Eli Roth‘s The Horror Section has acquired the indie slasher Stiletto, Deadline reports.
Samuel Gonzalez Jr. (The Retaliators, Night of the Missing) writes and directs, based on a story by actress and exotic dancer Gigi Gustin (The Retaliators, Brute 1976).
Set on the one-year anniversary of the brutal murder of her older sister, the film follows Lyric (Gustin) as she seeks retribution and works to protect the dancer community from the masked killer responsible for a wave of strip club slayings.
Charlotte McKinney (Fantasy Island), Colleen Camp (Clue), Meghan Carrasquillo, Stephen Blackehart (Superman), Hannah Hueston, and Russell Todd (Friday the 13th Part 2) round out the cast.
The Stiletto Killer’s mask was created by Jason Baker, who previously designed The Grabber’s mask for The Black Phone.
Roth is producing alongside Gustin and Hearse Productions. Executive producers include Jon Schnaars and Holly Adams of The Horror Section and Christopher Woodrow and Raj Singh of Media Capital Technologies.
“Gigi and Sam have made an instant classic. Original, smart, deliciously fun, I was absolutely blown away by their reinvention and original take on the slasher subgenre,” said Roth. “Gigi based the movie on real experiences and gives her all in an explosive performance. Sam’s direction is smart, scary, and truly cinematic.
Roth continues, “It’s a fantastic horror movie in the subgenre I love the most. The finale is truly one of the greatest, most original final girl vs. slasher finales I have ever seen in a slasher film. I cannot wait to bring this to audiences worldwide on the big screen; it’s a remarkable cinematic debut.”
“The journey of making Stiletto has been the most intense, chaotic, yet equally rewarding experience of my life,” commented Gustin. “There were moments I felt like I was running blind through a dark tunnel in eight-inch heels, fueled only by indie spirit, a negative bank account, and fierce belief in the story.”
Gustin adds, “Having someone like Eli in our corner, not just championing the film but becoming an integral part of it, feels completely surreal. I’ve poured every bit of heart, authenticity, glitter and blood I can into this story, and with Eli’s expertise in horror, I truly believe it has the potential to be something extraordinary.”
Currently in post-production, Stiletto will be the next release from The Horror Section following Roth’s Ice Cream Man, which is due out later this year.
It’s the first week of February, and this month brings a ton of notable new releases including Scream 7. But let’s hold that thought, and focus only on this week’s new releases for now.
Here’s all the new horror released from February 2 – February 8, 2026!
We Bury the Dead, writer and director Zak Hilditch’s (1922) post-apocalyptic zombie thriller starring Daisy Ridley, is now available to watch at home on Digital outlets.
After a catastrophic American military experiment results in mass casualties across Tasmania, Ava (Ridley) joins a body retrieval unit to help identify the dead and search for her husband on the southern part of the island. As Ava makes her way south, across the ravaged landscape, she soon learns that some of the victims of the disaster are coming back to life.
Meagan Navarro wrote in her We Bury the Dead review out of SXSW, “Hilditch peppers in a few intense horror sequences that get the pulse pounding, making you wish he’d commit more fully to exploring the rules of this new type of outbreak more fully.”
From the mists of legends, a vengeful war goddess emerges in The Morrigan. The Irish horror film is now available on Digital via Bloody Disgusting’s parent company, Cineverse.
The film follows an archaeologist specializing in Gaelic mythology who travels with her rebellious teenage daughter to a remote region of Ireland. The two are forced to fight for their lives as a vengeful pagan war goddess known as The Morrigan is released from her tomb.
Saffron Burrows (Deep Blue Sea), James Cosmo (Braveheart), Emily Flain, Art Parkinson (“Game of Thrones”), and Toby Stephens (Die Another Day) star.
Colum Eastwood writes and directs, expanding on his 2015 short of the same name. Ashley Holberry and Gavin Cosmo Mehrtens of Cowboy Cosmonaut produce.
