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Twenty five years ago, a new horror franchise was born with 2000’s Final Destination, a supernatural horror film that made Death an unstoppable slasher villain that employed Rube Goldberg machine-like tactics to reclaim the lives of those who evaded his grasp.

Final Destination, directed by James Wong and written by Wong, Jeffrey Reddick, and Glen Morgan, featured a clever setup that presented no shortage of creativity when it comes to delivering over-the-top kills and breathless, nail-biting suspense thanks to the elaborate series of events that would result in a gnarly and sometimes comically complex death sequences.

The series, now six entries deep thanks to this week’s release of Final Destination Bloodlines, offers some of horror’s most unforgettable kills, so much so that we’ve ranked the entire franchise (so far) by Death’s Designs.

In anticipation of the sixth installment, we’re retracing Death’s steps to examine the established lore,...

Cults are scary enough in real life. As a general rule, they infatuate your loved ones, drain their bank accounts, abuse them and make them think they like it, and in absolute worst cases -- think Jonestown and Heaven's Gate -- it all ends in mass death. Making that scarier for horror movies can be tough, but it usually involves actual supernatural powers. Horror movies involving cults offer them the one thing reality can't: legitimacy. In a fictional story, the dangerous demon or deity worshipped by the cultists can be real, and provably so.

Like actual cult involvement, a significant chunk of horror movies about cults end badly for their main characters. Real-world cult deprogramming takes a long time, and isn't cinematic, so in the movies, there's usually either a simpler solution, like killing the leader, or no solution at all. Satan is frequently involved, either explicitly or implicitly, in...

Horror has many tropes, but one of the biggest is the jump scare. They've become commonplace in the genre over the decades as an easy way to get an audience to react, but while some, such as in Sinister and Insidious, are very effective, in lesser films, they've become an overused cheap tactic that's more about creating a physical response rather than building up true tension. There was a time though when jump scares were a rarity, which made them work more when they were used. The first ever jump in a feature film is also one of the best. In 1942's Cat People, director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton created a jump scare that will make you jump out of your seat, not out of laziness, but in brilliant and purposeful misdirection.

Quick LinksVal Lewton Revolutionized Low-Budget Horror MoviemakingThe Curse of the Cat People Is One of Cinema's Best Films About Childhood ImaginationGenerational Trauma Is a Key Theme in The Curse of the Cat People

Directed by Gunther von Fritsch and Robert Wise, The Curse of the Cat People is an underrated 1944 psychological supernatural horror thriller that deserves to rank alongside the greatest sequels in cinema history. The Curse of the Cat People was one of eleven legendary B movies Val Lewton produced for Rko Pictures between 1942 and 1946. Lewton's historic run as a producer began in 1942 with Cat People, a low-budget B horror movie that became a surprise box office hit. Looking to capitalize on Cat People's commercial success, Rko Pictures commissioned Lewton to produce a sequel. While many sequels fall victim to being an inferior, copy-and-paste version of their predecessor, Lewton ensured that The Curse of the Cat People was...

Jacques Tourneur's I Walked with a Zombie wasn't an immediate success upon its release in 1943, despite both the director's and producer Val Lewton's solid reputations as horror masters thanks to Cat People. The major reason behind the mixed reviews might be that the film did, and still does, feel different from the body of classic Hollywood horror at the time. Using Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre as inspiration, Tourneur's film departs from classic monster figures and even from the psychological complexity that was explored in Cat People.

"The X-Files" was a series that had what is perhaps the platonic ideal of a structure for a scripted TV show. By alternating episodes involving a "Monster-of-the-week" and shows dealing with the series' overarching mythology of conspiracies and extraterrestrial activity, the series managed to be both an Ez-on, Ez-off episodic procedural, a genre anthology show, and a serialized saga that rewarded constant viewing. Thus, longtime fans could feel their investment paying off while new fans could jump on board at just about any point during the show's original 9-season run.

The only detriment to this near-perfect setup is the fact that it invited the possibility of as many low points as it did high ones. While certain sections of the fandom have their general preferences for which overall seasons were best and which weren't, even the most adoring fan of "The X-Files" will admit its propensity to be uneven, with...

Some great horror movies predate the burst of color filmmaking as the predominant form of cinema and are still scary watches even for modern audiences. The horror genre is one of the oldest kinds in film, an early source of chills and thrills on the big screen. In modern discussions though, people often only go back to the '70s and '80s when talking about classic horror movies. Despite this, there are some black and white horror films from the old golden era of the genre are still quite compelling.

