Horror critic | Senior Staff Writer at iHorror | Author of No House Is Empty | Cult, indie, queer, folk, and streaming horror.
Articles by Luna Gray
She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove: Killed by Politeness
Killed by her own politeness, Lucy comes back angry, and the anger moves her. Some horror novels open with a dead woman and get on with the plot. She’s a Doll by Barbara Truelove spends a long, awful stretch inside the manners that killed her, and that is where this book review starts. Lucy McQuinn is twenty, freshly qualified, and too polite to shut the door on the uninvited man who turns up with vodka, to refuse the drink, or to leave when she wants to.
5 Horror Movies to Stream This Weekend (September 4 to 6)
Another weekend, another pile of horror that appeared on streaming while we were busy doing something else. The first of the month is always the big drop, and September 1 fell on a Tuesday this year, which means the apps have been quietly restocking themselves since Monday and most of us have not caught up. So we went looking for what actually arrived this week, between Monday, August 31 and Sunday, September 6. Not what is sitting there. What is new.
Victor Miller, Screenwriter of the Original Friday the 13th, Has Died at 86
Victor Miller, the writer who sat down to answer a producer’s request for a Halloween knockoff and instead handed horror one of its most durable franchises, has died at 86.
‘Resident Evil’ Wants You to Eat Popcorn Out of an Organ Transplant Bag
The collectible popcorn container arms race has been running long enough that most of us can predict the shape by now. Big plastic character head. Hinged jaw. A hole where the snacks go. Regal looked at all of that and decided to do something considerably weirder for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil. The newly revealed collectible is not a bucket.
10 Horror Movies From the 2000s That Deserve a Second Look
The 2000s were a strange decade to love horror. The remake machine ran nonstop, J-horror imports arrived by the crate, Saw and Hostel kicked off years of arguing about torture porn, and found footage crept in underneath all of it. It was also the last decade when discovery was physical. You walked down a shelf, picked something up because the box looked cool, and took your chances. With that much product moving, good stuff got flattened. Some movies caught reviews they did not earn.
The Conjuring Series at HBO Max Has a Showrunner, a Writers Room and Almost No Answers
The Conjuring: Last Rites closed the book on Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s Ed and Lorraine Warren, and it did so with the kind of numbers that guarantee a franchise keeps moving. Warner Bros. has not slowed down since. There is a prequel dated for 2027, and there is still a television series in development at HBO Max that almost nobody can say anything concrete about. That series has been in the works since April 2023, when Warner Bros.
Every Horror Movie and Show Coming to Streaming in September 2026
Luna Gray is a trans horror critic, Senior Staff Writer at iHorror, author of No House Is Empty, and a lifelong horror obsessive with a soft spot for cult cinema. She specializes in cult, independent, folk, queer, international, streaming, and physical-media horror, along with horror history, haunted history, and folklore. She has seen too much and recommends most of it. Her reviews, interviews, features, and cultural criticism appear at iHorror.
Soul Snatchers Has More Theology Than Its 104 Minutes Can Hold
Most supernatural horror borrows Christianity the way it borrows a haunted doll. The crucifix is set dressing. The priest is a plot device. Whatever the movie actually believes about good and evil tends to evaporate once the demon starts throwing furniture. Soul Snatchers is not built that way. Julio Román’s Puerto Rican production, written by Román and Cesar R. Castillo and made entirely in English, is faith-based in the fullest sense.
David Gregory Would Rather Restore Bloody Moon Than Citizen Kane
On the afternoon of Saturday, August 22, Severin Films marked twenty years by handing out cupcakes in a movie theater on Fairfax. The occasion was the 2026 Super-Shock Pop-Up Film Festival at Brain Dead Studios in Los Angeles, presented with Cinematic Void and Rendezvous and built around four mystery screenings of unannounced titles. Surprise guests, a merch table, DJ sets between films, Severin’s international team in the room.
“You Have to Be Able to Risk an Exorcist II to Get an Excalibur”: David Kittredge on Boorman and the Devil
David Kittredge has a cold and about nine more of these calls today, and he still lights up when I ask why anyone would spend years inside a film that has been a punchline since 1977. “I think that’s my favorite question that I will probably be asked all day today,” he says. Then he corrects the premise. “I didn’t pick it. It picked me.” Boorman and the Devil is his documentary about John Boorman and Exorcist II: The Heretic, and it is not the movie you would expect from that description.
