“Horror has long been a favorite among moviegoers, especially during the Halloween season, and we’re always looking for new ways to give fans more opportunities to enjoy these films on the big screen at AMC,” says Ryan Wood, Senior Vice President and Head Film Buyer, AMC. “These are movies people know and love, and it’s exciting to bring them back to theatres in a unique way.”

The “Welcome to Horrorwood” lineup includes:

• October 2 & October 6: Hostel (2005)

• October 9 & October 13: Friday the 13th (1980)

• October 16 & October 20: American Psycho (2000)

• October 23 & October 27: Pet Sematary (1989)

• October 30 & October 31: The Crow (1994)

Inspired by Ice Nine Kills’ The Silver Scream and The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood albums, the series pairs the band’s love of horror with five films that have helped define the genre. Each screening will also feature a custom introduction from Ice Nine Kills frontman Spencer Charnas before the film, followed by the band’s corresponding music video inspired by the feature.

“It’s a bloody honor to present this selection of modern horror classics with the mighty AMC Theatres and our friends at Bloody Disgusting. Metal music and marquee movie mayhem. What more could we ask for this October?” says Charnas.

“Scares should be shared. Simple as that,” says Michael Roffman, Business Development of Bloody Disgusting. “There are no stronger crossroads for Horror fans than the theater experience. It’s where we fell in love with the genre; it’s where most of our earliest memories dwell. I grew up at AMC Theatres, so there’s a lot of passion to this partnership.”

“Welcome to Horrorwood” takes over Friday and Tuesday nights at AMC throughout October, with all screenings beginning at 8 p.m. local time. For Halloween weekend, THE CROW will be featured as the Friday night title on October 30, and returns for a special Halloween night screening on Saturday, October 31.

Secure your passes now and we’ll see you at the movies next month!

The post AMC Theatres, Bloody Disgusting, and Ice Nine Kills Announce Thrills and Chills October Lineup appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Queer supernatural horror film Leviticus hits theaters June 19 from NEON. Written and directed by Adrian Chiarella, the film centers around two teen boys evading a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most: each other.

On Tuesday, June 9th and Wednesday, June 10th, BloodyFM’s Horror Queers is teaming up with Neon to present free sneak screenings nationwide of the buzzy festival favorite.

• 6/9 – Austin, TX @ Alamo South Lamar
• 6/9 – Atlanta, GA @ Tara Theatre
• 6/9 – Dallas, TX @ Texas Theatre *
• 6/9 – Miami, FL @ AMC Tamiami
• 6/9 – New York, NY @ Regal Essex Crossing
• 6/9 – Philadelphia, PA @ AMC Dine-In Fashion District
• 6/9 – Seattle, WA @ Regal Meridian
• 6/10 – Columbus, OH @ Gateway Film Center
• 6/10 – Houston, TX @ Regal Edwards Houston Marq’e
• 6/10 – Nashville, TN @ The Belcourt
• JUST ADDED: 6/12 – Phoenix, AZ @ Harkins Camelview feat. Q&A with Adrian Chiarella, Joe Bird, and Stacy Clausen – RSVP!

* All screenings start at 7PM local time, except for Dallas, which begins at 6:30 PM.

RSVP NOW! Entry is first come, first served. Each attendee must RSVP separately.

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Leviticus is rated R for “Bloody violent content, language, some sexual content and teen drug use.” The film comes from writer-director Adrian Chiarella.

Joe Bird (Talk to Me) and Stacy Clausen play star-crossed teenage boys alongside a cast that includes Mia Wasikowska (Crimson Peak), Jeremy Blewitt, Ewen Leslie (The Nightingale), and Davida McKenzie (Silent Night).

“Leviticus is a strong debut with an incisive voice at the helm,” Meagan Navarro wrote in her review out of Sundance. “We care deeply about Naim and Ryan’s survival, making Leviticus a tense, atmospheric, and claustrophobic vision of young love in a hateful world.”

“Leviticus is the perfect title for writer-director Adrian Chiarella‘s powerful feature debut,” Meagan’s review explains, “a searing anthem against the corrosive nature of fear and bigotry.”

The film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is currently 96% with 26 reviews.

The post ‘Leviticus’ – Horror Queers Presents FREE Sneak Screenings of Neon’s Twisted Horror Romance appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The adaptation of Stephen King’s short story uses its source material as a loose framework for a Final Destination-style, gory comedy romp filled with a nonstop onslaught of over-the-top, Rube Goldberg-like elaborate deaths. All of it is a comical, carnage-fueled reminder of the film’s core thesis: Death comes for us all, and it’s quite silly to presume you can stop it.

The first sign that Perkins’ The Monkey won’t be an exact retelling of Stephen King’s story comes from a whimsically gnarly opening sequence that introduces a blood-drenched pilot (Adam Scott) marching into a pawn store to offload a vintage monkey toy. There’s both a sense of playfulness and tension as the nervous man seeks to remove himself from the eerie plaything before it winds up once more, banging the toy drum that will trigger the universe to claim another body in the most gruesome means possible.

After it does, in the most laugh-out-loud outlandish way possible, The Monkey skips ahead to introduce the pilot’s twin sons, Hal and Bill Shelburne, played by Christian Convery (Cocaine Bear) as kids and Theo James (“Castlevania”) as adults. The siblings, complete opposites in every way, discover Dad’s unsettling Monkey in the attic and, in turn, its parlor trick for causing death. It drives a permanent wedge between the brothers, even as the cursed toy resurfaces in adulthood to wreak further havoc.