It is a misconception that horror movies from that time aren't as technically strong as today's movies because of the technological advancements in modern filmmaking. If anything, the unique and imaginative techniques employed by the pioneers of the genre to create terrifying atmospheres and visuals add to the charm of black-and-white vintage horror cinema. Modern remakes of such classic...

Family gatherings can be murder. Even worse if you are not a member of the immediate family. As we head into this year’s holiday season, I have no doubt that many reading this will feel that even more acutely than in the past. Sure, there will be the usual gathering around the table (or in front of the TV with paper plates if you’re anything like my family), food will be served, drink will be had, and conversation will abound, but the latter especially could lead to more than a little family tension. Which is why William Castle’s classic 1959 film House on Haunted Hill feels especially appropriate for this edition of Gods and Monsters as we approach Christmas 2024. You may well feel like a stranger among strangers this year, as the guests of eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) and his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) no doubt do.

The marketing behind The Northman director Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu has made it clear that the inhuman visage of its central monster won’t be revealed until audiences arrive in theaters on Christmas Day. That’s all the more intriguing considering that descriptors like “erotic” and “sexualized” have been attached to Bill Skarsgård’s performance as Count Orlok, both in critical first reactions and from the cast.

Skarsgård even teased his character in an earlier chat with Esquire, saying: “He’s gross. But it is very sexualized. It’s playing with a sexual fetish about the power of the monster and what that appeal has to you. Hopefully you’ll get a little bit attracted by it and disgusted by your attraction at the same time.”

Of course, cinema’s history is filled with sexualized vampires that inspire lust, using it themselves to prey upon their victims. It’s an entirely...

The holidays are upon us, so whether you’re looking for film-related gifts or simply want to get for yourself some of the finest this year had to offer, we have a gift guide for you. Including must-have books on filmmaking, the best from the Criterion Collection and other home-video lines, subscriptions, magazines, music, and more, dive in below.

4K & Blu-ray Box Sets

There’s no better gift than an epic film collection, and 2024 was an embarrassment of riches thanks to a number of box sets. The king of them all, especially if you’re looking for a gift for a burgeoning cinephile, is Criterion’s massive CC40, collecting 40 landmark films form their 40-year history. It’s not the only stellar set from the company, of course, as I adored the essential Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978, Éric Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, Three Revolutionary Films by Ousmane Sembène,...

This year has seen a lot of returning features and revamped traditions here at The A.V. Club, and Halloween is giving us the opportunity to bring back one more: Asking a horror aficionado to program a 24-hour horror film marathon that readers can enjoy at home. Filmmaker Robert Eggers contributed...

Sure, there are plenty of new and classic horror movies on streaming this year. But there’s nothing that beats the sensation of sliding a disc into a Blu-ray player. It harkens back to the thrill of going to your local video store, picking out a scary movie and taking it home.

We thought we’d celebrate that sensation by picking out our very favorite new home video releases for this Halloween, a mixture of obscure favorites, outright classics, near-hits from some of our favorite modern filmmakers and a new movies that gets a terrific home video treatment. Grab some candy, your comfiest pajamas and settle in for the night with these gems.

Janus “Demon Pond”

One of the season’s must-have titles is “Demon Pond,” a bizarro, late-‘70s nightmare from Masahiro Shinoda, whose “Pale Flower” and “Double Suicide” are already a part of the Criterion Collection. Shinoda updates...

Things are getting spooky over at the Criterion collection, and it's not just because Beetlejuice's Winona Ryder recently stopped by the closet. For the next 24 hours, the famed purveyors of physical media will be offering a 50% off flash sale, including new releases like Gummo, Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse Trilogy,...

The horror films produced by Val Lewton for Rko Studios throughout the 1940s all share DNA, though the third and fourth films in the cycle, Jacques Tournier’s I Walked with a Zombie and Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim, seem to be especially connected. Both were released in 1943 and concern protagonists who enter hidden worlds beyond their understanding, worlds that allude to rot existing in conventional society should one care to acknowledge it. The protagonists’ growing awareness parallels our own, though in each case the viewer is left with little hope for reform or closure. They have glimpsed nightmare realms and are humbled by what they discover about their societies as well as themselves.

Notions of reform are particularly relevant to I Walked with a Zombie, which offers an unusually nuanced portrait of the legacy of colonialism. Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), a nurse from snowy Ottawa, is hired to...

