2026 – Horror Ghouls

The Last House (2026)

Posted on August 28, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Jason Delgado is out fishing, when he sees some stormy clouds approaching. Time to pack up! He returns to his suburban home in Seattle, and manages to get inside just before it starts to rain. Inside are also the rest of his family: his wife Ann, their son Graham and their daughter Ruth. And last but not least, the family dog Cassidy. Things quickly get weird when the family notice that they cannot open any of their doors. Windows are also impossible to open. It’s like some kind of force from outside prevents them from getting outside. Internet is down, phones have stopped working, and when looking through their windows they see that their neighbors are in the exact same situation. Those who are inside can’t get out, and those who are outside can’t get it. And things don’t seem to get any better. Desperate, Jason tries to break the doors and windows, and even the walls (because yeah, who wouldn’t in a situation like this) but to no avail. It’s like the water from outside creates a barrier that prevents any exit.

So, what to do? Well, luckily they have electricity, food and water. For now. They start rationing it, still hoping it all gets resolved soon…hopefully. After two months, it becomes apparent that things are way, way worse than they originally expected. And one day, one of their neighbors whom they saw could not get inside her home suddenly arrives outside their window, yelling that there’s no one left now, before she’s suddenly attacked by some kind of creature…

The Last House is a sci-fi horror film written by Matthew Robinson and directed by Loius Leterrier, and it was released on Netflix earlier this month. It was first announced in 2025 with the title 11817, and principal photography started in 2025 where the filming mostly occurred in England and Shepperton studios.

The premise here is rather simple: a family must survive locked inside their own house for who knows how long, while there is some sort of mysterious force at play. And we do actually get a little spoiler at the very start of the movie regarding where the threat actually comes from, we just don’t know exactly what it is. Regardless, what I found the most interesting part of this movie is how the family found ways to actually band together and use their brains and wit to survive with whatever means they have at hand, MacGuyver-style. Of course, this is a very average middle class family who may not have everything they want but absolutely everything they need, and their only real problems seem to be some financial struggles and a house which needs more fixing than they can afford. They do have pretty healthy family relations, however, and to be honest, I actually found this a little refreshing after so goddamn many movies about broken and trauma-ridden family relations. Now, don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind those themes, as very often they do fit like hand in glove when it comes to many horror narratives. It’s just a little refreshing to see a story about a more well-balanced family sometimes.

As time moves forward, the family do get put into some difficult situations which requires harsh decisions, especially one rather heartbreaking scene. Yeah, yeah…you could kinda see it coming from a mile away, but still. Now, had this been a much darker horror movie it could have gone considerably farther with these things, but it never really tried to be shocking in any way. In fact, there are even small parts of it where their situation is almost glamorized a little, where they bond even further as a family and have their regular funtime together with the only two DVD’s they own (Annie and Air Force One). Day after day, week after week, month after month…it kinda reminded me of the message in The Amazing Digital Circus: “there is meaning to be found in a stagnant life“. The Last House is not a “livin’ happily ever after“ in such a state, though, as there is a threatening force out there. What it is? Well, with the start of the movie it isn’t really any spoiler to mention that the story does take some Lovecraftian turns.

Surely enough, The Last House doesn’t really explain everything in detail when it reaches its climax, and if you search for too much logic you can easily rip it to pieces. Overall, though, we found it a very entertaining sci-fi thriller which goes well along with some popcorn on a lazy evening!

Oh, and here’s a fun tidbit: this movie does have a fair share of animal actors (yes, not CGI animals!) and the IMDb page has them listed with their names, with Dave Melmoth listed as the animal handler.

Director: Louis Leterrier
Writer: Matthew Robinson
Country & year: UK/France/USA, 2026
Actors: Greta Lee, Wagner Moura, Riley Chung,Noah Alexander Sosnowski, Emma Ho, Gabriel Barbosa, Arden Cho, Audrey Anderson, Sid Edwards, Eveline Reynolds-Boison, Cassidy Remi, Wicket, General, Bonnie, Layla, George, Ralph, Lady, Lilo, Moose, Annie
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32268156/

Insidious: Out of the Further (2026)

Posted on August 25, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Gemma is a young girl who lives with her mother, Ingrid, who appears to be very mentally unwell. As if the little girl wasn’t traumatized enough by living together with an unstable mother, Gemma one day witnesses her commit suicide in the bathroom while asking her to watch. A supernatural force then shuts the door right in front of her face. And yes, we know some demonic shit was at play here, and if you’ve seen the previous films it isn’t hard to already get the puzzle pieces to fit.

We fast forward to many years later, where Gemma is now a dentist, is raising her daughter Maya in her childhood home (yes, really) and is dating a police officer. All seems…rather good? Except for the old creepy-looking weirdos that appears outside on the sidewalk. Who are they? Did they just move to the neighborhood? Well, we’ll find out. Gemma, on the other hand, gets to encounter these old creeps during her astral projection, where she is haunted by visions that includes her mother’s suicide. It appears that something demonic is out for both Gemma and her daughter, who wants to use her in order to get brought back from the Further and into the world of the living. Only Elise Rainer can help her…who is now part of the Further too.

Insidious: Out of the Further is the sixth installment in the Insidious franchise, and I’d say it’s a step up from the previous one. The fitting music score was once again composed by Joseph Bishara, who also composed the score for all the previous films in the series, and we get to see both some new and some familiar faces from the earlier films.

