From ‘Halloween Ends’ to Jordan Peele’s ‘Nope,’ here’s every horror movie you need to see in 2022

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Hard-core horror fans already got a “Scream” out of their system this year, though there are plenty more freaky movies to be had in 2022.

The fact that Ghostface and Co. scared up a $30.6 million weekend debut means audiences haven’t lost their taste for horror films. A slew of terrifying treasures is still to come, too, including a Stephen King adaptation, a Jared Leto superhero movie, the latest entries from the “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Halloween” franchises, a secretive Jordan Peele project and, yes, even a Foo Fighters flick.

Here are 10 horror movies to put on your calendar this year if you love all things spooky:

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‘A Banquet’ (Feb. 18)

A selection from last fall’s Toronto Film Festival, the psychological family drama centers on a teenager (Jessica Alexander) who has an otherworldly experience, devotes herself to a higher power and refuses to eat – made even weirder when she loses no weight – all of which cause worry and strife for her widowed mom (Sienna Guillory).

Where to watch: In theaters and video on demand

‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (Feb. 18)

The direct sequel to the 1974 classic “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” unleashes Leatherface and his favorite weapon on another crop of youngsters who venture to the wrong Texas town, but the new film also returns original survivor Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), now looking for revenge against the masked maniac.

Where to watch: Netflix

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‘Hellbender’ (Feb. 24)

The coming-of-age horror film stars Zelda Adams as 16-year-old Izzy, forced by her mom to live on an isolated mountaintop because of a rare illness. Rebelling against this confinement, Izzy meets a new friend (Lulu Adams) and eats a strange worm, unlocking a violent inner hunger that’s connected to her family’s dark history.

Where to watch: Shudder

‘Studio 666’ (Feb. 25)

Dave Grohl and the rest of the Foo Fighters play themselves in this horror comedy, where the rock band moves into an Encino mansion to record their 10th album. But the place is steeped in bloody rock lore, Grohl gets possessed and the group battles supernatural forces in order to both finish their record and survive.

Where to watch: In theaters

‘X’ (March 18)

In 1979, a group of young actors and filmmakers (including Mia Goth, Brittany Show, Jenna Ortega and Scott Mescudi, aka Kid Cudi) travel to rural Texas and rent a farmhouse to make a porn film. Production gets complicated, though, when the weird elderly folks hosting them figure out what’s up and the situation quickly turns into a nightmare.

Where to watch: In theaters

‘Morbius’ (April 1)

Leto takes on the role of Marvel comic book character Michael Morbius, a scientist who yearns to find a cure for the rare blood disease he’s had since childhood. His latest experiment goes awry, accidentally turning Morbius into a living vampire with superhuman abilities but also a monstrous new inner side.

Where to watch: In theaters

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‘The Black Phone’ (June 24)

“Sinister” director Scott Derrickson’s 1970s-set thriller features Ethan Hawke as a sadistic Colorado serial killer named The Grabber who kidnaps children and sticks them in a soundproof basement. Mason Thames plays his latest victim, who finds a disconnected phone that lets him communicate with dead kids in order to escape.

Where to watch: In theaters

‘Nope’ (July 22)

Almost nothing is known about Peele’s third horror film, other than the movie has a great title and it released a cryptic teaser poster featuring a black cloud. Really, though, that’s all you need to get hyped for Peele’s latest collaboration with his “Get Out” star Daniel Kaluuya, as well as Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun.

Where to watch: In theaters

‘Salem’s Lot’ (Sept. 9)

Writer/director Gary Dauberman (“Annabelle Comes Home”) is the latest filmmaker to adapt King’s 1975 novel, about a writer (Lewis Pullman) who returns to his childhood hometown in Maine seeking inspiration for a new book and instead finds the place is now a haven for a vampire.

Where to watch: In theaters

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‘Halloween Ends’ (Oct. 14)

The new trilogy started with 2018’s hit “Halloween” concludes with this chapter, which picks up some time after last year’s “Halloween Kills” and features the final showdown between former babysitter-turned-warrior Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and evil masked man Michael Myers.

Where to watch: In theaters

‘I’ll say goodbye when I’m dead’:Jamie Lee Curtis talks a hospitalized Laurie in ‘Halloween Kills’

Best Horror Movie Sequels Ranked

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19. Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)

Unless we’re talking The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires or Carmilla adaptations, Hammer Films rarely strayed from the classic Dracula formula of the count feasting on unsuspecting villagers (or hippies, as is the case in Dracula A.D. 1972). There’s no question that 1958’s original Horror of Dracula remains the best of Hammer’s vampire offerings, as well as the legendary Christopher Lee’s best performance as the count. But if you want a Hammer sequel that slightly subverts audience expectations, look no further than 1968’s Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.

Yes, all the familiar set pieces are still there: the Count sneaking through a damsel’s open window, a holy man who will stop at nothing to vanquish evil, and a hero who journeys into darkness to save the love of his life. But in this one, the holy man is betrayed by his own faith and the hero isn’t so heroic (or loyal to his lover), which brings us to a tense third act where they must tangle with the truth about themselves before they can take down the vamp. It’s good fun and I’d recommend washing it down with Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), which is the one where Drac gets enthusiastic victims to do his dirty work and slaughter their square Victorian parents. – John Saavedra

18. Final Destination 5 (2011)

What? The fifth installment of a formulaic, glossy teen horror franchise is on the list? Are you drunk Den of Geek? Well yes, but that’s not the reason this entry is here. FD5 is a genuinely excellent movie that leans very heavily into the fact that everyone watching the film already knows the rules. Those rules being: 1. A catastrophe occurs (a bridge collapsing, in this case—what a set piece!); 2. Because of some sort of premonition, some people survive; 3. But after surviving, they’re then picked off by household objects until… 4. Someone does or does not ‘cheat’ death.

