Alam Nyo Ba?

Bruce Campbell has officially closed the door on Ash Williams. The Evil Dead icon, who retired from playing the character in live action years ago, has now confirmed that he won’t even return to provide Ash’s voice in animation.

That is a major change from Campbell’s previous position on the character. For years, Campbell made it clear that while he no longer wanted to put his body through the action sequences required to play Ash in live action, he was still happy to provide the character’s voice. He even saw animation as an ideal way to continue Ash’s story without requiring him to perform the physical stunts. Now, that option is gone, too.

During an exclusive interview with ScreenRant about his new dramedy Ernie & Emma, Campbell was asked about his future with the Evil Dead franchise. His answer was definitive: “Ash is done.”

Campbell went on to confirm that he is “not going to do any animated voice work” for Ash. If the Evil Dead team wants to bring the character back, Campbell said they can find a “Joe Ash soundalike,” adding that there are now ways to recreate his voice. For fans who have been following the possibility of an animated Evil Dead project, that’s a disappointing turn of events.

Bruce Campbell Once Wanted to Voice Ash in an Animated Evil Dead Series

Campbell’s retirement from live-action Ash isn’t new. After portraying the character for roughly four decades across Sam Raimi’s original Evil Dead trilogy and three seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead, Campbell explained that he no longer felt physically capable of handling the action sequences required by the role. But he repeatedly emphasized that voice work was different.

In 2021, Campbell said he would be happy to provide Ash’s voice if an animated Evil Dead series ever happened. At the time, that seemed like the perfect solution: Campbell could continue playing the character without having to perform the demanding physical work that had become a problem. That possibility seemed to become more real over the following years. In 2023, Campbell confirmed that an animated Evil Dead series was being “actively pursued.” He explained that Sam Raimi and his brother Ivan were working on shaping the world for the project and even joked about the prospect of returning as Ash: “My voice hasn’t aged as much as I have.”

Campbell had also previously suggested that an animated series could continue the story of Ash vs Evil Dead, picking up from the show’s futuristic cliffhanger.

In 2024, Campbell confirmed that the animated project was still in development, although he warned that these kinds of productions move very slowly. That history makes his latest statement more consequential. The animated Evil Dead series wasn’t merely something fans imagined Campbell might participate in. Campbell himself had spent years saying he was willing to return as Ash through voice work. Now he says he won’t.

Why Bruce Campbell Changed His Mind About Ash

Campbell’s latest comments come as he continues to step back from the Evil Dead franchise. He remained involved behind the scenes on Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise, serving as an executive producer and providing a vocal cameo. He is also an executive producer on Sébastien Vaniček’s Evil Dead Burn, although he stepped away from the creative process.

Meanwhile, the franchise is increasingly moving beyond Ash Williams. Francis Galluppi’s Evil Dead Wrath will take us back to a time before Ash ever crossed paths with the Deadites, while Burn continues the series’ move toward stories centered on new characters.

Campbell’s involvement has decreased, but for years, the possibility of an animated Ash provided one exception. Fans could reasonably believe that Campbell’s retirement from live action didn’t necessarily mean the end of Ash Williams. His latest comments remove that distinction.

Ash Williams Can Still Return, But Not With Bruce Campbell

Campbell’s retirement doesn’t necessarily mean Ash Williams can never appear again. In fact, Campbell himself acknowledged that the character could be recast, specifically pointing to modern technology that could potentially recreate the sound of his voice. That could theoretically allow Ash to appear in animation, video games, or another form of Evil Dead media without Campbell performing the role.

But it would be a fundamentally different Ash. Ash’s sarcastic delivery, increasingly ridiculous bravado, and distinctive one-liners became inseparable from Campbell’s portrayal over the decades. He now appears to be comfortable letting someone else carry that torch.

After years of leaving the door open for an animated return, Bruce Campbell has finally closed it. Ash Williams isn’t necessarily dead, but Bruce Campbell’s version of Ash appears to be finished.

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Screaming Mad George, the legendary special makeup and creature effects artist whose surreal work was featured in some of the most memorable horror movies of the 1980s and ’90s, has died at the age of 69. His family and representatives announced the news this week, revealing that George actually passed away five months ago, on February 10, 2026. According to a statement from his representatives, George suffered a cardiac arrest after losing consciousness at his home. His family followed emergency responders’ instructions and successfully restored his vital signs before he was transported to intensive care. Surrounded by his loved ones, George remained unconscious and passed away peacefully four days later.

