Written by Kyle Warren and directed by Matt Sobel, Goodnight Mommy is an English-language remake of the Austrian film of the same title.
The story follows twin brothers, played by Cameron and Nicholas Crovetti. They arrive at their mother’s country home, played by Naomi Watts, to discover her face covered in bandages.
She explains she needs to wear the dressings with her recent cosmetic surgery.
They immediately sense that something doesn’t add up because of her odd behavior, doing things their loving mother would never do. She sets strange new house rules, smokes in her bathroom, and secretly rips up a drawing they gave her.
As her behavior grows increasingly bizarre and erratic, a horrifying thought takes root in the boys’ minds. They have a sinking suspicion that the woman beneath the gauze, making their food and sleeping in the next room, isn’t their mother.
In Warren and Sobel’s version of the film, the fundamental theme is “the human need to be either the victim or the hero of one’s own story — never the villain.”
Compared to the original Austrian film relies on aesthetics and tone, the English remake focuses on reimagining character and psychology, emphasizing the drama over the horror elements.
“Some of the specific changes we made were to put one of the twin boys, Elias, at the center of the story, whereas the original largely treats the three main characters democratically,” explains Sobel.
They wanted to bring the audience into Elias’ experience, so they dramatized his thought processes. Another change was to create the role of Mother as not a monster but a flawed human being whose actions take on new meaning once the movie reveals the story’s core mystery.
Sobel and Watts weaved her performance to specific behaviors that make it clear there’s more going on than meets the eye. They made those moments vivid enough that when the viewer reaches the film’s end, they don’t need to return to the beginning immediately to understand what happened.
Jacqueline Byers as Sister Ann and Lisa Palfrey as Sister Euphemia in Prey of the Devil Photo Credit: Vlad Cioplea/Lionsgate
Directed by Daniel Stamm, Prey for the Devil begins with a global rise in demonic possessions. The Catholic Church reopens exorcism schools to train priests in the Rite of Exorcism. On this spiritual battlefield, an unlikely warrior rises, a young nun, Sister Ann, played by Jacqueline Byers.
Jacqueline Byers as Sister Ann and Posy Taylor as Natalie in Prey of the Devil Photo Credit: Vlad Cioplea/Lionsgate
Although nuns do not perform exorcisms, a professor, played by Colin Salmon, recognizes Sister Ann’s gifts and agrees to train her.
Thrust onto the spiritual frontline with fellow student Father Dante, played by Christian Navarro, Sister Ann finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl.
Sister Ann believes the same demon that possesses the girl is the same demon that tormented her mother years ago.
Sister Ann soon realizes the Devil has her right where he wants her, and it wants in.
Written by Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, Paul Brad Logan and Chris Bernier, Halloween Ends as the Halloween franchise arrives again just in time for the fateful holiday.
Based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill and directed by David Gordon Green, we follow Jamie Lee Curtis, once again, as she tackles, fights and kills Michael Myers. Myers can’t seem to let it go. He continues to hunt them.
It begins after Laurie Strode, played by Curtis, knows he burned up. The rest is pretty much the same.
Do you ever wonder why most horror movies have a mental health hospital or psychiatrist as part of the premise? It’s because psychiatry is an industry of death.
So, here we have Dr. Rose Cotter, played by Sosie Bacon, after witnessing a bizarre traumatic incident involving a patient. Dr. Cotter experiences frightening occurrences she can’t explain. As an overwhelming terror takes over her life, Dr. Cotter must confront her troubling past in order to survive and escape her horrifying new reality.
The movie has sharp cuts and sudden jerks of terror with an upside-down look at the world because you can see it in the trailer.
Directed by Parker Fin, the Smile also stars Jessie T. Usher, Kyle Gallner, Robin Weigert, Caitlin Stasey with Kal Penn and Rob Morgan.
Written and directed by Mariama Diallo, Master follows three women who strive to find their place at a prestigious New England university whose frosty elitism may disguise something sinister.
Regina Hall plays Professor Gail Bishop, who was recently promoted to “Master” of a residence hall, being the first Black woman to attain the post in the prestigious Ancaster College.
Determined to breathe new life into a centuries-old tradition, Gail soon finds herself wrapped up in the trials and tribulations of Jasmine Moore, played by Zoe Renee, an energetic and optimistic Black freshman.