FD5 is a tease, which holds the audience in a permanent state of excruciating tension. Will it be that nail that kills her? The air conditioner? The athletic beam? FD5 takes us to new heights of anxiety where absolutely every tiny thing is potentially a killer. And it’s brilliant and funny, and awful at the same time. Final Destination 5 should also be applauded for being one of only a handful of films which actually benefits massively from 3D. Because what is 3D for if not to poke you in the eye with a sharp spike? It also has a really clever end which brings the franchise full circle. Hats off to you, five, you pulled a blinder. – Rosie Fletcher

17. Bride of Chucky (1998)

Chucky creator Don Mancini once suspected that 1991’s Child’s Play 3 might be the end of the line for his flame-haired killer doll. But when he saw Wes Craven reignite the slasher genre with Scream later in the decade, he was inspired to bring Chucky back by embracing the “absurdist particulars” of the franchise. From then on, the Child’s Play series would deliver some genuinely weird and oddball surprises, starting with the favored Bride of Chucky in 1998, which brought back serial killer Charles Lee Ray and gave him an ex-girlfriend to die for.

Running with the ludicrous idea that a murderer could use voodoo to inhabit the body of an oversized kids toy, Mancini added Lee Ray’s sometime-fiancé Tiffany Valentine (Jennifer Tilly) to the mix. As the movie gets underway, Tiffany is punished for her hubris in mocking Chucky’s current state and soon wakes up trapped in a bridal doll she’d bought to mock him. We can only watch with glee as Chucky (voiced as ever by the great Brad Dourif) and Tiffany then embark on a road trip to end all road trips, with bodies piling up as they stoke their floundering romance. There have been plenty of Chucky sequels since Bride of Chucky, but none of them have had the success of this game-changing entry. – Kirsten Howard

Here are 15 terrifying horror movies you’ve (probably) never seen

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If you’ve seen all the biggest horror movies, we’ve got some ideas about where you should look for scares next.

The horror genre is vast, and it adds new titles very quickly. By the time you’ve watched the latest hit scary movie, half a dozen other worthy films have come and gone, leaving you flailing to catch up.

That means that, even if you spend a lot of time keeping track of the big releases, some stuff slips through the cracks, but of course the good news is that you then get to go looking for all the stuff you missed. Spend a little time on various streaming services, or hang in the right horror circles, and you’ll find all sorts of hidden gems you missed out on, whether we’re talking about forgotten films from horror’s great directors, early efforts from the genre’s current all-stars, or just very good movies that crept into the world very much under the radar. If you’re looking for films that fit that description, we’ve got you covered. From indie mockumentaries to thrilling Netflix productions, here are 15 hidden gems worth checking out.

1. Eaten Alive (1974)

Photo: Mars Productions

Director Tobe Hooper would arguably never top the cultural touchstone moment he reached in 1974, with the release of his indie horror classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, but while his follow-up isn’t nearly as well known, it’s certainly worth a watch.

Made just two years after Chain Saw, Eaten Alive is another Texas horror story from Hooper that moves the action to the swamps of East Texas, where the strange owner of a backwoods hotel goes on a killing spree that also involves the friendly neighborhood alligator dwelling in the water right by the guest rooms. Shot on soundstages, Eaten Alive weaves a surrealist nightmare that stands in contrast to Chain Saw’s docudrama frenzy, and presages some of what Hooper what due with Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 a few years later. Throw in Neville Brand’s startling central performance as the villain, and you’ve got an unsettling night on the couch.

2. Thirst (1979)

Photo: New Line Cinema

Not to be confused with Park Chan-wook’s excellent 2009 vampire film of the same name (which you should also check out), Thirst combines a high-concept horror narrative with elements of science fiction and vampire lore to become something that, while perhaps not as compelling as other vampire films of the 1970s, definitely fits the mold of a cult classic.

The story follows a group known as The Brotherhood, a secret society of vampires who feed on human “cattle” as a matter of both ritual and basic societal structure. They believe they’ve come across a descendant of the legendary “blood countess” Elizabeth Bathory. The worldbuilding alone that stems from that hook is worth the price of admission.

3. The Changeling (1980)

Photo: Pan-Canadian Distributors

Sure, you’ve probably heard of The Changeling, the haunted house classic starring the legendary George C. Scott, but have you actually taken the time to watch it? If you’ve worked your way through major modern horror releases and you’re looking to brush up on some of the best films in the genre, it definitely deserves a place on your list.

Changeling centers on a composer (George C. Scott) who moves into a very haunted mansion alone after the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter. Soon, he is forced to investigate the source of the things that go bump in the night. Peter Medak’s film is a masterful slow-burn exercise in mounting tension and terror, and it features some of the most atmospheric haunting sequences of its era, along with a compelling emotional storyline to support a robust and inventive collection of scares.

4. Possession (1981)

Photo: Gaumont

Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession is a film that, for many horror fans, has lived on by reputation alone for years thanks to rather scattered availability. In celebration of its 40th anniversary in 2021, though, the film finally got a beautiful 4K restoration and an exclusive streaming home over at Metrograph, where it’s very much deserving of your time and attention.

The story of a distant spy (Sam Neill) who returns home to find his wife (Isabelle Adjani) asking for a divorce, Possession is a nightmarish descent into psychosexual terror, a mixture of body horror, psychological drama, and creature feature that includes several images you won’t get out of your head any time soon. It’s a film worthy of its reputation, and that reputation will only grow in years to come.

