As soon as October rolls in, you can feel the fog get thicker, the owl’s “hoo” gets louder, and an awful feeling in the pit in your stomach beginning to form. And this time you are fairly certain it’s not a premature secret serving of candy corn. That hard-to-reach section of your second closet, the one that’s in a hallway that you avoid opening at all costs is starting to beckon late at night after all the lights are off. The anxiety meds aren’t working like they do the rest of the year and the spooky voices of the season become impossible to ignore:
Are you having trouble picking out a Halloween costume?
Well, you shouldn’t be! Horror has never been hotter and there are plenty of scary options on the store shelf or in your homemade imagination.
Horror had its biggest year at the box office ever in 2017 thanks largely to the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s It and Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out and it has not slowed down since. The resurgence continues to be fueled predominantly by those two creative sandboxes: The literary powerhouse Stephen King and the prolific production company Blumhouse Productions.
The amount of Stephen King adaptations the last couple of years is staggering. In the wake of the aforementioned It, but also Paramount’s Pet Sematary, and Netflix’s Gerald’s Game, there was an intense bidding war for King’s 1987 sci-fi horror novel The Tommyknockers. On television it’s been Hulu’s Castle Rock, SpikeTV’s The Mist, and Audience Network’s Mr. Mercedes. And now with the just-released It sequel and November’s The Shining sequel Dr. Sleep, as well as new TV adaptations of The Stand and Creepshow, Stephen King's domination is far from over.
And upcoming features Mile 81, The Long Walk and Salem’s Lot ensure that every property of his past, present, and future is covered.
To gauge Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions list of accomplishments in terms of only box office or volume would be a disservice. There’s also wooing Jamie Lee Curtis back to the Halloween franchise, the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Get Out, and revitalizing M. Night Shyamalan’s career. The company has also increased its footprint on television significantly with HBO’s Sharp Objects, Showtime’s The Loudest Voice, adapting their Purge franchise for USA, and serving up monthly holiday horror movies with their Hulu anthology series Into the Dark.
Up next, more of everything you’ve come to expect, plus adding their stamp to the Universal Classic Monsters with The Invisible Man and the darker side of superheroes with Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn.
Looking for more scares in this horror spree? Here are seven eagerly anticipated big-screen releases coming next year that would like to make you scream and squirm:
Grudge [January]
Nicholas Pesce is rebooting the franchise for Sony. It stars Jacki Weaver, Demian Bichir, John Cho, and Andrea Riseborough.
A Quiet Place 2 [March]
John Krasinski returns to write and direct his wife Emily Blunt as she keeps quiet around Cillian Murphy and Djimon Hounsou this time.
Saw [May]
Chris Rock is writing and producing a reboot of Saw. He will also star alongside Samuel L. Jackson, Max Minghella, and Marisol Nichols.
Candyman [June]
Jordan Peele is writing and producing a “spiritual sequel” to the 1992 original based on a Clive Barker short story. Nia DaCosta will direct and it’s set to star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Colman Domingo, and Nathan Stewart-Jarett.
Untitled Purge Sequel [July]
The fifth and allegedly final installment of James DeMonaco’s franchise wreaks havoc.
Escape Room 2 [August]
After making $120 million off of a $9 million budget, Sony quickly reteamed director Adam Robitel, writer Bragi F. Schut and producer Neal Mortiz to construct another maze of deadly rooms.
Halloween Kills [October and October again]
David Gordon Green and stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Judy Greer return for two more installments. Also, look for Halloween Ends in 2021.
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Note From Tongal: “Get Ready for Halloween with Upcoming Horror Films" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