Directed by horror master George A. Romero, the box office smash, Night of the Living Dead, arrives on 4K Uhd on 7th October. Shot on a shoestring budget the movie is a great story of independent cinema and became one of the most influential films of all time.

Following on 14th October comes I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim on 4K Uhd and Blu-ray™ . Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

To celebrate this release we have a chance for 2 lucky winers to win a copy of all 3 movies.

Criterion Collection Halloween Giveaway

Night of the Living Dead

New 4K Restoration

Shot outside Pittsburgh on a shoestring budget, by a band of filmmakers determined to make their mark,...

You used to hear the refrain from horror film fanatics with a lot more frequency – the original was so much scarier.

And while this is still true to some degree (the films of John Carpenter have been remade with an oddly uniform lousiness), there are still plenty of horror films that have been remade well. Sometimes the remakes are just as good as the original. In rare cases, it even surpasses the original.

Here is our definitive list of the very best horror remakes ever.

(United Artists) “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978)

Don Siegel’s 1956 classic “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is based on Jack Finney’s story “The Body Snatchers,” which was serialized in Collier’s in 1954 and published as a novel shortly after, has been remade several times over the years. But the very best iteration is still the 1978 version, the first since Siegel’s, from director Philip Kaufman and writer W.D. Richter.

Although you won’t often hear his name mentioned among auteur theorists, four-time Oscar winner Robert Wise amassed an impressive filmography in his lifetime. Let’s take a look back at 20 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Wise cut his teeth as a film editor, most notably working on Orson Welles‘ landmark film “Citizen Kane” (1941), for which he received an Oscar nomination. He made his directorial debut with “The Curse of the Cat People” (1944), the first of many successful collaborations with low-budget horror producer Val Lewton.

Throughout his career, Wise excelled at a number of genres, including science fiction (“The Day the Earth Stood Still”), film noir (“Odds Against Tomorrow”), horror (“The Haunting”), war (“The Desert Rats”), comedy (“Two for the Seesaw”), and drama (“Executive Suite”). Rather than imposing his own directorial fingerprint on each film, Wise instead tried to adapt his style to best suit the material.

Ride the Black Chariot: A Hitchcockian Horror of Vengeance and Retribution

Hex Studios is excited to announce Black Chariot, an intense and deeply disturbing supernatural horror directed by Lawrie Brewster, inspired by the macabre genius of Alfred Hitchcock. Drawing from Hitchcock’s dark thrillers like Rebecca (1942) and Psycho (1960), Brewster seeks to invoke Hitchcock’s spirit, combined with his love of classic film noir and Val Lewton’s atmospheric slow-burn horrors.

Director Lawrie Brewster shared, “My childhood was spent haunted and mesmerized by the romantic and seductive veil Hitchcock cast over me. It shaped my vision of horror, sensuality, and my understanding of fear and obsession. I am thrilled to finally produce a horror film that combines my love for the genre with inspirations drawn from his incomparable genius. Creating a period film and a love letter to that era, in a portrayal of horror that is as hauntingly beautiful as it is terrifying,...

Welcome to the latest edition of our (semi) regular crowdfunding feature here on Nerdly – Back This! – where we take a look at some of the cool content taking the crowdfunding route on sites such as Indiegogo, Greenlit and Kickstarter. In this edition, we’re spotlighting Black Chariot, the latest film from Hex Studios and director Lawrie Brewster.

Hex Studios’ Black Chariot is an intense and deeply disturbing supernatural horror directed by Lawrie Brewster, inspired by the macabre genius of Alfred Hitchcock. Drawing from Hitchcock’s dark thrillers like Rebecca (1942) and Psycho (1960), Brewster seeks to invoke Hitchcock’s spirit, combined with his love of classic film noir and Val Lewton’s atmospheric slow-burn horrors.

Director Lawrie Brewster shared:

My childhood was spent haunted and mesmerized by the romantic and seductive veil Hitchcock cast over me. It shaped my vision of horror, sensuality, and my understanding of fear and obsession. I am...

This October, Spirit Entertainment, in collaboration with The Criterion Collection, is set to delight horror fans with the release of two seminal films, Night of the Living Dead and a double feature of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. These releases promise to offer a fresh perspective on classic horror with pristine 4K restorations and an array of special features that delve into the making and legacy of these groundbreaking films.

