Horror critic | Senior Staff Writer at iHorror | Author of No House Is Empty | Cult, indie, queer, folk, and streaming horror.
Articles by Luna Gray
Pauly Shore Faces a Monster That Hunts Anxiety in Viral Horror Short ‘Remain Calm’
Most horror monsters come after you for running, hiding or answering the phone. Mr. Frett is pickier. The creature in Remain Calm can only find people who are anxious, stressed or afraid. That’s a terrible rule for anyone living in 2026. It’s a little more survivable if you’ve spent decades playing the most relaxed guy in the room, which makes Pauly Shore an inspired choice to put in its path. Jake Lewis wrote and directed the short from a story he developed with Sam Lewis.
5 Horror Movies to Stream This Weekend (October 23–25)
Halloween is almost here and the streaming services have clearly noticed. Every movie on this list arrives on Friday, October 23. That makes this weekend very easy to plan. We’ve got a new Shudder Original and a queer zombie comedy. There’s also a homemade nightmare from the woods, a Cronenberg classic and a British spoof that features cricket bats as a punchline. All five are on subscription or free services. Nobody here gets quietly redirected to a rental page.
Slayground Trailer: Jeremy Saulnier Turns a Haunted Attraction Into a Real Crime Scene
Every haunted attraction runs on one agreement. The people lunging out of the dark are pretending and the bodies sprawled across the floor will get up and go home at closing. Slayground, the new film from writer and director Jeremy Saulnier, starts by breaking that agreement in the ugliest way available. A24 released the official trailer this morning, giving us a closer look at the Halloween thriller previously known as October.
I See the Demon Review: Happy Birthday, Something Is Very Wrong
Lucy comes home to a surprise birthday party with all of her favorite people waiting for her. It should be one of the best nights of her life. Then someone asks about her day and she realizes she can’t remember any of it. Her friends tell her not to worry, which is roughly the moment I started worrying for her. I See the Demon opens on that feeling and refuses to explain it. The atmosphere is wrong in a way I couldn’t name at first.
Your Library Card Can Stream Hereditary, Terrifier and More Horror Movies Free on Hoopla
At some point being a horror fan turned into a subscription management job. One service has the slashers, another has the arthouse stuff, and a third has that one movie you swore you’d finally watch this October. Meanwhile the library card in your wallet might already have a horror collection waiting. Hoopla is a digital streaming service that works through participating public libraries. If your library is on board, your card gets you in.
Ripcord’s Halloween Film Festival Is Live: Stream 50 Genre Shorts Free and Vote by October 22
Your Halloween homework just arrived and it’s the fun kind. Ripcord’s Halloween Film Festival went live today, October 19. All 50 shorts are now streaming free at ripcord.film. The lineup covers horror, science fiction, thrillers and fantasy, and you don’t need another streaming subscription to watch any of them. You do need a free account. That gets you access to every film and a vote on each one you watch.
Looky-loo Made Me Check My Windows. Its Creators Want You to Ask Why. (Nightmares Film Festival)
After I finished Looky-loo and its sequel, I walked through my house and checked every window. Not the doors. I lock those. I mean the windows I crack open on mild nights and forget about until morning. These films don’t leave you afraid of a man in a mask so much as suspicious of your own house. I confessed this to director Jason Zink and writer Nolan Mihail when we sat down at Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus, where both films played as a double feature at the Gateway Film Center.
ÒPI Review: Marta Giec’s Kashubian Folk Horror Asks What Families Hand Down (Brooklyn Horror)
People will do almost anything for a story they believe is true. They’ll keep a ritual nobody remembers the reason for, avoid a road after dark, or decide a neighbor is dangerous because of something a grandmother said once. That impulse is where ÒPI lives, and it’s why I came out of Marta Giec’s feature debut more unsettled than scared.
Nightmares Film Festival Is the Sweetest Place in Horror
I have spent a lot of my life in dark rooms full of strangers. Festival coverage comes with the job, and over the years I’ve collected enough lanyards to build a very sad wind chime. Some festivals dazzled me with their programming. Others opened doors I never could have opened on my own. I have never attended one that made me feel as welcome as Nightmares Film Festival. That caught me off guard. I walked into Gateway Film Center in Columbus with my notebook and my usual festival armor on.
