Movies
4 New Horror Movies & Shows Releasing This Week Including Shudder’s Christmas Horror ‘The Advent Calendar’
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The holiday season is always a bit of a slow time for the horror genre, but we still have much to look forward to here in the final month of 2021. For starters, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (read Meagan’s review) is now playing in theaters, and big new releases including Halloween Kills: Extended Cut and Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley are still on the way.
What are we looking forward to in the first week of December, you ask?
Here’s all the new horror arriving between November 29-December 5!
Eugénie Derouand as Eva – The Advent Calendar – Photo Credit: JEAN-CLAUDE LOTHER/Shudder
The first new release for the week doesn’t arrive until Thursday, December 2nd with The Advent Calendar, an original holiday horror movie that’s coming exclusively to Shudder.
The streaming service describes writer/director Patrick Ridremont’s film as an “ornate and elegant French horror fantasy.” Shudder further teases, “Combining Faustian themes and allusions with European folklore and tense, chilling terror, the Shudder Original film provides some highly original holiday season horror.”‘
Eva (Eugénie Derouand, Paris Police 1900), an ex-dancer, is now using a wheelchair, unable to walk. When her friend Sophie (Honorine Magnier, Tomorrow is Ours) gives her an old wooden antique advent calendar before Christmas, she realizes each window contains a surprise that triggers repercussions in real life. Some of them are good, but most of them are bad, really bad. Now Eva will have to choose between getting rid of the calendar or walking again – even if it causes death and destruction to everyone she holds dear around her.
Unlock the first door by watching the trailer right here.
The dark holiday fun continues with Silent Night this Friday, which is coming to theaters and AMC+ on December 3rd. The film marks Camille Griffin’s directorial debut.
Keira Knightley stars in the “darkly comedic drama.” The film, focusing on a group of friends that comes together for an eventful Christmas dinner, also stars Matthew Goode, Roman Griffin Davis, Annabelle Wallis, Lily-Rose Depp, Ṣọpé Dìrísù, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Lucy Punch, Rufus Jones, and Trudie Styler, among others.
“Nell and Simon have invited their closest friends to join their family for Christmas dinner at their idyllic home in the English countryside. As the group comes together, it feels like old times – but behind all of the laughter and merriment, something is not quite right. The world outside is facing impending doom, and no amount of gifts, games or Prosecco can make mankind’s imminent destruction go away. Surviving the holidays just got a lot more complicated.”
Watch the official trailer from RLJE Films right here.
A man with species identity disorder believes he’s a beast in the new movie Wolf from Focus Features. Nathalie Biancheri (Nocturnal) directed Wolf, releasing in theaters on December 3.
In the film, “Believing he is a wolf trapped in a human body, Jacob (George MacKay) eats, sleeps, and lives like a wolf – much to the shock of his family.
“When he’s sent to a clinic, Jacob and his animal-bound peers are forced to undergo increasingly extreme forms of ‘curative’ therapies. However once he meets the mysterious Wildcat (Lily-Rose Depp), and as their friendship blossoms into an undeniable infatuation, Jacob is faced with a challenge: will he renounce his true self for love.”
Is he man or wolf? Watch the trailer here.
The final new release for the week is the fourth season of Netflix‘s animated series “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous,” which will be taking us to a whole new island this Friday.
The third season of “Camp Cretaceous” ended with the tease that the kids have finally made their way off the island, defeating the terrifying Scorpius Rex and evading capture by Dr. Wu and his villainous mercenaries. They’ve found themselves on a boat to freedom, but it seems at least one dinosaur managed to make its way onto the boat before they departed.
And they’re about to be re-routed to a fresh new island of dino-terrors, which seems to be packed with everything from a sabretooth tiger to… robotic dinosaur creatures?!
“This is an island previously unseen in the Jurassic canon,” showrunner Scott Kreamer tells Entertainment Weekly. “The kids, basically, are gonna have to figure out what the heck is going on as opposed to other seasons where the audience was ahead of them.”
Preview this latest round of dino terror with the official trailer right here.
The Bloody Disgusting-powered SCREAMBOX is home to a variety of unique horror content, from originals and exclusives to cult classics and documentaries. With such a rapidly-growing library, there are many hidden gems waiting to be discovered.
Here are five recommendations you can stream on SCREAMBOX right now.