Night of the Living Dead: A Landmark in Independent Cinema

Directed by the legendary George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead will be available in a new 4K Uhd restoration on 7th October. Shot on a modest budget just outside Pittsburgh, this 1968 masterpiece became a midnight hit and a box-office sensation, fundamentally altering the horror genre. The film’s simple yet gripping plot follows a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse as they fend...

Ride the "Black Chariot" - A Hitchcockian Horror of Vengeance and Retribution: "Hex Studios is excited to announce Black Chariot, an intense and deeply disturbing supernatural horror directed by Lawrie Brewster, inspired by the macabre genius of Alfred Hitchcock. Drawing from Hitchcock's dark thrillers like Rebecca (1942) and Psycho (1960), Brewster seeks to invoke Hitchcock's spirit, combined with his love of classic film noir and Val Lewton’s atmospheric slow-burn horrors.

Director Lawrie Brewster shared, “My childhood was spent haunted and mesmerized by the romantic and seductive veil Hitchcock cast over me. It shaped my vision of horror, sensuality, and my understanding of fear and obsession. I am thrilled to finally produce a horror film that combines my love for the genre with inspirations drawn from his incomparable genius. Creating a period film and a love letter to that era, in a portrayal of horror that is as hauntingly beautiful as it is terrifying,...

Folk horror from Japan! Angelic and devilish souls from rural America (US)! Val Lewton horror from Hollywood! Melodrama from Germany! In October 2024, Criterion plans to release a rich collection of horror-month appropriate titles from across the world. To be specific, in Demon Pond, "Japanese New Wave renegade Masahiro Shinoda transforms a classic Kabuki tale with his own extravagant visual style in this dimension-shattering folk-horror fantasia," according to the official description To continue: "When a lone traveler (Tsutomu Yamazaki) stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town's inhabitants--including lovers Akira (Go Kato) and Yuri (Kabuki legend Tamasaburo Bando, who also plays the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

A pair of moody horror milestones from producer Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim are being paired up for a new release from The Criterion Collection.

The double feature is getting a 4K Uhd + Blu-ray combo edition as well as a Blu-ray edition and a DVD edition, with the release date for all three versions set for October 8, 2024.

Terror lives in the shadows in a pair of mesmerizingly moody horror milestones conjured from the imagination of Val Lewton, the visionary producer-auteur who turned our fears of the unseen and the unknown into haunting excursions into existential dread.

As head of Rko’s B-horror-movie unit during the 1940s, Lewton, working with directors such as Jacques Tourneur and Mark Robson, brought a new sophistication to the genre by wringing chills not from conventional movie monsters but from brooding atmosphere, suggestion, and psychosexual unease.

Suffused with ritual, mysticism,...

Likely that Gummo‘s most often been seen on a DVD passed among friends like cinematic contraband. Though I doubt that legacy will ever quite die (maybe now it’s Mkv files), that history makes all the more notable a 4K upgrade put into circulation by Criterion. They’ll be releasing Harmony Korine’s totemic feature debut in October alongside a Val Lewton double of I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim and Masahiro Shinoda’s Demon Pond. Per the traditional October viewing, one could say that all four are, in their own ways, horror.

Meanwhile, G. W. Pabst’s immortal Pandora’s Box, featuring the never-bested Louise Brooks, gets a Blu-ray upgrade.

See cover art below and more at Criterion:

The post The Criterion Collection’s October Lineup Includes Val Lewton and Harmony Korine on 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s been almost 70 years since the first of four film adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers was released and in that time we’ve yet to meet a single one of these so-called “snatchers.” I suppose that’s the point, since if they have to snatch a body, they don’t have bodies. This plays directly into the way the story, in its various adaptations, serves as a metaphorical horse to be hitched to any topical cart, the non-corporeal snatchers (presumably extra-terrestrial) view us as all-purpose vehicles for their…what? Bodies, minds, or souls? Don Siegel’s 1956 film, still considered to be the quintessential version of the story (though Philip Kaufman and Abel Ferrara’s remakes aren’t exactly chopped liver), actually conceals the answer behind budget compromises and plot holes: They are us, or we could be, if we don’t watch out.

Through the...

