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If you’ve ever been in a video store, you’ll know the feeling (rows and rows of boxes, loads of cover art and no idea where to start). Online game lobbies can be the same, with lots of tiles and very little in the way of guidance. Jack2Win is a lot easier to get your head around once you know how …

Horror has always been a low-budget genre with big imagination. Creature designs, haunted locations and poster ideas usually start as sketches, and when money is tight, a picture that shows the vision can matter as much as a script. A growing number of indie creators are now using AI image tools to produce those visuals in minutes. The practice is …

Michael Myers appears at a window. Elsewhere, he lurks behind a clothesline. In a licensed slot adaptation of John Carpenter’s Halloween, released in 2017, the killer occupies the scenery around the reels, giving anyone familiar with the film a reason to watch the edges of the screen. That placement shows how horror filmmaking can shape game design. A threatening house …

October has a body count, and this year the release calendar is doing most of the work. Crawlers lands in theaters on October 16, a spider infestation nightmare from director Ángel Gómez Hernández that traps Matilda Lutz’s building manager inside a quarantined apartment block, and our own coverage of the Roadside Attractions and Saban Films release date has been the …

There’s a moment every bed-watcher knows. You’re four episodes in, warm and settled, and your arm goes numb. You switch hands. Your wrist files a complaint. You wedge the tablet against a pillow, and the pillow slowly betrays you: the screen tilts back a degree at a time until everyone on it looks like they’re lying on the floor.

Sealed packages, antique wooden boxes, or puzzles waiting to be solved have always been a running theme in horror. Before anything is revealed, the idea of not knowing what’s inside is enough to cause tension. Unopened Boxes Build Tension Unopened boxes create a gap in knowledge, which allows filmmakers to build suspense from the smallest of details. The concept isn’t …

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash Horror has had the kind of year most genres only get once a decade. A legacy slasher sequel broke a 30-year box office record in February. A video game adaptation finally earned the reviews the franchise always wanted in September. And a DC body-horror gamble opens right before the holiday itself on October 23. …

A creaking staircase, a dark hallway, and a door opening by itself once defined the atmosphere of a classic horror movie. Today, a mysterious notification, an unfamiliar video call, or a hacked camera can create the same unsettling feeling. Horror storytelling has changed alongside technology, entertainment habits, and everyday life. Haunted houses and supernatural creatures remain popular, but modern filmmakers …

Horror films have always depended on a simple idea: make the audience feel afraid of something they cannot control. Directors have tried countless ways to achieve that effect, from carefully timed sounds to disturbing images and unexpected movements. The basic approach still works. What has changed is the range of tools filmmakers can use and the way audiences experience the …

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR JENEVA ROSE “Sometimes I Scare Myself.”

A mask does not move. It cannot sneer, flinch or smile, and that is exactly why horror has leaned on it for more than sixty years. A painted face that never changes turns an ordinary figure in a doorway into something the audience cannot settle on.

If you have been putting off starting a newsletter or blog “until things slow down,” the fourth quarter of the year has a funny way of never actually being that slow-down moment. But there is a real advantage to setting things up now rather than waiting for January, when everyone else has the same idea and your first post gets …

Horror cinema has spent more than a century learning how to make audiences anticipate what they cannot see. Online casino games borrow that craft, compressing dread, surprise and release into sequences measured in seconds. You know the corridor is empty because the camera has shown every inch of it. Still, the darkness at the far end feels occupied. Reveal the …

Half a century is a long time. Monsters change, taboos move and techniques that once terrified audiences can become familiar enough to parody. Yet some films refuse to become museum pieces. 1976 was an unusually revealing year in that respect. The Exorcist had already demonstrated that supernatural horror could become a mainstream cultural event, while The Texas Chain Saw Massacre …

Horror in 2026 has split neatly between franchises finding new angles and filmmakers building stranger material from scratch. Scream 7 became the highest-grossing entry in its series, while Curry Barker’s Obsession went much further than expected, crossing $224.7 million worldwide and becoming Focus Features’ highest-grossing film. The fall calendar remains crowded: Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil arrives September 18, Mike Flanagan’s …