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... Stanley has confirmed that ‘Dunwich Horror’ is indeed happening. The announcement was made during a ‘Color Out of Space’ retrospective screening of the film at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, where Stanley revealed ‘Dunwich’ to be his next project.

In ‘Dunwich Horror,’ an invisible creature terrorizes the small and isolated village of Dunwich for several days, killing two families and several policemen, until Armitage, Rice, and Morgan arrive with the knowledge and spiritual weapons needed to kill it.

So, Stanley’s exoneration in French court seems to have helped him in turning his proposed Lovecraft trilogy into a reality. Production List has ‘Dunwich Horror’ now eyeing a June 2, 2025 shoot on the film.

“The Dunwich Horror” will be produced by Ace Pictures Entertainment in collaboration with Side Street Studios, continuing Stanley’s deep dive into the enigmatic world of Lovecraft. In a rather ambitious move, Stanley also revealed that ‘Dunwich Horror’ will be adapted into a two-part film, allowing for a “more expansive and detailed exploration of the story's complex themes and haunting atmosphere”...

It's natural to feel some trepidation about darkness. It's a survival instinct, rooted in the need to protect ourselves from very real predators. Cosmic horror is a little different: The only present danger the blackness of space presents is its inhospitable nature, and that only matters to the scientists (and billionaires) going up there. And yet, we still look at the blackness of space and find things to be afraid of. That's where cosmic horror, the genre pioneered by H.P. Lovecraft, comes from.

We like to think of humanity as being the center of the universe. As far as we can tell thus far, we are. Not in that the Earth is the center around which the universe spins, but in that we haven't yet found any confirmed signs of life and, thus, can really only worry about ourselves. Cosmic horror wonders at our insignificance against the vastness of space--millions of stars, billions of planets, and an almost infinite opportunity for other life to thrive. That life could be larger, older, and more powerful than us. It could be so large, so unfathomably ancient to our comparatively short-lived civilization, that we're as significant to it as ants are to us.

Cosmic horror is also equal parts fascinated and terrified by scientific discovery and the curse of knowledge. It fears the potential of knowing the unknowable and being unable to forget it, and what that can do to the human mind. It's fascinated with madness, superstition, and existential dread.

• Alien (1979)
• Stalker (1979)
• The Thing (1982)
• In The Mouth of Madness (1994)
• Event Horizon (1997)
• Call of Cthulhu (2005)
• The Mist (2007)
• Cabin in the Woods (2011)
• Under the Skin (2013)
• Black Mountain Side (2014)
• Annihilation (2018)
• Color Out of Space (2019)
• The Lighthouse (2019)
• Underwater (2020)
• Glorious (2020)
• The Empty Man (2020)

Making a feature-length film is so unbelievably complicated, it's amazing that anybody manages to do it at all, let alone well.

Rather than jump straight in at the deep end, most directors begin their careers with short films. Ranging anywhere in length between five and 40 minutes and made on a significantly smaller budget than a full-length movie, these petite pictures are a great way to learn the fundamentals of filmmaking without descending into a full-on stress spiral.

Some really famous movies started out life as shorter projects, including the likes of District 9, Fatal Attraction, Napoleon Dynamite, and Whiplash. The horror genre is also full of examples like this, with some making the transition to feature-length pictures more capably than others.

These short films (which are usually always made by the eventual directors of the feature) were the perfect proof of concept - a short extract that could prove their work was destined for something bigger.

While not every short film is guaranteed to translate to a longer running time, the following 10 examples all proved that great horror films can have small beginnings...

• When A Stranger Calls
• Willy’s Wonderland
• Trick 'R Treat
• Lights Out
• What We Do In The Shadows
• Smile
• The Babadook
• Terrifier
• Saw
• The Evil Dead

EXCLUSIVE: After scoring the big deal at the Toronto Film Festival with Neon for TIFF’s People’s Choice Award winner The Life of Chuck, director Mike Flanagan and Stephen King are right back at it. The Dish hears their next collaboration will be Carrie, this time in an eight-episode series for Amazon. Flanagan will be the showrunner...