Jasmine’s time at Ancaster hits a snag early on when she’s assigned a dorm room that is rumored to be haunted. Things get worse when Jasmine clashes in the classroom with Liv Beckman, played by Amber Gray, a professor in the middle of her own racially charged tenure review.
As Gail tries to maintain order and fulfill the duties of a Master, the cracks show in Ancaster’s once-immaculate facade. After a career spent fighting to make it into Ancaster’s inner circle, Gail must confront the horrifying prospect of what lies beneath, her question ultimately becoming not whether the school is haunted but by whom.
As her feature film debut, Diallo first encountered the idea of a college “Master” when she was an undergraduate at Yale. Faculty members oversaw an undergraduate residence called Masters, shaping these communities’ cultural and intellectual life and helping students navigate academic and personal problems. A long-standing tradition at elite British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, Yale adopted it in the 1930s.
Diallo recalls some of the older students downplaying the term’s connotation of enslavement. “It was very slickly normalized,” she says. “They induct you into this crazy system where they just tell you, ‘We know it sounds weird to call somebody master, but it’s nothing to do with slavery.’ And I was able to accept that in a remarkably and disturbingly short amount of time. So for my four years, it was just completely normal to have this person in your life who you would call Master so-and-so. They’re the person who you go to talk to if you’re having trouble in a class or if you’re feeling homesick or anything like that.”
But several years after graduating, Diallo ran into the former Master of her residential college and saw the title in a different light. “I was so excited to see him that I called out hello, addressing him as Master. He looked hugely uncomfortable because we were in earshot of a ton of people. It was almost like our kink was discovered. It’s a relationship that could only exist within the university gates. Anyway, we went on to have a lovely conversation. But as soon as I walked away, I told myself I had to make a film about it because it really threw into relief how bizarre that term, that relationship is. And I knew I wanted to call it Master because of the multiple layers of meaning.”
In response to student protests, Yale eliminated the term in 2016 — several years after Diallo graduated.
From that germ of an idea, Diallo drafted a screenplay that told the connected stories of three women at fictional Ancaster College: Professor Gail Bishop, the school’s first African-American Master; Jasmine Moore, a bright, optimistic incoming freshman; and Liv Beckman, an outspoken professor seeking tenure.
Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Nope is the Oscar-winning director’s next movie. The story is all hush-hush right now, but here is a teaser from Peele.
According to IMDB and the poster, the movie stars Barbie Ferreira, Daniel Kaluuya, Steven Yeun, Keke Palmer and Michael Wincott.
Written and directed by Goran Stolevski, You Won’t Be Alone takes place in an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, Southeast Europe. The story follows a young girl kidnapped and then transformed into a witch by an ancient spirit.
Curious about life as a human, the young witch accidentally kills a peasant in the nearby village and then takes her victim’s shape to live life in her skin.
Her curiosity ignited. She continued to will the horrific power to understand what it means to be human.
Noomi Rapace, Anamaria Marinca, Alice Englert, Carloto Cotta, Felix Maritaud and Sara Klimoska star in the movie.
Co-written and directed by Scott Derrickson, The Black Phone is about a dead phone that keeps ringing to save a kid’s life.
The horror movie follows Finney Shaw, played by Mason Thames, a shy but clever 13-year-old boy abducted by a sadistic killer, played by Ethan Hawke, and trapped in a soundproof basement where screaming is of little use. When a disconnected phone on the wall begins to ring, Finney discovers that he can hear the voices of the killer’s previous victims. And they are dead set on making sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to Finney.
No stranger to horror, Derrickson’s other credits include the writer-director of Sinister, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Marvel’s Doctor Strange.
C. Robert Cargill co-wrote the script based on the award-winning short story by Joe Hill from his New York Times bestseller, “20th Century Ghosts,” a compilation of his short stories.
Ethan Hawke’s career covers acting, directing, and producing, with Oscar and Tony Award nominations for his acting. He’s also a novelist and wrote a graphic novel.
Directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, Scream returns 25 years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro. A new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.
Neve Campbell, as Sidney Prescott, Courteney Cox, Gale Weathers, David Arquette, and Dewey Riley return to their iconic roles.