Osgood Perkins is clearly having an absolute blast bombarding his audience with a nonstop barrage of death sequences in The Monkey, and it’s infectious to watch. A woman’s head getting set on fire is only the beginning of an over-the-top demise that spans an entire house and front yard, as just one absurdly funny example of the Monkey’s devious machinations. It’s not just the intricate series of events that elicits maximum suffering and damage for laughs but the supporting cast as well.

Tatiana Maslany charms as the twins’ put upon mother, a character at the forefront of imparting the “Death is life“ mantra. Sarah Levy’s physical comedy pairs well with Perkins’ twisted sense of humor here, with the filmmaker himself appearing onscreen in an imaginative cameo as the boys’ swinger Uncle. Also game for this brand of gonzo cinema are Elijah Wood (The Toxic Avenger) and Rohan Campbell (Halloween Ends) as additional weirdos hindering Hal and Bill’s bid to find Monkey closure.

Convery and James anchor the insanity with dual grounding performances. Convery nails the shell-shocked, early exploration with the Monkey’s modus operandi, which Perkins wisely refuses to ever explain. But it’s James who turns in a revelatory performance, both as the audience proxy and as antagonistic foil, with dry wit and a willingness to swing for the fences with the script’s most outrageous demands. That’s at its most electric when James faces himself on screen, showcasing two distinctly different personalities caught in a bizarro cycle of death.

Those hoping for a straightforward, faithful adaptation of Stephen King’s story won’t find it here; Perkins leans into the setup and its core components but is far more interested in playing mad conductor with his symphony of morbid mayhem. It’s the type of gleefully unhinged sense of humor for horror fans, though the barrage of intricate carnage often means a reliance on VFX over practical. It’s also a high concept effort that, like its cursed plaything, only has one note to bang over and over.

That’s okay when The Monkey is this dementedly joyous. It’s a movie that points out the cruel randomness of mortality over and over, with tongue-in-cheek wit and cartoonish violence. Perkins weaves a raucous cautionary tale that smashes subtlety with a sledgehammer. Death happens, over and over again, and it’s absurdly funny, Perkins seems to say, that humans think they can thwart its designs. With brisk storytelling efficiency and a playful spirit, The Monkey delivers a Stephen King adaptation like no other. Perkins pushes back against logic in favor of entertaining midnight madness, and death has never been funnier or gorier as a result.

The Monkey releases in theaters on February 21, 2025.

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published on February 3, 2025.

The post ‘The Monkey’ Review – Death Gets Funny and Gory in This Madcap Stephen King Adaptation appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s often Saw or Hostel that credited as the first to usher in the way of excessively gory horror dubbed “torture porn,” but The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake deserves more credit. It didn’t just beat them both to the theaters by over a year, but it started the wave of both extreme horror and remakes of well-known properties thanks to its massive success at the box office. While a much slicker production than the gritty documentary style aesthetic of the original, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre really went for the jugular in brutal kills and bloodletting.

In this version, the fivesome that will soon find themselves in a battle for their lives are traveling across Texas for a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert. Even though it’s set in 1973, it keeps the modern audience in mind by addressing the horrors of hitchhikers straight away in its character introductions. Erin (Jessica Biel) is the clear designated final girl with a heart of gold, and her boyfriend Kemper (Eric Balfour) seems to be the group ringleader. There’s the nerdy friend Morgan (Jonathan Tucker), and horndog Andy (Mike Vogel) who’s getting intimately acquainted with the friendly hitchhiker, Pepper (Erica Leerhsen), the group picked up prior to the film’s opening. She certainly seems normal, so hitchhikers aren’t bad in 1973, right?

So, when they drive past a very despondent and pale young woman on the side of the road, Erin’s heart goes out. She looks more victim than dangerous, anyhow. Once in the backseat of their van, the woman (played by Lauren German) mumbles incoherently, pulls out a gun from between her bloodied legs, tells them they’re all going to die, and blows her brains out in front of them. The camera captures the horrified reactions from the group as it dollies out backwards through the gaping hole in her skull. It’s a visceral proclamation that despite the modern polish, this remake is not going to be for the faint of heart.

The remake dramatically expanded the size of the homicidal family (now named the Hewitt family), and switched up the third act, but it adheres closely to the original in a lot of ways. Leatherface’s first kill is nearly identical to Kirk’s death in the first film, and his second kill also involves a meat hook. The only difference is that the person, Andy, is left to suffer on that hook until the final girl can come put him out of his misery much later. Leatherface also cuts his own leg with his chainsaw in a final act chase sequence, just like in the original. John Larroquette reprised his role as the narrator, and Daniel Pearl returned to handle cinematography, bringing more masterful camerawork to the franchise that kickstarted his career.

But, back to the gore. The effects were handled practically, and it should surprise no one that they were done by Greg Nicotero and KNB EFX Group. If you want hyper-realistic gore, or impressive creature effects, you call the 35+ year veteran. Nicotero’s first brush with this series was with Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, as makeup supervisor. He and KNB’s exemplary work on the 2003 film meant that his company was involved in all of the subsequent Chainsaw films post reboot; The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning and Texas Chainsaw 3D. No matter how you feel about these films, the gore always delivers.

Before making his directorial feature debut in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Marcus Nispel (who also resurrected Jason Voorhees in 2009’s Friday the 13th) was a designer and painter. Between his artistic eye and Pearl’s always stunning cinematography, this remake exists in that weird crossroads of ugly and beautiful. It’s a gorgeous film with a vicious bite. When the question of why remakes have become so prevalent pops up, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the answer. Audiences ate this remake up, making this the highest grossing film of the franchise even with inflation. There were plenty of remakes before, and since, but the Hollywood reboot craze began in earnest with this one.

The post [Butcher Block] 2003’s ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Kickstarted the Major Wave of Modern Extreme Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.