While the first movie was indeed a very good supernatural horror film where a lot of the story was shrouded in mystery since we didn’t know much about what was happening to the family, it goes without saying that a sixth film would have to play its cards very differently. After five films we are now well familiar with the Further, how the demons/ghosts/entities wants to come back to our world, and how astral projection is what makes traveling there possible as a living human being. There’s not much of a mystery anymore, so what is the most interesting thing in this franchise now, of course, is the realms of “the Further“. The place where the dead things live and where many evil people have mutated into horrific demon-looking monsters. The premise here is that the demons want out, and the Further then becomes merged with the real world…and while I personally didn’t think this movie really went as far as it could with this, there is plenty of atmospheric and fun scenes where Gemma gets to explore the world of the dead and its inhabitants.

And yeah…as you’ve probably already guessed, this is yet another ride on the trauma train, as generational trauma plays a major factor in the plot here. Our protagonist, Gemma, is doing her best despite her troubled past, and is naturally terrified of becoming just like her mother. She’s actually doing a great job, even deciding to keep her childhood home in order to create the home she never had and not let the past overtake her in any way. As they say, you cannot run or hide from your trauma, so the only option you really have is to face it and not let it overtake your life. That is, of course, easier said than done…and especially when all the supernatural shenanigans starts hitting her full force and she quickly begins struggling with keeping herself cool and controlled. In real life you can’t blame ghosts if you lose your shit (although I’m fairly certain some people actually try to do that, after all we already have an infamous case of someone blaming the devil). Here, though, our protagonist has good reason to being close to losing her mind, but fortunately there’s help to get from the other side. Lin Shaye reprises her role as Elise Rainer, who is of course trapped in the Further since she’s been dead for a while. Aside from all the nasty ghoulies there, she’s a rare friendly presence.

Insidious: Out of the Further is pretty much exactly what you expect it to be, nothing more and nothing less. There are some really good atmospheric scenes, a fitting and strong sound design, and some solid new entities as well as a revisit with some old and familiar faces. It definitely plays the franchise’s old tricks over and over, but overall it’s a nice supernatural horror film where they definitely have lots more to explore if they want to take a further dive into the Further.

Director: Jacob Chase
Writers: Jacob Chase, David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick
Country & year: Australia/USA, 2026
Actors: Amelia Eve, Island Austin, Lin Shaye, Sam Spruell, Brandon Perea, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Joseph Lopez, Robina Beard, Susan Gray, Laura Gordon, Charli Penton
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32393988/

Prequels:
– Insidious (2010)
– Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
– Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015)
– Insidious: The Last Key (2018)
– Insidious: The Red Door (2023)

Evil Dead Burn (2026)

Posted on July 14, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

The young French bird Alice (Souheila Yacoub) has sought the good life in ‘Merica, but has already realized that the grass isn’t much greener on the other side. Because we soon learn that her husband, William, is an abusive piece of poo. The scars she’s wearing around the waist can tell. After he dies horribly in a car accident and burns alive as if it was pure karma, Alice should take that as a blessing, get the fuck away and never look back. But then the movie would pretty much be over and not much to talk about. So thanks for staying to the cost of our morbid entertainment, I guess. She doesn’t shed a tear during the funeral, because who would, and doesn’t hesitate to take off the wedding ring. The rest of the family only give her the stinkeye, and things only get worse when they have a gathering by the dinner table in her in-law’s old moldy house in the countryside. Soon, the gathering quickly escalates to hell on Earth, just like one would imagine every Thanksgiving crashout since 2016.

Now, if the circumstances didn’t look bad enough on the surface, we learn that the house was owned by none other than the mystery man who we have heard on the old tapes during the franchise for over forty years. So don’t worry, this is an Evil Dead movie, through and through. He’s the grandfather of Alice’s in-laws where William’s younger brother has gathered all his notes and, of course, the Necronomicon to hopefully write a book about it. Grampa also made a mythical dagger hidden somewhere in the attic, the only weapon that can kill the deadites. And the deadites want that dagger before it gets in the hands of Sam and Dean, or maybe Ash, if he’s still out there. So yes, the deadites actually have an important mission here other than to reek hell and mayhem. That leaves us back to the car crash where the lakeside deadite (the one we saw in the beginning of Evil Dead Rise) possesses William’s dead body which eventually reaches the meatsuit of his dad, where it all explodes by the dinner table when he suddenly stabs their dog to death with a fork.

So, the third installment of the “gritty/serious/trauma“ phase of the Evil Dead franchise, as I like to call it, is directed by the Frenchman Sébastien Vanicek and co-written with Florent Bernard. The original plan was to have Lee Cronin return as director after the success of Evil Dead Rise, but he chose to make Evil Dead Mummy instead. Producer Sam Raimi then handpicked Vanicek after watching his directorial debut Vermines (2023). And what a great pick to spice up the franchise with some spicy French Extremity. Yes, this entry is maybe the most brutal and mean-spirited of them all as Vanicek approaches the material with much of the same raging energy which Alexandre Aja did back in 2006 with The Hills Have Eyes. The Frenchmen just know how to cook when they’re at the their hungriest, or just to quote Orson Welles: Aaaaaah the French…

And yes, the film is heavy on metaphors, because we’re after all in the 2020s. The word Burn in the title is as much the metaphor of burning the bridges of toxic relationships as burning in hell, and let’s be honest with ourselves: many of us can relate either we want to acknowledge it or not, and I’m always in for it to gleefully witness a rotten family tree getting destroyed from the inside in the most brutal ways by the demons they’ve created themselves. You get what you fucking deserve, like Joker once said. And with that said, while this family is as much the villains as the deadites, this is an Evil Dead movie in the purest form that builds up to a a fierce non-stop demonic haunted house ride that rages as fast as a song by Cannibal Corpse. And while the franchise has never been rich on plot, this one also dig more into the lore. The deadites have also developed some new skills, if I’m not mistaken.

