The loud story this week is a franchise chainsaw revving back to life in a multiplex near you. The interesting stories are quieter and stranger, scattered across a Miami festival lineup, a content moderator’s screen full of footage she should not be watching, and a summer camp in the woods where the counselors know a little magic. Big horror had a good week. Small horror had a better one. Here are the five stories worth your attention.
1. Evil Dead Burn Reaches U.S. Theaters
The sixth Evil Dead film opens in American theaters today, July 10, and it arrives two weeks ahead of schedule after Warner Bros. pulled the date up from July 24. Studios do not move a release earlier unless they like what they have.
Evil Dead Burn comes from French director Sébastien Vaniček, who earned the job on the strength of his debut Infested, the one where a Paris apartment block fills up with spiders. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert produce through Ghost House Pictures, with Bruce Campbell and Evil Dead Rise director Lee Cronin listed as executive producers. Souheila Yacoub leads, playing a woman who goes looking for comfort with her in-laws after losing her husband and finds the Deadites instead. It shot in New Zealand and it is rated R for reasons the series has never been shy about.
This is the third standalone entry after the 2013 remake and Rise, and the pattern is holding: hand the Necronomicon to a new director, change the location, keep the blood volume non-negotiable. Vaniček is a real filmmaker, not a hired hand, which is the only reason a sixth film in a forty-five-year-old series should make anyone sit up.
The franchise keeps living because it keeps moving. This one moved to July 10.
2. John Goodman Joins the Creature Feature Skeletons
Casting news does not usually stop me, but this one did. John Goodman has signed on to Skeletons, the horror film JT Mollner is directing next, and he joins a cast already carrying Brie Larson, Kyle Gallner, Willa Fitzgerald, and Ione Skye. Deadline confirmed the deal this week, and Bloody Disgusting had it too.
Mollner made Strange Darling, so Gallner reuniting with him is the part genre people will circle first. The story follows a young boy who works out that his mother is hiding something monstrous under her skin. Brian Duffield wrote the script, adapting a short story by Philip Fracassi, and Sony reportedly paid twenty-five million dollars for worldwide rights at the European Film Market. J.J. Abrams is producing through Bad Robot, with FilmNation’s Infrared label financing.
That is a strange, specific pile of talent for a movie about a kid and his mom. Goodman has done this before, quietly and well, in 10 Cloverfield Lane and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. His presence tends to mean a film has grown-ups in the room. Production ramps up over the summer.
Larson and Goodman have now shared a screen three times. The first two did not involve anyone hiding a second face.
3. Popcorn Frights Reveals a Ridiculously Good First Wave
Here is where the week gets fun. The 12th Popcorn Frights Film Festival announced its first wave on July 9, and the South Florida fest is stacking old and new in a way that should embarrass festivals with ten times the budget. It runs August 6 through 16 across two Fort Lauderdale theaters, with a virtual program for everyone stuck elsewhere.
Opening night is a Yeon Sang-ho double bill: the premiere of his Cannes zombie picture Colony, paired with a 4K restoration of Train to Busan on its tenth anniversary. From there the retro slate does a lot of heavy lifting. Michael Ironside is showing up in person for the 45th anniversary of David Cronenberg’s Scanners. John Waters’ Polyester screens in Odorama, which means scratch-and-sniff cards and a room full of people voluntarily smelling the worst moments of a 1981 comedy. There is a live shadowcast of Little Shop of Horrors.
The premieres matter too. The Florida Focus program includes Gator Face, a swamp-set nightmare shot with real alligators and, per the festival, zero CGI or AI. A second wave lands next week.
A festival that pairs Cronenberg with odorama understands the assignment. Buy the badge.
4. The Faces of Death Remake Lands on Shudder
Speaking of updating something disreputable. Daniel Goldhaber’s remake of Faces of Death starts streaming on Shudder today, July 10, after a theatrical run this spring. Goldhaber made How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Cam, so this is not a cash-in. It is a real filmmaker taking on one of the most notorious titles in the mondo canon.
The 1978 original was a stitched-together reel of real and faked death footage that spent decades getting banned, bootlegged, and whispered about on schoolyards. Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei move the whole idea online. Barbie Ferreira plays a content moderator who starts finding videos that look like restagings of murders from the old tape, and then has to work out whether she is watching fiction or a crime happening in real time. Dacre Montgomery, Josie Totah, Jermaine Fowler, and Charli XCX fill out the cast.
Taking a film that was always about the ethics of watching and pointing it at the people paid to watch the worst of the internet is a sharp move. It hits Shudder and AMC+ today.
The premise was disturbing in 1978 for pretending. It is worse now for being plausible.
5. Avalon Fast’s Camp Slips Onto VOD
Save the strangest for last. Camp, the second feature from Honeycomb director Avalon Fast, reaches VOD today, July 10, after a run in select theaters courtesy of Dark Sky Films. Dread Central had the date this week.
It is a sapphic horror movie about a young woman named Emily, played by Zola Grimmer, who carries the guilt of two early tragedies to a summer camp for troubled youth. The counselors take her in without judgment. Then a voice starts calling from deep in the trees, telling her to go home. Fast made it on a micro budget in a remote forest, and the festival circuit paid attention. It won Best Feature in Fantastic Fest’s Next Wave competition and picked up Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
The names behind it are worth a squint too. The executive producers include Peter Kuplowsky of In a Violent Nature and Psycho Goreman and Michael Peterson of Harpoon. This is exactly the sort of small, handmade, queer horror that usually takes half a year to reach anyone outside the festival crowd. It is on VOD tonight instead.
What Are You Watching?
A franchise sequel, a marquee casting coup, a festival flexing on everyone, a nasty little mondo remake landing on Shudder, and a witchy Canadian gem that earned its spot the hard way. That is a healthy week, and it says something that the deepest cuts are the ones I keep thinking about. Tell me where you land. Are you first in line for Evil Dead Burn tonight, saving your money for a Popcorn Frights badge, or lighting a candle for Camp? Meet me in the comments.