This Week in Horror: Losing Tim Curry and Dolly Parton, David Gets Another Chapter, and RoboCop Finds Its Murphy
Two people with very different connections to horror died on the same day this week. That gave the week a shape nobody wanted. Everything else, and there was plenty, felt like the fall schedule quietly assembling itself in the background. This is our weekly look back at what ran on iHorror, for anyone whose week got away from them. Here is what mattered between Monday and Thursday. Curry died at 80, with his manager confirming the news Wednesday and no cause announced.
First Pendulum Teaser Sends Joseph Gordon-Levitt to a New Mexico Retreat From the Black Swan Co-Writer
Vertical will release Pendulum in theaters nationwide on January 1, 2027, and the first teaser is now online. The film is the feature directorial debut of Mark Heyman, who co-wrote Black Swan for Darren Aronofsky in 2010. He wrote this one by himself. Aronofsky produces alongside Ari Handel and Jacob Jaffke, and the teaser is not shy about any of it.
6 Horror Movies to Watch This Weekend: August 28-30
August is going out with a split personality. Netflix and Shudder are both dropping major new genre premieres on Friday, one a starry serial-killer thriller and the other a very mean Australian slasher, and either one could carry your whole weekend. Then there is Screambox, which has apparently decided to celebrate the end of summer by opening a crate nobody has looked in since the Clinton administration.
Blood Shine Review: The Light Is Where the Danger Lives
Horror trains you to watch the corners. Check the dark, check behind the door, check what the frame is not showing you. Blood Shine takes that habit away almost immediately, because everything terrible in it happens where you can see. Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks, who previously worked together on Alone with You, have made a folk horror movie about a woman who worships light.
Tim Curry Dies at 80, and He Is Still the Most Interesting Person in the Room
Tim Curry could look straight into a camera and make you feel like you had been caught at something. Tim Curry has died at 80. His manager confirmed his death Wednesday, with Variety and The Hollywood Reporter among the outlets reporting the news. No cause of death has been announced. The tributes arrived in the shape you would expect. Frank-N-Furter descending in the elevator. Pennywise leaning out of a storm drain with an armful of balloons.
Ridley Scott Is Still Chasing David’s Story, and Says a Third Alien Prequel Is in the Works
Ridley Scott told the Los Angeles Times that a third Alien prequel is in the works, and that it will pick the story back up with David, the synthetic played by Michael Fassbender. Scott says the film would find David building what he calls a “brave new world for himself.” That is the whole of the confirmed news, and it is worth being precise about it. In development is not greenlit. There is no announced release date, no production start, and no confirmation that Fassbender has signed anything new.
Prime Video’s RoboCop Has Found Its Alex Murphy, and It Is Dan Stevens
Dan Stevens is Alex Murphy. Deadline reports that Stevens has landed the lead in Prime Video’s RoboCop series, which puts him inside the visor for eight episodes of a property that has spent nearly forty years refusing to behave like a normal action franchise. That is the headline, and it is a good one. The rest of what we know is deliberately thin right now, which is worth saying up front before anyone starts building a teaser trailer in their head. Here is the shape of the thing.
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil Rated R for “Strong Bloody Violence, Gore and Language Throughout”
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil has a rating. The MPA has given the film an R for “strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout,” which lands about where anyone following the production would have guessed, though the wording is worth a second look. MPA descriptors are compliance language, not criticism. They tell you what is in the movie and roughly how intense or persistent that material is, not whether any of it works. In this case, “throughout” is the useful word.
Last Chance Motel Trailer: Harris and Taylor-Compton Take the Camera
Two actors who have spent most of their working lives running from something just spent a whole movie deciding where the camera goes. Danielle Harris and Scout Taylor-Compton co-directed Last Chance Motel, produced it through their own company, share the story credit, and play the newlyweds at the center of it. The Horror Collective has released the trailer ahead of a Digital release on October 6. The reunion is the part horror people will clock first.
10 Indie Horror Films To Put On Your Watchlist
Here is how a good horror movie disappears in 2026. It plays a festival. Maybe it wins something. A few critics write it up, horror Twitter gets loud for four days, and then it sinks under nine hundred other titles on some streamer. Nobody has to actively bury these movies. The flood does it for them. Studio horror gets billboards and a press tour. Indie horror gets a poster on a distributor’s website. Which is a shame, because the small stuff is where the weird ideas live.