The Curse of Tahu’a Review: One Control Tower and a Mystery Worth the Wait (Nightmares)
For almost the entire running time of The Curse of Tahu’a, I was looking at one person. Marie Kauffmann is essentially the only actor physically on screen for something close to 99% of the film. That is a gamble for any movie and an especially big one for a 90-minute independent horror film. It turns out to be the reason the whole thing works. I saw it at its world premiere at Nightmares Film Festival on October 16, 2026, at Gateway Film Center in Columbus.
This Week in Horror: Hulu Orders The X-Files and the O’Connells Return
Every October the genre gets a little sentimental about the dead, but this week felt like an exhumation with a press schedule. Hulu ordered a new X-Files. Universal titled a Mummy sequel after the book that wakes Imhotep. Hammer’s parent company acquired the rights to everything Susan Hill has written, and DC told us its Swamp Thing still has a pulse. Even Z Nation is lurching back toward the camera. I’m not complaining.
I Love Paris Review: A Vampire Mockumentary With the Best Monster of the Year
I Love Paris won me over the moment we meet Lutèce, yelling down a tunnel. Leonor Oberson’s vampire arrives looking like a familiar piece of genre machinery. She seems like the harbinger, the figure who shows up to tell the audience that the fun part of the story is over and the horror movie is about to start. Then she keeps yelling, and I realized this character was going to be a lot more interesting than her job description. Lutèce feels strangely warm from her first extended scene with Paris.
3 New Horror Movies to Stream This Weekend (October 16–18)
Here’s a confession. We went looking for five fresh horror movies hitting streaming this week and came back with three. There’s plenty of horror arriving on streaming right now. Shudder alone is adding a pile of it. But most of this week’s additions are movies that have already been out for months, or decades, quietly switching apartments. Swiping right on a 2023 movie because Netflix just picked it up doesn’t count as new, so we held the line. What survived is a pretty good weekend.
Crawlers Review: Bad Tenants, Big Spiders and a Lot of Garlic
Serena is tired before a single spider shows up. Matilda Lutz plays her as the woman keeping an apartment building running with almost no help from the landlord. The residents treat her terribly. By the time the infestation starts in Crawlers you may already have a short list of tenants you wouldn’t mind seeing wrapped up for later. That’s a big part of the fun. Director Ángel Gómez Hernández works from a script by Jayson Rothwell.
Heat of Madness Review: Olivier Picard Could Walk Through Anything and I’d Watch (Sitges)
I could watch Olivier Picard walk for two hours. Heat of Madness comes close to testing that theory. Picard plays Scola in Karim Ouelhaj’s new film, which the director also wrote. Roughly half the movie feels like watching him walk dramatically from one location to another. Somehow every second earns its place. Some actors need a big monologue to take over a movie. Picard just needs somewhere to go. He’s phenomenal here and his physical presence does the kind of work dialogue usually gets credit for.
Christmas at the Kringles Gets an R Rating Just in Time for Halloween
Santa is coming early this year and he’s rated R. Christmas at the Kringles, the holiday horror-comedy from Willy’s Wonderland director Kevin Lewis, has been rated R for “some strong bloody violence, language, and some sexual material,” Bloody Disgusting reports. Briarcliff Entertainment opens the film in theaters October 30. Before hitting theaters, the film will make its world premiere October 15 as the closing-night selection at Screamfest. That’s right.
Ripcord’s Halloween Film Festival Reveals 50 Shorts Across Seven Themed Programs
Ripcord’s Halloween Film Festival has revealed the 50 shorts in its inaugural lineup, and horror fans will have a say in which ten films make it to Hollywood. The free online festival opens October 19 at ripcord.film. Registered viewers can watch the films and vote for their favorites through October 22. The selections were chosen from more than 500 submissions spanning horror, science fiction, thrillers and fantasy.