We don’t get a ton of Gothic or romanticized horror anymore, at least not in the sense of the old days. The old days had a bit of a stretch too as I’m talking about the Universal classics and Val Lewton all the way through at least the early run of Hammer Films. To that end, what creature is more romantic or at least romanticized than Dracula and any of his vampire off shoots? While many of the vampiric screen adaptations have that feel to them from Frank Langella to Gary Oldman and David Bowie sandwiched in between, there are few vampires who embody that ideology more than those found in the writings of Anne Rice. While her novel Interview with the Vampire came out all the way back in 1976, it would take nearly 20 years for the adaptation to hit theaters with the movie of the same name...

Some of the most memorable ventures into "The Twilight Zone" are bottle episodes in spirit if not exact definition. "The Invaders" follows a woman in a remote cabin menaced by tiny aliens. "Nothing in the Dark" features not only a young Robert Redford but also an elderly woman (Gladys Cooper) scared that death will be arriving at her door.

Cooper returned for a similar "Twilight Zone" in the show's fifth and last season: "The Night Call" Cooper plays Elva Keene, an aged widow living in a Maine cabin who is dealing with repeated phone calls that always go silent whenever she picks up. Is it just a technical error, like her nurse assures her? Or is something sinister and supernatural lurking in the phone lines?

On "The Night Call," the guest talent wasn't only in front of the camera. The episode was directed by Jacques Tourneur, one of the first...

Admit it – there’s at least one horror movie out there with a “gotcha” moment that made your heart slam against the inside of your ribcage. A sudden out-of-nowhere reveal, often accompanied by a loud noise on the soundtrack. Scenes like this have been making audiences soil their seats since the era of classic monster movies, and it’s not hard to see why. The response is hardwired into our brains; an instinctive fight-or-flight reflex when our natural defense mechanisms are rudely interrupted. The term “jump scare” wasn’t commonly used to label this effect until the 21st century, and it only really became part of popular culture after the birth of YouTube – which practically weaponized the technique with viral “screamer” videos and clip compilations.

Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock once famously criticized this kind of scare tactic, claiming suspense far is more effective than a sudden shock… but he’s...

Quick: Name five stars who got their start in horror movies. This is such an easy question, even for much of today’s modern crop of Gen-z talent. So posing it in the 1980s is hardly fair. And yet, that is what Mia Goth’s eternally striving dreamer does at the top of the new MaXXXine trailer from A24.

“Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta, Demi Moore, and—” Maxine’s video store clerk buddy rattles off. She cuts him off before what surely must have been Kevin Bacon. At least it’s easy to presume this, because the trailer almost immediately cuts to a shot of a slightly older Bacon, who’s transitioned from big screen heartthrob to cinema statesman, stating, “My employer is a very powerful man.” Once upon a time, Bacon might’ve said the same thing about Sean S. Cunningham. After all, Bacon got his start in Cunningham’s ‘80s schlock classic,...

The highest grossing director of all time, Steven Spielberg enjoys high-brow classics as much as crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Known for “Jurassic Park,” “Indiana Jones,” “Jaws,” “West Side Story” (2021), and more favorites, the beloved American filmmaker premiered his semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans” in theaters last November.

The movie, nominated for seven Oscars (winning none), tells the story of how Spielberg came to be Spielberg — chiefly through the lens of his parents’ traumatic divorce. Boasting a cast that includes not just Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Spielberg’s mom and dad, but also David Lynch in a rare acting opportunity, “The Fabelmans” was described by IndieWire’s David Ehrlich as an epic rendering of “the breakup that launched a million blockbusters.”

Following the contemplative mood of two-ish years in Covid-19 lockdown, the 2022 fall film season was chockfull of projects meditating on the role — and, in the case of “TÁR,” responsibility — of artists. How...

The Coen brothers broke up four years ago, and it has taken them a while to come out with solo albums that define their identities. In 2021, Joel Coen directed “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” which was a dazzling black-and-white pastiche of a Shakespeare drama. It was well-done but felt like a one-off, a decision by Coen to serve the material. One year later, Ethan Coen came out with “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind,” a small-scale rock ‘n’ roll documentary that he made during the pandemic; it was a YouTube clip job, and on those terms expertly crafted — but even after Jerry Lee died (five months after the film’s Cannes premiere), it took ages for the film to be released.

Now, though, we finally have a Coen movie in which one of the brothers puts his solo stamp on filmmaking. “Drive-Away Dolls,” directed by Ethan Coen, is a crime-speckled road-trip...

