• Obsession, directed by Curry Barker and rated R, follows Bear (Michael Johnston), a shy young man who uses a supernatural novelty item called the One Wish Willow to make his longtime crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) fall in love with him — with increasingly disturbing results
• Critics have praised the film for grounding its horror in emotional realism, with Collider calling it better than most recent dating-horror thrillers at weaponizing “blurred boundaries, emotional entitlement” — Barker executes the story “with restraint” as the romance curdles into something “uglier, sadder, and genuinely disturbing”
• Inde Navarrette, previously known for a supporting role in The CW’s Superman & Lois, has been singled out for what one reviewer called a “tour de force performance” — and Michael Johnston’s work as Bear has been called a potential breakout moment
• The film has become a box office success; the director had to cut its most brutal scene to avoid an NC-17 rating, landing the film at R

Curry Barker’s Obsession understands something that most horror films about bad romantic fixations don’t: the truly terrifying part comes before the violence does. The premise is deceptively simple. Bear (Michael Johnston) — a shy, infatuated young man working at a small music store alongside his friend group — uses a supernatural novelty item called the One Wish Willow to make his longtime crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) fall in love with him. What follows, per Collider, is “something uglier, sadder, and genuinely disturbing” as Nikki’s affection spirals into emotional instability and dangerous obsession.

Collider’s review frames the film as the rare modern dating-horror entry that “weaponizes” fears around emotional entitlement and the moment intimacy becomes control — and does it better than most. Barker grounds the story in emotional realism first: the film opens with the familiar rhythms of a rom-com, making Bear’s awkward affection feel almost endearing before the turn. “Forced love is horrifying before bloodshed ever begins” is how Collider summarizes Barker’s thesis — and critics appear to agree he’s made that case effectively.

The Performances

Inde Navarrette carries a psychologically demanding role. Her Nikki goes from relatable crush to someone who bursts into violent episodes, lies to manufacture sympathy, and refuses to leave Bear’s side at social gatherings — her laugh, in one scene described by reviewers, is “too forced and too unnatural” in exactly the right way. Falls Church News-Press called it a “tour de force performance” and noted that Navarrette, of Mexican and Australian descent, handles the complexity “with dazzling believability.”

Michael Johnston’s Bear works as the moral center of a story in which neither the wish-granter nor the wish-giver comes out clean. The role has been described as a potential breakout for Johnston, who has spent years in television and voice work. Cooper Tomlinson co-stars as Ian, with Megan Lawless as Sarah, per Falls Church News-Press. The film is rated R — the director cut its most brutal scene to avoid an NC-17. That the film lands as hard as it does while staying within those parameters is part of what critics are responding to, per Tooele Online.

The post ‘Obsession’ Is a Horror Movie About Forced Love — and Critics Say Inde Navarrette Is a Revelation appeared first on Cream.

• Hammer Horror’s Horror of Dracula (1958) starring Christopher Lee is getting a full 4K restoration
• The new cut restores previously censored scenes that have never been seen by audiences
• It will release in cinemas in time for Halloween, plus home entertainment formats
• The restoration comes as Hammer Horror Films has been revived under John Gore Studios
• The film’s release coincides with its 70th anniversary

Christopher Lee only spoke 13 lines in Horror of Dracula. He didn’t need more than that.

The 1958 Hammer Horror classic — the film that launched Lee’s legendary run as Count Dracula across ten movies — is heading back to cinemas this Halloween in a 4K restoration that puts back everything censors originally cut. Deadline reports that John Gore, owner of the revived Hammer Horror Films label, confirmed the release, saying the restored footage will also be available on home entertainment formats.

“Horror of Dracula will also be available on home entertainment,” Gore told Deadline, describing the project as a celebration of both the film’s legacy and its upcoming 70th anniversary.

What Was Cut

The original 1958 release was trimmed by censors in multiple territories — scenes deemed too graphic for audiences at the time. Exactly what’s being restored hasn’t been fully detailed, but Den of Geek argues that the uncensored version has the potential to cement Lee’s Dracula as the definitive screen vampire, more terrifying than Bela Lugosi’s iconic Universal take and certainly more physical.

Lee brought something genuinely unsettling to the role — the height, the red eyes, the sudden bursts of violence — and a cut that removes nothing should land differently than the version audiences have known for decades.

Hammer Is Back

The restoration is also a signal that Hammer Horror, now under John Gore Studios, is taking its legacy seriously. After years of dormancy following the label’s 2010s attempts at revival, this feels like a more considered approach: start with the gold standard, restore it properly, and let it speak for itself.

Halloween 2026. Count Dracula. Uncensored. This one’s worth the theater trip.

The post Christopher Lee’s 1958 Dracula Is Getting a 4K Restoration — With All the Censored Scenes Back appeared first on Cream.

• Curry Barker’s supernatural horror film Obsession opened to $2.6M in previews and holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes from both critics and audiences
• The 26-year-old director went from TikTok sketch comedy to a $15M Focus Features acquisition out of TIFF — almost overnight
• Jason Blum, who executive produced Obsession, has called Barker one of the most exciting emerging voices in horror
• A car-kill scene had to be trimmed to avoid an NC-17 rating, and the film’s original ending had Nikki dying by suicide
• Barker has two major projects lined up: Blumhouse’s Anything But Ghosts with Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard, and A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Not long ago, Curry Barker was posting sketch comedy videos on YouTube under the brand “That’s A Bad Idea.” Now he has a billboard next to his car wash, a $15 million Focus Features deal, and Jason Blum in his corner. At 26 years old, Barker is having a moment — and if Obsession‘s opening weekend is any indication, it’s only getting started.