Z Nation: Resurrection Is Bringing the Zombie Series Back From the Dead
The dead never stay down in this franchise. The Asylum is developing Z Nation: Resurrection, a sequel series to Syfy’s cult zombie show. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news Tuesday, eight years after the original show went off the air. Apparently, the apocalypse still has a few things left to say. This is the part fans will care about most. Kellita Smith’s Warren, Keith Allan’s Murphy, Russell Hodgkinson’s Doc and DJ Qualls’ Citizen Z are all in talks to return in supporting roles.
Devour Review: Great Monsters, Bad Choices
Some premises sell themselves. An all-woman heavy metal band gets stranded in a town packed with cannibals, vampires, a warlock and a werewolf. I didn’t need a synopsis. I needed snacks. That’s what makes Devour so frustrating. Director Scott B. Hansen and screenwriter Desirée Hansen hand themselves a gloriously ridiculous B-movie setup. KateLynn E. Newberry leads the cast alongside Heidi Shepherd of Butcher Babies and Alex Lucchesi. Everything I wanted was right there.
Simon Rumley on Crushed, Forgiveness and the Long Wait for a Missing Child
Forgiveness is a lovely idea right up until someone asks you to do it. In Simon Rumley’s Crushed, that request lands on Daniel, an English vicar living in Bangkok whose daughter Olivia, 10, is abducted. Steve Oram plays Daniel opposite May Nattaporn Rawddon as his wife May and Margaux Dietrich as Olivia, from a script Rumley wrote himself. The film asks how much weight a man’s faith can carry once his own child becomes the test case.
The Body Trailer: Netflix’s Catholic School Horror Series Tips a Town Into Mass Hysteria
Netflix has released the trailer for The Body, and the series arrives with exactly the kind of reading list we like to see. Creator and showrunner Quinn Shephard has named Carrie, Jennifer’s Body, Heavenly Creatures, Mean Girls and the Salem witch trials as influences. That is a lot of teenage girls getting blamed for things. The story starts with a Catholic school dance team whose initiation goes horribly wrong.
Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe Get Stranded With a Masked Killer in the River Trailer
The first trailer for River landed Monday, and the casting alone has our attention. Jane Levy, who outlasted the Deadites in Evil Dead and a very bad burglary in Don’t Breathe, teams up with Jessica Rothe, who spent two Happy Death Day movies dying on a loop until she got it right. That is a lot of survival experience for one small boat. Levy, Rothe and Max Mattern play estranged siblings who head to a remote river to scatter their father’s ashes. Then the boat breaks down.
Luc Besson’s Dracula Arrives on Paramount+ Today
Dracula has never been good at letting go. Death takes the woman he loves and he simply refuses to accept the ruling, which might be the most relatable thing about him. That stubborn devotion drives Luc Besson’s Dracula, and the film makes its streaming debut on Paramount+ today. Photo credit: Vertical Entertainment/Courtesy of Paramount+ Caleb Landry Jones plays a fifteenth-century prince who renounces God after the murder of his wife, played by Zoë Bleu. His punishment is eternal life.
Don’t Move Review: A Fun Giant Spider Movie That Needed More Spider
Sometimes a simple creature feature is enough and Don’t Move seems to know it. Maclain Nelson directs from a screenplay he wrote with novelists James Murray and Darren Wearmouth and the result is a giant spider movie with no grand ambitions beyond being a giant spider movie. A church group’s annual retreat in the Ozarks goes sideways when they wander into the wrong stretch of wilderness and cross paths with a prehistoric spider that hunts by vibration.
Split Rock Review: Glover’s Lovecraftian Badlands Horror Gets Lost in the Scenery
I will watch almost anything where someone digs up a thing that should have stayed buried. Ryan Glover’s Split Rock offers exactly that, with a remote stretch of badlands and an intelligence older than anything with a pulse. On paper this is very much my kind of movie. On screen it mostly felt like waiting. Clark Backo, Drew Ray Tanner, Olivia Luccardi and Graham Verchere lead the cast and Glover shot the whole thing on 16mm. That grain does real work out here.
