Movies
Bloody Disgusting’s 2021 Summer Horror Movie Preview: The 19 Can’t Miss Movies of the Summer!
It’s that time of year again, where the summer sun warms up the box office and heralds in a slew of big summer releases. Perfect timing, too, considering theaters are making their return to normalcy. As last year proved, though, horror thrives in all formats, which means that this summer’s genre offerings extend well beyond the theater.
Expect streaming platforms, digital, and VOD to bring the horror fun, too. That means that the summer slate of horror is packed, with new titles dropping every single week.
To help you prepare for a summer of screams, here’s what’s ahead…
The Forever Purge – July 2 (Theaters)
Purgers in The Forever Purge, directed by Everardo Valerio Gout.
The final entry in the franchise is here. After Election Year’s events, The Forever Purge follows Adela (Ana de la Reguera) and Juan (Tenoch Huerta), who finds solace at a Texan ranch, having fled a drug cartel in Mexico. They’ll run into trouble when a group of outsiders decides to keep purging beyond the allotted time when people can break all laws. The Forever Purge releases just in time for its traditional Fourth of July slot.
Fear Street Part 1: 1994 – July 2 (Netflix)
FEAR STREET PART 1: 1994 – (Pictured) MAYA HAWKE as HEATHER. Cr: Netflix © 2021
The first of the Leigh Janiak helmed Fear Street trilogy drops on Netflix. An R-rated trilogy based on R.L. Stines YA novel series kicks off with Part 1, set in 1994. The plot follows a group of teenage friends that accidentally encounter the ancient evil responsible for a series of brutal murders that have plagued their town for over 300 years. Welcome to Shadyside.
Till Death – July 2 (VOD)
Emma (Megan Fox), trapped in a stale marriage to Mark (Eoin Macken), gets surprised with a weekend getaway for their tenth anniversary. Romance turns into a harrowing fight for survival when she wakes up to discover she’s handcuffed to her husband, and he’s dead. That’s before she realizes she’s the target of a sinister home invasion plot.
Fear Street Part 2: 1978 – July 9 (Netflix)
FEAR STREET PART 2: 1978 – Cr: Netflix © 2021
Part 2 of the Fear Street trilogy explores more of Shadyside, this time in 1978. School’s out for summer, and the activities at Camp Nightwing are about to begin. But when another Shadysider is possessed with the urge to kill, the fun in the sun becomes a gruesome fight for survival.
Dachra – July 9 (Theaters and Virtual Cinemas)
Three journalism students investigating a cold case come upon a mysterious place marked by unsettling rituals and terrifying children. The Tunisian horror film is described as “Equal parts Midsommar and The Blair Witch Project” and developed a reputation for terrifying viewers during its festival run. If you need something to send shivers down your spine during the blazing hot season, this might do the trick.
A Classic Horror Story – July 14 (Netflix)
Netflix is keeping release details for this one close to the vest, offering a synopsis that reads, “Music for children, an abandoned house, five strangers: it looks like the classic horror movie and instead….” The effective teasers hint at brutal torture ahead and a twist on familiar horror tropes.
Escape Room: Tournament of Champions – July 16 (Theaters)
Zoey Davis (Taylor Russell), Ben Miller (Logan Miller), Rachel (Holland Roden), Brianna (Indya Moore) and Nathan (Thomas Cocquerel) in ESCAPE ROOM: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS.
Taylor Russell and Logan Miller return along with director Adam Robitel for this sequel. In this installment, six people unwittingly find themselves locked in another series of escape rooms, slowly uncovering what they have in common to survive. If the title isn’t already an indicator, it’s discovering they’ve all played the game before.
Fear Street Part 3: 1666 – July 16 (Netflix)
FEAR STREET – Cr: Netflix © 2021
The final entry in the Fear Street trilogy wraps up by taking a giant leap backward in time by a few centuries. The origins of Sarah Fier’s curse are finally revealed as history comes full circle on a night that changes the lives of Shadysiders forever.