“This film is deeply personal to me, drawing on the stories and landscapes I grew up with,” says Eastwood. “Seeing The Morrigan find a home with Cineverse is incredibly gratifying.”
The feature debut of writer-director Charlie Polinger, coming-of-age psychological thriller The Plague is now available to watch at home on Digital via Independent Film Company.
Set at an all-boys water polo camp, the film sees a socially anxious 12-year-old is pulled into a cruel tradition that targets an outcast with an illness they call “The Plague.” But as the lines between game and reality blur, he fears the joke might be hiding something real.
Shot on 35mm film, The Plague premiered at Cannes to an 11-minute standing ovation. Joel Edgerton stars alongside Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, and Kenny Rasmussen.
“I was really into psychological horror,” Polinger told BD. “We were watching everything from Repulsion and Carrie and The Shining and Black Swan. Raw was a big one. Eighth Grade, which is not really horror, but it’s so stressful that I think it’s a great influence.”
Dying is not a choice in Whistle, the latest from The Nun director Corin Hardy. The cursed object horror movie is now playing in theaters via Independent Film Company and Shudder.
The horror film follows a misfit group of unwitting high school students who stumble upon an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. Soon, they discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down.
As the body count rises, the friends investigate the origins of the cursed artifact in a desperate effort to stop the horrifying chain of events that they have set in motion.
Dafne Keen (Logan), Sophie Nélisse (“Yellowjackets”), Sky Yang (Rebel Moon), Jhaleil Swaby (“Supergirl”), Ali Skovbye (“Firefly Lane”), Percy Hynes White (“Wednesday”), Michelle Fairley (“Game of Thrones”), and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) star.
Owen Egerton (Blood Fest) wrote the script, based on his own short story.
If Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein have you longing for another auteur’s take on a classic monster, Luc Besson (Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element) has you covered with Dracula. Originally titled Dracula: A Love Tale, the fresh take on Bram Stoker‘s seminal 1897 novel is now playing only in theaters in the United States.
Caleb Landry Jones (Get Out), Christoph Waltz (Django Unchained), and Zoë Bleu star.
When a 15th-century prince witnesses the brutal murder of his wife, he renounces God and damns heaven itself. Cursed with eternal life, he is reborn as Dracula, an immortal warlord who defies fate in a blood-soaked crusade to wrench his lost love back from death, no matter the cost. But Dracula is hunted by a relentless priest, sworn to end his immortal reign.
Danny Elfman (Batman, Beetlejuice) composed the score.
Renny Harlin’s trilogy ends with The Strangers: Chapter 3, now playing in theaters.
In the final chapter of this new reboot trilogy, “Maya (Madelaine Petsch) faces the masked killers one last time in a brutal, full-circle reckoning of survival and revenge.”
Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2, Deep Blue Sea) once again directs from a script by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland. Gabriel Basso (Super 8), Ema Horvath (“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”), Pablo Sandstrom, and Richard Brake (Barbarian) also star.
A grieving mother awakens a haunting in The Arborist, now available on VOD from Dark Sky Films. The indie folk horror movie is written and directed by Andrew Mudge.
Lucy Walters, Hudson West, and Will Lyman star.
After suffering a devastating loss, grief-stricken arborist Ellie and her son Wyatt are hired by mysterious recluse Arthur Randolph to fell the trees in part of his vast, remote estate. As Wyatt starts showing signs of erratic behavior and falls prey to creature hallucinations, a past tragedy reveals itself, a haunting awakens, and Arthur discloses the real reason he hired them.
Lauren LaVera (Terrifier franchise) is back on the horror scene in Twisted, the new movie from director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II-IV, Spiral). It’s now available on VOD outlets.
LaVera stars as a millennial who makes quick money by leasing incredible New York City apartments she doesn’t own to people who don’t know they are being swindled.
The con artist’s real estate scam unravels into a nightmare when she’s captured by a surgeon (Hounsou) who has a terrifying plan.