... This would be the second recent deal in which one of King’s treasures would be given a longer storytelling road. A24 has Paul Greegrass and JH Wyman adapting King’s Fairy Tale into a series, after an earlier attempt to mount it as a movie at Universal made them realize there was just too much story to pack into one feature. The Gary Dauberman-directed Salem’s Lot was just released for Halloween...

... They’re opening a writers room, so this one’s happening quickly.

Many academically minded types have written at great length and with fascinating eloquence on the connection between sex and death in horror movies. We'll cut right to the chase, offering up some of the best and most potent examples of sexuality in the horror-movie genre.

But first, a disclaimer: These are horror movies, spanning decades, and, thus, don't always, or often, offer up the healthiest representations of human sexuality. Whether it's vampire eroticism or horny teen campers, sex in movies is complicated, and not always sex-positive, even as we're being invited to be aroused.

Some of these movies have deep and complex, if often uncomfortable, things to say about the links between sex and death; others are pure titillation—movies that throw in some nude bodies and sweaty, writhing flesh in order to get more butts in seats. We're not here to make a distinction between high-minded horniness and baser sexual impulses—if it's sexy, it's under consideration...

• Don't Look Now (1973)
• Knife + Heart (2018)
• Mulholland Drive (2001)
• The Hunger (1983)
• Def by Temptation (1990)
• Species (1995)
• Society (1989)
• Cat People (1982)
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
• Knock Knock (2015)
• Stranger by the Lake (2013)
• Daughters of Darkness (1971)
• Interview With the Vampire (1994)
• Titane (2021)
• Hatchet II (2010)
• Nadja (1994)
• Swallowed (2022)
• Thirst (2009)
• Possession (1981)
• An American Werewolf in London (1981)
• Wrong Turn 6: Last Resort (2014)

Occasionally, an indie film slips through the mainstream and becomes a hit. It's easiest to do in the horror genre, where a low budget doesn't keep fans away (the recent Terrifier franchise is a great example of this, but it goes back to Night of the Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, and many earlier films). In 2023, Older Gods became one of the crossover hits, a microbudget horror movie with a trailer that garnered over 500 thousand views on YouTube (watch the trailer below). Using thick layers of atmosphere and drawing on the terrifying lore from H.P. Lovecraft's body of work, Older Gods managed to create a spellbinding horror mystery with very little money. Now it's streaming for free...

"Older Gods is filled with enough passion to not only look past its small budget, but to offer a more personal horror film with a surprisingly large scale. Older Gods is perhaps one of the best horror movies so far this year, certainly in the Lovecraftian horror genre. It offers a deeply compelling mystery, an undeniably tense atmosphere, satisfying jump scares, and plenty of creepy visuals. If you're a fan of horror and Lovecraft in particular, Only Gods is the movie for you."

"One of Older Gods' major achievements is its haunting atmosphere," continues MovieWeb's review. "From the location, music, cinematography, and pacing, Older Gods is a tense and haunting movie the whole way through. It never eases up; thank God it was only 80 minutes, because it'd almost become oppressive if it was any longer. Filmmaker David A. Roberts does a wonderful job at expressing isolation and anxiety throughout"...

Despite rarely gaining accolades and praise from contemporary and mainstream film critics, Lucio Fulci is a name that needs little introduction among horror fans and aficionados of cult European cinema. Known for creating images of excessive violence that earned him the nickname the "godfather of gore," Lucio Fulci spent much of his career pushing the envelope and, in many cases, tearing it completely to shreds.

Among the best-known contributions from the director is his Gates of Hell trilogy, consisting of The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, and The House by the Cemetery. All three took place in the United States and explored some of the horror traditions associated with their accompanying areas. Set in New Orleans, The Beyond embraces the Southern gothic horror tradition, and the City of the Living Dead contains a subtle nod to H.P. Lovecraft, with the film taking place in the town of Dunwich.