The gory highlights are rolling like rotting pearls on strings here with some creative and flawless practical effects. My favorite is the one in the beginning at the lake where someone’s face gets torn apart by fishing lines. Demon dad shoots himself several times in the skull as he smiles in front of the family to show that nothing can kill a deadite. You have brutal car fights where fingers get chopped off by the car door, and the one that should be the most painful, where Alice gets a pen shoved straight into her eardrums. And she reacts as if she just got a small splinter on her thumb. We all know that the French have a strong threshold for pain, but still. Just barely touching the eardrums with Q-tips is torture. Souheila Yacoub gets a lot of beating, if she hasn’t gone through hell already, and is a very likable final girl to root for. The only redeeming character who isn’t a malignant narcissist like the rest of the family is their youngest son Joseph (Wednesday actor Hunter Doohan) as he’s trapped in the hellish crossfire.

There’s also a particular slimy gross-out moment here to mention that includes dentals, and if you thought that the similar scene from Evil Dead Mummy was yucki, this one takes it almost one meter further. Fans of Jackass or Lucifer Valentine will probably slurp this like liquid candy though.

The humor is very subtle and almost absent as it follows the same serious tone as the previous two, but there are some freudian laughs to be had here. The demented crazylady in the wheelchair cracked me up when she got dragged down the stairs and have no clue what’s going on. And I’m not the only one who saw the clear parallels to the Baker family from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The only thing missing was a thick southern accent. Welcome to the family, hon. I find it funny how we have gotten more Resident Evil in other films in later years, unintentionally or not, than in the actual Resident Evil films. The only thing that drags the film down a bit is the CGI at the climax, which unfortunately looks pretty shoddy in contrast of all things considered. But all in all, Evil Dead Burn is another strong entry in a franchise that has survived for over 40 years. Six films in and not one single dud and still manage to feel fresh and new for the classic audiences (wink wink). That must be a record for a horror franchise. So let’s have a toast with a shot of fresh candle wax. Yum.

The next installment, Evil Dead Wrath, was wrapped already in May, but don’t hold your breath — for whatever reason we have to wait until 2028 for that one.

Director: Sébastien Vanicek
Writers: Florent Bernard, Sébastien Vanicek
Country & year: New Zealand/USA/Canada, 2026
Actors: Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Greta van den Brink, Tandi Wright, Alain Chabat, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Keanu Karim, Victory Ndukwe, Tapiwa Soropa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31170389/

Passenger (2026)

Posted on May 26, 2026May 26, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Yeah, you’ve probably already heard the flying monkeys yelling from the rooftops that this is the worst horror movie of the year because Obsession is a masterpiece. Bollox. But if that’s so, then I guess all horror movies have already sucked since 1973 after The Exorcist. Someone said it best: Not all horror movies need to be the best horror movie ever, or the scariest movie since the scariest movie. Sometimes it’s OK to just be good, or just OK to be OK, like enjoying a quick fat cheeseburger.

Passenger is basically a haunted house movie on wheels where we follow the young lovebirds Tyler and Maddie from Brooklyn as they set out for a six-week road trip across the USA in a nomad van, protected with a Saint Christopher necklace and a Bob Ross bobblehead on the dash. “No mistakes, just happy accidents“, as he famously said. We all love Bob Ross, but to be more safe than sorry, they should also add bobbleheads of Ed and Lorraine, and maybe Bob Larson, you know, just to be sure.

Their relationship gets put to the test when they hit some, well, bumps in the night, pun intended. Because there’s one golden rule for road nomads to follow: If you must drive at night, don’t ever stop, if the road is haunted/cursed. And you better know what the hobo codes mean. If the morbid curiosity wouldn’t first get the best of me, I’d also stay away from Clinton Road. A specific country road is more haunted than others, where our love couple stops by (Uh-oh) an ugly car accident (that we see in the opening) where they instantly get attached to a curse of a demonic, ghoulish old geezer known as, yes, you guessed it: The Passenger. To make it more obvious and not subtle at all, their van gets marked with three scratches. Maddie is the first one to see visions and gets her head fucked with, while her boyfriend has a hard time believing her. Pretty much the same set up like in every episode of A Haunting. But instead of being isolated in some house, they’re isolated on rural country roads where there’s hardly any street lights. And I think I would prefer a haunted house on wheels over a deep house.

And, of course, like any curse, we eventually have to pick up the pieces to solve the puzzle before losing grip on reality. To be on the safer side, they stack up the whole van of all the Saint Christopher necklaces they can buy, to hopefully “beat the devil out of it“.

Even though Passenger doesn’t reinvent the wheel, no pun intended, André Øvredal showcases that he still manages to make the woods look haunting with some creative use of lights, like he did back in the Troll Hunter days. A scene that sticks out is when a film projector gets used as a flashlight, and an eerie liminal space sequence at an empty parking lot. Moments like this, where the film gets more room to breathe and lets the atmosphere sink in while the imagination goes rampant, are the strongest part. A fun nod to The Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) at the beginning as well. And yes, the bag of clichés is unfortunately not left home in Brooklyn, where you have some of the typical lame straight-forward jumpscares with loud boom-sound. And it has to be said that getting pulled from the ground into darkness while screaming at the camera just makes me eye-roll. The demonic entity could also have been explored more.