The New ‘Resident Evil’ TV Spot Has a Very Bad Dog
A new TV spot for Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil has given us the first real look at one of the film’s creatures, and it is a dog. Sort of. Bloody Disgusting flagged the spot, titled “Survive,” which spends a beat letting the animal read as an ordinary dog before the head opens up. That is most of what the footage gives you. It is a TV spot, so the shot is quick and the reveal is the whole point. The head splits, something comes out of it, and the thing goes at a fence.
The Death of Us Trailer Knows Grief Is Not Alone in the House
The trailer for The Death of Us is out, and the film premieres at Tubi FrightFest 2026 this Saturday, August 29, as a world premiere in the festival’s First Blood strand. Annabella Rich directs, co-writing the script with Chris Mills. The two of them also star. The supporting cast includes Nicholas Vince, who horror fans know from Hellraiser and Nightbreed, along with Johnny Vivash, Marta Svetek, and Francesca Louise White. The setup is a retreat that does not take.
Joko Anwar’s Ghost in the Cell Has Nowhere to Run
Well Go USA has released the official U.S. trailer for Ghost in the Cell, the prison horror comedy written and directed by Joko Anwar. It opens in theaters October 2. The premise is a locked box. A high-security prison, a warden who runs the place like personal property, and gangs that save most of their hatred for each other. A new inmate arrives. Bodies start turning up arranged where everyone has to look at them.
‘Insidious: Out of the Further’ Scares Up $25 Million and Pushes the Franchise Past $800 Million
Insidious: Out of the Further opened to roughly $25 million domestically this weekend, finishing No. 2 on the North American chart. That is a solid August number for a horror sequel, and a genuinely interesting one for a series that first premiered in 2010 and hit U.S. theaters in 2011. The film it could not catch was Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which added about $39 million in its fourth weekend to hold the top spot.
A Child Calls for Help and Something Answers in ‘Family’ Trailer
Plenty of horror movies are about summoning something. Fewer are about being desperate enough to call anyway. Bloody Disgusting has the exclusive debut of the trailer for Family, the feature debut of writer and director Benjamin Finkel. The footage does not lead with a monster. It leads with a house where somebody is dying and a kid who has decided she can do something about it.
Night Terror Should Have Trusted the Dark
Found footage asks for one thing before it asks for anything else. Believe the camera was really there. Believe somebody was holding it, that the battery was a real concern, that nobody in the frame knew they were in a movie. Night Terror buys that belief honestly for long stretches, then spends it on things it never needed to buy. Night Terror was written by Joshua Brucker and co-directed by Brucker and Hunter Nino.
This Week in Horror: Losing Hayden Panettiere, Cregger Draws His Line, and October Eats the Calendar
Every August the horror calendar stretches further than it did the year before, and this year it finally tore. Shudder is running its Halloween event from September 1 straight through New Year’s Eve. Tubi looked at its October horror hub and decided the doors should never close again. Lowe’s is out here selling a fifteen foot skeleton. By Wednesday the genre had annexed a third of the year and was still reaching.
All the Horror Flicks Hitting Streaming This Weekend (08/21-08/23)
Late August is supposed to be the dead zone. Everyone is squeezing in one last cookout, the good stuff is holding for October, and the couch is technically a waste of a nice evening. Ignore all of that. This weekend brings a Shudder exclusive built out of fake restaurant commercials, a religious horror film with half the indie horror bench in it, a possession movie shot in one take, and a couple of older titles quietly sliding onto Hulu. Some of these are brand new.
‘Never After Dark’ Trailer Reveals the Horror Movie Stephen King Called “Amazing and Haunting”
Stephen King has spent fifty years telling us exactly what unsettles him, so when he hands a new horror movie the words “amazing and haunting,” the genre tends to sit up straight. The film that earned it is Never After Dark, and as of this morning the official trailer is finally out in the world. Magnolia Pictures opens the Japanese ghost story in theaters on September 25. King is not the only heavy hitter in the marketing.
‘The Depths’ Review: A Found Footage Idea Good Enough to Make You Impatient
Found footage has a supply problem. There are only so many camcorders left in the woods, only so many hard drives pulled out of a crime scene, and horror fans learned the rhythm of that setup a long time ago. The Depths gets around the shortage by asking something the format has mostly left alone. What if the camera could leave your body and keep recording? Writer and director Tristan Reed puts a brother and sister at the center of it.