Believe it or not, the dreadful 2004 Catwoman was not the movie Warner Bros. set out to make. After Michelle Pfeiffer‘s stunning turn as Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, nobody initially thought, “Yes, but what if we get some terrible French commercial director to shoot a story about a different cat lady fighting a budget-Emma Frost like it’s a perfume ad?” In the truth, the Catwoman project went through many iterations, not landing on the laughable mess that stalled the career of Halle Berry (who’s actually quite good in Catwoman) until the early 2000s.

Recently, Batman Returns screenwriter Daniel Waters shared some ideas about the original treatment for a Catwoman spinoff that director Tim Burton himself wanted to make after his Batman sequel. As revealed to IndieWire after a screening in Los Angeles in December, Burton had no intention of continuing the superhero route for his Catwoman film.

On the 8th day of Creepmas, we’re celebrating the Victorian holiday tradition of sharing ghost stories. Telling ghost stories during winter was a folk custom that dated back centuries but slowly faded over time. Any tradition that involves scaring each other with horror stories feels like one worth reviving, so today’s Creepmas festivities embrace holiday horror movies that center around ghosts and hauntings. The eight titles below run the gamut from inducing warm holiday feels to ghostly insanity to chilling terror.

The 12 Days of Creepmas continues on Bloody Disgusting, this time with 8 Christmas ghosts to haunt your holiday season.

Keep track of the 12 Days of Creepmas here.

Anything for Jackson

Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings star as Audrey and Henry Walsh, a well-to-do couple mourning their young grandson’s tragic loss. Still deep in the denial stage of grief, they turn to Satanism. The couple kidnaps a pregnant...

“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within…and whatever walked there, walked alone.” – Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959).

Of all the subgenres of horror, the haunted house story has provided the most opportunities for slow and subtle terror that creeps and crawls its way under the skin and into the psyche. The Old Dark House (1932), The Uninvited (1944), The Innocents (1961), Burnt Offerings (1976), and The Changeling (1980) stand among the best that not only the haunted house film, but all of horror have to offer. For many, the absolute pinnacle of these films is Robert Wise’s 1963 masterpiece of suggestive horror The Haunting. Based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, the film owes much to the influences of the past while still carving a way toward the future, is populated by rich and relatable characters, and is a deeply felt...

When cinephiles of a certain sensibility talk about the best decades for horror, they’ll probably point to the 1980s with its explosion of cutting-edge special effects and home video-induced demand for material. Or they might point to the era of Universal Pictures’ domination in the 1930s, followed up then by the moody Val Lewton thrillers of the 1940s. Maybe even a very unpopular kid will try to make an argument for the 2010s, at least until everyone pulls the A24 hat over his eyes and kicks him out.

But moviegoers would be foolish to overlook the 1960s. The decade saw not only two amazing horror flicks from Alfred Hitchcock but also caught the genre in an interesting time of transition. Filmmakers built on the Gothic approach of previous decades by adding a psychological dimension, finding new chills in an established model. Furthermore, the decade saw the first steps toward the ho,...

Killers of the Flower Moon was partially inspired by Ari Aster, says Martin Scorsese.

In an interview with The Irish Times, director Martin Scorsese says the work of Ari Aster helped him pace his upcoming film, Killers of the Flower Moon. The total run time for the movie is 3 and 1/2 hours -- a choice that Scorsese vehemently defends. That being said, he understands the crucial aspect of pacing in a movie that long, stating, “I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid. The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie. Just going a little slower. A little quieter." Midsommar in particular has been praised for its eerie and suspenseful slow burn, making audiences wait for the terrifying payoff.

Related: Midsommar Movie Ending,...

Every year, horror fans attempt the daunting task of watching a horror movie for each day in the month of October. Aptly named 31 Days of Horror, the challenge usually consists of having viewers watch a mixture of their favorite classic horror films, as well as popular genre staples and recent releases that may be new to them. In celebration of the spooky season, we at MovieWeb have assembled our own suggestions for the month, providing a plethora of favorites from our contributing editors and writers. Today, we kick off Day 19 with the 1982 remake of Cat People.

Horror and sexuality have almost always gone hand in hand as taboo topics in older times, with the former frequently being used to allegorically explore the latter. The vampire myth is the prime example of this, along with the gothic works of the Brontë sisters, the 'final girl' trope and male gaze in slasher cinema,...

Parasitic obsession sickens the roots of “Eileen,” director William Oldroyd’s adaptation of novelist Ottessa Moshfegh’s slim 2015 chiller. The 1960s-set noir, which played out of competition way back in January at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, stars Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie in career-topping turns. Neon will open the film in limited release on December 1 before going wide on December 8. Watch the official trailer below.