The supernatural horror film, which Barker wrote and directed, earned $2.6 million in Thursday previews and Wednesday early access screenings alone — a striking number for a movie that cost just $1 million to make. It’s playing in 2,542 locations across North America, including 435 large-format and premium screens. And it arrives with a rare 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes from both critics and audiences, the kind of double approval that studios dream about.

Obsession centers on Bear (Michael Johnston), a shy, 20-something music store employee who has been quietly in love with his childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette) for years. When he can’t bring himself to just tell her how he feels, he cracks open a vintage “One Wish Willow” toy — an ’80s novelty item that promises to grant one wish — and uses it to wish that Nikki would love him more than anyone in the world. She does. Immediately. Terrifyingly. What follows is 108 minutes of possession, obsession, jealousy, and gore, as Nikki transforms into a self-destructive, dangerously violent version of herself, incapable of letting Bear go.

“We wanted it to feel grounded, and we wanted to really lean into, ‘OK, magic is real in this world, fine. Let’s accept that, let’s move on,'” Barker explained. “And now, what you’re left with is a pretty tragic story about a man and a woman, and leaning into the realism of that was really important to me.”

At its core, the film is about consent and the cost of avoiding an uncomfortable conversation. Bear’s inability to simply tell Nikki how he feels is what sets everything in motion — and the movie doesn’t let him off the hook for it. Navarrette’s performance walks a razor’s edge, playing Nikki as both a villain and a victim, with the real Nikki occasionally breaking through her possessed state in tortured, horrified outbursts. It’s the kind of dual performance that earns a star a reputation, and reviews have already started calling her a scream queen in the making.

From YouTube Sketches to TIFF Bidding Wars

Barker’s path to this moment is genuinely unlike most directors working today. He and his longtime creative partner — and Obsession co-star — Cooper Tomlinson met in film school, dropped out together, and started making content online. Their sketch comedy brand “That’s A Bad Idea” built them a real audience. Then Barker made Milk & Serial, an $800 found-footage serial killer film that he released for free on YouTube. It went viral. Hollywood noticed.

He signed with UTA. Buyers came calling. And when Obsession premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, it sparked a full-on bidding war — Focus Features beat out both Neon and A24 to acquire it for around $15 million, with Universal Pictures coming aboard to handle international distribution.

“My agent looked at me after TIFF — this is someone who’s had clients that have made it and who knows what this industry is like — saying to me, ‘Your life is never going to be the same. Your life just changed,'” Barker recalled. “I was hearing him and taking that in, but also being, like, we’ll see. It’s too much for a human to comprehend at that time.”

The pinch-me moment came later, walking down a street and seeing an Obsession billboard next to the car wash he always uses.

Focus leaned into an inventive marketing campaign that matched the film’s eerie tone. Replica One Wish Willow toys sold out within hours of going on sale. An in-world commercial for the toy has racked up more than 4.4 million views on YouTube. And fans across Los Angeles and New York have been encountering cryptic billboards featuring Nikki’s obsessive handwriting alongside a phone number — call it, and you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of Nikki’s increasingly unsettling texts, voice notes, and special deliveries.

The Scene That Almost Got an NC-17

The film’s most talked-about sequence involves Nikki killing Bear’s female co-worker — slamming her head into a steering wheel in a jealous rage — and in its original cut, it was significantly more extreme. The MPAA pushed back, and Barker had to reduce the number of head impacts to avoid an NC-17 rating.

“I was so upset about that at first and scared that it was going to change the integrity of the scene,” he said. “I was scared to touch it, because I had already seen the reaction at TIFF. I didn’t want to mess up whatever good is happening here. But it was fine. I think the integrity of the scene is still there.”

He’s already dreaming about a director’s cut that restores it — along with an alternate ending and a cut monologue from Nikki at the car where she talks about love and romance. “Let this movie breathe just a little bit more,” he said. “It would be fun to experiment and do a new cut of it.”

That alternate ending is its own conversation. In the script, Nikki wakes up from her possession with a gun already in her mouth. She looks around, sees Bear, realizes for the first time in a while that she has control over herself — and then puts the gun back in her mouth and ends her life, unable to live with the horror of what she’s done. Barker ultimately decided against it.

“We just decided that it was more brutal if she stays alive,” he said simply.

Jason Blum’s Stamp of Approval

One of the more striking elements of Barker’s rise is the support he’s received from Jason Blum, the producer behind the Halloween franchise, Get Out, and the entire Blumhouse empire. Blum serves as an executive producer on Obsession and has publicly described Barker as one of the most exciting emerging voices in horror.

Barker said the support has been “awesome” and made clear it isn’t a one-time thing. The two are already deep into their next collaboration — Blumhouse’s Anything But Ghosts, which Barker just finished shooting alongside Atomic Monster and Spooky Pictures.

The film stars Aaron Paul and Bryce Dallas Howard as con artists who call themselves ghost hunters but are, as Barker puts it, “glorified magicians” who don’t actually believe in ghosts. Until, presumably, they have to. Barker and Tomlinson also star in the film — a first for both of them at this scale.

“I was nervous at first, because I have very specific ideas of what the scene looks like for me,” Barker admitted about directing Paul and Howard. “But my dad said, ‘They want to be directed and you’re going to let them down if you don’t give them direction.’ That really meant a lot to me.” He added that both actors were “literally both the most sweet people I’ve ever met in Hollywood.”

Texas Chainsaw and What Comes After

Beyond Anything But Ghosts, Barker is also attached to direct A24’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre — a project he’s been openly excited about since A24 acquired the rights to the franchise. His pitch for it sounds exactly like what you’d hope: grounded, brutal, and character-first.