Tabitha Brownstone on Gator Face, Swamp Survival and Betting on Yourself
The first thing Tabitha Brownstone wants us to know about Gator Face is that it plays. Loudly. “It was so exciting. I really loved seeing how the audience responded to it,” she says. The kills worked. The alligator material worked. Then people laughed. “There was actually some moments that people were laughing out loud at jokes that I didn’t know would hit so hard. But I guess when something is so serious you need those moments of levity.” That is the register Padraig Reynolds is working in.
Shudder Stretches Spooky Season Across Four Months With 2026 ‘Season of Screams’ Lineup
Shudder is not waiting for October. The streamer’s Season of Screams programming event returns September 1 and runs all the way through December 31, which means the horror calendar now starts before Labor Day even arrives and does not stop until the year does. The four-month event brings new original and exclusive films every Friday, a new season of The Creep Tapes, live watch parties on Shudder TV, the annual Ghoul Log, and a stack of Halloween specials.
‘Whalefall’ Trailer Gives Austin Abrams One Hour of Oxygen Inside a Sperm Whale
There are a lot of bad places to watch your air gauge run down. Inside the stomach of a sperm whale has to be near the top of the list. That is the entire pitch of Whalefall, and the new official trailer from 20th Century Studios makes it clear the film has no interest in softening it. Austin Abrams plays Jay Gardiner, a diver who goes into the water off California’s Central Coast looking for his late father’s remains and ends up swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale.
Tubi Makes ‘Terror on Tubi’ a Permanent Horror Hub With 13,000+ Hours of Scares
Horror fans have never really needed a calendar. Tubi has finally noticed. The free streaming service announced Tuesday that it is turning Terror on Tubi, its long-running seasonal Halloween celebration, into a permanent home for the genre. The new hub is live now, and it is not a October-only pop-up that vanishes on November 1. The numbers behind the decision are the interesting part.
Peachfuzz Recruits New Playmates in The Creep Tapes Season 3 Trailer
Somewhere out there, another batch of people have agreed to spend time alone with Mark Duplass. On camera. Voluntarily. We all know how this goes. Shudder and AMC+ have released the official trailer for the third season of The Creep Tapes, and it confirms that the streamer’s most socially catastrophic serial killer is back with a fresh batch of tapes.
Fantastic Fest 2026 Lineup Is Here: The Horror Movies We’re Most Excited to See
Fantastic Fest has revealed its 2026 lineup, and the calendar for September just got considerably more crowded. The 21st edition runs September 17 through 24 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas. Festival director Lisa Dreyer framed the year around discovery, promising audiences “the next batch of breakout Directors.” That is the sort of thing festivals always say.
Lowe’s Answer to the 12-Foot Skeleton Is a 15-Foot One
There is a homeowners association somewhere in this country about to discover its bylaws contain no language covering a fifteen-foot headless man holding his own skull above the mailbox. Lowe’s has entered the giant Halloween decoration arms race with the Haunted Living 15-ft Talking Lighted Skeleton Watcher Motion Activated Animatronic. It is listed at $429, though Lowe’s notes on its own site that prices and availability vary and can change without notice.
THE MORGUE FILES: At The Mountains Of Madness
In late February 2011, Guillermo del Toro was somewhere near the border of Canada and Alaska, looking at snow, deciding which of it would appear in his movie. Production offices in Toronto were a week from opening. Crew had been hired. Industrial Light and Magic had animated a creature nobody had ever seen. James Cameron was producing. Tom Cruise was poised to star as William Dyer, the geologist who walks into the ice and comes back with a warning nobody believes. Cameras were scheduled for June.
‘The Demon Detective’ Review: A Supernatural World Worth Revisiting, Stuck Inside a Movie That Runs Too Long
The Demon Detective feels like the pilot episode of a supernatural TV series that somebody accidentally released as a two-hour movie. That is a compliment and it is also the problem. Miles Mako is a Catholic outcast who works as an exorcist for hire. He takes cases with his partner Pin, tries to make rent, and carries around a lot of unprocessed damage from his childhood.
Pennywise Is Going Back to 1935: HBO Renews ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ for Season 2
It took a while, but HBO has finally made it official. IT: Welcome to Derry is coming back for a second season, and it is going further into the past. The renewal landed Monday, August 17, roughly eight months after the first season wrapped its run in December. Season 2 jumps back from 1962 to 1935, dropping us into Derry during the Great Depression, and it centers on the massacre of the Bradley Gang. If you have read Stephen King’s novel, that name probably rang a bell.