5. Night of the Creeps (1986)

Photo: NIGHT OF THE CREEPS – Official Trailer [1986] (HD) / Sony Pictures Entertainment YouTube

A year after co-creating the Universal Monsters homage The Monster Squad, writer/director Fred Dekker released this intentionally goofy love letter to 1950s sci-fi B movies. While Night of the Creeps hasn’t yet built a cult following on the same level as Monster Squad’s, it definitely deserves a lot of love. Creeps follows a group of university students and a detective haunted by his past (Tom Atkins, in top form) as they battle an invasion of alien slugs that turn whoever they inhabit into mindless zombies. Tom Atkins steals every scene he’s in, the visual effects are pure practical ’80s fun, and the climactic battle against a horde of zombie frat boys is both hilarious and oddly socially relevant.

6. Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight (1995)

Photo: Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) | Official Trailer / Fear: The Home of Horror YouTube

The first Tales from the Crypt feature film is enjoying a re-appraisal of sorts among horror fans in recent years, and revisiting it lately, it’s easy to see why.

Demon Knight combines a diverse cast with a fun, ambitious concept for a wild ride packed with creatures, gore effects, and moments of dark comedy perfect for the Tales from the Crypt aesthetic. The story of a mysterious artifact that dates all the way back to God’s creation of the world (yes, really), the meat of the film involves of a group of relative strangers holed up in a former church turned rooming house, while demonic monsters outside fight to get in. From the neon-green monster blood that oozes throughout the film, to Billy Zane’s fun performance as the Big Bad, there’s a lot to love about this feature-length spinoff.

7. Session 9 (2001)

Photo: Session 9 (2001) Official Trailer (HD) / Shout! Factory YouTube

Shot largely in one extremely spooky location with a digital video setup and a low budget, Session 9 is one of the most unsettling horror movie experiences of the 21st century. It is a psychological exercise in suspense that gets under your skin and just festers there.

The film follows a blue-collar work crew as they fight a tight deadline to remove asbestos from an old mental hospital. Once they get inside, though, they find the most harmful thing about the asylum is evidence of a patient’s care that seemingly starts to infect each of the workers’ minds. Tense, atmospheric, and full of wonderful character work and a hell of a twist ending, Session 9 is a fantastic example of less-is-more horror filmmaking.

8. Lake Mungo (2008)

Photo: Arclight Films

If there’s one film on this list that I’ve been hammering my friends to watch more than any other, it’s Lake Mungo, director Joel Anderson’s mockumentary film about a grieving family who begins to suspect some aspect of the daughter they lost might still be with them. As it begins, the film plays like something you might find on a PBS station, a portrait of a shattered home that’s also a deconstruction of spirit photography and false hope. Then Lake Mungo digs deeper and becomes an experience not just of loss, but of existential horror, all building to one of the most effective scares ever in a horror film.

9. The Awakening (2011)

Photo: The Awakening |Trailer Starring Rebecca Hall / StudiocanalUK YouTube

There’s a reason people keep making horror films in classic haunted house settings. If you execute it will enough, it just works, no matter how many times you feel like you may have seen this story before.

That’s the case with The Awakening, a chilling, intimate 2011 film that stars Rebecca Hall as a woman who specializes in debunking supernatural hoaxes. When she’s called to an all-boys boarding school to investigate reports of a haunting, though, she finds more than just a few drafty rooms and overactive imaginations. If you love Hall in The Night House, one of 2021’s best horror films, you should check out this chilling film — which is a blend of The Others and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

10. Honeymoon (2014)

Photo: Honeymoon TRAILER 1 (2014) - Harry Treadaway, Rose Leslie Horror Movie HD / Movieclips Coming Soon YouTube

I love horror films that can do a lot with just on location, a couple of actors, and a heavy dose of atmospheric tension. Honeymoon, starring Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie and Penny Dreadful’s Harry Treadaway, is that kind of film, and an intriguing showcase for future Fear Street trilogy helmer Leigh Janiak. Leslie and Treadaway star as a couple who head to a secluded cabin for their post-wedding vacation, only to find they might not be in the woods alone. What starts as a few strange lights in the trees soon becomes something more disturbing, as suspicions mount between the couple and it’s clear that at least one of them might not be the same as they were when they arrived. It’s essentially one long build-up to a single, extremely disturbing reveal. But when that reveal hits… it really hits.

11. The Invitation (2015)

Photo: The Invitation Official Trailer #1 (2016) - Liam Hemsworth, Michiel Huisman Movie HD / Movieclips Trailers YouTube

The last few years have brought some well-deserved respect and attention to Karyn Kusama’s horror film Jennifer’s Body, and the same should also be extended toward her 2016 effort, The Invitation. The story of a dinner party that turns sinister over the course of one harrowing night, The Invitation got very solid acclaim upon its release in 2015, and remains one of that year’s best films.

12. Hush (2016)

Photo: Netflix

Before he became the guy who spearheads prestige horror shows for Netflix, Mike Flanagan was making feature films for the streaming giant. If you only know him from shows like The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, you’re probably looking for more of his work right about now, and Hush is handily right there on the same platform, ready to plunge you into some decidedly non-supernatural terror.

The setup for Hush is very simple: A deaf novelist (Kate Siegel, who also co-wrote the script) is home alone at her house in the woods, and a masked madman (John Gallagher) decides he’s going to kill her. That’s it. What Siegel, Gallagher, and Flanagan do with that setup over the next 90 minutes is…well, just watch it.

13. Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016)

Photo: Ouija: Origin of Evil - Official Trailer (HD) / Universal Pictures Youtube

That’s right, another Mike Flanagan joint, because he’s quite possibly the most gifted and prolific mainstream horror director working right now, and quite a few people still haven’t worked through his back catalog. Though it’s technically a prequel to 2014’s Ouija, you don’t need to have seen that film to enjoy this one, and that’s by design. It’s just the story of an earlier family — led by a mother (Elizabeth Reaser) who works as a phony medium to give closure to grieving people — who pick up a Ouija board and find it’s about more than self-suggested seance games.