Mia Healey (“The Wilds”), Gina Philips (Jeepers Creepers), Jacob Lukas Anderson (AKA rapper Prof), Neal McDonough (Minority Report), and Alicia Witt (Longlegs) round out the cast. Jonathan Bernstein & James Greer (Unsane) wrote the script.
The bizarre experiment that is The Strangers reboot trilogy has finally reached its end. Madelaine Petsch’s exhausted final girl Maya has been on the run for one night of grueling hell, stretched far too thin across three separate films. However, instead of a full circle reckoning, The Strangers: Chapter 3 crawls toward its confused conclusion.
The teases of Venus, Oregon’s murderous underbelly, back in the first installment, finally get pushed closer to the forefront, though with zero new revelations that foreshadowed clues hadn’t already indicated. That means that it’s more spinning wheels as Maya continues her attempts to evade the clutches of the town’s most sadistic masked residents, including the least surprising reveal that Richard Brake’s Sheriff Rotter is not only in on it, but an orchestrator of the chaos.
His motive factors into the murky backstory behind the masked killers and their slaygrounds, a continued dispelling of mystery that robs the film of tension. Not helping is that director Renny Harlin, working from the behemoth screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland, maintains laser focus on Maya’s survival bid and deteriorating mental state amidst the constant barrage of attackers.
Madelaine Petsch as Maya and Gabriel Basso as Gregory in The Strangers – Chapter 3. Photo Credit: John Armour
Petsch remains exonerated in this meandering trilogy; the unrelenting gauntlet of Maya’s constant evasion makes it all the easier to feel her level of exhaustion and breaking point to a palpable degree. It also becomes clear, once Maya goes toe to toe with Scarecrow (his identity another big “no duh”), that the actor is bringing much more thought to her character’s arc than the script. Petsch interrogates the concept of a final girl, quietly choosing to dismantle it altogether in acknowledgement of everything her character has endured.
That leaves Chapter 3 on an introspective, ambiguous note that the trilogy doesn’t quite earn. Harlin attempts to close the loop with a greater sense of all-out action as the final siege brings Maya’s sister into the fray, but this plot point, like most in this series, winds up another underbaked idea designed to propel Maya’s journey.
The action and attempts to close the loop on demystifying serial killers’ seemingly random acts of violence do make for a less tedious entry than Chapter 2, but this trilogy has consistently been afraid to actively engage with any questions or ideas beyond Chapter 1’s recreation of Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion hit. It’s been trapped in place since, occasionally tossing out a few wild sequences or ideas that are never fully realized.
The Strangers – Chapter 3. Photo Credit: Jordy Clarke/Lionsgate
The Strangers reboot trilogy is so barebones that it’s difficult to wrap my brain around the idea of a lengthy supercut. Or remotely caring about new masked killers that were trimmed from the final cut; Chapter 3 can’t even find anything of substance for Dollface or Pinup Girl to do. But at least Harlin provides a clearer sense of geography and direction here, and we’re mercifully free of CG boars.
Demystifying the line “Because you were home,” and so poorly, misunderstands why it was so effective in the first place. Chapter 3 brings us no closer to explaining why this trilogy was so compelled to explore this chilling answer, and so superficially. This misfire instead leaves you repeating the original film’s question, “Why are you doing this to us?”
The Strangers: Chapter 3 releases in theaters on February 6, 2026.
If you think the Super Bowl halftime shows have been wild lately, get a load of this one from 1995 that featured Patti LaBelle, Tony Bennett, and Indiana Jones.
Brazilian horror comedy Bowels of Hellgleefully keeps its head in the toilet in its gross-out depiction of an apartment building so caught up in its own crap that they don’t notice disgustingly cursed plumbing until it’s too late. Writers/Directors Gurcius Gewdner and Gustavo Vinagre don’t hold back on gag-inducing potty horror, creating a strange backdrop to its prominent and ambitious social commentary that skewers generational divides, gender politics, and emotional constipation.
