Editorials
Happy Hellidays! 29 New Horror Movies, TV Shows and Video Games Premiering in December 2020
If you think the horror genre would take a break in December just because it’s a time of the year for family-friendly entertainment and yuletide cheer, you’ve got another thing coming.
In fact, the nightmares have already begun! December 1 brought with it the new Icelandic vampire thriller Thirst, on DVD and Digital, about a young woman accused of her brother’s murder, who turns to a creature of the night to bring him back from the dead, which (naturally) turns out to be an awful idea. Or, if you’re more into video games, December 1 is also the day that Twin Mirror arrives on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The new thriller tells the story of a man investigating a conspiracy in his home town, using his mind palace and another version of himself to solve the mystery.
On December 3, horror fans can get Anything for Jackson, a supernatural thriller about grandparents who kidnap a pregnant woman and try to possess her unborn child with the spirit of their dead grandson. In his review of this Shudder exclusive, Bloody-Disgusting critic Joe Lipsett called Anything for Jackson “a worthwhile twist on the exorcism/possession subgenre.”
And, just to solidify the first week of the month as a big one for horror gamers, December 3 sees the premiere of the Horrorpunk RPG Morbid: The Seven Acolytes on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch, and December 4 brings two new games to boot. Nine Witches: Family Disruption, a comedic horror game about an ancient curse unleashed in World War II, debuts on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch, and Darq: Complete Edition, about a young boy trapped inside of a nightmare, hits PC, PS4, Xbox One and GOG.
‘Castle Freak’
December 4 is a huge day for horror movies on VOD! The acclaimed horror comedy Freaky, a slasher riff on Freaky Friday starring Vince Vaughn, finally arrives on VOD, and speaking of “finally” (and freakiness), the long-awaited remake of Stuart Gordon’s brutal Lovecraft adaptation Castle Freak also arrives On Demand and Digital HD!
Also on December 4, What Lies Below debuts On Demand and Digital HD, and tells the story of a young woman whose mother’s new, ideal fiancé might very well be an aquatic monster in disguise. That same day Smiley Face Killers, written by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) and directed by Tim Hunter (River’s Edge), tells the fictional story behind an actual serial killer conspiracy theory, and stars cult icon Crispin Glover as the mysterious figure at the center of it all.
Netflix gets back into the horror business on December 5 with the debut of the Taiwanese horror series, Detention, about a ghost telling the history of horror within a high school. Meanwhile, fans of Attack on Titan have a reason to rejoice on December 6, because the last season of the hit post-apocalyptic anime series about man-eating giants debuts on Funimation’s streaming service! And speaking of anime, December 10 brings the live-action remake of Alice in Borderland to Netflix. The series tells the Lewis Carroll-inspired story of a people thrown into a strange alternate reality in the midst of a survival game.
“Attack on Titan”
Over on Shudder, December 11 brings the debut of Joe Bob Saves Christmas, the latest holiday special that highlights the best on the service, as hosted by Joe Bob Briggs. The same day also sees the theatrical and VOD premiere of Don’t Click, a horror film about a young man sucked into a nightmare when he clicks on the wrong X-rated pop-up.
And then of course there’s the topical pandemic thriller Songbird, produced by Michael Bay, which tells the story of a world ravaged by martial law and strict quarantines. Songbird stars KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Bradley Whitford, Demi Moore, Paul Walter Hausser, Alexandra Daddario and Peter Stormare, and debuts on PVOD on December 11 as well!
If you’re looking for something a bit less shocking this month, AppleTV+ has the exclusive new animated feature Wolfwalkers. This distinct and beautifully animated new take on the werewolf legend tells the story of a village where the denizens are whipped into an anti-wolf frenzy, unaware that the animals are led by supernatural beings which only transform into wolves when they sleep. The acclaimed film also debuts on December 11.
‘Wolfwalkers’
Back in the realm of VOD, December 15 brings Breaking Surface, a survival thriller about two sisters and lifelong divers, who face life-and-death disaster when one of them becomes trapped under a fjord. In her four-star review on Bloody-Disgusting, Megan Navarro called Breaking Surface a “non-stop, unrelentingly intense thriller that never struggles to find new ways to prolong the answer to whether these sisters will make it out alive.”