That said, Passenger is overall an enjoyable flick, with some inventive scares, grim woodsy atmosphere spiced with vibrant, stylish flair. It’s far from Øvredal’s scariest film, as he himself claims, but it’s surely a big step up after his previous one, The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023). Now that he’s back on track again, and found his way back to the campfire, I hope for More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.

Director: André Øvredal
Writers: Zachary Donohue, T.W. Burgess
Country & year: USA, 2026
Actors: Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, Melissa Leo, Joseph Lopez, Miles Fowler, Alan Trong, Devielle Johnson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33763941/

They Will Kill You (2026)

Posted on May 15, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Asia Reaves and her younger sister Maria are trying to escape from their abusive father, but this doesn’t go too well. It ends up with Asia shooting him (not dead, though) and running away while abandoning Maria. Asia is, of course, arrested and has to spend a long time in jail, all the while Maria has to remain in their father’s custody.

Fast forward 10 years later, we see Asia arriving at a place called The Virgil, which is some kind of exclusive high-rise building in NYC. She’s there to become a new maid, and as the building manager Lilith Woodhouse welcomes her inside, Asia quickly learns that this place is filled with a wealthy cultist elite. And yes, they’re satanic and commit human sacrifices…what a shocker. As Asia was planned to be their latest sacrificial lamb, things take an unexpected turn as she’s come prepared and stacked with lots of weapons, plus badass fighting skills like she’s been taking lessons with Pai Mei. And things really turn deadly, bloody and crazy! Asia finds herself in a bigger challenge than expected, though, when it appears the satanic cultists respawn like low-level enemies in a video game, no matter how many times they are killed. A nice perk they’ve been given after all the human sacrifices…

They Will Kill You is an action comedy horror film directed by Kirill Sokolov, co-written with Alex Litvak. The movie was filmed in Cape Town, using the South African Mutual Life Assurance Society building, CGI’ing the hotel’s name “The Virgil“ on it. Virgil is a reference to Dante’s Inferno, where the ancient poet Virgil is leading Dante through the nine circles of hell. Sokolov said that the inspiration behind the film came from when he and his wife moved to a different city in Russia, where they rented an apartment on the 17th floor. They started joking amongst themselves how the whole building probably belonged to some kind of cult and that eventually they’d end up sacrificed. I’m sure there’s a lot of large apartment buildings that will easily give off that kind of feeling…

Prior to watching this movie, I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. Something fun and fast-paced, sure…but would it be as bloody and crazy as I hoped? Well, it certainly was, because goddamn, does the movie hit hard with its blood-soaked frenzied ride! There are the good old blood-fountains, a fair amount of gore and totally insane scenes like the one involving a disembodied roving eyeball. Wicked! It was what I had hoped it would be and then some, for sure. It does absolutely not hold back, there’s so much over-the-top moments that I got some Braindead and Re-Animator vibes all mixed with Kill Bill and a dose of the good old Sam Raimi. And, if I’m going to be completely honest…I actually got more of a Sam Raimi feeling from this film than Send Help from earlier this year…

Zazie Beetz who plays Asia, delivers her performance with just the right amount of ferocious and unhinged brutality. Her little one-person-army is kicking satanic ass all over the place while she must battle her way through the hordes of cultists. They Will Kill You is bloody, ultra-violent and outrageous in such a fun way, and as far as horror-action movies go this is top-tier entertainment. If you want a thrill-ride filled with blood fountains and craziness, you should definitely check this one out!

Despite this being such a fun, bloody and upbeat movie, it didn’t fare too well at the box office with $19 million against its $20 million budget. Oof. Perhaps this had a bit to do with Ready or Not 2 being released at the same time, who knows. Hopefully it will grow in popularity over time.

Director: Kirill Sokolov
Writers: Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak
Country & year: USA/South Africa/Canada, 2026
Actors: Zazie Beetz, Patricia Arquette, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Willie Ludik, David Viviers, Gabe Gabriel, Viktoria Korotkova, James Remar
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31728330/

Hokum (2026)

Posted on May 5, 2026May 11, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Ohm Bauman is sitting at home, sipping whiskey and writing the epilogue of his latest novel. It’s not going to end on a happy note, and we also realize that Ohm is a miserably guy (as if sitting there and sipping whiskey while writing the bleakest ending he could probably come up with wasn’t proof enough of that), but it appears he’s also haunted. Whether by actual ghosts or memories…who knows. But we see him glimpse his mother on the staircase, something that triggers him into packing his bags and going all the way to rural Ireland, to visit The Bilberry Woods Hotel. This was the place where his parents had been on their honeymoon, and he’s keeping a photo of his mother who is standing nearby a large tree, where she’s smiling from ear to ear and looks as happy as can be. Quite the contrast to her gloomy son, but there’s of course a reason for this. There always is.

Once arriving at the hotel, we do notice that Ohm is…kind of a dick. He’s dismissive and mean towards nearly everyone he meets, with perhaps the exception of the no-bullshit bartender Fiona whom he shows the photo to and asks if she knows where the tree is located. She does, of course. Once he’s there, he spreads his parents ashes, carefully placing his mother’s around the tree’s roots, while emptying the container of his father’s ashes the same way you shake the last few drops from a can of beer you’re about to discard. Sometimes a small scene like that tells you a lot more than words can do.