Martha Nowill stars as Malu, a busy mom with a thriving career in event planning. She specializes in gender reveal parties, causing conflict with Malu’s rebellious, nonbinary child, Genesis (Benjamín Damini), especially as she takes on new jobs from clients, including a pregnant neighbor. But that’s the least of Malu’s problems; the single mom also has severe trauma and residual bowel movement issues stemming from the horrific death of her other child via freak toilet accident. Only, it wasn’t an accident.
The toilets have had enough of the tenants’ shit.
Gewdner and Vinagre channel early Peter Jackson for their splattery mayhem, ensuring no bodily fluids are ignored in their tactile explorations of goopy, nasty, cursed toilet madness. The practical effects achieve maximum gross-out effect, and the deaths can be gnarly. But they’re also employed sparingly, at least at first, as they set up a pressure cooker scenario for their characters. That means that it’s metaphor first, gnarly horror second. The good news is that the filmmakers save the best for last, delivering a gory punchline that finally frees clogged bowels in more ways than one.
But it can take a while to get there as the film trudges through barbed social encounters and conflict, dwelling heavily on social commentary over characterization. The high-strung Malu struggles to endear, with her prickly parenting of her abrasive teen doing no favors. It’s part of the point; all characters are so wrapped up in nonsense to see what’s happening around them. They’re unlikeable by design, all in service of its social commentary. And Bowels of Hell refuses to be subtle about anything.
While bickering characters can frustrate, Nowill and Damini both excel at the physical comedy. Nowill, in particular, is fearless when it comes to the vulnerable positions the script demands. In a film that wields the term “fecaloma” as a plot point and opens with the over-the-top demise of a child via monstrous toilet, well, that should indicate the wacky scenarios Nowill’s high-strung Malu faces.
Bowels of Hell attempts to cover too much ground with its commentary, so much so that its themes get a bit muddled as certain elements get underserved, causing pacing lulls. Not helping is how repetitive some of its talking points get, bludgeoning viewers over and over with its satirical lampooning of gender reveal parties. Gewdner and Vinagre succeed in corralling their ambitions into a satisfying, excessively bonkers finale, at least.
Grounding a high-concept horror movie about cursed toilets with real-world issues was the smart approach, rendering relatable anxieties and familiar issues through the lens of gross-out horror and humor. But, as intentional as it may be, spending time with the self-centered tenants of one doomed building can make the patient wait for full-blown gory chaos stretch thin. Still, it’s a commendable, silly, and fearless swing that serves as a demented reminder to eat your fiber.
After decades in front of the camera, horror icon Bruce Cambell made his feature directorial debut with 2005’s Man with the Screaming Brain and followed it up with 2007’s My Name Is Bruce.
Nearly 20 years later, Campbell has returned to the director’s chair for a heartfelt comedy titled Ernie & Emma. Watch the trailer below.
Campbell wrote, directed, and stars in the indie film, which he also produced alongside his wife, Ida Gearon.
The poignant story follows Ernie Tyler, a small-town pear salesman who embarks on the journey following the death of his beloved wife, Emma.
After 25 years as an executive secretary, Emma leaves behind a detailed list of instructions regarding her ashes, which leads Ernie on a series of challenging and reflective escapades across Pear Valley, Oregon.
As Ernie navigates the road trip of their lives, Emma helps him confront his grief and encourages him to move forward, transforming his life in the process.
Cerina Vincent (Cabin Fever) co-stars as Campbell’s newfound love interest, while Robin McAlpine provides the voice of the late Emma. The cast also includes frequent collaborator Ted Raimi (Evil Dead 2) and Sam Raimi’s daughter Emma Raimi (Send Help).
The film’s crew features cinematographer Kurt Rau (My Name Is Bruce), editor Kaye Davis (Evil Dead II), and composer Joseph LoDuca (Evil Dead trilogy).
Ernie & Emma will premiere at the Holly Theatre in Medford, Oregon, on February 14. Campbell will take the film on a nationwide tour later this year, including screenings at Alamo Drafthouse locations with live Q&As.
