New Year, New Horror

Happy New Year and welcome to the annual preview of horror movies we expect to see in 2023. We hit a record preview last year with 64 films on the list and as of New Year’s Eve, 24 had failed make it. Looking back is new for us so we’re not sure if two out of three is good or if we’re still seeing post-covid effects. We’ll let you know next year. We are moving ten of last year’s previews into 2023, keeping in mind that limited release and direct-to-streaming are the new normal so a lot of films escape our preview. Barbarian, X, Smile, Pearl, and The Menu are just a few examples of top movies that we missed last year - and the streaming options keep growing.

So - let’s dive right in and see how many we get right this year starting with the longest list of January releases in the history of the preview.

January

The first three films are carried over from last year. M3GAN, Unwelcome, and There’s Something Wrong with the Children. I also put Christian Bale’s The Pale Blue Eye in the first block since it already on your Netflix dashboard and getting some pretty good reviews. And speaking of Christian Bale, he also stars in Teen Wolf: The Movie, a Paramount+ exclusive that is due out at the end of the month.

We live in Utah so the January Sundance Film Festival is a big deal. We pulled six independent film submissions from their Midnight category this year: In My Mother’s Skin, Infinity Pool, My Animal, Run Rabbit Run, Birth/Rebirth, and Talk to Me. This year marks the film festival’s return to the mountains of Utah after a three-year hiatus thanks to Covid. Sundance retained the on-line viewing option which we really like and while it is no substitute for the start-studded events, we think it’s great that these films are more accessible.

Next is True Haunting, the working title of the first ever televised exorcism that was filmed and broadcast by NBC in 1971. If you are keeping track, that is just two years before The Exorcist terrified audiences across the country.

Werewolf Game is the film adaptation of an adult party game where kidnapped strangers must vote among themselves who to murder, and then leave the dirty work to the “werewolves.” And before you book your next Air B&B, checkout a couple of vacations that turn into nightmares in Fear and Snow Falls.

Sick is a Peacock exclusive. This slasher film is set in April 2020 Pandemania when covid lockdowns were just getting underway. The Riverside Slasher is a film about a masked killer on a bloody rampage and looks to be pure drama as we could find nothing to suggest it is based on any actual events. The Flood is most certainly not based on anything real life, unless we somehow missed the story of a jailbreak interrupted by hungry alligators.

The last title on the January list is our favorite. Title, that is. Skinamarink is a low-budget Canadian film that premiered last year at several international film festivals, and is scheduled for U.S. release this month. It is a nightmarish tale of children who wake up to find their father missing and all windows and doors sealed - a reminder to young and old of what it’s like to be afraid of the dark.

February

We follow up a record 19 titles in January with just three scheduled for February. Knock at the Cabin is a movie that combines a couple of controversial elements in filmmaking: M. Night Shyamalan and social-justice inclusivity. In this end-of-the-world film, parents must choose who lives and who dies.

Fresh out in the public domain is your favorite childhood bear in the slasher film, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. And we round out the month with another bear - a real bear - that just happens to be coked up and out for blood. Believe it or not, Cocaine Bear is based on a real event.

March

From a cocaine bear to a bar full of heroin addicts in Craving. Withdrawal sets in when the bar is besieged by mysterious beings and one of the addicts threatens to expose a destructive secret. We agree that’s not much to go on, so let’s move on to chapter six in the Scream universe. The survivors of last year’s massacre leave Woodsboro and head to New York City for a fresh start. Of the original 1998 cast, only Gale Weathers returns.

Next, we launch into spring with a pair of comedy horror films whose plots are “under wraps.” We do know that Bring on the Damned has one thing that Scream Therapy doesn’t, however. It is a musical, and can we ever have too many of those?

April

Evil Dead Rise is the sixth installment in the Evil Dead universe and reported to be a sequel to the 2013 remake. We expected to see this release directly to streaming last year, but it was delayed and will now enjoy a full theatrical release in April.

If you liked Train to Busan, stick around for the American remake, Last Train to New York. Meanwhile, Dracula gets the Nicolas Cage treatment in the Universal Classic Monsters spin-off, Renfield.

With little to go on besides Russell Crowe and an intriguing title, The Pope’s Exorcist has us excited for a plot that feeds off our greatest fear. And the last film on our April list is Analog Eyes, an ultra-low budget tale of a loner kid who tries to change his mundane life with a mysterious cerulean VHS tape. We have no idea what that even means so we hope the film makes it to release so we can find out.

