Nine months of horror releases down, three to go! We’re officially in 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:
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.
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.