Jeepers Creepers Deserved Better Than Victor Salva
Twenty-five years later, the Creeper is still one of modern horror’s great monsters, and his legacy is still inseparable from Victor Salva’s conviction for abusing Nathan Forrest Winters. Jeepers Creepers turns 25 this year, and its best idea still shows up before its monster does. Siblings Trish (Gina Philips) and Darry (Justin Long) are driving home through the middle of nowhere when a rusted truck swells in the rearview mirror and leans on its horn. There’s no face.
‘Other Mommy’ Opens at 20% on Rotten Tomatoes as Critics Question Its Jump Scares
Other Mommy had one of the year’s sharpest hooks. Rob Savage, who made Host and The Boogeyman, directs from Nathan Elston’s screenplay, adapted from Josh Malerman’s novel Incidents Around the House. Jessica Chastain plays both Ursula and the thing wearing her face, opposite Arabella Olivia Clark as Bela. As iHorror’s Anthony Pernicka reported, the whole story grew out of a real bedtime goodnight to “Other Mommy.” The trailer did the rest, and then Savage put a number on it.
This Week in Horror: Losing Hank Loomis, Fulci’s Hotel Reopens and Godzilla Takes IMAX
The original Scream loses a familiar face, Fulci’s cursed hotel prepares to reopen and Godzilla claims an entire IMAX screen for himself. Horror spent this week digging up foundations. Peacock promised to show us where Jason’s first mask came from. Two companies want to reopen the Louisiana hotel Lucio Fulci built over a gateway to Hell. A programmer took Konami’s most famous corpse apart and rebuilt it from the code up. Even the saddest news went back to the beginning.
Becky Takes Her Nazi Problem International in The Last Temptation of Becky Trailer
Some people get a career counselor. Becky got Nazis. Quiver Distribution has released the first full trailer for The Last Temptation of Becky, following the pair of teasers that dropped October 1. Lulu Wilson’s Becky Hooper has officially turned a grudge into a career. The third film in the franchise opens in theaters November 4, 2026. Becky started out fighting off Nazis at a lake house. Two movies later she’s flying overseas to hunt them on purpose. That’s not a character arc so much as a promotion.
5 Horror Movies to Stream This Weekend (October 9–11)
A new V/H/S, Adam Scott’s haunted Irish inn, a witch played by Cassandra Peterson and two wonderfully strange Shudder additions are waiting this weekend. October is finally starting to earn its reputation. This weekend brings five horror movies that are new to subscription or free streaming services. We’ve got a fresh V/H/S anthology, a creepy Irish hotel and a killer fortune-telling machine.
Rockabye Baby! Halloween Gives Tiny Horror Fans Their First Spooky Season Soundtrack
Halloween was never only about candy. For a lot of us it was the first time we figured out that monsters could be fun. That strange could be wonderful. That being a little scared was half the excitement. Every kid finds their way there at their own pace. Sometimes it starts with a plastic skeleton on the porch. Sometimes it starts with a song. Rockabye Baby! is offering a very soft landing. The lullaby brand releases Rockabye Baby! Halloween on October 16, 2026.
Rob Riggle Plays a Rogue Santa in New Christmas at the Kringles Trailer
The Willy’s Wonderland director sends Ron Livingston next door to rescue his family from neighbors who celebrate Christmas all year. Stores have been shoving Christmas into October for years. Now a horror movie wants in. Christmas at the Kringles is an action horror comedy about neighbors who never take the tree down. It hits theaters October 30, 2026. That’s one day before Halloween. Bold choice. I respect it. The new trailer starts like a cozy holiday movie. Then the neighbors start acting strange.
Exclusive Trailer: The Awakening Makes a Modern Military Unit Repeat a 500-Year-Old Mistake
A modern military unit heads into the Colombian jungle on a kill order and walks straight into the nightmare that swallowed a Spanish conquistador expedition 500 years earlier. The exclusive trailer opens like a straight military thriller. A helicopter cockpit. A voice laying out the drop point. Rifle optics sweeping through jungle so dense the frame is mostly black.