Close by, he meets the groundskeeper Jerry, who lives in his van and drinks milk mixed with magic mushrooms. Probably a fun guy to be around, and seemingly a very kindhearted dude. Once Ohm gets back to the hotel, he gets as shitfaced as possible at the bar, and gets in talk with Fiona again and the bellhop Alby, where they tell him about the closed off honeymoon suite that’s supposedly haunted by a witch that the hotel owner once trapped inside. To this, Ohm’s simple reply is “hokum“! He doesn’t believe a single word they say, and thinks of it all as nonsense (and yes, hokum means nonsense). Despite Ohm’s original plans for the stay at the hotel, though, he is soon to find out that there’s less “hokum“ to the story than he’d expected…

Hokum is a supernatural horror film, written and directed by Damian Mc Carthy in his third feature length film. We have already reviewed his earlier films Caveat (2020) and Oddity (2024), and ever since watching those two we have been looking forward to Mc Carthy’s next entry into the horror field. This is the first movie of his that we’ve been able to view at the theater, and it was a great experience to watch a spookfest like this at the big screen!

Just like his two previous films, it’s filled with thick atmosphere and a constant eerie vibe. While there are a few jump-scares, the movie doesn’t rely on them in the slightest. The setting, locations and scenery are all spot-on when it comes to creating such a moody, isolated and foreboding place ideal for a horror story like this. I so, so much prefer these old-fashioned spooky places over any modern-looking place. I also think Mc Carthy nails the feeling of isolation in the places he use in his films.

Adam Scott is doing a solid performance as the alcoholic, depressed and unlikable Ohm. It just goes to show that you don’t always need a charismatic and likable protagonist. He’s a jerk but we still want to root for him. And yes, of course he’s got a backpack of trauma and childhood shit to drag alongside with him, and even though this doesn’t explain or excuse his behavior in the slightest, we do at least get a bit of sympathy for him. There is also a little bitty redemption arc in store for him, and no, that still doesn’t make him a good or likable guy but we don’t always need a character to be that in order to deliver a good story. And speaking of story, this one has a lot more of it than Caveat and Oddity. While the previous ones relied a lot more on atmosphere and slow build, this one presents several mysteries between it all, adding more layers to the narrative.

It has also become apparent that Mc Carthy’s got a thing for rabbits, and in Hokum there’s a rabbit man/entity (which I first actually believed to be the witch upon seeing the trailer), having a very small yet not insignificant role. We only see this creature in a few scenes, mostly during what appears to be some kind of children’s TV show, and while the significance is never fully explained it’s not hard to get the underlying meaning of it once you learn more about Ohm’s past. Gotta give props to the design of this rabbit-man thing, it looks menacing as hell! Speaking of creepy-looking creatures, I also have to say the witch in the movie is also pure nightmare fuel. Some of the scenes involving her are terrifying, especially the early ones where we only see glimpses of her in the dark. I know for a fact that had I seen this movie in my less desensitized days, sleep would have been less comfortable for at least a few nights to come…

Hokum is a horror movie that makes us even more excited to see what Mc Carthy will brew next! According to an article at Dread Central, he’s mentioned that For my next film, I definitely want to make the ultimate haunted house movie which is a statement that I (not gonna lie) hypes me up a bit. He also stated that I really feel like if I was to make another horror film, I think I’d really nail it, although personally I think he very much “nailed it” with Hokum. Already looking so much forward to what comes next from this director.

Writer and director: Damian Mc Carthy
Country & year: Ireland/United Arab Emirates, 2026
Actors: Adam Scott, Mallory Adams, David Wilmot, Michael Patric, Will O’Connell, Brendan Conroy, Peter Coonan, Florence Ordesh, Sioux Carroll
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt35672862/

Pretty Lethal (2026)

Posted on April 24, 2026April 24, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

A group of ballerinas from Los Angeles have gotten the opportunity of their lifetime: to attend a prestigious international competition in Budapest. Too bad the group have as much chemistry as water and hot oil. The teacher, Thorna Devenport, tries her best to make the girls work together but their differences are creating too much of a gap between them. You have rich and bratty Princess (yes, that’s her name), deeply religious Grace (fitting name, right?) Zoe and her hearing-impaired sister Chloe, and rebellious and street-smart Bones. Well, ahead to Budapest for the time of their life anyway…and of course, things go bad already from the get-go: there are mix-ups at the airport, resulting in them having to take a bus which breaks down. As they leave the bus to find a cab, they are invited to a place called Teremok Inn, which is run by a former prima ballerina called Devora Kasimer. Huh! What a coincidence. And this place is located in the middle of…bumfuck nowhere, it seems, with nothing but forest around for miles. How convenient…for some.

As they’re trying to wind down a bit inside the inn that looks like a colorful Haunted Mansion, the one red flag after the other is waving in front of their faces. Devora Kasimer is also the head of a small crime family, and bad things happen at Teremok Inn. Bad things that doesn’t really have anything to do with the American troupe, but they get mixed into the shit anyway, because, well…Europe is always so, so dangerous for Americans, ya know! At least according to American horror movies. After their teacher gets killed and the girls locked up and ready to be slaughtered, they finally band together and use their ballerina skills to survive.

Pretty Lethal is an action thriller film, directed by Vicky Jewson and written by Kate Freund. It premiered on South by Southwest Film & TV Festival on March 13, 2026, and released worldwide on Prime Video on March 25. It was originally announced as Ballerina Overdrive back in 2023 and was supposed to be filmed in Serbia, but things changed and it was instead filmed in Budapest, Hungary.

If you want something fun, colorful and vibrant, then this is it. This movie doesn’t only promise some kick-ass ballerina fights and blood ‘n gore to follow with it, it actually delivers. It is fast paced, highly energetic and so, so much fun! In stark contrast to the more dark and brooding Livide from 2011 (which is also a great horror movie featuring a ballerina), this one is a different kind of beast that pumps up the fun and action!