At the Abigail premiere, Dan Stevens listed Norway among his four favorite vampire movies. “I just saw a great movie recently that I’d never heard of,” he told Letterboxd. “A Greek film called Norway, about a vampire who basically exists in the underground disco scene in ’80s Athens, and he can’t stop dancing ’cause he’s worried his heart will stop. And it’s lovely. It’s great.”
You won’t find a better endorsement than that, but allow me to elaborate. Imagine Only Lovers Left Alive meets What We Do in the Shadows by way of Yorgos Lanthimos. The quirky 2014 effort follows a vampire vagabond (Vangelis Mourikis) navigating Greek’s sordid nightlife circa 1984 as he dances to stay alive. Not as campy as it sounds, its idiosyncrasies land more in the art-house realm. Stylized visuals, colorful bloodshed, pulsating dance music, and an absurd third-act reveal help the existentialism go down in a mere 74 minutes.
With the recent solar eclipse renewing public interest in the astrological event, Bloody Birthday is ripe for rediscovery. Three children born during an eclipse – Curtis Taylor (Billy Jayne, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose), Debbie Brody (Elizabeth Hoy), and Steven Seton (Andrew Freeman) – begin committing murders on their 10th birthday. Brother and sister duo Joyce (Lori Lethin, Return to Horror High) and Timmy Russell (K.C. Martel, The Amityville Horror) are the only ones privy to their heinous acts.
Bloody Birthday opened in 1981 mere weeks before the release of another attempt to claim the birthday slot on the slasher calendar, Happy Birthday to Me. Director Ed Hunt (The Brain) combines creepy kid tropes that date back to The Bad Seed with slasher conventions recently established by Halloween and Friday the 13th – with a little bit of the former’s suspense and plenty of the latter’s gratuity. The unconventional set up helps it to stand out among a subgenre plagued by banality.
Starting in the late ’70s and throughout the ’80s, Italy built an enterprise out of shameless rip-offs of hit American movies. While not a blatant mockbuster like Cruel Jaws or Beyond the Door, 1989’s Alien from the Abyss (also known as Alien from the Deep) was inspired by – as you may have guessed from its title – Alien, Aliens, and The Abyss.
After a pair of Greenpeace activists attempt to expose an evil corporation that’s dumping contaminated waste into an active volcano, the environment takes a backseat to survival when an extraterrestrial monster attacks. Character actor Charles Napier (The Silence of the Lambs) co-stars as a callous colonel overseeing the illicit activities.
Director Antonio Margheriti (Yor: The Hunter from the Future, Cannibal Apocalypse) and writer Tito Carpi (Tentacles, Last Cannibal World) take far too long to get to the alien, but once it shows up, it’s non-stop excitement. The creature is largely represented by a Gigeresque pincer claw that reaches into the frame, giving the picture a ’50s creature feature charm, but nothing can prepare you for its full reveal in the finale.
Set against the backdrop of displaced Syrian and Palestinian refugees, What Is Buried Must Remain is a timely found footage hybrid from Lebanon. It centers on a trio of young filmmakers as they make a documentary in a decrepit mansion alleged to be haunted on the outskirts of a refugee camp. Inside, they find the spirits of those who died there, both benevolent and malicious.
It plays like Blair Witch meets The Shining through a cultural lens not often seen in the genre. The first half is presented as found footage (with above-average cinematography) before abruptly weaving in more traditional film coverage. While the tropes are familiar, the film possesses a unique ethos by addressing the Middle East’s plights of the past and the present alike.
Cathy’s Curse is, to borrow a phrase from its titular creepy kid, an “extra rare piece of shit.” The Exorcist, The Omen, and Carrie spawned countless low-budget knock-offs, but none are as uniquely inept as this 1977 Canuxploitation outing. Falling squarely in the so-bad-it’s-good camp, it’s far more entertaining than The Exorcist: Believer.
To try to make sense of the plot would be futile, but in a nutshell, a young girl named Candy (Randi Allen, in her only acting role) becomes possessed by the vengeful, foul-mouthed spirit of her aunt, destroying the lives of anyone who crosses her path. What ensues is a madcap mélange of possession, telekinesis, teleportation, animal attacks, abandoned plot points, and unhinged filmmaking that must be seen to be believed.
Visit the SCREAMBOX Hidden Gems archives for more recommendations.
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