Then, on Netflix, a new true-crime documentary called The Ripper debuts on December 16. The film explores the terrifying real-life crimes of the notorious “Yorkshire Ripper,” who killed 13 women between 1975 and 1980.
But probably the biggest TV release this month for the horror genre is The Stand, an all-new adaptation of Stephen King’s apocalyptic epic about the end of the world via global pandemic, followed by a world torn apart by morally-divided survivors. The mini-series, directed by Josh Boone, co-stars James Marsden, Amber Heard, Greg Kinnear, Odessa Young, Whoopi Goldberg, Ezra Miller, Alexander Skarsgard, Nat Wolff, Heather Graham, Fiona Dourif and Clifton Collins, Jr. and debuts on CBS All Access on December 17.
“The Stand”
December 18 is also a huge day for the horror genre this month. Kicking things off is A Creepshow Holiday Special, a Shudder exclusive, with an hour-long episode about a man who fears he’s a serial killer and joins a mysterious support group for answers. Also in the realm of TV, Netflix debuts the South Korean horror series Sweet Home, about an apartment complex where supernatural events converge, and residents turn into monsters.
In theaters and VOD, December 18 is the debut date for Skylines, the third installment in the ambitious alien invasion series that began with Skyline and Beyond Skyline. The new film brings the sci-fi action to the homeworld of the invading alien species. Also in theaters and on VOD is Hunter Hunter, starring Devon Sawa as a hunter trying to protect his family from a rogue wolf, and Breach, a sci-fi monster movie starring Bruce Willis, Thomas Jane and Rachel Nichols as they fight off a shape-shifting alien in space!
Christmas Day brings a couple of big gifts for horror lovers in 2020. Monster Hunter, Paul W.S. Anderson’s latest epic video game adaptation starring Milla Jovovich, premieres in theaters and IMAX, and tells the story of a military unit transported to an alternate dimension full of giant beasts. Promising Young Woman, a movie about hunting different kinds of monsters, also premieres in theaters on December 25. Carey Mulligan stars in the acclaimed revenge thriller as a woman who lures men into compromising situations, and turns the tables on them.
And finally Netflix closes out the month with Equinox, a Danish thriller series about an investigation into a two decades-old tragedy that reveals unexpected secrets, which debuts on December 30, followed by the fourth season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which premieres on December 31!
All of these release dates are subject to change, especially nowadays, so keep coming back to Bloody-Disgusting for more updates and announcements!
‘Monster Hunter’
Due to a complex series of anthropological mishaps, the Wayans Brothers are a huge deal in Brazil. Around these parts, White Chicks is considered a national treasure by a lot of people, so it stands to reason that Brazilian audiences would continue to accompany the Wayans’ comedic output long after North America had stopped taking them seriously as comedic titans.
This is the only reason why I originally watched Michael Tiddes and Marlon Wayans’ 2013 horror spoof A Haunted House – appropriately known as “Paranormal Inactivity” in South America – despite having abandoned this kind of movie shortly after the excellent Scary Movie 3. However, to my complete and utter amazement, I found myself mostly enjoying this unhinged parody of Found Footage films almost as much as the iconic spoofs that spear-headed the genre during the 2000s. And with Paramount having recently announced a reboot of the Scary Movie franchise, I think this is the perfect time to revisit the divisive humor of A Haunted House and maybe figure out why this kind of film hasn’t been popular in a long time.
Before we had memes and internet personalities to make fun of movie tropes for free on the internet, parody movies had been entertaining audiences with meta-humor since the very dawn of cinema. And since the genre attracted large audiences without the need for a serious budget, it made sense for studios to encourage parodies of their own productions – which is precisely what happened with Miramax when they commissioned a parody of the Scream franchise, the original Scary Movie.
The unprecedented success of the spoof (especially overseas) led to a series of sequels, spin-offs and rip-offs that came along throughout the 2000s. While some of these were still quite funny (I have a soft spot for 2008’s Superhero Movie), they ended up flooding the market much like the Guitar Hero games that plagued video game stores during that same timeframe.