Beautifully shot, compellingly acted, and full of emotional details that would eventually become Flanagan hallmarks, Origin of Evil actually improves upon the film it was prequelizing.

14. The Wind (2018)

Photo: The Wind - Official Trailer I HD I IFC Midnight YouTube

I don’t know if “prairie folk horror” is an actual subgenre yet, but if it is, The Wind deserves to be its haunting calling card.

The Wind hinges on a pair of 19th century couples who move to the plains of New Mexico to start a new life, and director Emma Tammi delivers an understated, unnerving, elegant exercise in supernatural suspense. With a non-linear storytelling approach, beautiful production design, a great cast, and a story that will haunt your dreams, The Wind is a very particular kind of period horror we don’t often see, and a modern folk horror essential.

15. Blood Quantum (2019)

Photo: Blood Quantum - Official Trailer / IGN YouTube

You might think you’re burned out on zombies, but that’s only because you haven’t seen Blood Quantum yet.

Jeff Barnaby’s film about a group of people on a First Nations reserve in Canada, and their response to a zombie outbreak, certainly carries with it a few familiar tropes. But if you haven’t seen this film, you’ve probably never seen those tropes executed in such an effective way. Incisive, clever, darkly funny, and packed with both social commentary and inventive imagery, Blood Quantum is the zombie film that will cure you of zombie fatigue.

5 Horror Movies We Can’t Wait to See at the Sundance Film Festival

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phantom limb /ˈfan(t)əm’lim/ n. an often painful sensation of the presence of a limb that has been amputated.

Welcome to Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which will take a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we will be chatting with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.

In our latest installment, we’ll be delving into the fascinating history behind The Crow 3: Resurrection, the planned but ultimately unproduced third entry in the supernatural action franchise. Joining us to discuss Resurrection are screenwriter Steven E. de Souza (48 Hours, Die Hard) and actor/screenwriter Phillip Rhee (Silent Assassins, Best of the Best), whose initial screenplay for an unrelated action film gave birth to this short-lived sequel. Along the way, the two will discuss the origins of the script, their noteworthy collaborators, and why it sadly never came to pass.

“What happened here was, in a way, kind of what happened with Die Hard 2,” Mr. de Souza begins. “After the success of Die Hard, almost immediately, like the week after it opened, the studio said ‘We’re doing a sequel!’ This was at Fox. They rummaged around in their files and they found a script for a movie called 58 Minutes, which was based on a novel that involved terrorists sabotaging air traffic control.

“It was nothing to do with the Die Hard franchise. The hero was the head of air traffic control, and the plot was very different. It was Arab terrorists. It was an entirely different novel, but they had commissioned a script which wound up sitting on a shelf for a couple of years. And they said, ‘Hey, with some modifications, we can do this as a Die Hard script,’ which I did. So that was, I guess, in 1991.”

Cut to a few years later, when Mr. de Souza had written both Street Fighter and Judge Dredd for Edward R. Pressman, the producer of The Crow. “He actually came to me about getting involved in trying to finish The Crow after Brandon Lee had died,” de Souza reveals. “With writing some new scenes [involving] early CG at the time. But I was so overwhelmed with the work on the other two pictures [de Souza also directed Street Fighter] that I couldn’t get involved with that. But somehow, my reading the script and familiarizing myself with the Crow franchise over several meetings, although nothing came of it, put me on Ed Pressman’s radar for a Crow movie.

“And now if I can set the Wayback Machine and take you back to 1989. Oliver Stone approached me and said, ‘I really like your movies. I think action movies are kind of dimwitted, but I think your pictures are pretty smart, and I want to do an action movie. I have a story that is written by my martial arts instructor…’ He was taking martial arts lessons at the time from Phillip Rhee, a terrific actor and martial artist who was in the movie Best of the Best.”

“Well, you know, for me as an Asian American, I was very young and I wanted to make movies, but nobody would give me a shot,” Mr. Rhee says, discussing the origins of his original screenplay. “I knew that the only way that I could do anything is for me to develop it. So in the beginning, I would send out my black and white 8x10s to everybody, to casting directors.”

After dealing with several rejections, Rhee hit upon a new approach to create opportunities for himself. “I just thought that I have to do something different, so I started writing. I did a movie called Ninja Turf [aka L.A. Streetfighters] that got picked up, and then a movie called Silent Assassins with Sam [Flash Gordon] Jones. Right after that, I wanted to write about my background as a US Taekwondo guy going into competition with Korea. After I came back from Korea, I started to write about the experience, and that became Best of the Best.” For those unfamiliar with the film, Best of the Best is an action/sports drama which finds Rhee playing Tommy Lee, a member of an American martial arts team squared off against South Korean fighters in a Taekwondo tournament. Eric Roberts, James Earl Jones, Chris Penn and Sally Kirkland co-star in the film, which spawned three sequels.

“But in the beginning, I tried to send all of these scripts to various producers and directors, and nobody was interested. So, I had to do something where people would recognize [me]. So what I did was create a pamphlet. There was a Janet Jackson concert I was at, and she had these pamphlets. It was big, it was flashy, and everybody was buying this pamphlet. I said, ‘Wow, that’s really nice. You know what? I think I’m gonna make one like that.’

“So I sent out that pamphlet that I made. It was just gorgeous. All of a sudden, I got a call from [producer] A. Kitman Ho. He said, ‘Hey, Phillip, thank you for sending the pamphlet. It was pretty cool. Why don’t you come by our office and meet with my partner?’”