The family chose to keep his death private while they grieved, explaining that they needed time and space to process the loss before sharing the news publicly.

Born Joji Tani in Osaka, Japan, in 1956, George developed a fascination with Japanese genre cinema, supernatural folklore, and horror manga at an early age. He also drew inspiration from artists like Salvador Dalí and Hieronymus Bosch. At 18, he moved alone to New York to pursue a career as a painter and studied fine art at the School of Visual Arts. While attending the school, he also formed the punk band THE MAD and performed as its vocalist at legendary New York clubs including CBGB. His interest in combining music, physical performance, and visual art eventually led him toward special makeup effects.

George’s career changed after he sent a short film to legendary makeup effects artist Rick Baker. Impressed by what he saw, Baker invited George to California. After years of working behind the scenes, George established himself as one of the industry’s most distinctive creature and special makeup effects artists. His professional career began in 1986. Over the following decades, George contributed his unique imagination to films like Society, Bride of Re-Animator, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Big Trouble in Little China, Predator, Spaceballs; Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: The Initiation; Silent Night, Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker; Freaked, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, Space Truckers, and Beyond Re-Animator, among others.

His name became particularly associated with director and producer Brian Yuzna, with whom he collaborated on several genre productions. George’s work on Yuzna’s Society may be his most famous achievement, with the film’s infamous finale showcasing the kind of surreal, grotesque physical transformation that became his signature.

But George never considered himself simply a horror artist. He described himself as a surrealist, explaining that his interest was not in creating grotesque imagery simply for its own sake. Instead, he wanted to explore transformation, imagination, and the possibility of finding beauty beyond conventional reality. That philosophy helped make his work immediately recognizable. His creatures could be horrifying, bizarre, funny, beautiful, and repulsive all at once. They looked as though they had escaped from a nightmare, but also had a strange sense of playfulness and artistry.

George eventually established S.M.G. Inc., his own Hollywood effects studio. The laboratory became an important training ground for younger effects artists, including Greg Nicotero and Robert Kurtzman, who would go on to co-found KNB EFX Group and become major figures in the special effects industry themselves.

In 1991, he stepped behind the camera to co-direct The Guyver, the live-action adaptation of the Japanese manga and anime franchise, alongside Steve Wang. The film allowed George to bring his surrealism to the overall filmmaking process, while showcasing the creature and practical effects work that had made his reputation.

His creativity also extended well beyond feature films. George worked on music videos, live performances, artistic installations, and album projects, and continued making music throughout his life. In 1992, he appeared at EXTASY SUMMIT ’92 at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan as Screaming Mad George & Psychosis. He also directed and produced music videos and worked with numerous musicians. His connection to music and visual art was particularly evident in his work with Marilyn Manson during the Mechanical Animals era, helping create the androgynous, alien appearance of the Omega character.

George was also deeply connected to Japanese horror culture. Among his many unusual projects was his work translating Hideshi Hino’s nightmarish manga The Panorama of Hell for its 1989 English-language edition. The translation retained the original Japanese right-to-left reading format, helping preserve the manga’s intended presentation for English-speaking readers.

In the early 2000s, as computer-generated effects increasingly became part of mainstream filmmaking, George taught himself the technology rather than abandoning the medium. He incorporated digital effects into his own filmmaking, including his project Boy in the Box, treating the emerging technology as another tool in his artistic arsenal.

In 2003, George returned permanently to Osaka and began focusing more heavily on education, mentorship and fine art. He served as a visiting professor at Osaka University of Arts, where he taught and mentored young artists. He also studied Aikido and became a certified instructor of the Russian martial art Systema, eventually establishing a Systema club at the university. He continued exhibiting his artwork in Japan, including the Special Hallucinogenic Art Show: Screaming Mad George Exhibition at Abeno Harukas in Osaka in 2019. His final years remained creatively active. In October 2025, he held another solo exhibition in Tokyo, Screaming Mad George: Hallucinogenic Art Show, and appeared at Tokyo Comic Con in December.