May

May is historically a lean month for new horror and this year is no exception. Enjoy the outdoors or consider getting a jump on your Halloween prep.

June

We have very few details on most of our June releases. Tape Head: The Return of Jacob Cobb and Angels Fallen: Warriors of Peace are next-chapters in a couple of series that we admit we’ve never heard of before. The Blackening is a comedy horror about a group of friends trapped in a cabin with a killer who must rely on their knowledge of horror films to survive. Luckily, we have just learned that the film adaptation of Stephen King’s short story The Boogeyman is scheduled to release in theaters in June.

July

Things get borderline ridiculous in the comedy horror genre with Billy Bonka and the Fudge Facility. We’re not even going to try and defend that one and move on quickly to Shelbly Oaks, a film about a woman searching for her long-lost sister who finds that her childhood demon may indeed be real.

And another film from last year’s preview is the fifth installment in the Insidious series. Insidious: Fear the Dark has a new release date and a new title. It’s just the thing to pull you out of the heat and into the theater this summer.

August

Having bid farewell to the Halloween universe, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to the big screen in a family friendly reboot of Disney’s Haunted Mansion. And we are excited to see The Last Voyage of the Demeter - not because it is a Dracula film (which we love) - but we are intrigued by a full-length filme based on a single chapter from Bram Stoker’s classic 1897 novel, Dracula.

Summer winds down with a Blumhouse tease for They Listen. It is currently set to release on August 25 without so much as a byline or a leaked movie poster to pique our interest.

September

We will have to spend some energy putting together this year’s Preseason Moviefest with the slim offerings currently scheduled for September. The Big Foot Trap is what happens when a journalist gets captured by a crazy sasquatch hunter. If only we could pick the journalist…

Danse Macabre is the French term for the Dance of Death, an allegory from the Middle Ages. It is also the title of a 1981 Stephen King nonfiction journey into three decades of horror. We’re not sure which is the film’s source material but either would be fine with us.

We have nothing to go on for the film Cuckoo except a release date and a concept movie poster. So we’ll close the preseason predictions with The Nun 2, a sequel to 2018 film from The Conjuring Universe.

October

We’re going to be honest with you. We mostly stopped watching the Saw films after the third chapter - although we did catch Chris Rock in Spiral. With that history, we are really not the ones to comment on chapter ten but if it is your jam, then you’ll be excited for the October release of Saw X. Tobin Bell returns to the franchise in this “midquel” set between Saw II and Saw III. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who stopped watching.

Skill House is a horror movie playing off the social media influencer theme - and who doesn’t love seeing their favorite influencers in horror film situations? If you love nostalgia, then PA39 is for you. This full-length release of the PA39 Halloween television broadcast even includes the commercials.

Listen Carefully to what happens when a baby goes missing and instructions for her return come from a mysterious voice on a baby monitor. This one sound a bit like Await Further Instructions … and remember how that turned out.

There is nothing scheduled for November or December so we will have to rely on The Exorcist to get us through the silly sesason. Ellen Burstyn reprises her role as Chris McNeil in this long-awaited sequel to the ground-breaking, first ever horror film nominated for a best-picture Oscar. And that was back when the best picture meant something.

TBA

We’re on par with our TBAs this year starting with five films from the 2022 preview. Hostage, Wolf Hollow, Dark Harvest, Dr. Gift and Salelm’s Lot are all completed or in post-production, so we are sort of confident they will be released. We love Jared Leto and really hoped his ghost ship film Adrift would make it to production, but its status has not changed in three years so we reluctantly dropped it.

Hulu was set to distribute The Boogeyman but that is a theatrical release now, so the only streamers we know that are awaiting a release date are Netflix’s Time Cut and Paramount+’s Apartment 7A. Like we said, streaming makes life unpredictable.

We wind down our preview with another eight films that look good for release this year.

Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Strangers 3, Year 2, The First Omen, Cello, Hell of a Summer, and Late Night with the Devil. All of these films are in post-production except Hell of a Summer which is filming, and Jump Cut - which has no status but we love the poster.

Thanks to January, we actually beat our record preview from last year with 65 films on the list. We took some extra time to research details in order to better predict what movies would make it and still hit a record. We hope that means the industry is bouncing back. Or maybe our research tools are just getting better. Either way, we have a lot to look forward to this year.

We’ll see you at the movies. Enjoy!