“It’s gonna be grounded, brutal, raw. It should be very, very uncomfortable,” he said. “I want to make you care about the characters that we’re on the journey with. Just like Bear, Nikki and Sarah are characters that you never knew before — I mean, we all know Leatherface and the Sawyers — but what are the characters that I can invent that we can grow to care about? If they do die brutally, we’ll actually be sad that they died.”

And if all that weren’t enough, Barker is also quietly entertaining the idea of returning to the world of Obsession. He’s acknowledged, with good humor, that the One Wish Willow’s rules don’t entirely hold up to scrutiny — “if the One Wish Willow actually works, which it does in this lore, and people are just making wishes left and right, there would be some crazy — like, dragons would exist” — but that hasn’t stopped him from thinking about what comes next.

“I obviously have a couple more things that I’m excited about next, but I do see Obsession 2, maybe,” he told Total Film. “Or even what really is exciting to me is maybe an anthology, like a one-hour episode. Each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails. Maybe I’ll direct the pilot with the same DP, and you could invite other filmmakers to kind of give their spin at it. That would be really cool.”

For a filmmaker who was posting YouTube sketches just a few years ago, Curry Barker is now operating at a level most directors spend decades trying to reach. And from everything he’s said about Texas Chainsaw, Anything But Ghosts, and whatever version of Obsession he eventually gets to make without anyone telling him to pull back — he’s just getting warmed up.

Obsession is in theaters now.

The post Curry Barker Is Horror’s Most Exciting New Voice appeared first on Cream.

• Kate Beckinsale has replaced Milla Jovovich as the lead in Twilight of the Dead, the final chapter of George A. Romero’s zombie saga
• The Paz Brothers (Doron and Yoav Paz) are also stepping in to direct, replacing Session 9‘s Brad Anderson
• Romero wrote a treatment for the film before his death in 2017 and considered it the true conclusion to his Dead franchise
• Magenta Light Studios has secured North American distribution rights and is committed to a theatrical release
• The project is being launched at Cannes, with the script and concept materials available to international buyers

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George A. Romero’s final chapter is getting a major reset — and Kate Beckinsale is leading the charge. The Underworld star has officially been cast in Twilight of the Dead, stepping into the lead role that was previously held by Milla Jovovich. Along with the casting change, the project has a new directing duo — the Paz Brothers, Doron and Yoav Paz — replacing Session 9‘s Brad Anderson, for undisclosed reasons. Stunt veteran Ho-Sung Pak, known for his work on Bullet Train, has also come aboard to direct the film’s action sequences.

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The overhaul is sweeping. New cast, new directors, new financing. But the mission remains the same: honor what Romero started.

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Romero, who passed away in 2017 after a battle with lung cancer, had developed a treatment for Twilight of the Dead before his death, intending it as the definitive conclusion to the saga he launched in 1968 with the low-budget classic Night of the Living Dead. That film — made for almost nothing and barely mentioning the word “zombie” — effectively defined the genre’s modern template. Nearly six decades later, his widow Suzanne Romero has been working with screenwriters Joe Knetter, Robert L. Lucas, and Paolo Zelati (who co-developed the original treatment with Romero) to bring that vision to the screen.

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\”I gave [Zelati] my full blessing as long as I could be there every step of the way for it to remain true to George’s vision,\” Suzanne said in a previous statement. \”We had a solid treatment and the beginning of the script. I can 100 percent say that George would be incredibly happy to see this continue. He wanted this to be his final stamp on the zombie genre.\”

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Where Twilight of the Dead Fits in Romero’s Legacy

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For those who need a refresher on the timeline: Romero followed Night with Dawn of the Dead (1978), which found survivors sheltering in a shopping mall as the outbreak spread. Day of the Dead (1985) pushed further, with the last remnants of humanity living underground while a scientist attempted to study zombie cognition. Then came Land of the Dead in 2005, the most fully realized apocalyptic vision of the bunch — think Escape from New York meets the undead.

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Romero later made Diary of the Dead (2007) and Survival of the Dead (2009), but he never considered those found-footage-era entries part of the same continuous narrative. Twilight of the Dead is set to pick up directly after the events of Land, making it the true seventh and final chapter of that core storyline.

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The plot, as described, is set \”on a decimated earth where the last vestiges of humanity are trapped between warring factions and an evolving undead threat.\” That evolution angle is interesting — and it tracks with where Romero had been taking things, slowly giving the undead more agency and intelligence with each film.

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Why Beckinsale Makes Sense Here

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On paper, swapping one genre action star for another might seem like a lateral move. But there’s a logic to it. Beckinsale spent years as Selene in the Underworld franchise — a leather-clad vampire warrior who hunted monsters with cold precision and genuine menace. She brings the kind of physical authority and emotional gravity that a story this weighty demands. Jovovich, of course, brought similar energy to her years battling the undead in the Resident Evil series, and her departure is a real loss. But Beckinsale stepping in signals the production isn’t going softer — if anything, the casting suggests a film that wants to feel both visceral and grounded.

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Roundtable’s John Baldecchi clearly agrees. \”We’re thrilled to have Kate Beckinsale starring in Twilight of the Dead,\” he said. \”Her extraordinary talent, emotional range, and commanding screen presence make her the perfect actress to lead a final chapter worthy of George’s legacy.\”

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The Paz Brothers — whose credits include The Golem and Plan A — are also bringing genuine conviction to the project. \”Stepping into Romero’s world is the ultimate privilege for any genre filmmaker,\” they said in a joint statement. \”This is more than a continuation, it’s a responsibility. We are committed to honoring his voice while delivering a visceral, terrifying, impactful experience for today’s audience that resonates beyond the screen.\”

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The Road to Production Has Been Long

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Twilight of the Dead first surfaced publicly in 2021, when Roundtable Entertainment came aboard and Brad Anderson signed on to direct. Jovovich was cast, as was Betty Gabriel of Get Out. Then the project hit financial turbulence, stalling out and forcing a rethink.