According to his representatives, George’s health had begun declining around 2024. He experienced increasing difficulty walking and eventually used a wheelchair while dealing with chronic pain and respiratory illness. Despite those challenges, he continued teaching and creating art until the final months of his life.

Behind the outrageous imagery and larger-than-life persona was, according to those who knew him, a warm, generous and deeply compassionate man. His representatives described him as cheerful and approachable, while emphasizing the humility and work ethic that existed alongside his extraordinary talent.

George reportedly worked at an almost relentless pace during his years in Hollywood, sometimes sleeping only three or four hours a night and taking very little time away from his work. He also made a point of looking after the people who worked for him, even during difficult periods when he went without income himself. His legacy can be seen not only in the unforgettable creatures and transformations he created, but in the artists he inspired and mentored along the way.

Screaming Mad George leaves behind his wife, Miki, and their daughter, Alice. A memorial gathering is planned for the first anniversary of his passing, with additional details to be announced.

For horror fans, practical-effects artists and filmmakers, the loss of Screaming Mad George marks the passing of a singular creative voice. His work gave physical form to nightmares that could not have existed in quite the same way through any other artist’s imagination.

Our deepest condolences go out to George’s wife Miki, his daughter Alice, his extended family, friends, former colleagues, students, and all of the fans around the world who were inspired by his work, which will continue to inspire artists and horror fans for generations to come.

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Cody

What do you do when you’ve had huge success with a movie about a Marvel Comics vampire hunter? For the makers of Blade, the answer was obvious: get Guillermo del Toro to direct a sequel that’s darker, weirder, and maybe somewhat cooler, even though Morbius had to be written out. The film goes deeper into horror territory while introducing a disturbing and disgusting new breed of vampire. Enemies have to team up. Familiar faces return, but can they be trusted? And will Blade ever get laid? Let’s cut this sucker open and find out what happened to Blade II.

Development

Screenwriter David S. Goyer teamed up with star Wesley Snipes, producer Peter Frankfurt, and director Stephen Norrington to bring the Marvel adaptation Blade to the screen. The story of a badass vampire hunter went over well with the audience and was a hit for distributor New Line Cinema. Made on a budget of forty-five million, the film earned over one hundred and thirty-one million at the box office.

Goyer had always envisioned a trilogy – and with box office like that, it was almost guaranteed that he would have the chance to make his trilogy. But that doesn’t mean Blade II would be the sequel he always had in mind.

Some of the ideas Goyer had involved time travel and a vampire apocalypse, along with the introduction of allies from the comics, like Hannibal King. But those early story ideas were scrapped, and Hannibal King got pushed into the third movie. Goyer’s back-up idea was to have Blade fight Morbius, a Marvel character who became a pseudo-vampire by conducting scientific experiments on himself. But Marvel wouldn’t let him use Morbius.

So he came up with a story that would involve a different sort of scientifically created vampire.

Story

Blade II tells us that, contrary to what the first movie led us to believe, Blade’s mentor Whistler is not dead. He turned into a vampire and has been held captive by bloodsuckers in Europe for the last year. After a long search, Blade catches up with Whistler in Prague, rescuing him and curing his vampirism.

Just as Whistler is settling in with Blade and his new sidekick Scud, another group of vampires shows up at their hideout… not to attack, but to ask for their help. They claim that the vampire virus has mutated, creating new creatures called Reapers, though we’ll later find out that the Reaper strain was created in a lab. These monsters can infect vampires and humans alike with their bites, and they’re led by Jared Nomak, who has a vendetta against regular bloodsuckers, especially the Nosferatu-like vampire overlord Eli Damaskinos.

An elite group of vampires called the Bloodpack has been assembled and trained to fight Blade… but now they need to team up with him to wipe out the Reapers before their infection spreads. So we have Blade working with vampires to fight even worse vampires. But all is not as it seems.

Finding a Director

The cool visual style Norrington brought to the first movie had been a key component in its success. But apparently, Norrington wasn’t interested in coming back for a sequel, which was fine with Goyer and Frankfurt because they had a different director in mind from the start. They wanted Blade II to have more of a horror edge, to be more suspenseful and scarier than its predecessor. And they thought the perfect director to bring the horror and scares would be Guillermo del Toro.

