Eight months of horror releases down, four to go! We’re officially entering the “spooky season” portion of the year, the build-up to our favorite holiday, Halloween, and with our 2024 Fall Horror Movie Preview, we’re looking ahead at some of the horror movies we can’t wait to check out in the remaining months of this year. For now, we’re only including movies that have a known release date, so films like the remakes/reboots of The Toxic Avenger and Witchboard are currently absent because they don’t have a release date yet, even though they might still show up at some point in 2024. Below, you’ll find a list of the movies we’re anxious to see this Halloween season and beyond… so, here we go:
SPEAK NO EVIL – Theatrical, September 13
Director James Watkins and Blumhouse have teamed up to bring us a remake of the 2022 Danish film Gæsterne, a.k.a. Speak No Evil – and if this is as intense as the original film was, it sounds like it’s going to be a real endurance challenge for a lot of viewers. The story centers on “a family who takes a dream holiday to an idyllic country house, only to have the vacation turn into a psychological nightmare,” and the cast includes James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scott McNairy, Aisling Franciosi, and Alix West Lefler. You can watch our interviews with Watkins, McAvoy, Davis, and McNairy HERE.
SUBSERVIENCE – Digital/VOD, September 13
Megan Fox and director S.K. Dale, who previously worked together on the thriller Till Death (about a woman who has to deal with a pair of killers while handcuffed to the corpse of her husband), have reteamed for a sci-fi thriller that sees Fox taking on the role of a lifelike artificially intelligent android who is purchased by a struggling father to handle the housework when his wife gets sick… and, of course, this AI android ends up becoming both self-aware and a danger to the man and his family.
THE SUBSTANCE – Theatrical, September 20
Seven years after director Coralie Fargeat made her feature directorial debut with a very cool revenge movie that was appropriately titled Revenge, Fargeat has returned with The Substance, which has been described as an explosive feminist take on body horror. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, a past-her-prime A-lister who takes an injection of a drug called the Substance and is reborn as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue (Margaret Qualley). Problem is, they have to share equal time, spending one week in the body of Elisabeth, the next in the body of Sue, then back to Elisabeth, etc. Dennis Quaid co-stars as a repellent studio head named Harvey, a role that Ray Liotta had signed on to play right before he passed away. JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray gave The Substance a 9/10 review.
NEVER LET GO – Theatrical, September 20
The latest film from genre regular Alexandre Aja stars Halle Berry as a mother struggling to raise her two young sons in a world that has been taken over by a mysterious evil. If they even want to step outside, they have to be tethered to each other with ropes… So, of course, this is a situation that’s just waiting to fall apart. Aja’s previous directing credits include High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Mirrors, Piranha 3D, Horns, The 9th Life of Louis Drax, Crawl, and Oxygen, so there’s no way we’re going to miss Never Let Go.
AZRAEL – Theatrical, September 27
Samara Weaving has earned “modern genre icon” status through her roles in the likes of Ready or Not, Mayhem, The Babysitter, Guns Akimbo, Scream VI, and episodes of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and she’ll be back in horror territory with the action horror film Azrael, which was recently picked up by IFC Films and the Shudder streaming service. Directed by E.L. Katz from a screenplay by You’re Next and The Guest writer Simon Barrett, this one sees Weaving taking on the role of a young woman fighting for her life against a devout female-led community that wants to sacrifice her to an ancient evil.
BAGMAN – Theatrical, September 27
Colm McCarthy, who previously directed The Girl With All the Gifts, pits Sam Claflin of Peaky Blinders and Daisy Jones & the Six against “his deepest inner fear” in this film, which is about a father who has to fight to protect his family when “the childhood monster he once vanquished returns to haunt him.” Not only does this involve facing off with a supernatural being that carries a bag like the title promises, but the marketing materials reveal there’s some creepy doll action in there as well.
APARTMENT 7A – Paramount+, September 27
The folks at Platinum Dunes never shied away from the challenge of having their work directly compared to horror classics; this is the company that brought us remakes and reboots of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Now they’ve teamed up with their A Quiet Place director John Krasinski to produce a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby. Natalie Erika James directed the film, which stars Julia Garner as Terry, a struggling young dancer who is taken in by peculiar, well-connected, older couple after she suffers an injury. This couple lives in the luxurious apartment building known as the Bramford… and anyone who has seen Rosemary’s Baby will know that things aren’t going to turn out well in Apartment 7A.
HOLD YOUR BREATH – Hulu, October 3
Formerly known as Dust, this horror thriller starring American Horror Story regular Sarah Paulson marks the feature directorial debut of directors William Joines and Karrie Crouse. The story is set in 1930s Oklahoma, when a woman played by Paulson becomes convinced that a sinister presence is threatening her family while they’re trapped by increasingly perilous dust storms. Paulson is joined in the cast by Amiah Miller (War for the Planet of the Apes), Bill Heck (I Know What You Did Last Summer TV series), Annaleigh Ashford (Masters of Sex), and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear).
IT’S WHAT’S INSIDE – Netflix, October 4
Executive produced by Fear the Walking Dead cast member Colman Domingo, It’s What’s Inside earned a lot of positive reviews after having its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival at the start of this year. (You can read an 8/10 review from JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray right HERE.) The Netflix streaming service quickly picked up the distribution rights for $17 million – and their subscribers will be able to celebrate the Halloween season by watching this story of a pre-wedding party that descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend shows up with a mysterious suitcase.