Kandisha – July 22 (Shudder)
Kandisha- Photo Credit: Shudder
While we wait for Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s underwater haunted house feature, The Deep House, Shudder delivers their latest, Kandisha. Friends Amélie, Bintou, and Morjana spend their summer trading ghost stories. When Amélie’s ex assaults her, she recalls the legend of vengeful demon Kandisha. She summons the demon, and her ex dies. Kandisha’s bloodlust isn’t satiated, however, and the friends must learn how to break the curse before it’s too late.
Old – July 23 (Theaters)
Rufus Sewell as Charles in Old, written for the screen and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
M. Night Shyamalan’s latest is based on the graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters. The mysterious new thriller features a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives into a single day.
The Boy Behind the Door – July 29 (Shudder)
Bobby (Lonnie Chavis) and Kevin (Ezra Dewey) are an inseparable pair of best friends. While out in a park tossing the ball, both are grabbed by unseen assailants. Bobby wakes in the trunk of a car and breaks free. When he hears Kevin’s screams, he puts his life on the line to rescue his friend. Filmmakers David Charbonier and Justin Powell plunge straight into the heart of evil for their unrelentingly suspenseful thriller that fearlessly pushes boundaries.
The Green Knight – July 30 (Theaters)
Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain, who encounters the mysterious Green Knight (Ralph Ineson), intent on striking a perilous bargain. Gawain contends with ghosts, giants, thieves, and schemers, which becomes a more profound journey to prove his worth. From visionary writer/director David Lowery, expect a heavily stylized take on the Arthurian legend, full of nudity and bloodshed.
The Last Matinee – August 6 (Theaters)
The latest Bloody Disgusting x Dark Star Pictures collaboration is for ultra-gory Giallo fans. In The Last Matinee, the audience attending the last showing of a horror film in a small downtown cinema is terrorized by a murderer who begins to pick them off, one by one. The only person to notice that something strange is going on is the projectionist’s daughter. The Last Matinee promises to deliver an eye-popping experience.
Don’t Breathe 2 – August 13 (Theaters)
Co-writer Fede Alvarez passes the director’s reigns to co-writer Rodo Sayagues for this home invasion sequel. Stephen Lang returns as the Blind Man, but the synopsis curiously suggests he might be the protagonist this time. In Don’t Breathe 2, the Blind Man has been hiding out for years in an isolated cabin and has taken in and raised a young girl orphaned from a house fire. Their quiet existence is shattered when a group of kidnappers show up and take the girl, forcing the Blind Man to leave his haven to save her.
Demonic – August 20 (VOD)
Neill Blomkamp seems to blend the supernatural with a technological nightmare for his latest. In Demonic, a young woman unleashes terrifying demons when supernatural forces at the root of a decades-old rift between mother and daughter are ruthlessly revealed.
The Night House – August 20 (Theaters)
The Night House follows a widow (Rebecca Hall) who begins to uncover her recently deceased husband’s disturbing secrets. Director David Bruckner (The Ritual) wastes no time cutting straight to the heart of terror here; his latest is scary as hell.
Candyman – August 27 (Theaters)
The wait for one of the year’s most anticipated horror movies is nearly over. Directed by Nia DaCosta and produced by Jordan Peele, this spiritual sequel returns to Cabrini-Green. The plot follows visual artist Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen) and his girlfriend Brianna (Teyonah Parris), who move there and discover the horrifying legend firsthand.
We Need to Do Something – September 3 (Theaters and VOD)
Seeking shelter from a storm, a dysfunctional family finds themselves trapped for days with no sign of rescue. Worse, unspeakable horrors lurk just outside their walls, attempting to find a way inside. Sean King O’Grady’s feature directorial debut offers an unpredictable grab bag of terror and includes one of the year’s most potent scares.
Malignant – September 10 (Theaters and HBO Max)
Plot details remain scarce for James Wan’s latest, which arrives at the very tail end of summer. Described as an original Giallo thriller, Wan directed off a screenplay by Akela Cooper and JT Petty with story by Wan and Ingrid Bisu. The MPA gave it an R-rating for “Strong horror violence, gruesome images, and for language.”
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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