The Heretiks Trades Axes for Spells, but Its Heart Belongs to Two Sisters
‘ve seen a thousand home invasion movies, so that’s where I started with Gregg Bishop at Fantastic Fest. His new film, The Heretiks, puts two sisters under siege on Halloween and hands the fight over to witchcraft. “By adding the supernatural elements, it kind of flips it,” Bishop told me. “Instead of axes and guns, you get spells and counterspells.” Bishop, who also directed Dance of the Dead and Siren, gave the credit to writers Luke Piotrowski and Ben Collins.
New Clayface Featurette Wants You to Know This Is a Horror Movie
DC is not backing off the horror pitch. A new Clayface featurette arrived alongside the news that tickets are now on sale. “We are making a true horror film,” producer James Gunn says in it. That’s a sharper promise than a superhero movie with a few scary scenes. Clayface opens in theaters October 23, 2026, and it’s being sold as a monster movie first and a DC movie second. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a Hollywood leading man left horribly disfigured by a local crime boss.
Friday the 13th Is Back: Everything We Know About Crystal Lake Before It Premieres
Friday the 13th is finally coming back to the screen, and it’s bringing Mom. Crystal Lake premieres Thursday, October 15, 2026 exclusively on Peacock, with all eight episodes available to stream immediately. It’s the franchise’s first official installment in almost twenty years, and this isn’t simply another round of Jason wandering through the woods looking for teenagers. This time, the story belongs to Pamela Voorhees.
Frankenhooker Has Never Looked This Good, and Somehow That Makes It Even Funnier
Frankenhooker has never looked this good. I went into Synapse Films’ new 4K UHD expecting to have a great time with one of the sleaziest and sweetest horror comedies of the early ’90s, and I did. What I didn’t expect was to keep stopping and staring at how good this grimy, ridiculous movie looks. Synapse releases its standard 4K UHD and Blu-ray editions on October 13, 2026, and this is the version of Frankenhooker I’ll be reaching for from now on.
Trixie Mattel Is Claiming Halloween Because Mariah Already Owns Christmas
Mariah Carey has spent three decades thawing out every December. Trixie Mattel looked at the calendar and spotted an unclaimed month. “I made a Halloween record because Mariah already copyrighted Christmas,” Mattel told iHorror. Somebody had to file the paperwork on October. That record is ‘Till Death Do Us Part, a six-song release that arrived October 2 via PEG Records. Three days later she followed it with Trixie’s Halloween Mattelathon on her YouTube channel. The Mariah joke gets you in the door.
Casper Kelly’s Buddy Hits Digital October 13 After $26 Million Theatrical Run
Buddy is coming home. Casper Kelly’s horror film about a children’s TV unicorn arrives on Digital October 13, 2026, with DVD and Blu-ray following December 8. Witter Entertainment will also open a VHS pre-sale on November 24, timed so the tapes ship for the holidays. For a movie that pitches its star as the host of a classic kids’ show, a tape you can slide into a VCR feels like exactly the right format.
The Terror: Devil in Silver Is Very Good TV. The Blu-ray Is a Harder Sell
Acorn’s UK Blu-ray of the third Terror season pairs a very good show with a short featurette and a picture gallery. Here’s who should still pick it up. The Terror: Devil in Silver is a very good season of television. That sentence is the easy part of this review. The harder part is the Blu-ray Acorn Media International releases in the UK on Monday, October 5, 2026, the same day as a DVD edition.
Access:Horror Is Building the Horror Festival Disabled Fans Should Have Had All Along
The disability-centered genre fest streams 19 international films worldwide from October 4 through November 1, and its body horror lineup is nastier than you’d expect. Horror has spent decades using disabled bodies as a warning sign. The limp that means something is wrong with this guy. The wheelchair that means she won’t be able to run. The scar that tells you who the killer is before anyone gets stabbed.
Pluto TV Just Dropped a Ridiculous Amount of Free Horror for October
Pluto TV’s Halloween Hits collection is back with Scream, Jason, a stack of Stephen King and a deep bench of modern and cult horror you can stream without paying a cent. October is the most expensive month to be a horror fan. Every service you canceled in July suddenly has the one movie you need, and by the second week you’re paying for four platforms just to keep your marathon intact. Pluto TV went the other direction.