If you’ve ever wondered why nearly four years passed between the first two Blade movies, this was a big part of the delay: New Line Cinema was hesitant to sign off on the idea of del Toro directing Blade II. At the time, he was seen as an arthouse director. He had made the lower-budgeted genre movies Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone – and while he tried to work in the studio system with Mimic, it hadn’t been a good experience. None of his movies had been fast-paced or action-packed, so New Line saw no indication that he could be a good action director.

Del Toro was a fan of the first movie and even thought it was underrated, but it also took a while for him to agree to work on the sequel. He had never been interested in making a sequel to somebody else’s movie before. So when Goyer sent him the script, he just gave him some notes. Then Goyer integrated those notes and sent him the new draft. Del Toro gave him some more helpful suggestions. Goyer did more revisions – and the third time the script was sent to del Toro, he agreed to direct the film, if New Line would have him. It wasn’t until Wesley Snipes said he wanted del Toro to make the movie that New Line went along with the idea.

Del Toro’s Vision

Del Toro told Fangoria that he signed on for Blade II because he was “very curious about trying to do a new type of vampire that takes away the sympathetic, charming angle we’ve become so familiar with in the post-Anne Rice era. I wanted to do a completely unglamorous type of vampire, like a bottom feeder, and treat it almost like an animal.”

After making the deeply personal The Devil’s Backbone, he also wanted to work on “something light that would not demand enormous amounts of emotional investment, just like a joyride. I was completely drained and wanted to go into an amusement park, and that’s what this is.”

He was ready to prove that he was capable of directing action. And he wanted to challenge himself, because this was the first time he’d be directing a script he didn’t write: the challenge of executing someone else’s imagination. With his stories, he always relied on atmosphere, making things that were slow-moving and eerie. Goyer had written a fast-paced script, and del Toro would have to deliver a fast movie, one that would include edgy, nasty moments like the first one but wouldn’t go too far with the violence. As he put it, “We’re trying to make things fun. Whatever violence exists in the movie exists on a comic book or cartoon level.”

He wanted to bring a heightened, comic book style to every aspect of the film, from the violence to the visuals. His goal was for the imagery in Blade II to be one hundred percent comic book style – and to achieve that, he brought in comic book artists Mike Mignola, Tim Bradstreet, and Wayne Barlowe to draw designs. Barlowe was the one who came up with the look of the Reapers, which were then brought to life by legendary effects artist Steve Johnson. These things have chins that split open to reveal tentacle-suckers, they inject victims with a neurotoxin, and they’re more difficult to kill than the average vampire: their hearts are encased in bone, and they’re immune to silver and garlic.

Cast

Blade II was the first time Wesley Snipes came back to play one of his characters in a sequel. For this one, he was interested in playing a Blade that had become more comfortable with his half-vampire nature and had loosened up a bit. He even changed up the character’s fighting style, making him faster and less focused on traditional martial arts moves and poses, to reflect how comfortable he had become.

Asked why he enjoyed playing Blade so much, he explained, “He has all the freedoms of a bad guy without the restrains of a good guy, and that’s always fun to play. The opportunity to wear the costume and the outfits and be in a genre movie, at the same time doing martial arts – that’s very appealing to me. And that he is a kind of short-on-words, big-on-action type of guy is very appealing to me too. I’m much more verbose than he is, and more of a wuss.”

Snipes was also happy that the sequel would be an ensemble mission movie, with the set-up drawing comparisons to The Dirty Dozen or The Guns of Navarone, but with vampires. He felt it was a better approach to have Blade take on a number of different villains, rather than having just one villain try to live up to the first movie’s Deacon Frost.

A great cast was assembled around Snipes. Starting with Kris Kristofferson, who was surprised to have the chance to play Whistler again. He thought the guy was dead. Norman Reedus plays Scud, the young man who has been working with Blade in Whistler’s absence and is highly suspicious of Whistler when he returns.

The Bloodpack consists of Danny John-Jules as Asad; martial arts movie legend Donnie Yen – who was, unfortunately, given very little to do – as Snowman; Daz Crawford as a hammer-wielding vampire called Lighthammer; Marit Velle Kile as Lighthammer’s significant other Verlaine; Tony Curran as Priest, who doesn’t like any vampires that aren’t purebloods; del Toro regular Ron Perlman as Reinhardt, who gives Blade a hard time and gets an explosive device stuck on his head in response; Matt Schulze, who had a minor role as a different character in the first movie, as Chupa; and Leonor Varela as Nyssa, daughter of the ancient Eli Damaskinos, who’s played by Thomas Kretschmann.