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The version moving forward now has fresh financing and a new distribution partner in Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Studios, which has secured North American rights and is committed to bringing the film to theaters across the U.S. and Canada. The Syndicate is handling international sales, with executive producers Jeffrey Giles and Michael Lurie launching the project at Cannes — where buyers can access the screenplay and concept materials.

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\”George Romero is one of the most successful and influential creatives in the horror and genre space, and his final film deserves to be experienced on the big screen,\” said Yari. \”We’re proud to partner with his estate and the filmmakers to bring Twilight of the Dead to audiences.\”

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One name that’s been quietly attached throughout the project’s long development: Greg Nicotero, the special effects legend who got his start on Romero’s Day of the Dead and went on to collaborate with the director on Land, Diary, and Survival. He’s on board to handle the FX, and has described the project as a \”full circle\” moment in his career. That kind of continuity with the original films matters — it’s not just a brand extension, it’s a genuine attempt to close the loop.

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Additional casting is still underway. And while the producers have said they haven’t closed the door on future films if this one performs, right now the focus is singular: giving Romero’s saga the ending he always intended it to have.

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The post Kate Beckinsale Replaces Milla Jovovich in Romero’s Twilight of the Dead appeared first on Cream.

• Halsey is set to star in and co-write Replacer, a psycho-sexual horror film directed by her partner Avan Jogia
• She plays Proxy, a troubled DJ stranded in Montreal who encounters a mysterious underground radio signal
• Lilly Wachowski of The Matrix trilogy is executive producing and is already raving about the script
• The project is launching sales at the Cannes market, with both Halsey and Jogia in attendance to meet buyers
• It marks a significant step for Halsey as a creative force behind the camera, not just in front of it

Halsey is stepping fully into the world of film — and she’s not doing it halfway. The three-time Grammy-nominated singer is set to star in Replacer, a “psycho-sexual horror” film she co-wrote with her partner, actor-director Avan Jogia, who is also directing. And the person signing on to executive produce? Lilly Wachowski — yes, one half of the duo behind The Matrix.

Halsey plays Proxy, described as a “troubled DJ” who finds herself stranded in Montreal. She falls in with an alluring artist and his circle of friends who run an underground radio station — until a mysterious signal buried deep beneath the city’s subway system warps the broadcast and begins transforming everyone it touches into “something raw, primal, and unrecognizable.” It’s eerie, it’s underground, and it sounds exactly like the kind of film that gets a cult following before it even opens wide.

What Lilly Wachowski and Avan Jogia Are Saying

Wachowski isn’t holding back her enthusiasm. “Avan and Halsey’s script is a surreal hyper-dive into a twitchy, conspiratorial genre mashing snarl of horror/thriller/comedy, set against the grit and grime of a rarely glimpsed Montreal subculture,” she said. “This thing is packed! I have the sense that Avan’s eyeballs have gulped down a steady diet of the films I grew up on — David Cronenberg, Alex Cox, Tony Scott, John Carpenter. Anarchists United is beyond excited to join the Replacer team and bring this super cool story to the screen!”

That’s a hell of a reference list. Cronenberg in particular feels like the obvious touchstone for a film about bodies warping and identities dissolving — and the Montreal setting only deepens that connection, given how much of Cronenberg’s early work was rooted in that city.

Jogia, for his part, described the film in terms that are almost poetic: “Replacer is a bright and electric club horror mashed together with a vulnerable romantic story about belonging and community. Come together. Leave as one.”

A Real Creative Partnership on Screen and Off

What makes this project particularly interesting is how personal it is. Halsey and Jogia didn’t just attach their names to someone else’s vision — they built this thing together. The script is theirs, the story is theirs, and the film’s Montreal underground setting feels like a deliberate choice to go somewhere unexpected, far from the Hollywood machinery.

For Halsey, it’s a natural next step. She’s been quietly building her acting résumé — most notably with a role in MaXXXine, Ti West’s slasher trilogy closer — but Replacer is a different kind of move. This is her as a writer and lead, not just a musician crossing over for a cameo. And Jogia, who audiences know from Zombieland: Double Tap and has the upcoming Backrooms project in his pipeline, is making a clear pivot to directing with real creative ambition behind it.

Halsey reposted Deadline’s coverage of the project on her Instagram Stories, which given how deliberately she tends to use social media, reads as genuine excitement rather than routine promotion.

The Cannes Push

The film is launching sales at this week’s Cannes market, with CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group repping North American rights and Film Mode Entertainment handling international sales. Both Halsey and Jogia are in Cannes to support the launch and meet with potential buyers — which means the project is being positioned seriously, not as a passion project left to find its own way.

On the producing side, the full team includes Kyle Mann of Independent Edge, Isabelle Deluce of Soft Focus Films, Damiano Tucci of Getaway Entertainment, and Olivier Picard and David Pierrat of Parce Que Films co-producing — alongside Wachowski and several others exec producing under the Anarchists United banner.

“Come together. Leave as one.” If that tagline is any indication, Replacer is going to get under your skin — which is exactly the point.

The post Halsey Stars in Horror Film ‘Replacer’ With Avan Jogia appeared first on Cream.