The choreography during the fight scenes are just awesome, and the fight where they take on a group of people in the inn’s pub while having Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers playing is pure gold. These ballerinas kick ass, and the Hungarian mob doesn’t stand a chance! That being said, I love how the movie doesn’t give them some kind of magical-girl superpower where they’re suddenly practically invincible. They get kicked around, punched and hurt too, their ballet-fu isn’t going to stop the Hungarian mob from being a very, very dangerous threat. But this is a bonkers setting where a high tolerance for pain, flexible bodies, and ballerina shoes armored with razor blades manage to beat guns and knives, and it works surprisingly well. Ballerinas are known for having a very high pain tolerance, often disassociating to perform their best, so it makes sense for them to endure as much as they do. A scene where one of them is being “tortured“ by a guy starting with pulling our her toenails makes for a nice gag – she’s a fucking ballerina, you idiot! A broken toenail is almost an everyday occurrence for these ladies…

Visually, the movie looks good with rich visuals and contrasts, with lovely interior matching the setting. Performances are solid, with all the ballerinas doing well with their roles, and Uma Thurman in the role of Devora Kasimer does a pretty good job on portraying a vicious crime-queen with a thick Eastern European accent. The hearing-impaired girl Chloe is played by Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place) who is deaf in real life.

Pretty Lethal is a high-energy wild ride from start to finish, with a lot of gore and silly violence, and it’s always totally aware of what it is. A fun time with some killer ballerinas who dance and slash their way out of danger!

Director: Vicky Jewson
Writer: Kate Freund
Country & year: USA/Hungary
Actors: Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Lydia Leonard, Avantika, Millicent Simmonds, Iris Apatow, Tamás Hagyó, Uma Thurman, Tamás Hagyó, Julian Krenn, Miklós Béres, Péter Végh, Adam Boncz
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26678938/

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)

Posted on April 21, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Evil Dead Mummy, Egyptian Evil Dead, Evil Dead Wrapping, Bring Her Back from the Evil Dead, The Exorcist of the Evil Dead, Resident Evil Dead… a dear child has many names, as we say in Scandinavia. But what this is certainly not, is a new entry from the Universal Monsters Universe. To avoid more confusion and potential legal copyright issues, Blumhouse/Atomic Monster took the easy fix by adding the director’s name above the title — while the grimy, necro promo posters alone spoke loud and clear by itself that this is a whole new take on the mummy concept. And if you still expected something in the same style of the more lighthearted and adventurous approach of The Mummy from 1999 and only waited for Brendan Fraser to show up, well, then you have no one but yourself to blame (LOL). Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is pure mean-spirited horror, through and through, and to quote Emil from RoboCop: I LIKE IT!!

We’re in Cairo, Egypt, where the little girl Katie gets kidnapped by a creepy horse-faced-looking lady. She’s the type of person who looks like a walking spell, and has groomed Katie with candy for some time. Dad Charlie, who’s a TV reporter, runs after her through some narrow streets until he gets slowed down by a sudden sandstorm and loses them. The local police won’t do shit as the scummy lead detective only suspects the parents. What can you say…

Eight years go by where the family, Charlie, his wife Larissa and their two children, Sebastian and Maud, have since moved to dusty Albuquerque, New Mexico. Then the phone rings. Their daughter has been found – alive. Well, sort of. The bad news is that she was found in a sarcophagus, of all things, from a crashed cargo plane in the desert of Aswan — and is now in a locked-in catatonic state in a wheelchair looking like a ghoulish, rotting corpse that has just been dug up from the grave by Wednesday 13. Time has not been kind to her, to put it mildly. Besides all that, her heart is in great condition. Hm..

A top comment I’ve seen floating around is the lack of logic of bringing her back home in the condition that she’s in, rather than just discard her like trash and let her rot at the hospital. Well, if we’re gonna have some serious talk here about logic, and a quick psychology course for dummies while we’re at it, it could maybe have something to do with the sweet health insurance? Since this is the United States of ‘Merica, BOY, where the power of thoughts and pears are way more lifesaving than one’s basic rights to proper healthcare will ever be. Or maybe the parents aren’t, you know, just some cold psychopaths. I’m not a parent, so what do I know.

The big question is, of course, what the hell really happened to her, and why. Hell happened, that’s for sure. And Hell will happen again as soon as she gets rolled back home with her parents and two siblings. Katie starts to act more weird, uncanny and unpredictable with sudden violent tics, one that ends up headbutting poor grandma to a nosebleed. At night, she runs on all fours like a wild dog in the crawlspace to hunt for scorpions to eat before puking green goo. While this sounds more like a generic possession movie, you’ll be surprised…and disgusted… and maybe lose your appetite for the rest of the week.

Not to slip into spoiler territory, but yes, we have a possession thing going on here that was on full display in the trailers. But on the surface, this is actually a mummy movie — with even a mummy. Yeah, I know, I’m as surprised as you. There’s a lot to chew on here (and swallow, for that matter), just from the aggressive visuals alone, where Lee Cronin seems to be a big fan of the so-called split diopter-effect, shot by cinematographer David Garbett, who also did Evil Dead Rise (2023) with Cronin. It’s icky, which puts an extra flavor to it. The dusty and old, almost Resident Evil’ish haunted house-setting that is the home of the family in New Mexico works perfect for the backdrop. The heavy atmosphere is consistent with much of the same edge as the first two Conjuring films, mixed with the gritty detective aspects like Deliver Us from Evil (2014), without the rain, of course.