The House by the Cemetery, with its exterior shots being filmed in Scituate, Massachusetts, and the film taking place in and around Boston, makes full use of its location to weave a New England horror story influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's writings. The House by the Cemetery, while featuring many of Fulci’s trademarks that fans of his films instantly recognize, such as quick camera zooms, close-ups of eyes, and depictions of unrestrained violence, is a tale of Victorian evil that exists within the landscapes of New England...

The Folk Horror genre has become one of the most popular forms of horror in recent years, with the rise of cult and ancestral narratives pervasive throughout all horror films. Folk horror's best films are known for using elements of folklore, rituals, and ancient traditions to provide the backdrop for the thrilling and horrifying stories told that reveal the darker sides of our nature and humanity. It has become so popular as it mixes the realistic with the spiritually sinister and creates a crossover that has a feel all too real of 'this could happen to me'.

The most impactful of the folk genre throughout cinema history and into recent years have focused on cults, voodoo, paganism, and superstition. Films like the critically acclaimed Hereditary with surprise endings, which puts a legitimately terrifying, modern spin on the occult, or Midsommar, that brings violent cults and the psychological forces within to the fore. Every film places the onus on the viewer that what they are watching isn't something too far outside the realm of possibility, and that realization is what makes this genre one of the most fear-inducing horror themes and why the films themselves are so haunting...

• The Blair Witch Project (1999)
• The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971)
• Apostle (2018)
• La Llorona (2019)
• Kill List (2011)
• Midsommar (2019)
• The Wailing (2016)
• The Wicker Man (1973)
• The Witch (2015)
• Hereditary (2018)

As international leaders, corporations and NGOs gear up to discuss efforts to tackle global warming at the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, residents in a crucial region for the climate crisis show they have very different priorities.

On Oct. 6, voters in the Amazon chose its mayors and councilors for the next four years, deciding as much about the rainforest’s future as authorities in international forums.

Many politicians who openly oppose conservationism were elected. Two of the seven Amazon states’ capitals elected candidates supported by former President Jair Bolsonaro, a climate denialist who empowered illegal miners and land-grabbers during his government from 2019-22.

“The rise of the far right is very visible in the Amazon states,” Wendell Andrade, public policy specialist for the Amazon at the Talanoa Institute, a Brazilian think tank committed to climate policy, told Mongabay...

... The centrist and right-wing parties also dominated the elections in the municipalities targeted by the federal government as a priority to control deforestation in the Amazon. Of the 70 municipalities, 69 were decided in the first round, and only two went to left-wing parties, which historically favored environmental conservation in Brazil, according to news outlet ((o)) eco.

The 2024 elections happen during the Amazon’s worst drought ever. Large rivers, like the Madeira, Amazonas, Negro and Purus, reached their lowest levels ever, isolating communities, leading to food and water shortages and damaging local economies. Fire outbreaks have burned the Amazon in Brazil and the neighboring countries. This year’s extreme drought followed another harsh dry season in 2023, which was 30 times more likely due to climate change.

“It’s a development agenda that is bringing a lot of destruction, and yet a large part of the population prefers these candidates,” Maureen Santos, coordinator of policies and alternatives in FASE, a Brazilian nonprofit that helps to promote local and community development, told Mongabay. “We need to study this phenomenon to tackle it more concretely in the next elections”...

The director of the 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, Oscar nominee Luca Guadagnino (Bones and All, Challengers) is in final negotiations to direct a brand new interpretation of the 1991 book American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis for Lionsgate, we’ve learned today.

Scott Z. Burns will be scripting the new movie, which is being described as a new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s aforementioned novel, rather than a remake of the 2000 movie.