Rhee was unaware of Ho’s work at that point, and did not know who his famous producing partner was. “He goes, ‘My partner is a director/producer as well. His name is Oliver.’ And I said, ‘Who’s Oliver?’ A. Kitman Ho goes, ‘It’s Oliver Stone. Do you want to come in?’ And I said, ‘Oh, shit! Oh, absolutely, I mean!’ So Oliver Stone, A. Kitman Ho, and their partners, they said “Hey, Phillip. It’s pretty cool that you’re doing this all by yourself. We saw Best of the Best. Let’s meet.

“So we met, and then Oliver and A. Kitman Ho took me to the Warner Brothers. After the meeting, I received a three picture deal for Warner Brothers. And one of the projects I was working on was called Kato. It was not the Green Hornet Kato.”

“I think Phillip was either instructing Oliver, or giving him private lessons,” de Souza recalls. “He had written this story for a martial arts movie … Oliver said, “I think we have the bones of a story here. Can you come up with the new script with the basic idea and freshen it up? I want to make this for a modest price, and I know you’ve been directing lately. You can direct it.’ So I kind of reinvented the movie and tried to sever ties with previous films like this. I wanted to eliminate the usual scene where Steven Seagal does pushups.”

Rather than having a hero that nearly gets killed and “after lots of rehab he comes back better than ever”, de Souza notes that his lead character would suffer a far more grievous injury. “I had the scene where the villains double-cross the hero, who was an undercover cop, and they shoot him in the head and leave him for dead. [He’s taken] to the operating room. The surgeon opens his head up and goes, ‘Just close him up. This guy’s going to be a vegetable for the rest of his life.’ Then the film cuts to five years later. His partner is always visiting him, even though he’s like a vegetable, right?

“They put him in a wheelchair, in a room for rehab with the other people, hoping he will come out of his coma, and nothing works. Then one day, some criminals break into the hospital to attack the pharmacy. In the course of it, they attack his therapist who runs the group and is trying to get people to come out of their comas. Somehow, the sight of this woman who has tried to help him for five years, getting mugged, snaps him out of his coma. He gets out of the wheelchair, and karates the hell out of all these people. But, he’s still like Rain Man. And for the rest of the movie, he never gets in his right mind. So it was very funny. It was like Rain Man as an action hero, kind of misunderstanding metaphors, being almost like Madison the mermaid [from Splash], unfamiliar with how the real world operates. So it had a lot of dark comedy.

“So the idea here – Oliver and I were kidding around when I finished the script that we should title it My Left Foot of Death. Of course, he breaks out of the mental ward to track down the drug dealers. He spends the whole movie in hospital pajamas, barefoot.

“So when we changed the movie with Oliver, we gave it a dozen other titles, including Ballistic. The poster was a backward figure, barefoot, straightjacket ripped apart. The tagline was going to be ‘Out of Control, Out for Revenge, Out of His Mind.’”

Once de Souza rewrote the project now known as Ballistic (“Terrific writing. It was terrific,” Rhee enthuses), the producing team considered bringing in a surprising choice to helm the action pic. “They brought in a Hong Kong director who had never directed in the United States,” Rhee reveals. “Oliver Stone and A. Kitman Ho invited John Woo [to direct Ballistic], and that’s how John Woo came to the United States.”

So. The star of Best of the Best, the producers of Born on the Fourth of July, the writer of Die Hard, and the director of The Killer and Hard Boiled. With that pedigree, one imagines Ballistic might very well have been an action classic that would still get talked about today. How did this not happen?!

“It takes a long time to develop projects,” Rhee explains. And [Ballistic] took a long time to develop. In the middle of that, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s team came in, and they had a script [Hard Target] and wanted to go right away. So they reached out to John Woo and [Woo’s producing partner] Terence Chang. So John went, ‘You know, I really want to do Ballistic, but it’s not ready.’ So he and Terence Chang went off to do the movie with Jean-Claude. After that, it just kind of lost momentum. So it’s never been made, unfortunately.”

At this point, your writer asks Mr. Rhee’s thoughts on Ballistic nearly becoming a Crow sequel, at which point he admits that he’d had no idea that it might have been. “I did not know about that! Actually, it would have been great, to have Ballistic made into a Crow sequel…”

“For a variety of reasons, Oliver ends up having a big fight with Warner Brothers over a movie [Heaven and Earth],” de Souza notes. He had a fight over royalties, residuals. He left Warner Brothers contractually, and my script was stuck in Warner Brothers.

“So somehow, because of his relationship with Oliver … Ed Pressman got ahold of the script and said, ‘Oh my God, this would make a perfect Crow sequel. What you did with Die Hard 2, where you took an existing script and retrofitted it … this is almost a perfect Crow sequel because he’s not dead dead. He’s just brain dead. He comes from back from being brain dead.

“So for several months, this was going to be a new Crow reboot for Ed Pressman. I did not sit down and write a Crow sequel. I spent two days tinkering with the existing script to bring it in line with the Crow continuity.”

So why didn’t this project happen as a Crow sequel? “All I can think of is that, at the end of the day, Ed was unable to get this script out of Warner Brothers. The turnaround price was several hundred thousand dollars to take it out of Warner Brothers, and maybe Dimension did not want to pay Warner Brothers the money to get the script released. So the plan to repurpose this script into a Crow movie was not realized. Whereas, in the case of Die Hard 2, Fox owned the script.”

So, what exactly would this take on Ballistic have looked like as a Crow sequel?

The script in question, titled The Crow 3: Resurrection and dated April 19th, 1997, opens with a bird’s eye view over a dark port city. The titular bird soars over nighttime San Francisco as a woman’s voice gravely intones a variation on the traditional Crow myth (“There’s a legend that when a body dies, a crow comes to escort its soul to the next world…”). However, rather than ending with its own take on the assertion that “the crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right,” this voiceover asks a tantalizing question for fans of the series: what if a victim’s soul dies, but their body keeps living on?