Sick Won’t Tell You How to Feel and It Knows Exactly What It’s Doing
Most horror movies hand you a flashlight. Sick hands you a damp towel and leaves the room. Agata Trzebuchowska’s feature debut has no character whose reactions you can borrow. Nobody says out loud what the audience is thinking. The camera never flinches, so you have to do all the flinching yourself. The problem is that you’re never quite sure what you’re flinching at. I spent most of its 90 minutes feeling several things at once and none of them cleanly. Pity. Revulsion. Fear.
5 Horror Movies to Stream This Weekend: Ghosts, Grief and a Very Bad Bathroom
October is here, which means every streaming service spent the first two days of the month dumping horror into its library like it was clearing out a haunted storage unit. Some of it is great. Some of it exists mostly so the “Halloween” row has something in it. So we did the digging. Every pick below was newly added to its service this week. These aren’t new movies. A couple of them are old enough to rent a car. But they’re new to these platforms, and each one earns its spot on your weekend.
Camp Crystal Lake Is Opening at New York Comic Con Before Peacock’s Friday the 13th Prequel
Camp Crystal Lake is opening early. You just have to be willing to walk into it at New York Comic Con. Peacock is setting up a Crystal Lake activation at NYCC to promote its upcoming Friday the 13th prequel series. The pitch is simple. Peacock says the experience transports attendees back to the 1970s, to a Camp Crystal Lake that still looks idyllic. Then it asks the obvious question: will you survive your camp counselor orientation?
The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Season 7 Unleashes Its New Monsters Ahead of the Show’s 10th Anniversary
We know the judges. We know the theme. Now we know who has to survive it. The Boulet Brothers have revealed the cast of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Season 7 in a new Meet Our Monsters cast reveal video. The season premieres October 27 on Shudder and AMC+. Until now, Season 7 had been all setup.
Dexter Has Two Killers and a Mid-Life Crisis to Deal With in the Resurrection Season 2 Trailer
Dexter Morgan has spent decades managing a double life. Season 2 of Dexter: Resurrection adds two more killers and a mid-life crisis to the calendar. Paramount+ has released the first trailer for the new season, as Bloody Disgusting reported on October 1. Michael C. Hall returns as Dexter, and the season premieres October 30, 2026, on Paramount+ Premium. The setup is simple and a little nasty. According to Paramount, Dexter is caught between two killers.
The Crypt Keeper Is Back and Hosting AMC FearFest 2026
The Crypt Keeper is hosting horror again. AMC has brought the ghoul back as the official host of FearFest 2026, which runs throughout October and marks the event’s 30th anniversary. Bloody Disgusting debuted the first footage on October 1. This isn’t a digital stand-in or a quick archival clip. Greg Nicotero rebuilt the puppet. John Kassir is back on the voice. The cackle is back too.
Mike Flanagan Went Into Carrie Thinking He Understood Teenagers. He Didn’t.
Mike Flanagan was a bullied kid. He figured that gave him a way in. I asked him about the teenagers he brought into the writers’ room for Carrie. “My misconception was that I was a bullied kid in high school,” Flanagan told me during the Carrie press day. “I felt those pressures, and so I assumed that I had a point of reference that was comparable to what kids go through, and I was wrong.” That’s quite a thing to hear from the person adapting horror’s most famous bullying story.
Johnny Depp’s Scrooge Gets the Ti West Treatment in the New Ebenezer Trailer
Johnny Depp is Ebenezer Scrooge. Ti West is directing. If that pairing made you raise an eyebrow, Paramount would like you to keep it raised. The studio just released the official new trailer for Ebenezer. It isn’t being sold as cozy holiday viewing. The first stretch plays it familiar. Depp’s Scrooge moves through a snowy Victorian city in a black top hat and heavy dark coat. There are charity collectors at his office, ledgers, cold rooms and a man who very much wants to be left alone.
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