Set in a punishing 1964 winter outside of Boston, “Eileen” centers on the title character, a young secretary played by Thomas McKenzie, who becomes enchanted by the glamorous, blonde new counselor at the prison where she works. Their friendship takes a sinister turn around a recently incarcerated juvenile, now at the institution after his father’s murder, and together Eileen and Rebecca (Hathaway) spark a twisted connection reminiscent of “Carol” meets Hitchcock — especially when you consider Hathaway’s character’s cinematic namesake.

Oldroyd’s second feature...

We’re now just a few days away from the widest release of Martin Scorsese’s career as Killers of the Flower Moon is set to open in around 3,500 theaters in the United States from Paramount and Apple. With the SAG strike underway, the legendary director himself has led the promotional campaign, which means the publishing of several stellar interviews digging deeper into the process.

One of the most interesting bits to arrive about the production of his David Grann adaptation is that Scorsese drew inspiration from Ari Aster when it comes to the project. “I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid,” he told The Irish Times. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie.” While Scorsese’s admiration for Aster is well-documented,...

Based on David Grann’s best-selling crime thriller, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon tells the real-life mystery of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s, who became wealthy after oil was discovered beneath their land. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off, and the ensuing spiral of conspiracy, greed and murder got so bad that the FBI had to step in. It’s a sprawling story with a nearly three-and-a-half-hour runtime, and Martin Scorsese looked to the films of Ari Aster for influence on its pacing.

“I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Beau Is Afraid,” Martin Scorsese told The Irish Times. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People or I Walked With a Zombie. Just going a little slower.

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have been quite open in interviews when discussing the massive “Killers of the Flower Moon” script overhaul that took place during the film’s development. In a new interview with The Irish Times, the director revealed that he and co-writer Eric Roth had been working on the “Flower Moon” script for two whole years when DiCaprio took issue with the approach.

“Myself and [my co-screenwriter] Eric Roth talked about telling the story from the point of view of the bureau agents coming in to investigate,” Scorsese said. “After two years of working on the script, Leo came to me and asked, ‘Where is the heart of this story?’ I had had meetings and dinners with the Osage, and I thought, ‘Well, there’s the story.’ The real story, we felt, was not necessarily coming from the outside, with the bureau, but rather from the inside, from Oklahoma.

Martin Scorsese is crediting Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” for inspiring the pacing and running time of “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Scorsese told The Irish Times that the 206-minute length of “Killers of the Flower Moon” is in line with horror films ranging from auteurs like Aster or Val Lewton. “Killers of the Flower Moon” borrows from a blend of genres like Westerns and horror.

“I very much like the style and pacing of good horror films like Ari Aster’s ‘Midsommar’ or ‘Beau Is Afraid,'” Scorsese said. “The pacing of those films goes back to the B films of Val Lewton, Jacques Tourneur’s ‘Cat People’ or ‘I Walked With a Zombie.’ Just going a little slower, a little quieter.”

Scorsese continued, “I was very concerned about allowing scenes that were not narrative into the story, scenes to do with the Osage culture — leaving in those scenes of custom,...

One of the great unsung traditions of horror is a character’s external environment reflecting their internal state. It has found its way into films as diverse as Repulsion (1965), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), and Relic (2020) to name just a few. Edgar Allan Poe was hardly the first to use the device, it had been a feature of the Gothic romances popular in the decades before him, but Poe moved it from character-deepening subtext to overt metaphor in his short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.”

Roger Corman’s 1960 film adaptation of the story latches onto and expands this and several of Poe’s obsessions into what has become a classic of slow-burning terror. The Fall of the House of Usher is the first in what has come to be called the Corman Poe Cycle. These eight films produced between 1960 and 1964 are among the most stylish,...

Just in time for the spookiest month of the year, Guillermo del Toro shares some of his favorite films from Turner Classic Movies.

The Oscar-winning director discussed his watchlist on the TCM YouTube page, starting with 1941's Suspicion. "One of the main resources of suspense is not knowing," he explained. "And the other one, by the way, is hope. They go hand in hand. And not knowing is the moral of this tale." He lauded Cary Grant's casting as a suspected killer, the way the film explores Joan Fontaine's paranoid psyche and the film's ambiguous ending, which was reshot by director Alfred Hitchcock himself. Fontaine's work would earn her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1941, marking the only Oscar-winning performance in a Hitchcock film.