On a dark pier at San Francisco Bay, four well-dressed men (ACER, BRUNO, MORGAN, and their leader TERRELL) arrive to see out a designer drug deal for “number one bio-hack Lucien Rayner”. Meanwhile, a number of fisherman and homeless people milling about the dock are revealed to be undercover cops with the city’s anti-smuggling force. Amongst them is our lead, JOHN KATO.

One wonders while reading the script who might have played Kato, given that Phillip Rhee was originally attached to play the character when the project was still Ballistic. “I would think at that point, very likely he would have been the lead [of The Crow 3],” de Souza says. “That was about eight years after the script was written, and I don’t see how the movie could have been done without the relationship between Oliver Stone and Ed Pressman. So I imagine that very likely it would have been him.”

Accompanying Kato on this stakeout is his partner, SARAH WELLER. Wait…Sarah? Given the name and its importance to the franchise, one has to wonder if this is somehow meant to be the young girl from the original film, last seen as a young woman dying heroically during the climax of the franchise’s first sequel. As Mr. de Souza tells it, the name was meant as more of an homage. “I’m almost certain that Sarah was deliberate there,” he says. While the character is surely different, the name acts as a fun nod to the previous films.

An inevitable gunfight erupts between the police and the drug runners once they’re caught in the act, with Kato exhibiting some impressive martial arts moves along the way. This big action sequence moves from the ship to the dock, from the dock to a car chase which culminates in a crash that sees Terrell’s vehicle teetering over a cliff, all as its owner and Kato do vicious battle. Terrell gets the upper hand, escaping with – unbeknownst to Kato – the cop’s hotel room key, which fell from his pocket during the scuffle. Terrell rendezvous with remaining henchman Acer and Rayner, here said to go by many names, including his current moniker BYRON. Terrell presents the key to the men, and plants the idea to seek revenge.

We cut from this to a large outdoor wedding ceremony at a Bay Area hotel. Kato is marrying the love of his life, ANNE. Sarah is in attendance, sitting alongside coworkers and friends, as well as the bride’s family. Her face betrays her emotions – she is clearly in love with her partner.

At the subsequent wedding party, the guests mingle before Kato spies a horrifying sight: a helicopter cresting above the hill at the party. Byron is glimpsed riding shotgun next to the pilot as Terrell wields an assault rifle from the ‘copter’s sniper’s nest. The script describes this sequence as moving into slow motion – not to detail the inevitable “cliché ballet of death”, but to focus on the victims-to-be, in the moment before the shots rings out.

The resulting attack is a bloodbath, seeing the various attendees brutally gunned down alongside one another. Anne is shot down in front of Kato, and dies in her newly minted husband’s arms. Kato, enraged, races up onto the tables, onto the bar, a flagpole, a tree – making his way to the helicopter. He climbs up onto the skids, making a valiant effort to bring the villains down before Byron shoots our hero in the head, sending him tumbling to the ground below – alive, but gravely wounded.

In an operating room, DR. BATISH (50, energy of a woman half her age) does her best to salvage Kato’s brain, to no avail. The doctor tells the surviving Sarah that her partner is somehow miraculously alive, but not at all lucky for surviving. We cut from this moment to two years later.

Kato is now an empty shell, the bullet wound and subsequent operation having “scarred him bizarrely, but there’s a perverse, savage beauty to the damage…his face might almost be considered arresting, or mysterious, like the Phantom of the Opera,” according to the script. “Because the bullet had gone through his head, he had a scar across the top of his head where the hair turned a different color,” describes de Souza. “So it was kind of like a zigzag scar. It was cool looking.”

Kato sits in a wheelchair, expression blank. He is no longer there. He can no longer feel “pain, heat, cold, or any physical sensations.” He is fully catatonic.

Nevertheless, Batish includes the former cop in a processing group for high functioning patients who have lost their “ability to process certain mental information” due to trauma or disease. The doctor hopes that by including Kato in these group sessions, he will eventually come to and begin making human connections again, starting with the group members. They include Oswald (a delusional conspiracy theorist), Fetterman (an ex-pilot who believes that Eisenhower is still president), and Julius, who has anterograde amnesia (a condition fans of the Christopher Nolan film Memento might be familiar with).

“I had a lot of fun with the therapy group,” recalls de Souza. “One guy was … it’s a real thing I’ve read about when you can’t hold a memory for more than a couple of minutes. There’s one bit where he says ‘I’m so glad to be in this therapy group. I hope I can make some progress.’ And they go, ‘You’ve been in therapy for four years.’ He says ‘Get out!’ Then after a five minute break, he forgets that. That character was funny.”

Sarah has continued to visit Kato every week since the incident, though she’s been saddled with a new partner. She is unknowingly shadowed by Byron’s men from his nest at Biodyne Pharmaceuticals. There – henchmen Pring, Acer and Terrell appear, each sporting “deliberate, exaggerated” changes in hairstyles and wardrobe. The team has surveilled Sarah to make certain she is not following up on their case. Byron, quite changed himself (“clean shaven now, hair marcelled back, body Armani-ized”) and more concerned with chasing a government contract for a sedative he’s developed which may or may not be lethal to patients, is satisfied Sarah is no longer a threat to he or his team, and calls his men off.

Meanwhile, a familiar figure from the franchise begins appearing to our hero. “I put the crow as an avatar into the movie,’ de Souza reveals. “The crow keeps visiting him. When they put him in the sunroom in rehab, the crow would periodically come when he’d be out, and the nurses were trying to shoo the crow away, not realizing he was trying to help.”