All the actors do a solid job, but Natalia Grace, who plays the mummy girl, doesn’t get enough roses. She has the perfect balance of looking like a vulnerable vegetable while at the same time reeking with the same intimidating force like Pazuzu, or maybe Mumzuzu in this case. The film is way more brutal and bleak than expected, especially having in mind that this is Blumhouse, where I assumed that only The Grabber had full access to the Splatter & Gore department. All, if not most effects are practical, and they all rip, in all literal sense.

Then there’s the already infamous gross-out scenes which goes all up to eleven during a wake/funeral scene that starts off with an old wine-sipping lady saying the embalming fluid is the new Botox. Haha. It’s something straight out from the dinner scene from Braindead where the pitch-dark gallows humor shouldn’t work, but it somehow does. Some moments here are truly disgusting, even for a ghoul like me — and after witnessing the young girl grinning with the uncanny teeth in full context, is now a still image that will lives rent-free in my head for a while. This could easily have been a muddled, tonal mess, especially judging by the trailers, but Lee Cronin manages to stitch it all together into a cohesive and highly entertaining dark wild ride where the runtime of two hours and fifteen minutes flew away like a crispy leaf on a windy autumn day. One of the best horror films of 2026.

Writer & director: Lee Cronin
Country & year: USA/Ireland/Spain, 2026
Actors: Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, Natalie Grace, Shylo Molina, Billie Roy, Veronica Falcón, Hayat Kamille, May Elghety, Emily Mitchell, Husam Chadat, Tim Seyfi, Mark Mitchinson
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32612507/

Send Help (2026)

Posted on March 27, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Sam Raimi is back (babyyy) with his first horror film in seventeen years. Time flies, and sooner or later we’ll all die and burn in Hell along with Christine Brown. So enjoy life to the fullest while you can — just like the hobby survivalist Linda Liddle that we get the pleasure of meeting over a pouch of tuna in Send Help.

A new horror film by the legend himself, Sam Raimi, is never just any horror film. It’s a rare cultural event where just the announcement itself would make the Earth stop spinning for a moment. But I have to admit that the trailers for Send Help gave me next to nothing. Something felt off, if not missing. Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is the first horror film of Sam where he isn’t credited as screenwriter, nor his brother Ivan. So, instead we have Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, the duo who wrote Freddy vs. Jason (2003), Friday the 13th (2009) and Baywatch (2017). It’s fair to say Uh-oh…

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) works in an open-office area as a corporate strategist where she’s never been able to fit in. Calling her awkward is an understatement. She’s a socially inept goofy freak who reeks of tuna, looks like a total mess, and talks in a certain way that would get on anyone’s nerve. But she’s at least good at her job. Still, no one hates her as much as her new boss, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien), who gives all her credit to Donovan, a Patrick Bateman-ish slimeball. To add insult to injury, Preston gives Donovan the promotion that was promised by her former boss. What a wonderful work environment. There is a reason that her last name rhymes with Little, by how much they think of her.

And yes, Bruce Campbell (Linda’s former boss and Sam Raimi’s longtime friend) has a cameo here, well, kinda — in the form of a wall picture in the background, based on his IMDb profile pic. Better than nothing, I guess.

Bradley invites Linda to join him and some of his team to a business trip to Bangkok. And her involvement seems more of a set-up so Bradley and his buddies can mock and bully her. Yes, Bradley is a complete narcissistic scumbag, if that wasn’t obvious already, and people like Linda is a perfect victim for him to abuse. Then the plane crashes and everyone dies, except for Bradley and Linda who get stranded on a small exotic island somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand. While Bradley never seemed to have set up a campfire or even touched a pinecone, it’s good to know that Linda is an obsessed fan of the competition TV show Survivor, and have learned a few skills. The power dynamic gets suddenly turned upside-down in the most primitive ways possible as Bradley is badly injured and Linda is holding the knife. Who’s laughing now, huh? Cast Away meets Misery, for sure, with some interesting twists and turns where we all root for Linda while we wish the absolute worst for Bradley. Right..? Well…

Send Help was a mild disappointment. Mostly because there’s very little of the raw and unique, frantic Sam Raimi-style to be seen here. He’s way past his Evil Dead days, and someone on the interweb gave it a fitting description by calling it Raimi Lite. The goriest moment the film has to offer is when Linda fights a cartoonish CGI boar that looks more like a scrapped creature-design from The Lion King live-action remake. The CGI is made by Disney, after all. Then we have a foggy and gloomy dream sequence with a quick shoehorned-in ghoulish jumpscare to remind us that Sam Raimi is somewhere in the room. The puke scene made me chuckle though, and “that knife-scene“ was a pretty clever and unsettling one.

But the most disgusting Eeeeew–moment in the entire film, for my part, is the tuna smudge on the corner of Linda’s mouth. For fucks sake, lady, wipe that shit away! I can handle gore all up to the ceiling, as the desensitized ghoul I am, while rolling my eyes of films like Slaughtered Vomit Dolls, but this was too much. Rachel McAdams should’ve worn this food stain on every press interview for the film, just for the lols, and see how long it would take before someone dared to react.

We’re first and foremost talking about a twisted psychological drama/thriller/mindgame where the comedic tone doesn’t always find the balance when the film tries to be more serious. Drag Me to Hell, on the other hand, was a perfect mix, but that film was also written by Sam and his brother. All credits here goes to Rachel McAdams, who runs the whole show with a way more layered performance than you’d expect, while Dylan O’Brien’s character is just a self-centered asshole. The film also goes in a direction where we should feel guilty rooting for Linda, or not. No spoilers here, but trying to make her the villain, all things already considered, felt unnecessary. That said, Send Help is overall an entertaining watch with a fun concept, but not exactly the triumphant return of horror director Sam Raimi I’d hoped for.

