role-playing games. However, not everyone was happy with the release of this beloved classic.
Legendary film producer Roger Corman was absolutely livid when he found out that Dino de Laurentis had acquired the rights to Robert E. Howard’s iconic character before Corman could shoot his own long-gestating Conan adaptation. That’s why Corman decided to use the hype surrounding the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle to sell his own collection of cheaply produced Sword & Sorcery films.
The first of these vengeful productions was 1983’s infamous Deathstalker, a film that, ironically enough, features a much more barbarous protagonist than the movie it’s trying to rip off. And with the character making his long-awaited return to the big screen later this year thanks to Steven Kostanski’s crowdfunded Deathstalker remake, I think this is the perfect time to look back on the original film in all of its schlocky glory!
Roger Corman was already a world-renowned filmmaker by the 1980s, and this notoriety meant that he could often secure international production companies to partner with him in countries where the American Dollar had greater value. That’s how he came to broker a ten-picture deal with the Argentinian-based studio Aries Cinematográfica, with their first collaboration being a low-budget fantasy film that could be shot on location in Buenos Aires.
Saturday the 14th scribe Howard R. Cohen was hired to quickly pen an off-brand Conan yarn, with James Sbardellati being invited to helm the picture. Sbardellati (who then went by the name John Watson) had previously worked with Corman when he was hired by to direct additional “sex” scenes meant to spice up Barbara Peeters’ controversial exploitation classic, Humanoids From the Deep.
Deathstalker’s cast would also feature famous model Barbi Benton in her final role before moving on to her musical career, as well as newcomer Lana Clark in the first of her many collaborations with Corman. The titular character was played by former football player Rick Hill, with his swashbuckling partner Oghris being played by horror veteran Richard Brooker (who had previously played Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part III).
In the finished film, we follow the “hero” known as Deathstalker as he reluctantly embarks on an epic quest to defeat the evil sorcerer-king Munkar (Bernard Erhard) and acquire three magical artifacts that will unlock the ultimate “Power.” Along the way, he’s joined by the thief-turned-imp Salmaron (Augusto Larreta), a wandering hero with sparkling abs named Oghris (Brooker), as well as the topless warrior Kaira (Clarkson).
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Merely explaining the individual plot elements of the story doesn’t do Deathstalker any justice, as the film’s script mostly serves as an excuse to place our characters in classic fantasy situations like thrilling tournaments and high-stakes sword duels – as well as a series of problematic sexual encounters that make revisiting the flick in 2025 a much more uncomfortable experience than the filmmakers originally intended.
However, while the film’s unnecessary sexuality often gets in the way of its more enjoyable action elements, it’s clear that Deathstalker is one of very few Fantasy flicks produced by masters of Exploitation cinema, a distinction that makes the movie feel unique.
After all, most of the flick’s brutality appears to be intentional. This is a barbaric world with barbaric inhabitants, and while the story’s overall lack of a moral compass makes it hard to root for our scumbag hero, one could argue that this just makes the film feel even more medieval. That being said, it’s still hard to justify the flick’s treatment of women, though many of the misogynistic elements would be remedied in the sequel, withDeathstalker 2 functioning more as a parody of the first film than a proper continuation.
Not all of the sexual elements present in the first film is necessarily bad, however. For instance, Clarkson’s character seems to embrace her sexuality as a source of power (and possibly a distraction meant to give her an edge against her enemies). And in true barbarian fashion, most of the men are dressed in clothing just as revealing as that of their female counterparts.
AND WHY WOULD HORROR FANS ENJOY IT?
Deathstalker is probably better known for its iconic poster than the movie itself, with Boris Vallejo’s iconic artwork (done in the same style as the artist’s National Lampoon posters) promising a thrilling adventure where a musclebound hero faces off against horrific monsters. However, while the finished product isn’t as detailed as what we see in the advertising, I appreciate the film’s low-budget attempt at populating its gritty fantasy world (which looks a lot like regular South America) with ghouls and goblins.
The drooling Pig-Man obviously takes centerstage despite the overall crudeness of his costume. His Vaseline-slathered mask and hulking frame instantly make him a memorable villain, but I also find it hilarious that Deathstalker makes no effort to explain the creature’s origins or why he’s attending a royal tournament. None of the other characters seem alarmed by his appearance either, implying that pig-men and other monsters are simply a fact of life in this ancient land.
The film also boasts charming practical effects in everything from imp puppets, to diseased Neanderthals and even the occasional ogre – as well as an eye-ball-eating pet demon that exists only to show how depraved our main antagonist can be.
Of course, the real monsters in Deathstalker usually turn out to be human, so it makes sense that the film exhibits plenty of exaggerated violence as we watch evildoers get decapitated, impaled and even dismembered by wild horses in over-the-top displays of barbaric justice. The effects aren’t always blockbuster-quality, but I admire the effort that went into making these fights seem ugly and mean.
I can’t honestly call Deathstalker a traditionally good movie, but there’s an undeniable chaotic energy powering its messy filmmaking. Maybe Sbardellati is unconsciously tapping into fantasy greatness due to his use of ancient tropes and familiar archetypes, or maybe I’m just a little too lenient on Sword & Sorcery flicks due to my personal love of the genre, but I’d argue that Deathstalker remains an interesting combination of Fantasy and Exploitation even four decades later.
That being said, I still hope that Konstanski’s reboot borrows more from the film’s humorous sequel!
The Together soundtrack is available on vinyl for $35 from Mutant and Neon.
Composed by Cornel Wilczek (Talk to Me, Bring Her Back), the album is housed in a reverse board gatefold sleeve featuring artwork by Greg Ruth.
Mutant’s “Flesh and Bone” color variant is limited to 400 and is due out on September 19, while Neon’s splatter variant is limited to 250 and is expected to ship in October.
Mutant writes, “Cornel Wilczek crafts an incredible score for this body horror future classic from director Michael Shanks, blending the organic and synthetic, merging them to create something new, mesmerizing, calm, eerie yet beautiful and oddly melodic. Disembodied voices flow in and out of soundscapes made up of traditional acoustic instruments, strings, and synthesizers.
“At first listen, the score seems very minimalist, but with repeated listening, it reveals these amazing earworms that stick in your mind. It’s a truly lovely, otherworldly listen, ideal for late nights and headphones.”
Currently in theaters, the cosmic body horror film marks the feature debut of writer-director Michael Shanks.
Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other. With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural foe threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh.
Real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie star with Damon Herriman, Sunny S. Walia, Jack Kenny, and Mia Morrissey.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her review, “Its unique blend of awkward romantic dramedy and cosmic body horror yields no shortage of crowd-pleasing moments and horror freakouts that left the rowdy Sundance audience laughing and screaming in equal measure.”