Back at the hospital, night falls as Kato sits in the sunroom, “head lolling, eyes vacant.” Just then, three addicts burst in on Batish to rob the pharmacy. The junkies beat her, then pull a knife. Things look bleak, until the men notice a figure “standing there on unsteady feet, face still a blank cipher.”

“Finally, the crow showed up the night that the criminals broke into the pharmacy and resurrects the new hero,” de Souza says. The men attack Kato, who beats the men brutally, even while showing no reaction to pain. No emotion. He’s blank the entire time, even as he dismantles his doctor’s attackers.

He comes to a bit, sifting through his memories as Batish speaks with him after. He remembers the attack, and believes the men might be after Sarah. He tries to race away, only for his legs to buckle beneath him. He admits to Batish that he can’t feel anything, and apparently cannot even remember defeating the doctor’s attackers. Batish assures Kato that his body still has the ability to function, then throws a punch at him. He catches her arm without so much as blinking. “See,” the doctor asks. “Your reflexes remember even when you don’t.”

Kato eventually breaks out of the hospital, led on by the crow and hellbent on finding Sarah, who is drawn back into Byron’s orbit when a whistleblower clues her in to the deadly effects of his company’s sedative. His men attempt a hit, which is thwarted when Kato arrives and makes quick and bloody work of them. Sarah is stunned at the sight of Kato, then pulls him in for a hug. The two partners reunited.

Kato and Sarah catch up, with the former cop conflating his old partner with his wife. Realizing that Kato still isn’t mentally well, she stages a capture that sees Kato brought down by orderlies, put into restraints, and returned to the hospital.

With Kato helpless, Acer and Pring sneak into the hospital to kill him. Oswald cuts Kato (mostly) free of his straightjacket, allowing our hero to dispatch the two would-be hitmen in spectacularly violent fashion. From there, Kato escapes and makes his way to Biodyne, followed shortly after by a SWAT team that converges on the building to apprehend this violent escaped mental patient.

Inside Biodyne, Terrell and his men attempt to stop Kato before he can reach Byron. What follows is a flurry of gunfire and martial arts action, culminating in the villains’ bone-breaking deaths, with Terrell’s final moments awakening memories of the wedding massacre that claimed Anne’s life.

Kato makes his way to the roof, where Byron is making an escape via helicopter. Kato pulls him free, then breaks his bones one by one before sending him to a grisly death at the hands (and, presumably, teeth) of one of Byron’s animal test subjects. The helicopter explodes, sending flames throughout the building’s penthouse floor.

Sarah arrives, just ahead of the SWAT team, and finds Kato standing on the edge of the building, considering the ground below. Something has awakened in him. He admits that while he cannot feel physical pain, the mental and emotional pain he is now faced with is overwhelming.

The SWAT team arrives, ready to gun down our hero, just before another helicopter moves into view – this one piloted by Fetterman, sporting his 1950s flight jacket. Oswald and Julius are in tow, there to save their friend. Kato and Sarah jump aboard, flying off with their fellow lunatics as the crow rises into frame behind them, trailing after them as the helicopter races toward the rising sun.

“What’s interesting about the script – not just Ed Pressman, but many people over the years have tried to make this movie,” de Souza says. “It’s gotten a wide circulation, because people like martial arts movies. Also, anecdotally, if you’re in the movie business, you read the script and you realize there’s very few locations. Half the battle of making a picture on budget is not moving trucks and trucks of people from one place to another.

“So the fact that a third of the movie’s at the mental hospital, another third of the movie’s at the bad guy’s building. So it’s a very, very makeable movie. And that may be the reason that people come out of the woodwork. I’m telling you, it was like clockwork every couple of years. ‘I want to make this movie? Where’s it going?’ ‘It’s at Warner Brothers, you got to pay some money to get it out.’ And then, you know…everybody wants to be the second person to write a check.”

In closing out this look at this action movie that might have been (and might yet be), both men offer their closing thoughts on the project and its future. “I was totally thrilled with the idea,” de Souza says. “Like I said, I had pulled this off once before with Die Hard 2, retrofitting an existing script. In this case it was my own script, not a third party script. I was really looking forward to it, and I was disappointed when Ed got back to me and said, ‘We couldn’t work it out.’ He didn’t go into detail as to what the problem was, whether the problem was Dimension or whether the problem was Warner Brothers. Dimension, right at that time, had a big turnover in management.

“I think new people had just come in. A lot of times when there’s a new executive, they want to burn bridges with whatever was in the pipeline from the previous people, because presumably the previous people screwed up. So you don’t want to make a movie the previous people brought in, because if it fails – ’Why did you do that?’ If it’s successful, they start having second thoughts about why they brought you in to replace the previous people. So it’s kind of a lose-lose situation.”

Rhee offers his own final thoughts on the Ballistic and its crazy history as a potential Crow sequel: “Everything is cyclical. Right now, I think that it’s time to reboot The Crow, but who would be the star? You know what I mean? Because without an actor, you cannot make the movie, and vice versa.”

As far as the original take on the material, Rhee points out that the likelihood of Ballistic ever getting made all comes down to the tangled rights issues. “It’s all mixed up … the rights are all scattered between Steven, between Warner Brothers. You’d have to go to legal to sort it out. But I hope it will still happen in some form.”

Very special thanks to Phillip Rhee and Steven E. de Souza for their time and insights.

5 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week and “Servant” Returns for a Brand New Season

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While the brand new Scream movie continues to top the box office after the long 4-day weekend, scaring up $35 million domestically at the time of writing this article, a new week brings another batch of new horror movies this week. Additionally, a popular horror series returns to television with a new season, and another horror series premieres this week.

Here’s all the new horror coming between January 18-January 23, 2022!