MONSTER SUMMER – Theatrical, October 4
Director David Henrie’s fantasy adventure / family horror film Monster Summer stars Mason Thames of The Black Phone as a young boy who comes to suspect that a supernatural entity is hunting the children of Martha’s Vineyard, so he seeks the help of an aging detective – and for many viewers, the actor playing that aging detective will be the main selling point of the movie. It’s Mel Gibson! Monster Summer may be aimed at a younger audience, but we can’t pass up the opportunity to see Mel Gibson deal with the supernatural.
TERRIFIER 3 – Theatrical, October 11
Terrifier 3 may be reaching theatres in time for Halloween, but unlike its predecessors this one is not set on Halloween. Instead, the setting is moving a couple months, over to Christmastime. Writer/director Damien Leone had a budget of around $55,000 to work with on the first Terrifier movie, and a budget of “a little over” $250,000 for Terrifier 2 – which was so successful, a “couple million” is going into the budget of Terrifier 3. Art the Clown (David Howard Thornton) will be spilling more blood and facing off against heroine Sienna (Lauren LaVera) again, and Leone said he’s aiming to make this one shorter and less mystical than the second film.
SMILE 2 – Theatrical, October 18
Smile writer/director Parker Finn’s said that if he were to make a sequel to his 2022 horror hit, he would want to make sure it’s “new, exciting, fresh” rather than just a retread of its predecessor. The freshness begins with the casting of Naomi Scott – who was not in Smile – as the lead character in Smile 2, a pop star who begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events while gearing up for her new world tour.
DIE ALONE – Theatrical, digital/VOD, October 18
The latest film from WolfCop and Another WolfCop director Lowell Dean, Die Alone drops Frank Grillo of the Purge franchise and Carrie-Anne Moss of the Matrix franchise into a post-apocalyptic world that has been reclaimed by nature and overrun by mysterious creatures, which we’ve previously heard described as “zombie-like monsters.” And the idea of getting to see Frank Grillo and Carrie-Anne Moss fight zombie-like monsters is enough to get us interested in adding this one to our list of Halloween season must-sees.
DON’T MOVE – Netflix, October 25
Produced by genre legend Sam Raimi and directed by Adam Schindler and Brian Netto, who directed episodes of the Raimi-produced anthology series 50 States of Fright, Don’t Move stars Yellowstone cast member Kelsey Asbille as a woman who is injected with a paralytic agent by a killer and “must run, fight and hide before her body completely shuts down.” Sounds interesting, and the involvement of Sam Raimi is enough to make this one a must-see for many genre fans.
TIME CUT – Netflix, October 30
Freaky collaborators Michael Kennedy and Christopher Landon have teamed up again to bring us Time Cut, which has been described as “Back to the Future meets Scream.” Kennedy wrote the Time Cut script with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend story editor Sono Patel and Landon produced the film, which has been directed by Hannah MacPherson, director of Sickhouse and the Into the Dark film Pure. Madison Bailey of Outer Banks and Antonia Gentry of Ginny & Georgia star in the film, which is about a teenage girl going back in time to the early 2000s to stop the murder of her sister from ever happening. We were already sold as soon as we saw the “Back to the Future meets Scream” description.
SALEM’S LOT – Max, October
Including this one on the list is a bit of a cheat, as it doesn’t have an official, specific release date as of this writing – but director Gary Dauberman has assured that world that his Stephen King adaptation will be released through the Max streaming service this October, after spending a couple of years sitting on a shelf at Warner Bros., so we’re taking his word for it. For a while, genre fans were worried that Warner Bros. was going to scrap the finished film and make it another one of their tax write-off situations, but it looks like the vampire movie is actually going to be released, unlike Batgirl. This is the third adaptation of Salem’s Lot. The previous two were both mini-series, which aired in 1979 and 2004.
NIGHTBITCH – Theatrical, December 6
Amy Adams stars in this darkly comic “neo-horror” movie, written and directed by Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) and based on a novel by Rachel Yoder. The lead character is a stay-at-home suburban mom who begins to suspect that she might be turning into a dog… and that’s about all we know about this one so far. Scott McNairy plays Adams’ “oft-traveling husband,” while Mary Holland takes on an unspecified role.
Y2K – Theatrical, December 6
The feature directorial debut of Saturday Night Live veteran Kyle Mooney, the apocalyptic horror comedy is another A24 release. This one takes us back to the last day of December 1999, when the world was concerned that technology was going to crash when the calendar switched over to 2000. Things do go terribly wrong in Mooney’s movie, but not in the way anyone was expecting back in ’99. Instead, he has his characters – which include the likes of Jaeden Martell (Stephen King’s It), Rachel Zegler (West Side Story), Julian Dennison (Hunt for the Wilderpeople), and Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst – fighting for their lives against rebellious machines.
NOSFERATU – Theatrical, December 25
Nine years have gone by since it was first announced that The Witch director Robert Eggers was going to be writing and directing a remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu. At the end of this year, we’re finally going to be able to see what Eggers – who made The Lighthouse and The Northman in the interim – has done with the concept. Bill Skarsgard (It) plays the title character and is joined in the cast by Lily-Rose Depp (The Idol), Nicholas Hoult (Renfield), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train), Emma Corrin (The Crown), Ralph Ineson (The Witch), Simon McBurney (The Conjuring 2), and the legendary Willem Dafoe, who plays a crazy vampire hunter. Focus Features wanted to give this film “a prime holiday season release”, so they clearly believe Eggers has turned in something special.
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