You could really confuse someone by editing this scene into Paranormal Activity.
Of course, that didn’t stop Tiddes and Marlon Wayans from wanting to make another spoof meant to lampoon a sub-genre that had been mostly overlooked by the Scary Movie series – namely the second wave of Found Footage films inspired by Paranormal Activity. Wayans actually had an easier time than usual funding the picture due to the project’s Found Footage presentation, with the format allowing for a lower budget without compromising box office appeal.
In the finished film, we’re presented with supposedly real footage recovered from the home of Malcom Johnson (Wayans). The recordings themselves depict a series of unexplainable events that begin to plague his home when Kisha Davis (Essence Atkins) decides to move in, with the couple slowly realizing that the difficulties of a shared life are no match for demonic shenanigans.
In practice, this means that viewers are subjected to a series of familiar scares subverted by wacky hijinks, with the flick featuring everything from a humorous recreation of the iconic fan-camera from Paranormal Activity 3 to bizarre dance numbers replacing Katy’s late-night trances from Oren Peli’s original movie.
Your enjoyment of these antics will obviously depend on how accepting you are of Wayans’ patented brand of crass comedy. From advanced potty humor to some exaggerated racial commentary – including a clever moment where Malcom actually attempts to move out of the titular haunted house because he’s not white enough to deal with the haunting – it’s not all that surprising that the flick wound up with a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes despite making a killing at the box office.
However, while this isn’t my preferred kind of humor, I think the inherent limitations of Found Footage ended up curtailing the usual excesses present in this kind of parody, with the filmmakers being forced to focus on character-based comedy and a smaller scale story. This is why I mostly appreciate the love-hate rapport between Kisha and Malcom even if it wouldn’t translate to a healthy relationship in real life.
Of course, the jokes themselves can also be pretty entertaining on their own, with cartoony gags like the ghost getting high with the protagonists (complete with smoke-filled invisible lungs) and a series of silly The Exorcist homages towards the end of the movie. The major issue here is that these legitimately funny and genre-specific jokes are often accompanied by repetitive attempts at low-brow humor that you could find in any other cheap comedy.
Not a good idea.
Not only are some of these painfully drawn out “jokes” incredibly unfunny, but they can also be remarkably offensive in some cases. There are some pretty insensitive allusions to sexual assault here, as well as a collection of secondary characters defined by negative racial stereotypes (even though I chuckled heartily when the Latina maid was revealed to have been faking her poor English the entire time).
Cinephiles often claim that increasingly sloppy writing led to audiences giving up on spoof movies, but the fact is that many of the more beloved examples of the genre contain some of the same issues as later films like A Haunted House – it’s just that we as an audience have (mostly) grown up and are now demanding more from our comedy. However, this isn’t the case everywhere, as – much like the Elves from Lord of the Rings – spoof movies never really died, they simply diminished.
A Haunted House made so much money that they immediately started working on a second one that released the following year (to even worse reviews), and the same team would later collaborate once again on yet another spoof, 50 Shades of Black. This kind of film clearly still exists and still makes a lot of money (especially here in Brazil), they just don’t have the same cultural impact that they used to in a pre-social-media-humor world.
At the end of the day, A Haunted House is no comedic masterpiece, failing to live up to the laugh-out-loud thrills of films like Scary Movie 3, but it’s also not the trainwreck that most critics made it out to be back in 2013. Comedy is extremely subjective, and while the raunchy humor behind this flick definitely isn’t for everyone, I still think that this satirical romp is mostly harmless fun that might entertain Found Footage fans that don’t take themselves too seriously.
4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Late Night with the Devil’ at Home
‘Ready or Not’: Radio Silence Filmmakers Tease the “Absolute Banger” of a Sequel That’s Taking Shape
‘Sting’ Review – Throwback Creature Feature Entertains With an Impressive Practical Monster
Looking for New Episodes of “Chucky” on Peacock? Here’s What Changed
“We Built Every Creature” – ‘Alien: Romulus’ Goes Heavy on the Old School Practical Effects!
You must be logged in to post a comment.