Matilda Lutz Is Trapped With a Building Full of Killer Spiders in the Red Band Trailer for CRAWLERS
Roadside Attractions and Saban Films have released the official red band trailer for CRAWLERS, which opens in theaters on October 16, 2026. The red band designation is worth noting before you hit play. This is the version cut for adult audiences, so it is not the one to throw on speaker at your desk. The premise is contained and easy to follow. A catastrophic infestation of venomous and deadly spiders overruns an apartment building, and a police-mandated quarantine seals the residents inside.
The Complete Nightmare on Elm Street Bible: Freddy Krueger, Dream Rules, Springwood, the Timeline, and Every Movie Explained
Every great horror monster is a promise about where you are not safe. Michael Myers says the street outside is not safe. Leatherface says the countryside is not safe. Jason says leave the city and you will regret it. All of those threats have a solution, even if it is a stupid one: go somewhere else, lock something, stay in the light. Freddy Krueger closed the last exit.
Hayden Panettiere, Kirby Reed in the Scream Franchise, Dies at 36
Hayden Panettiere has died at 36. Her representative confirmed the death to ABC News on Sunday, August 16. Her father, Skip Panettiere, released a statement the same day describing her as “an incredible light and a force of nature,” and asked for privacy while the family processes the loss. A cause of death has not been released.
5 Horror Sequels That Are Actually Better Than the Original
Horror fans learn early to flinch at the words “Part 2.” We have been burned. The sequel usually means a smaller budget, a bigger body count that somehow matters less, and a killer who has stopped being scary and started being a mascot. We brace for diminishing returns because that is what the genre trains us to expect. And then, every so often, a franchise gets a second swing and connects. Sometimes a new director shows up. Sometimes the same one finally figures out the assignment.
This Week in Horror: American Horror Story Reunites Its Villains, Verity Turns Nasty, and Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza Gets Real
Horror spent this week refusing to let anything stay dead. American Horror Story emptied its entire vault of villains onto one soundstage, Lionsgate went digging for a leprechaun it had buried years ago, and a girlfriend from a micro-budget slasher clawed her way out of the movie and into a theme park. Somebody is even building a real Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, which is either a love letter or a lawsuit waiting to happen.
‘Bury the Devil’ Trailer Locks a Night Nurse in a One-Take Possession (Exclusive)
Possession movies love a locked door. Decades of them have been built on the simple cruelty of putting someone in a room with a demon and quietly removing the exits. Bury the Devil wants to remove one more. The editing. The new international trailer for Adam O’Brien’s film makes its pitch in the first few seconds, then spells it out with a title card that reads “REAL-TIME POSSESSION HORROR.” The whole movie plays out in real time, in a single continuous take. No cut to spare you.
American Horror Story: 13 Teaser Brings Back Constance, Kai, and Twisty for a Full Villain Reunion
The marketing for American Horror Story: 13 has spent months pulling familiar faces out of the vault. Now the first official teaser makes the plan impossible to miss. By the time Vogue published a wave of first-look images on August 12, the thirteenth season had stopped pretending to be subtle. The new photos confirm what the casting rumors had been circling for months. Jessica Lange is back as Constance Langdon, staring out a window in that unmistakable beehive.
5 Horror Movies on Tubi You Should Watch Tonight
Opening Tubi to find a horror movie is its own little horror movie. The catalog is enormous, half of it has cover art that looks AI generated, and twenty minutes later you have watched four trailers and committed to nothing. It is like wandering a haunted Blockbuster that never closes and never restocks the good stuff up front. So let me do the wandering for you. Here are five horror movies actually worth your night on Tubi right now, and I mean actually worth it, not filler with a scary thumbnail.
5 New Horror Movies to Watch This Weekend: August 14–16, 2026
Four new horror movies arrive on Friday, August 14, and they have been scattered across the internet like someone lost a bet. One is in IMAX. One is on Shudder, one is on the ordinary rental storefronts, and one is on a streaming service you have very possibly never opened. A fifth, The Boy From Below, turned up Tuesday and still counts, because it is sitting right there. All of it is watchable between Friday and Sunday, August 16. Nothing here is a ranking and nothing here is a review.
Every Horror Movie Needs a Bad Object. ‘Harbinger’ Found a Great One.
Somebody finally remembered that a machine can be scarier than a monster. The best thing in Harbinger is a boxed-up fortune teller with a painted face and a coin slot, the sort of thing that would sit at the end of a pier taking your money and telling you that a stranger will bring good news. This one deals a card with your death on it. That is a wonderfully old-fashioned idea for a horror movie to be built on, and James Crow’s British occult horror knows it.
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