The new cast members of Scream include Melissa Barrera, Kyle Gallner, Jason Gooding, Mikey Madison, Dylan Minnette, Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid, Marley Shelton, Jasmin Savoy Brown and Sonia Ammar.
Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Nightmare Alley exposes the truth about carnie and psychiatrists, the charlatans that they are with a kaleidoscope of a tale.
“I was very interested in a story about destiny and humanity. Stanton Carlisle is a man who is given all the elements to change his life. He has people who believe in him, who love him and trust him. Yet his drive and his own hubris are so strong that they turn him away from that.” —Guillermo del Toro
Charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena, played by Toni Collette and her has-been mentalist husband Pete, played by David Strathairn. Stanton joins a traveling carnival, where he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly gained knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York Society.
With the virtuous Molly, played by Rooney Mara, loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con a dangerous tycoon, played by Richard Jenkins, with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist, played by Cate Blanchett, who might be his most formidable opponent yet.
Based on the 1947 novel with the same title by William Lindsay Gresham, the monsters in this movie are people who trick others into horrific circumstances. Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Willem Dafoe star in this noir.
The story follows Cooper’s character Stanton Carlisle, a nobody, working in a small-time carnival that is not as innocent as America thinks with touches of del Toro.
“In a way, Molly is the conscience of Nightmare Alley. She tries very hard to keep Stan on the right track,” says Dale. “Guillermo has always been a believer in what an actor can convey with their eyes, and Rooney has that ability. She brings to Molly an innocence but also an increasing strength as she grows. She comes to stand in moral contrast to Stanton as loyal, spiritual, and humane.”
Though she has the thick skin and resilience of a young woman raised in the carnival world, Molly wins Stanton’s attention early on with her warmth and hopefulness. She believes he has greatness in him, enough to take a chance on him and leave behind the community she loves.
“Rooney has the most amazing tracking instinct for her character. She knew exactly where the character was, so she’s always real,” commented del Toro.
“We also went after every detail — wanted Molly to be symbolized by a deer, so she wears a little deer pendant throughout,” added del Toro. “We then have a deer in the room of the hotel, on the headboard of the bed. We referenced everything back to her.”
Stanton partners with psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter, played by Blanchett, after Ritter discovers his underhanded schemes to target millionaires.
Blanchett notes that the fascination between Dr. Ritter and Stanton is not only sexual, but the chemical attraction is palpable. There is also a sense of recognition. “She’s a lone wolf, and that’s where she and Stan connect. They are both running from the past, and they can see a similarity between them.”
She continues, “Lilith is also someone who’s interested in both the practical and mystical sides of psychoanalysis, so that’s part of why Stanton intrigues her. She’s trying to work out what makes him tick, as she’s a bit of a shaman herself. Their entire relationship takes place in her office, so we thought about that set as being not just a physical space but a psychological space.”
Passion and vengeance are among the unpredictable emotions that arise in that space. “In a way, Lilith’s office is where Stan is finally vulnerable. There are a lot of destructive urges in Stan that have a parallel in Lilith. It’s a manipulative, deceitful dance between them… and these things rarely end well.”
The carnival’s manager, Clem, played by Willem Dafoe, is an old-school carny with an intimidating gruffness but willingness to give anyone their one chance. “I love this world. It’s so theatrical, full of color and drama, and perfect material for a film,” Dafoe says.
Clem is simultaneously hard-nosed and unwaveringly loyal to his own. “He has a bit of a conman in him, too, and he wants to make a dollar. But there’s a sweet side to Clem as well, where he feels responsible for his carnival family,” Dafoe says.
When Clem first meets Stanton, he identifies with him as someone who seems lost yet full of potential. “I think he sees that Stanton is a little off, he’s a little on the make, but Clem also recognizes himself in Stanton,” notes Dafoe. “A guy like Clem has been around. He’s probably done time, he’s had to scrape to get by, and he knows what that’s like, so he’s willing to help Stanton.”
Clem gives Stanton refuge, but he also demonstrates the depths of his own darkness in his harsh treatment of the carnival’s geek. “It’s pretty rough stuff, the way he creates the carnival geek,” says Dafoe.