Related: Guillermo Del Toro Celebrates Over the Garden Wall’s Fall Dominance

Del Toro's next pick was 1931's Freaks, which he called...

Guillermo del Toro doesn’t hold back about his love for his favorite movies. If you’ve spent any time on his Twitter feed over the years, you’ve likely seen him praise Stanley Donen’s use of the color red throughout the late director’s body of work, and hail everything from William Wellman’s 1931 film “Other Men’s Women” to David Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future” from 2022. The man has wide-ranging taste, and a deep awareness of cinematic history that’s informed his own films.

Now he follows Turner Classic Movies advisors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson in giving his own picks from TCM’s lineup, all titles that will be airing in October. Watch the video, exclusive to IndieWire, above.

First up, he picks one of the most sorely underrated titles from Alfred Hitchcock’s filmography, 1941’s “Suspicion,” airing on TCM at 2:00am...

What the fuck is in that jar?

That’s the first question that It Lives Inside throws at you, and the one that has Samida (Never Have I Ever‘s Megan Suri) wondering if it has something to do with the odd behavior of her classmate, Tamira (Mohana Krishnan). Once upon a time, these two first-generation Indian-Americans were the closest of friends. Then, as they got older, Samida started going by “Sam,” began distancing herself from her cultural identity, and chose to hang with a newer, “cooler” (read: Caucasian) crowd.

“The clouds lifted” for cinema’s future recently. At least that was how Martin Scorsese felt after he saw “TÁR,” on which he lavished praise at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner in early January 2023.

That kind of praise means a lot. Scorsese is not just one of the greatest filmmakers of all time: he’s one of its greatest cinephiles. In recent years, he’s become known for the movies — or, as he might say of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “theme parks” — he doesn’t enjoy. But the Oscar-winning director’s favorite films are as wide-ranging in genre, year of release, and national origin as you might imagine, from Ti West’s “Pearl” to the horror flicks of Val Lewton and the works of Senegalese master Djibril Diop Mambety. He’s such an avid-moving watching buff that, in a recent interview with Time Magazine, he admitted he...

Get ready for a spooky season of horror films and shows with streaming services like Max and networks like TCM, AMC, and Shudder. TCM starts the scare early with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho on September 10, followed by a lineup of horror classics throughout October. MeTV and Svengoolie will also be celebrating Halloween with double features and scary episodes from their classic TV portfolio all month long.

"Everyone's entitled to one good scare." As summer slips away, autumn takes hold. And for horror fans, this is a favorite time of the year. Yes, spooky season is near, which means the scary television and movie marathons will soon follow. Streaming services like Max have already taken the initiative by dropping the first eight installments of the Friday the 13th franchise to enjoy anytime. But part of the fun of Halloween is being inundated with all the macabre-inspired content. And Turner Classic Movies (TCM), AMC,...

One of the unique aspects of the horror films produced by Val Lewton at Rko in the 1940s is the seriousness with which they discuss matters of mental illness. Even today, mental health issues are often tiptoed around, but in the forties, they were practically taboo. As discussed in previous entries in this column, Cat People (1942) is largely about repression and The Body Snatcher (1945) deals with guilt, paranoia, and psychopathy. The Seventh Victim (1943), one of the lesser-seen entries in the Lewton cycle, is about loneliness, the depression that stems from it, and suicidal ideation. It externalizes the inner struggles between the light and darkness that use the mind as a battlefield and demand a choice between life and death. Because of the unflinching way The Seventh Victim approaches the subject of suicide, this should be a considered a content warning for the discussion to come later. But first, some background on the film itself.

Somewhere in the middle of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, the eponymous young character (Asa Butterfield) dreams of a catastrophe in which a steam train runs over him, careens through the Gare Montparnasse railway terminal, and takes a nosedive into the street outside. While it isn’t made clear, or mentioned at all after he wakes up, the disaster he dreams about is based on a real crash at the same station that happened in 1895, mere months before the public exhibition of the Lumière brothers’ seminal actuality film Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.

As the persistent but largely embellished filmic chestnut has it, audience members who first witnessed the Lumières’ cinematographic train fled the screening room in Paris in a panic, reacting as if they were in real danger of being run over. If you “print the legend” regarding these perhaps apocryphal, panicking spectators, it’s not too much...