• The 2026 Faces of Death remake is now available on Prime Video and other digital platforms as of May 12
• The film stars Barbie Ferreira, Dacre Montgomery, Charli xcx, and Jermaine Fowler
• It earned just $2.6 million domestically against a $7.4 million budget during its brief theatrical run
• Director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei previously collaborated on Netflix’s Cam
• A Shudder streaming debut is expected to follow the PVOD window

The 2026 reimagining of Faces of Death is officially available to watch at home — and given how quickly it disappeared from theaters, that day came sooner than most expected. The horror thriller, starring Barbie Ferreira of Euphoria, hit digital platforms on May 12 and is currently available to rent for $19.99 or purchase for $24.99 on Prime Video, with Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and YouTube Movies & TV also carrying it.

It’s a quick turnaround. The film opened in 1,600 theaters on April 10, pulled in $1.6 million opening weekend for a seventh-place finish, and was already down to 1,000 venues by its second week. By week three, it was playing in just 50 theaters. Its domestic theatrical run wrapped entirely on April 30 — less than three weeks after it opened — having earned a total of $2.6 million against a $7.4 million production budget, not counting marketing costs.

What the New Faces of Death Is Actually About

This isn’t your 1978 cult oddity. The original Faces of Death was a so-called “documentary” that purported to show real footage of people dying — though Variety has confirmed those death scenes were largely staged and faked. It still became a genuine cultural phenomenon, earning $35 million worldwide and spawning seven sequels over the following two decades.

The 2026 version takes that premise and filters it through a very modern lens. Ferreira plays Margot Romero, a content moderator at a TikTok-like platform whose job is to flag and remove violent or offensive videos. When she encounters a particularly disturbing death clip, she starts to suspect the deaths being depicted are real — and that they’re being staged to recreate scenes from a movie. It’s a sharp pivot from found-footage shock doc to something that feels ripped from today’s anxiety about what we consume online and who profits from it.

The film was directed by Daniel Goldhaber and written by Isa Mazzei, the duo behind Netflix’s Cam — a 2018 psychological thriller that also grappled with identity and the dark corners of online platforms. Legendary Entertainment produced the reimagining alongside Don Murphy and Susan Montford’s Angry Films banner, with Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath of Divide/Conquer also producing. Rick Benattar served as executive producer and Cory Kaplan co-produced.

Murphy and Montford had actually been trying to get a new Faces of Death off the ground since 2006, with writer-director J.T. Petty attached for several years before the project was scrapped and rebuilt from scratch with Mazzei and Goldhaber at the helm.

The Cast That Came Together for This One

Beyond Ferreira, the film brought together a genuinely interesting ensemble. Dacre Montgomery, best known as Billy Hargrove in Stranger Things, co-stars alongside Jermaine Fowler, who horror fans will recognize from last year’s The Blackening. Josie Totah, who appeared in the recent Saved by the Bell revival, also has a role — and then there’s Charli xcx, the pop star turned cultural moment, making her presence felt on screen as well.

Production took place in Louisiana, and the film spent about three years from announcement to release — a long runway for something that ultimately had such a short theatrical life.

For horror fans who missed it in theaters — or who were curious but not curious enough to make the drive — the digital window is here now. And given that Faces of Death was co-produced with Shudder, the horror streaming platform seems like the natural next stop once the PVOD window closes. That’ll be the real test of whether this one finds its audience.

The post Faces of Death Is Now Streaming After Rough Box Office Run appeared first on Cream.

• Lee Cronin’s The Mummy hits digital platforms on May 19, 2026, with 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD to follow July 14.
• The film stars Jack Reynor, Laia Costa, May Calamawy, and Veronica Falcón and runs 134–136 minutes.
• Made for $22 million, it has grossed over $86 million worldwide despite a divisive 47% Rotten Tomatoes score.
• The home release includes deleted scenes, a director’s commentary, and behind-the-scenes featurettes.
• This New Line Cinema project is unrelated to Universal’s classic Mummy property or the upcoming Brendan Fraser sequel.

If you missed Lee Cronin’s The Mummy in theaters — or just want to revisit it from your couch — the wait is almost over. The horror reimagining from the Evil Dead Rise director is set to land on digital platforms on May 19, 2026, with a physical media release following on July 14.

Bloody Disgusting first broke the news, and it’s a welcome one for horror fans who’ve been eager to get the film at home. Starting May 19, The Mummy will be available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and other participating digital platforms. The July 14 physical release will cover 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WnsLG8m9q0M%3Ffeature%3Doembed

What You Get With the Home Release

The digital and physical editions come loaded with bonus content. There’s a behind-the-scenes featurette — “The Making of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” — in which Cronin walks through his vision for the film’s claustrophobic atmosphere. A separate featurette digs into the film’s wild practical effects work, including the intense prosthetics used to transform actress Natalie Grace into a demon-possessed vessel. A third piece explores the Egyptian mythology and demonic rituals at the story’s core. Rounding it out: deleted scenes and a full commentary track from Cronin himself.

For a film this tactile and visually driven — blood, bugs, and practical horror effects front and center — that behind-the-scenes access should be genuinely compelling viewing.

The Movie, the Money, and the Mixed Reviews

Cronin’s film tells the story of a journalist’s daughter who vanishes into the Egyptian desert and reappears eight years later — only the family quickly realizes the girl who came back is not the same child who disappeared. She’s been possessed by something ancient and malevolent, and what should be a joyful reunion becomes, as the synopsis puts it, “a living nightmare.”

The cast includes Jack Reynor (Midsommar), Laia Costa (Victoria), May Calamawy (Moon Knight), Veronica Falcón (Queen of the South), Hayat Kamille (Vikings: Valhalla), May Elghety (Clash), and Natalie Grace. James Wan and Jason Blum produced, with Cronin also serving as executive producer through his Doppelgängers banner.