The book was previously adapted by director Mary Harron from a screenplay by Harron & Guinevere Turner, with Christian Bale starring in that original (and iconic) movie adaptation.

In the tale, “A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman (played by Christian Bale in the 2000 movie), hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.”

The new film will be produced by Frenesy Films, executive produced by Sam Pressman, son of Edward R. Pressman, producer of the first adaptation, through his company Pressman Film...

Problematic as his views are today, H.P. Lovecraft is still regarded as one of the giants of horror literature, and his stories have been finding their way to the big screen for decades. But equally interesting are the Lovecraft-adjacent works, movies clearly influenced by his vision of an indifferent universe full of monstrous entities, yet not specifically based on anything the man wrote. John Carpenter, for example, has mined this territory with films like The Thing (1982) and In the Mouth of Madness (1995), while Lovecraft Country addressed Lovecraft’s racism within the context of the cosmic horror he made famous.

One of the best films to derive inspiration from Lovecraft’s work is The Lighthouse, directed by Robert Eggers from a script by Eggers and his brother Max, and released on October 18, 2019. The siblings had discussed the idea around the time Robert was seeking funding for his stunning 2016 folk-horror debut, The Witch, with its success allowing them to finally move forward.

The Lighthouse was initially inspired by an unfinished story fragment, “The Light-House,” by that other early titan of horror and mystery, Edgar Allan Poe. Aside from the title and bleak setting, however, The Lighthouse doesn’t really have any connections to Poe’s tale. As the film opens sometime during the 1890s, two lighthouse keepers arrive on a desolate island off the coast of New England for a four-week tour of duty...

... It’s the more mythic and cosmic aspects that are overtly Lovecraftian, along with the constant stream of ichorous fluids, putrefying bodies, barely glimpsed tentacular horrors, panicked sexual tension, and allusions to gods of the sea, where many of Lovecraft’s Elder Gods slumbered. Some of these merge, as when Pattinson’s Winslow (whose real name, it turns out, is also Thomas, adding the loss of identity to the thematic morass) hallucinates himself beating Dafoe’s Thomas Wake, only for the latter to morph into the Greek sea god Proteus. And then there’s the lantern atop the lighthouse, which will likely remind horror veterans of the “unnatural light” of Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” or the “deadlights” from Stephen King’s It.

There’s a lot going on under the hood of The Lighthouse; in addition to Poe and Lovecraft, Robert Eggers has cited authors like Herman Melville and Sarah Orne Jewett, along with playwrights such as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, as instrumental to the film’s flavor and mood. Yet as an original psychological horror in which reality itself is besieged by unseen forces, it remains a Lovecraftian tone poem, an oppressive yet cosmic study of madness, desire, and ancient terror that, minus the author’s more noxious tendencies, could fit easily alongside his best works.

There’s something so unique about Lovecraft. While classic horror tropes like vampires, werewolves, and psychotic serial killers all feel well within the realms of human understanding, Lovecraft’s twisted gods and grotesque monstrosities feel completely alien – comprehensible, yet incomprehensible. It’s a universe I love to see reimagined in videogames, and RailGods of Hysterra is doing just that. From the ominous shadowy Cthulhu in the key art’s background, to the weird train that sports a glowing orange eye and rows of teeth, I’ve fallen for the survival game’s universe hook, line, and sinker.

RailGods of Hysterra is described as a co-op survival game set in a Lovecraftian hellscape. You are a Dreamer, and you’ve awoken bound to your eerie RailGod – the aforementioned living locomotive. As either a five-man squad or a solo traveler, you’ll venture through nightmarish landscapes, abandoned outposts, and cult hotspots, gathering new gear in order to upgrade your RailGod.

Combat looks a little Diablo-esque, with multiple players slinging spells at a poor, unsuspecting crocodile. You’ll have to take down various terrors to fuel your RailGod (or kidnap them, whatever you prefer), helping it transform into the horrific Eldritch fortress that it’s supposed to be...