Nyssa is the one Blade is really able to connect with – and their connection was even deeper in early drafts of the script. While Blade II was in pre-production, Goyer spoke with RevolutionSF and teased “Blade gets laid” in the sequel. Blade and Nyssa were supposed to be a romantic pairing, but that didn’t make it into the finished film.

Villain

Played by Luke Goss, Jared Nomak is the danger at the heart of the story. The Reaper infection can’t be allowed to spread… but Nomak isn’t the clear-cut “big bad,” either. As the story goes on, you find out how he became this monster and come to understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. It’s a Guillermo del Toro movie, so it’s no surprise to have a sympathetic monster somewhere in the mix.

Production

When a director doesn’t have action experience, they’ll often hand all of the action off to a second unit director. But del Toro won New Line over so much, they let him direct everything. From dialogue scenes to action sequences and even minor inserts, del Toro shot it all. And he proved that he was up for the challenge. He brought the darker, more suspenseful moments Goyer and Frankfurt hoped he would – and he also proved to be an awesome action director. There are impressive fight scenes throughout the movie, with Blade taking on a whole lot of vampires and Reapers. The scene where he battles Damaskinos goons after being reinvigorated in a blood bath is especially cool, along with, of course, the final fight between Blade and Nomak.

Release and Legacy

Blade II filmed in the Czech Republic from March 12th to July 2nd, 2001, aiming for release the following year. While the first movie came out at the end of summer in 1998, the sequel was scheduled to reach theatres on March 22, 2002. That would have been a negative sign for some. March was seen as something of a dumping ground for lesser movies around that time. But New Line Cinema had success releasing the franchise-starting horror movie Final Destination in March of 2000, so why not try putting a Blade movie out in that month?

It turned out to be a great decision.

Made on a budget of 54 million dollars, Blade II surpassed the first movie at the box office, pulling in a worldwide total of over 154 million. It was enough to get the third film in the trilogy on the fast track to production – and since that movie didn’t do as well when it was released in 2004, Blade II remains the highest-grossing film in the franchise.

Conclusion

Moviegoers wanted to see more of Blade, and del Toro gave them more in one of the best sequels fans could have possibly hoped for. Goyer and Norrington made this look easy with the ‘98 film, and del Toro did the same with the sequel… but when you see how Goyer himself fumbled the trilogy capper Blade: Trinity, it becomes clear: this Blade business wasn’t as simple as it seemed.

Guillermo del Toro wasn’t the obvious choice to direct the Blade sequel, but he turned out to be the perfect choice.

A couple of previous episodes of this show can be seen below. For more, check out the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel—and don’t forget to subscribe!

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PLOT: Friends embark on a dream vacation of parties and diving, but their trip takes a terrifying turn when criminals attack them at sea.

REVIEW: 2026 has been the year of the shark movie, and the bar has been considerably low. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult to just give us some sharks killing people in a fun way, but the focus always seems to be in the wrong place. Above & Below attempts to change up the formula a bit, with the threats of the criminals on the surface and the sharks in the water. It’s not safe anywhere. Add in Antonio Banderas as a charismatic crime boss, and this manages to do what so many other shark films this year have not: actually be fun.

Above & Below follows a group of friends as they head out on a shark diving excursion. Unfortunately for them, they’re sharing the boat with a group of criminals, who aren’t too happy when their crimes are discovered. Now, they’re being forced to retrieve something for the criminals in the shark-infested waters. It’s a simple premise that feels like a mish-mash of several films we’ve seen before, but that’s okay: the main point is that we’re getting sharks attacking people. Mostly.

Oddly enough, what works here is how stupid the characters are. I was constantly laughing at the awful decisions they were making. The acting rides the line of being bad but is never so awful that it’s cringey. Though the underwater dialogue was clearly ADR’d, the actor’s performances don’t really match between the booth and the scene. They give Laura Marano‘s Tatiana enough agency, but it results in her looking extremely ignorant and lucky rather than actually skilled. But that’s where so much of my enjoyment came from: watching these people do stupid things and pay the consequences. They never seem to understand the severity of their situation.