This week’s new horror releases kick off with Jack in the Box: Awakening, a sequel to the 2019 film that let loose a demonic clown from his box. It’s now available on VOD outlets.

In Awakening: “Terminally ill heiress Olga Marsdale acquires a mysterious gothic box containing a captured demon – Jack. The powerful entity within makes a deadly deal with Olga and her devoted son Edgar – deliver six victims to Jack, and Olga will live. They trap several unsuspecting victims for him within the vast crumbling mansion – but can they deliver all six before it’s too late? Or will Amy, the young and innocent woman recently hired to look after the estate turn out to be more than a match for both the family and the Jack?”

What’s inside the box? Watch the trailer below to find out.

RLJE Films disturbs An Unquiet Grave today, available now on VOD, Digital HD and DVD.

“A year after losing his wife in a car crash, Jamie convinces her sister, Ava, to return with him to the site of the accident and help him perform a strange ritual. But as the night wears on, it becomes clear that he has darker intentions. An Unquiet Grave is an exploration of grief, and the harm we cause when we don’t take responsibility for our own healing.”

Terence Krey directed the film, starring Jacob A. Ware and Christine Nyland.

The third indie horror movie that’s now available today is titled Ditched, written and directed by Christopher Donaldson. The film is Donaldson’s directorial debut, but he has served as a storyboard artist on many notable projects in recent years including “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” “Superman and Lois,” and even the 2019 remake of Child’s Play.

In Ditched, “After a routine prison transfer crashes in the forest, young Inuit paramedic Melina finds herself surrounded by murderers with a mere 100 feet to climb out of a ditch to escape.

“When they are attacked by an unseen force in the forest, Melina’s short journey to safety becomes the ultimate contest of wills.” Watch the film’s official trailer below.

Werewolf sisters fight monsters in “Supernatural Academy,” a brand new animated young adult horror series that debuts on the Peacock streaming service Thursday, January 20th.

“Supernatural Academy chronicles an otherworldly adventure of sisters marked at birth. One twin sister was raised in the Supernatural world, confident and popular. The other was raised in the human world, an offbeat outsider. Now they’re about to be reunited at the Supernatural Academy, and neither one of them is thrilled about it.

“These adversarial twins will have to learn to get over their differences and trust each other in order to save themselves – and save the world.”

The show’s voice cast includes Larissa Dias (Supernatural), Gigi Saul Guerrero (Marvel Super Hero Adventures), Vincent Tong (Ninjago), Cardi Wong (Supergirl), Shannon Chan-Kent (Good Trouble), Bethany Brown (Charmed), Brian Drummond (Mega Man: Fully Charged), Barbara Kottmeier (Supernatural), Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica), Ali J. Eisner (Fraggle Rock), Diana Kaarina (The Hollow) and Kathleen Barr (Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch).

Also on Thursday, Orphan star Isabelle Fuhrman plays a central role in the period horror movie The Last Thing Mary Saw, set in the year 1843 and coming to Shudder on January 20th.

Fuhrman stars alongside Rory Culkin (Lords of Chaos), Stefanie Scott (Insidious: Chapter 3) and Judith Roberts (You Were Never Really Here).

Written and directed by Edoardo Vitaletti, “The Last Thing Mary Saw begins in Southold, New York, 1843: Young Mary (Stefanie Scott), blood trickling from behind the blindfold tied around her eyes, is interrogated about the events surrounding her grandmother’s death. As the story jumps back in time, we witness Mary, raised in a repressively religious household, finding fleeting happiness in the arms of Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), the home’s maid. Her family, who believe they are seeing, speaking, and acting on God’s behalf, view the girls’ relationship as an abomination, to be dealt with as severely as possible. The couple attempt to carry on in secret, but someone is always watching, or listening, and the wages of perceived sin threaten to become death, with the tension only heightened by the arrival of an enigmatic stranger (Rory Culkin) and the revelation of greater forces at work.”

On the small screen, the M. Night Shyamalan-produced horror series “Servant” returns for a third season this week, premiering on Apple TV+ this Friday, January 21st.

Executive produced by M. Night Shyamalan, the third season takes place three months after we leave the Turner household in season two, where things appear to be back to normal.

“Dorothy and Sean dote on Jericho, Julian has a new girlfriend, and Leanne has moved back into the brownstone. With the threat of the cult looming and suspicious visitors staked out in a nearby park, Leanne does everything she can to feel secure—ultimately causing more chaos for the Turner family. As Sean starts trusting in Leanne’s power, Dorothy feels increasingly threatened and worries for Jericho’s safety. While the Turners struggle to keep their family whole, they must come to terms with the costs of Jericho’s return.”

Be careful what you wish for…

The final new horror release for the week is Warhunt, starring Mickey Rourke and In Theaters, On Demand and Digital on January 21st. This one should pair well with 2018’s Overlord.

The film is set in 1945…

“A US military cargo plane loses control and violently crashes behind enemy lines in the middle of the German black forest. Immediately ruthless Major Johnson (Mickey Rourke) sends a squad of his bravest soldiers on a rescue mission to retrieve the top secret material the plane was carrying. Led by Sergeant Brewer (Robert Knepper) and Walsh (Jackson Rathbone), the soldiers venture deep into the forest near the crash site. They soon discover hanged Nazi soldiers and other dead bodies bearing ancient, magical symbols. Suddenly their compasses fail, their perceptions twist and straying from the group leads to profound horror as they are attacked by a powerful, supernatural force. Fighting for their sanity and struggling to survive they must uncover the shocking truth behind the force before the Nazis and do everything they can to remove all evidence it ever existed, even at the cost of their own lives.”

Reggie Keyohara III and Scott Svatos wrote the film, directed by Mauro Borrelli.