springing into spring horror
all the horror i've seen in the past month (and all the horror i'm looking forward to)
imagine a time of rebirth—demonic babies sprouting from the fertile soil of the amc theater, watered by our collective mother nicole kidman. paimon in imax, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of bodies and beheadings. eyes sticky with oozing blood and allergies. satanic children infecting televisions everywhere, and vampire ballerinas dancing a routine in a bloody tutu.
isn’t it a beautiful sight?
welcome to spring horror, where antichrists abound, religious horror flourishes, winnie-the-pooh brutally slaughters people via dishwasher, and matthew from downton abbey fights a vampire ballerina.
and that’s just what’s happened so far. we’ll cover the may horror coming too, fear not, and at the end i’ll throw in a little word about my most anticipated films of the year and their release dates.
additionally, i’ve been trying to build up a little horror community on instagram, and would love you to follow along! (i’ve actually got a giveway going right now!) my handle is, unsurprisingly, @horrorwithhenri
March was huge for horror releases. The second half of the month brought us Sydney Sweeney’s religious horror Immaculate, the retro seventies-vibe Late Night With the Devil, and the gory sequel Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2.
My favorite Letterboxd review for early April’s The First Omen was the simple comment “This happened a couple weeks to my friend Cecilia” (the main character of Immaculate). Horror in April felt a little drier, but Abigail premiered near the end of the month, with a one-night-only IMAX release of Hereditary following shortly after.
Which brings us to May. Before I jump into horror coming out this month, I want to recap my reviews of and feelings about March and April’s horror offerings. There were some serious surprises in here, which was quite fun.
—Immaculate: 3.5/5. I do love some religious horror. I’ve got a soft spot for Catholicism/Anglo-Catholicism, so the Marian imagery in this one made me quite happy. It wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but it was a fun movie with an absolutely visceral ending. Sydney Sweeney’s great. If you’re into religious horror, definitely go for it.
—Late Night with the Devil: 3/5. This one made me a bit sad. I was so looking forward to it, and I loved the first half. I loved the vibe, the set, the jokes, and David Dastmalchian’s performance. Ingrid Torelli, who played Lilly, was delightfully unsettling. I was so ready for the tension that had been building to drop off the precipice, but it felt like the snowballing horror just stopped suddenly and then the snowball exploded into surrealism. and i don’t love surreal horror. It was very intriguing, just not my cup of tea, unfortunately.
—Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2: 4/5. I unironically loved this one. It was gory and extreme, but it was a lot less brutal, and a lot sweeter and more forgiving than the first, which I appreciated. It went to wild and random places, in a somewhat self-aware sense. It was a super fun theater experience, and I adore the idea of a horror Poohniverse (which was announced around the time the film came out—they’re doing Bambi, Peter Pan, and Sleeping Beauty horrors, as well as a third Pooh movie).
—The First Omen: 4/5. I got into giallo horror earlier this year, and I loved The First Omen’s callbacks to those films. What could have just been a cheesy prequel became a well-conceived religious horror with themes of bodily autonomy and regulations imposed on bodies, set against a backdrop of seventies Italian scenery and mystery.
—Abigail: 4/5. I didn’t expect to like Abigail. I actually expected to not see it, or, if I did, to hate it. This was mostly because they played the trailer for months on end at every single movie I saw, and by the time it came out, I was thoroughly sick of the trailer. When it started getting good reviews, though, I decided to go see it—and it was so much fun. There was oodles of blood and gore and swearing and death, and the whole cast was a delight to watch. I, somewhat begrudgingly, have to highly recommend this one for as fun vampiric romp.
Image Credit: The Guardian. Still from I Saw the TV Glow.
Upcoming May Horror:
This month is going to be wildly fun for horror, mostly because the new A24 horror from Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow, comes out this month. The soundtrack sounds stellar so far, the trailer looks stellar, and I love love love horror that presents itself as “childhood tv show gone wrong.” I’m such a sucker for a nostalgic puppet show themed ARG, honestly. (The Welcome Home project, anyone?) I can’t wait for this.
I’m not particularly excited about the new Strangers movie this month—I respect the franchise, but don’t love home invasion films.
Tarot, the movie about teenagers using a cursed tarot deck with entities who come to life to kill them, comes out this week, and, while it doesn’t look particularly good, it does look fun. I’ll have to report back.
The end of the month brings In a Violent Nature, a Sundance film from a serial killer’s POV. It looks very woodsy, and the killer is being compared to classic slasher villains like Jason or Michael Myers. It’ll probably be quite gory and relentless.
Summertime horror’s bringing sunshine and blood this year.
My most anticipated film of the year, Maxxxine, opens in theaters on July 5th. There’s finally a trailer, and it looks so phenomenal and so fun. I love the idea of a brilliant summertime slasher. Get ready for me to not shut up about this until July.
Everyone’s been talking about the cryptic and enticing marketing for Longlegs (July 12th), which looks eerie, occult-y, and quite disturbing. I’m hoping it’s as distressing as the teasers, because, if it is, it’ll absolutely take the helm for scariest film this year.
Cuckoo, the widely-anticipated Hunter Schafer horror film, will get its theatrical release on August 9th. It looks trippy and gruesome—I’m quite excited for it, though it may be a tad surreal for me. We’ll see.
In other news, Terrifier 3 has been moved up from October 25th to October 11th! Filming finished a bit ago, so people on Reddit are speculating about a summertime trailer, though I’m afraid to hope for one that soon. I’m already nervous about Art the Clown on a big screen, but we all know I’ll go anyways. (Amusingly, a petition was circulating online for a Terrifier Art head popcorn bucket, which would be great. I signed it.)
There’s always more to say, but I’ll leave it here for now, with the promise of another Substack soon.
Thank you all for following along! Do let me know what you think about the spring horror I discussed, past and present!