Made on a $22 million budget, the film has pulled in over $86 million worldwide — a solid return by any measure. But critics weren’t as enthusiastic. It currently sits at 47% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviewers pointing to an inconsistent story and a slightly bloated runtime (clocking in at over two hours, it’s one of the longest mummy movies ever made). Audiences, though, have been kinder — the Popcornmeter sits at 74% from over 1,000 user ratings, suggesting the film has found its crowd even if it didn’t fully win over the press.

It’s worth putting that in context: this is part of a broader wave of Blumhouse and Atomic Monster reimaginings of classic horror monsters. Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man in 2020 set the template and nailed it. His follow-up, Wolf Man in 2025, stumbled. Cronin’s Mummy sits somewhere in the middle — profitable, visually committed, but narratively uneven by most accounts.

No Connection to Universal’s Mummy Universe

One thing worth clarifying for fans: because this film is set up at New Line Cinema, it has absolutely nothing to do with Universal’s classic Mummy property. These are two entirely separate mummy worlds. Universal currently has three Mummy projects in various stages of development, including a prequel being written by Wes Tooke and — perhaps most excitingly for longtime fans — a fourth installment in the Brendan Fraser series, with Fraser and Rachel Weisz confirmed to return and Radio Silence (Scream) attached to direct from a script by David Coggeshall.

As for where Cronin’s film ends up on streaming, given that Warner Bros. distributed it, an HBO Max landing seems like the logical next step after the digital window closes — though no streaming date has been announced yet.

For now, May 19 is the date to mark. Deleted scenes, director’s commentary, and all the ancient demon horror you can handle — right from your living room.

The post Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Hits Digital May 19 appeared first on Cream.

• Paramount Pictures has set January 14, 2028 as the release date for the next Longlegs movie
• Nicolas Cage and writer-director Osgood Perkins are both returning for the follow-up
• Paramount describes it as set in the Longlegs universe — not a direct sequel
• Neon, which distributed the original, passed on the project due to budget size; Paramount stepped in
• The first film grossed $127.9M worldwide on a $10M budget, becoming a word-of-mouth horror hit

Nicolas Cage is going back to the dark side. Paramount Pictures has officially set January 14, 2028 as the release date for the next film in the Longlegs universe, confirming both Cage and filmmaker Osgood Perkins are returning to the nightmare they first built together in 2024.

The project is being positioned carefully — Paramount’s press release is clear that this is not a direct sequel but rather a new story set within the Longlegs universe. Plot details are being kept firmly under wraps, though that open-ended framing has fans already speculating. A prequel seems like the most logical direction, but the studio isn’t tipping its hand either way.

From Indie Sensation to Paramount Franchise

One of the more interesting behind-the-scenes moves here is the distributor shift. The original Longlegs was released by Neon in July 2024, and it became the indie distributor’s best domestic opening weekend ever — $22.4 million in its debut, legging out to $74.3 million domestically and nearly $128 million worldwide against a production budget of just $10 million. By any measure, that’s a phenomenon.

But when the follow-up started taking shape, Neon stepped aside. According to The Hollywood Reporter, sources indicated the sequel’s budget was simply beyond Neon’s usual range. Paramount — which has made horror a stated priority — moved in and acquired the rights. The studio knows this weekend: January MLK openings have been good to them, with Scream pulling $33.8 million in 2022 and Mean Girls $33.6 million in 2024. Their all-time record for that frame belongs to Cloverfield’s $46.1 million back in 2008.

Perkins will write and direct again, and the producing team largely reunites the original crew — Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, Chris Ferguson, Dave Caplan, and Perkins himself are all back. Cage will both star and produce, continuing his creative investment in the project.

What Made the First One So Special

For those who need a refresher: the original Longlegs starred Maika Monroe as FBI Agent Lee Harker, a haunted investigator pulled into a series of ritualistic murder-suicides connected to a mysterious serial killer. Cage played the titular Longlegs — nearly unrecognizable beneath heavy prosthetics — in a performance that reminded everyone why he remains one of the most compelling and unpredictable actors working today. The cast also included Alicia Witt, Blair Underwood, and Kiernan Shipka.

What the film did with its marketing campaign became almost as talked-about as the movie itself. Neon kept Cage’s character deliberately hidden, teasing audiences with cryptic imagery and drip-fed content that had the internet obsessed before a single frame of footage was widely seen. Industry observers have since cited it as a model for how to build anticipation in the horror space.

The film elevated Perkins — who previously directed I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House — to genuine name-brand horror director status almost overnight. That combination of a breakout filmmaker, a fully committed Cage, and a marketing campaign that genuinely unnerved people is a hard thing to replicate. Which is exactly why January 2028 will be worth watching closely.

The post Longlegs 2 Gets a 2028 Release Date With Nicolas Cage appeared first on Cream.

• Damian McCarthy’s Hokum stars Adam Scott as a cantankerous novelist investigating a haunted Irish hotel’s forbidden honeymoon suite
• The film is already McCarthy’s biggest box office hit, following the acclaimed Oddity (96% on Rotten Tomatoes)
• McCarthy and Scott revealed the ending was originally far bleaker — Ohm was meant to be punished by karma with no hope of survival
• The film features McCarthy’s signature style: isolated settings, cursed objects, Irish folklore, and recurring rabbit motifs
• Hokum is a Neon release, rated R, running 101 minutes

Damian McCarthy has done it again. The Irish director who quietly became one of horror’s most exciting voices — first with 2020’s Caveat, then with 2024’s Oddity — is back with Hokum, and it’s his most entertaining, most accessible, and most commercially successful film yet. Adam Scott leads the charge, and while the movie has a few rough edges, it delivers exactly what horror fans want: genuine scares, a compelling mystery, and an atmosphere so thick you can practically feel the cold Irish air.

Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a renowned novelist who travels to a remote inn in Ireland to scatter his parents’ ashes near the hotel where they honeymooned. He’s finishing his conquistador trilogy, and the weight of that unfinished work follows him everywhere. Ohm is, to put it plainly, a nightmare of a human being — dismissive, entitled, and almost pathologically rude to every hotel employee he encounters within minutes of arriving. The one exception is Fiona (Florence Ordesh), the bartender, who becomes his only real connection at the inn. When she disappears, Ohm does the one thing you’d expect a horror protagonist to do: he breaks into the one room he was explicitly told never to enter. The Honeymoon Suite. Locked by the hotel’s owner (Brendan Conroy) and whispered about for years, the suite is supposedly home to something ancient and very, very angry.

A Horror Movie That Plays Like a Video Game — and That’s a Compliment

Hokum has an unusual energy for a horror film. It moves fast, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and there’s a quality to Ohm’s journey — a lone man in a jacket, searching for a missing girl, solving puzzles, unraveling a mystery room by room — that feels genuinely inspired by horror video games like Alan Wake, Silent Hill, and Amnesia. Scott’s character being somewhat one-note, stubbornly pissy throughout, actually feeds into this rather than working against it. He’s less a fully realized literary character and more a vehicle through which McCarthy can put the audience through its paces. And McCarthy’s paces are something to behold.

The filmmaker has become, in just three films, one of the most reliable architects of horror set pieces working today. He’s one of the few directors who can still pull off a clever jump scare — not the cheap, musical-sting variety, but the kind that’s earned through genuine tension. Hokum is stuffed with them. There’s a Halloween party, a terrifying children’s TV show host that appears in Ohm’s visions like demonic flashes, nightmares rooted in childhood trauma, Chekhov’s crossbow, an Irish whiskey problem, and a bearded van-dweller named Jerry (David Wilmot) living in the woods who may or may not have killed his wife. A lot is dangled and not much is explained, which will frustrate some viewers — but horror movies rarely improve with elaborate blueprints, and McCarthy trusts his audience enough not to over-explain.

The hotel itself is a character. In its well-trafficked areas it toes the line between charming and creepy, all antiquities and aged wood. But in the Honeymoon Suite, it’s practically rotting from the inside — cobwebs, peeling wallpaper, a putrid swamp where a bathtub used to be. McCarthy uses shadows masterfully, and while each of his films has gotten progressively darker in visual tone, they never lose their vibrant colors. It’s old-fashioned ghost story filmmaking done with real craft.

The Ending Almost Went Somewhere Much Darker

The ending audiences see in theaters — which leans toward something quietly hopeful without erasing Ohm’s sins — was not always the plan. In an interview with CBR, McCarthy revealed that early drafts of Hokum had a far more punishing conclusion.

“In early drafts, yeah, it was all about that,” McCarthy said. “It was all about having a much heavier, bleaker ending to it, really to kind of punish the character and say, ‘He deserves everything that’s coming to him. Karma has caught up.'”

The problem, he said, was that every time he came back to the script over the course of a couple of years, the darker ending just didn’t excite him. “‘Are people going to return to this? Are they going to find this entertaining?'” he recalled thinking. The shift came when Jerry entered the story, bringing a slightly lighter energy with him. David Wilmot’s performance apparently helped McCarthy find a different emotional register for the whole film.

What audiences get instead is an ending with real ambiguity baked in. The final twist reveals that Alby, a bellhop Ohm burned earlier in the film, secretly drugged Ohm’s whiskey with Jerry’s mushroom powder for revenge — which raises the possibility that everything Ohm experienced, including the shape-shifting ancient witch, was a psilocybin-fueled hallucination. Or maybe not. Ohm still has the marks on his wrists from being chained up.

Scott said he loved that the twist “questions everything without copping out.” “Because whether it was real or not, whether all of that occurred or not, Ohm is in the place he’s in,” Scott said. “He’s in a better place, and he is looking forward to the rest of his life now. But also, he still has the marks on his wrists from being chained up. So, who knows?”

For McCarthy, it came down to making the survival feel earned rather than undeserved. “Still having quite a terrifying film with this very complicated character that Adam brings to life so brilliantly,” he said, “but having that happy ending earned when you get to it.”

McCarthy’s Signature Style Is Getting Harder to Ignore

Three films in, Damian McCarthy has a recognizable aesthetic that’s becoming more refined with each project. He’s part of a new wave of Irish horror that blends the supernatural with the mundane — from the outside, the gorgeous Irish countryside looks peaceful and inviting. Through McCarthy’s lens, it’s a trap. His protagonists are always isolated, always pulled toward the one place they shouldn’t go, always confronting something that blurs the line between folklore and reality.

And then there are the rabbits. McCarthy has woven rabbit imagery into all three of his films, starting with the angry-looking toy rabbit in Caveat that functions as a harbinger of danger. That same rabbit toy makes a brief appearance in Oddity, alongside a painting of a white rabbit. In Hokum, there are two figures in rabbit costumes: one who guides Ohm from beyond the grave through a taped diary, and one — a nightmarish children’s TV host — that is genuinely one of the more disturbing images in recent horror memory. The duality maps onto good and evil, but McCarthy’s rabbit obsession goes deeper than Alice in Wonderland references. In Irish folklore, the Púca is a shapeshifting fairy that sometimes takes the form of a rabbit. It’s the kind of specific, layered detail that separates a filmmaker with a genuine vision from one just hitting genre beats. For more on how McCarthy keeps returning to the same creepy idea — and why it keeps working — it’s worth hearing it from the director himself.