It’s so weird to go from seeing Antonio Banderas in Tony to then seeing him here, but that’s just the life of an actor. Banderas seems to be having a blast as Burns, and his distorted criminal perspective provides a lot of the humor. He has a twisted perspective and logic that makes him appropriately unpredictable. It really made me want him in more villainous roles, and he’s easily the best part of the film. Louis Mandylor makes for the perfect unhinged henchman, bringing just the right amount of sleaziness and danger. It’s really the bad guys that make this a more entertaining time.

Any shark movie rides and dies on its FX, and Above & Below is fairly competent in that regard. In fact, I’d say these are the best Shark FX we’ve gotten in quite some time. They make sure to hide it amongst the darkness of the ocean. While I do wish they had had a practical element, the sharks aren’t interacting with the cast enough for that to be completely necessary. And I liked that they didn’t act entirely sentient and seemed mostly food-motivated. Hilariously, more people die due to gunshots than by shark attacks. The ones we do get are very quick and not overly bloody. Though there are some pretty nasty aftermaths of ripped apart bodies.

One of my chief complaints about so many shark movies these days is that they don’t know how to have fun. They end up taking themselves too seriously. Above & Below embraces the silliness, with even the characters not understanding the gravity of their situation. At one point, one of the girl’s is freaking out about sharks outside the cage potentially getting in, and gets talked down by someone who’s literally free swimming outside of it. Unfortunately, there’s nothing outright scary here, despite the sharks actually being handled well. The tension is cut by the fact that the characters aren’t worth rooting for. This is most certainly a “cheer when this person dies” type of film.

Sadly, Above & Below features far too little actual shark action. They are merely treated as obstacles versus the main threat of the film. Even the characters don’t seem to treat them with the same level of urgency that they do the criminals up top. I’m conflicted because this was just the right level of campy but I needed more shark action. This isn’t a great film, but it’s the kind of B-movie entertainment I want from my ocean monster cinema.

Above & Below is now playing in theaters!

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Talk about bad timing! That’s what I’d say plagued André Øvredal’s Passenger, the horror flick Paramount released earlier this summer — on May 22nd. It had the terrible misfortune of opening smack-dab between the two biggest horror sleeper sensations in recent years, Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, both of which grossed over $200 million domestically. By contrast, Passenger was only able to scrape out about $18 million total, as horror fans were too caught up with those other movies to give it a fair shake (our critic was lukewarm on it).

Now, Passenger is being given a second chance, with it setting its Paramount Plus streaming date for August 20th. No doubt the studio is hoping to take advantage of the dog days of summer and bring some attention to a movie they had high enough hopes for that they gave it a wide summer theatrical release. Passenger stars Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell as “a young couple who, after witnessing a gruesome highway accident, soon realize they did not leave the crash scene alone. A demonic presence called the Passenger has latched onto them, and won’t stop until it claims them both, turning their van life adventure into a nightmare.”

André Øvredal has helmed a solid number of well-received horror flicks, including the underrated The Autopsy of Jane Doe, as well as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. His last film, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, didn’t make much of an impact, with it having suffered a number of release date delays. Passenger had a smoother ride to theaters and might have fared better at the box office had it not had to go up against Obsession and Backrooms. Now that it will be streaming, perhaps horror fans who are signed up with Paramount Plus will give it a shot.

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The Descent director Neil Marshall and actress Charlotte Kirk are teaming up again for a new psychological thriller, Deadline reports. Kirk is set to star in The Spiral Down, marking the fifth collaboration between Kirk and Marshall.

Marshall, Kirk, and Karlos Ways (Christmas & Chaos) are producing the privately backed feature, with Kirk producing through Primal Empire Studios. Aaron Mirtes (Whiskey Run) will be directing. Production is scheduled to begin in Kentucky next month, with additional casting currently underway.

In The Spiral Down, Kirk plays Mary Doyle, a woman who is kidnapped by a serial killer with an obsession with perfection. However, the situation takes an unexpected turn when detectives investigating the disappearance discover that Mary is not the helpless victim they initially believed her to be. Mary is actually a dangerous escapee from a psychiatric institution with a violent past of her own. After killing her captor and vanishing without a trace, she becomes the focus of a much larger investigation, forcing law enforcement to reconsider exactly who the real threat is.

Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk Are Frequent Collaborators

The Spiral Down continues a creative partnership between Marshall and Kirk. The pair previously worked together on The Reckoning, The Lair, Duchess, and most recently Compulsion.

Marshall is best known for directing the 2005 horror movie The Descent, as well as films including Dog Soldiers, Doomsday, Centurion, and Hellboy. He has also directed numerous television projects, including episodes of Game of Thrones, Westworld, Hannibal, and Lost in Space.

Kirk has appeared in several of Marshall’s films and has continued building a filmography heavily populated by horror, thriller, and genre projects. Her upcoming movies include the horror film The Possession of Gladstone Manor, opposite Caylee Cowan, Jesse Metcalfe and Lin Shaye, as well as the horror comedy Catnip, which co-stars Jake Busey, and the horror thriller The Last Bride. Kirk also stars in the romantic comedy Christmas and Chaos with Jason Isaacs and the suspense thriller Night Driver, which features Josh Lucas.

With production on The Spiral Down approaching, more casting and details about the film are expected to be announced soon.

What do you think of Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk teaming up again for The Spiral Down? Let us know in the comments.

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Peacock has unveiled two new posters for Crystal Lake, offering fresh looks at Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees and Callum Vinson as young Jason Voorhees in the highly anticipated Friday the 13th prequel series. Crystal Lake will premiere with all eight episodes on Peacock on October 15, 2026.

You can check out the newly released posters below.

The posters put the mother-and-son relationship at the center of Peacock’s new take on the Friday the 13th mythology. Cardellini plays a younger version of Pamela Voorhees, the character originally portrayed by Betsy Palmer in the 1980 Friday the 13th, while Vinson plays Jason before he became the masked killer fans know from the franchise.

Based on the mythology established by the original films, Crystal Lake takes place before the events of Friday the 13th and explores Pamela’s life as a mother to young Jason. Rather than immediately dropping viewers into the familiar summer camp slasher formula, the series is designed as a deeper exploration of the people and history surrounding Crystal Lake.

The official synopsis reads:

Crystal Lake is a prequel to the Friday the 13th franchise that explores Pamela Voorhees’ life before the events of the original film. The series follows single mother Pam Voorhees, who is struggling with grief nearly a year after her young, sickly son Jason tragically drowned in Crystal Lake. When two strangers arrive at Pam’s door investigating her past, a disturbing chain of events begins. The people of Crystal Lake are soon left wondering exactly who Pamela Voorhees really is.

The new images arrive shortly after Crystal Lake showrunner Brad Caleb Kane promised that the series will eventually deliver the kind of bloody slasher horror longtime Friday the 13th fans are looking for. Kane explained that the early episodes take a different approach, incorporating elements of a paranoid conspiracy thriller and psychological drama before Pamela eventually goes “full Friday the 13th.” He also teased a series of kills designed to satisfy fans of the original movies. The series isn’t simply telling another story about a killer at a summer camp. It’s exploring the woman who would eventually become one of horror’s most infamous murderers and the tragedy that shaped her.

Cardellini has also discussed the challenge of following Palmer’s iconic performance. Rather than attempting to imitate the original Pamela, she said she wanted to capture the character’s devotion to Jason and explore the relationship that eventually leads to the woman audiences meet in Friday the 13th.

The series is expected to be packed with connections to the original franchise. Kane has promised that Crystal Lake will feature numerous Friday the 13th Easter eggs, including some references that go beyond simple background details. “We re-create things,” Kane previously teased, while declining to reveal exactly what fans should expect.

Crystal Lake was originally ordered by Peacock in 2022, with Bryan Fuller attached as writer and showrunner. Fuller eventually departed the project in 2024, with Kane taking over creative duties.

Alongside Cardellini and Vinson, the cast includes William Catlett as Police Chief Levon Brooks, as well as Devin Kessler, Cameron Scoggins, and Gwendolyn Sundstrom.

The series has also been selected for the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival. Warner Bros. Discovery has acquired the series for HBO Max across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, while Sky and Now will carry it in the UK and Ireland.

Are you looking forward to Crystal Lake? Take a look at the posters, then let us know in the comments.

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