Director: Sam Raimi
Writers: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Country & year: USA/Thailand, 2026
Actors: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Dennis Haysbert, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8036976/

Iron Lung (2026)

Posted on February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the distant future where an incident called the Quiet Rapture has caused all star systems and planets to vanish, leaving only some space stations with a few surviving humans left. An imprisoned man named Simon has been tasked with testing and piloting the SM-13 submarine, which has been nicknamed “Iron Lung“. He needs to explore an ocean of a moon named AT-5, and this is no ordinary ocean: it’s made of blood! With the promise of being freed once he completes this mission, he reluctantly does what he’s told. In the claustrophobic confines of the submarine, Simon can only see outside with a crude camera, and communication is done only through a radio. Once he’s down there in the ocean of blood, the submarine’s detectors indicate that there’s something moving outside. Simon uses the camera and captures what looks to be a skeleton on the ocean floor. The officials want him to capture a sample of it, but it appears that the skeleton is not the only thing at the bottom of the blood ocean. And he also discovers that he’s not the first pilot being sent down there…

Iron Lung is a sci-fi horror film written and directed, and also self-funded, by Mark Fischbach aka Markiplier in his feature directorial debut. It also stars Fischbach himself in the leading role, and it is based on a horror video game from 2022 by the same name which was made by David Szymanski. The development for the film began in the start of 2023, and it was shot at Troublemaker Studios. During the production, Fischbach stated that the film would contain the most fake blood of any horror film thus far, even surpassing 2013 Evil Dead‘s 50,000 US gallons (190,000 L). Iron Lung has 80,000 gallons (300,000 L). Yikes! Fischbach even had to go to hospital during the filming as he’d gotten too much of that fake blood in his eyes (ouch).

When Iron Lung was done and ready for release, it was only supposed to be shown in some independent US theaters. Fischbach encouraged his fans to request the movie from their theaters, and ohhhh boy, did that spread like wildfire! From an initial planned release to only 60 independent US theaters, it ended up being shown in 4,161 theaters internationally. And that’s how we Horror Ghouls also got to see it at the big screen here in Norway on January 30th, all thanks to Markiplier’s dedicated fans!

Now, I’m going to admit a little sin here: I didn’t know who Markiplier/Fischbach was prior to watching this film. I pretty much went in totally blind for this one, other than knowing it was made by a very famous YouTuber and based on a horror game from 2022. And while we are rather often at the big screen, this was probably the busiest opening we’ve experienced since we watched Oppenheimer back in 2023. Sure, it wasn’t as crazy-busy as the Barbenheimer-insanity that went on back then, but it was still the busiest day at the cinema in a long time. In fact, it was so busy that the theater had (for some inexplicable reason) managed to overbook two of the seats, causing an unfortunate couple having to leave. Goddamn… (I really hope those two were compensated for the theater’s big blunder).

Sitting there in the most cramped cinema in a long while, it didn’t take long until I got the feeling of déjà vu once the movie had started. Wait…this looks familiar? And then it clicked: I had seen a walkthrough of that game before. I often watch horror game walkthroughs on YouTube (mostly indie games) and I recognized this one immediately despite that it obviously had buried itself deep within my brain somewhere. Which speaks volumes about how detailed and true to the game the set design here is. This immediately set the mood for me as well, as I knew more or less what to expect from here on. What you get here, is a slow dive (pun intended) into a slow-burn chamber drama lovecraftian sci-fi horror. Much of the horror is of the subtle kind, with an ever-growing feeling of total helplessness and how insignificant humanity is in the scope of bigger, unknown things. Which is basically cosmic horror in a nutshell. Did Fischbach hit the nail on the head with this movie adaptation? My personal opinion of that is definitely a yes. At least it scratched my cosmic horror itch well and good.

Iron Lung is a passion project through and through, and Fischbach is indeed a very decent actor. Which was a must in a chamber drama movie like this, where everything relies mostly on the shoulders of one actor. The set design looks great and exactly like the game as I already mentioned, and the effects used in this film are overall really solid. There is only one issue, and that is the movie’s runtime. It’s just too dang long. I’m not saying that a runtime of 2 hours wouldn’t necessarily work for a movie like this, but it does unfortunately become too repetitive at times and it was hard not to feel that it could have done much better with a shorter runtime. Despite some issues with the pacing and overly long runtime, I thought it managed to keep a creepy atmosphere and dense, claustrophobic vibe throughout. And those 80,000 gallons of blood? Well, they’ve been put to good use in a totally bonkers finale which really amps up everything to a hundred and eleven!

Iron Lung is without a doubt a movie that will be perceived with mixed feelings, as it’s not exactly a mainstream movie by any means. If you liked the game, I think there’s a pretty fair chance you’ll also like this movie. Despite some mixed reception (yes, it’s not a movie for everyone) it’s still been a huge success so far with a box office of $21 million after the opening weekend, against a budget of $3 million. Fischbach/Markiplier has proven that he’s both a good filmmaker and actor, so let’s hope the success will spark some ideas for future films to be made!

Writer and director: Mark Fischbach
Country & year: USA, 2026
Actors: Mark Fischbach, Caroline Kaplan, Troy Baker, Elsie Lovelock, Elle LaMont, Dave Pettitt, Isaac McKee, Asher Wagh, Kazuki Jalal, Alanah Pearce, Seán McLoughlin, David Szymanski
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27564844/