He’s also a former electrician, and that background shows. In Hokum, he uses a delicately timed clock to trigger a button that calls a dumbwaiter elevator back up to the forbidden suite. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of practical ingenuity that gives his films a tactile, handmade quality that big-studio horror often lacks.

A Few Cracks in the Foundation

None of this means Hokum is perfect. The film’s opening — a sun-drenched desert, a Spanish conquistador in armor, a little boy with a map — is a jarring mismatch with everything that follows. The connection to Ohm’s unfinished trilogy is logically coherent, but the conquistador subplot feels like it belongs in a different, less aesthetically cohesive movie, and it takes a while to shake off that dissonance once the Irish hotel comes into frame.

Ohm himself is a genuine challenge. He is, without exaggeration, one of the most insufferable protagonists in recent horror memory — the kind of guy who will go out of his way to say something cruel when saying nothing at all would have been fine. You spend the early stretches of the film almost rooting for the witch. The movie is aware of this, and there’s arguably a point being made about human decency (it’s Fiona, the one person Ohm treats with basic respect, who ultimately helps him), but it tests your patience before the haunting kicks in and gives you something else to focus on.

And while all three of McCarthy’s films are genuinely good, they are also — by his own design — variations on the same fundamental premise: a person in a creepy, possibly haunted location who must solve a mystery to survive. It works. It keeps working. But at some point, the question of what McCarthy can do outside this particular sandbox becomes more interesting than the sandbox itself.

Still, Hokum is a genuinely fun horror movie — scary when it needs to be, surprisingly funny in moments, and anchored by a filmmaker who knows exactly what he’s doing with a camera and a dark room. The Severance star and the Irish indie horror director are an unlikely pairing that, somehow, works. Whether Ohm’s ordeal was real or a mushroom trip, he walked out of that hotel changed.

So will you.

Hokum is in theaters now from Neon. Rated R. 101 minutes.

The post Adam Scott’s ‘Hokum’ Is the Horror Hit You Need to See appeared first on Cream.

• A24 has tapped Obsession director Curry Barker to write and direct a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot
• Barker says he wants to explore the full Leatherface family dynamic, not just the iconic killer himself
• He cites Marcus Nispel’s 2003 remake — his first-ever horror film as a kid — as his favorite entry in the franchise
• Barker’s upcoming film Obsession already holds a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes ahead of its May 15 release
• No release date has been set for the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Leatherface is getting a new lease on life — and the director A24 has chosen to swing the chainsaw this time around has a clear, genuinely intriguing vision for where the franchise can go next.

Curry Barker, the rising horror filmmaker behind Obsession, has been tapped to write and direct a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre for A24. And in a recent interview with Total Film, he laid out exactly what’s driving his approach: he wants to go deeper into the family at the heart of the story — not just Leatherface, but the whole terrifying household behind him.

“I think of it as respecting the source material,” Barker said. “I absolutely love the original film, but I want to do something that’s different. I’m not going to stray away too far from what we know, but just making it stronger. Really, I want to lean into the uncomfortability of the family. I want to lean into the rawness of what’s going on there. There’s some really messed-up stuff happening at that farm. I genuinely feel there’s so much potential for that concept that has not been realized.”

It’s a smart angle. Leatherface has been the face of this franchise for over 50 years, but the character’s motives have always been rooted in family — he’s less a lone predator and more a product of the deeply disturbed people around him. The Hewitt family has popped up in a handful of installments, most notably in the second and third entries, but no film has ever truly put them front and center as the main event. Barker clearly sees that gap, and he wants to fill it.

“There’s so much that concept hasn’t really leaned into or hasn’t dived into,” he added. “So I actually feel like there’s a lot to explore, and I’m really excited about it.”

Why His Favorite TCM Entry Says a Lot

Here’s a detail that adds useful color to Barker’s thinking: when asked about his history with the franchise, he didn’t name the 1974 Tobe Hooper original as his favorite. He named the 2003 Marcus Nispel remake — the one starring Jessica Biel — as the entry closest to his heart.

“The 2003 reboot was my favorite,” Barker said. “It was like my first horror movie I’d ever seen when I was a kid, and I actually think it’s a decent remake.”

That film — produced by Michael Bay and co-written from the original screenplay by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel — was a significant financial success that helped trigger a wave of horror franchise reboots in the mid-2000s. Critical reaction was mixed at the time, but it’s held up for a certain generation of horror fans as a genuinely effective, visceral piece of work. Knowing that’s where Barker’s love of the franchise was born makes his instinct to dig deeper into the family dynamic feel even more grounded — the 2003 film did spend real time with the Hewitts, and it clearly left a mark on him.

Who Is Curry Barker?

If you haven’t heard the name yet, you will soon. Barker broke through with Milk & Serial, an acclaimed found-footage horror film that’s available to watch for free on YouTube and has earned serious praise from genre fans. His follow-up, Obsession, hits theaters on May 15 — and it’s already sitting at a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes based on early reviews. That kind of momentum is exactly why A24 came calling.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise has had a rough stretch. The 2022 Netflix sequel was widely dismissed, and before that, the series had been lurching through reboots and sequels with diminishing returns for years. Handing it to a filmmaker with genuine horror credibility and a specific, considered vision feels like the right move — and Barker sounds like someone who’s thought hard about what this story still has to offer rather than just what it can recycle.

No release date has been set yet, but Obsession opens May 15 — and if Barker delivers there, the anticipation for what he does with Leatherface’s family is only going to grow.

The post TCM Reboot Director Wants to Make It a Family Affair appeared first on Cream.