The tension is rising with every bit of fresh rotting footage that comes stumbling out of Zach Cregger’s next big project, Resident Evil — and that really is a good thing. From skydiving zombies faceplanting cars to oversized human-shaped mutations hiding out in sewers, the Weapons director’s venture into the popular survival horror franchise doesn’t look to be holding back, which makes sense given how wild he was allowed to go with it.

Speaking to Empire about the new movie, which sees his former Weapons star, Austin Abrams, transporting an organ across Raccoon City, Cregger was borderline giddy about the gruesome playground he’d been given the keys to. “I was given total freedom. I have the final cut. I was not interfered with. I didn't have anyone putting any sort of limitations on me," the director assured.

Being up with the dead comes with issues, though, and Cregger didn’t hide the matter of taking on such a massive franchise and the pressure that can come with it. "It's an incredibly demanding job, and I feel like I could burn out. You have to push yourself so hard to make a movie. Every day on set, you have to be the energy source that 150 people feed off, and I don't know if I'll be able to keep it going. At the very least, I'm gonna have to take years off,” Cregger guessed. “I could change my mind. Maybe in two years I'll be singing a different song. I have no idea. But this is how I've felt for a while.”

It’s certainly an upgrade. Switching from zombie swarms to scary aunts with lipstick in their teeth and magical twigs is a leap, but Cregger promises that the same kind of batshit tone audiences loved with Weapons and Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan) will make itself known in Resident Evil. "Gladys was a very specific flavor. There are a couple of things in this movie that are really wild, and who's to say whether any of them will be the same lightning-in-a-bottle thing that Gladys was. But there's some imagery in Resident Evil that is so fucked-up and weird.”

Splendid. Exactly what we like to hear, and considering Cregger’s work up until now, feels absolutely guaranteed. You can see how much Resident Evil checks both categories when it arrives in theaters on September 18. Should you require more scares than that in the meantime, check out our guide to all the most excting upcoming horror movies.

He may be a little late to the game this time, but the king of Twitter movie reviews has spoken once again, and it sounds like Hideo Kojima is a fan of 2026 horror hit Backrooms.

"I'm blown away," said Kojima over on Twitter. "It reminds me of pseudo-3D games from the 2D era, back in the dawn of RPGs and the Family Computer (NES), before polygons and textures existed… That sense of confinement. That feeling of anxiety. Both are revived here in live action. The art direction is clever, incorporating elements of art, architecture, and psychology." Check out Kojima's full review below.

Backrooms hit the big screen on May 29, 2026. After a long theatrical run, the movie finally landed on digital in mid-July. However, the movie has yet to hit screens in Japan.

Based on the online urban legend of the same name, Backrooms has had an extremely impressive theatrical run, smashing all expectations and grossing over $330 million worldwide. That is quite the feat considering the film's $10 million production budget, and the fact that it is 21-year-old director Kane Parson's feature film debut.

Although he didn't create the original Backrooms image and story posted on 4Chan in 2019, Parsons extended the urban legend over on YouTube. Parsons' Backrooms web series further explored the fear of liminal spaces, where monsters lurk at every corner. The movie then takes that one step further, following an employee at a furniture showroom who finds a doorway leading to an endless network of interconnected rooms.

The movie was such a hit that last month Parsons released a director's cut titled Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition. The cut hits the 2 hours 6 minutes mark, and includes bonus footage that Parsons edited on his laptop himself. It's not just Kojima who has been blown away, though, as Parsons is now very much in demand in Hollywood.

For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Zach Cregger says star Austin Abrams almost died during the making of Resident Evil... and that the moment was captured on camera.

"So there’s a scene in this movie…it’s in the trailer," Cregger told Dread Central. "He’s [Austin] running down the street, and there’s zombies on the roof of the buildings on either side, and they’re all leaping at him. And so we had to design this thing where he’s just running with bodies falling and detonating all around him. I knew I didn’t want to do it with VFX. So I was like, how do we do this?"

"All these explosions are real, and the way to do it is, you get a bunch of cranes, and you have all these body-sized blood bags, and you rehearse the shit out of how they’re going to fall, and how fast he’s going to run, and then you just shoot it," Cregger explained. "So, he’s running, and they’re releasing these bags that are falling and hitting all around and exploding. One triggered too early, and it missed him by inches. And these things are all like one hundred and fifty pounds, and would have killed him if he had been one step to the right. He would have died. And it’s in the movie. So it’s fucking worth it. I was pretty stoked."

Cregger also reportedly specified that he was happy that Abrams was safe and uninjured, though he did receive minor injuries throughout the course of filming. This is unfortunately par for the course for a physical zombie movie with action of this caliber. Cregger directs from a screenplay he penned with Shay Hatten. Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser also star.

Abrams, who starred in HBO's Euphoria and Cregger's Weapons, plays Bryan, a medical courier who is in the process of making a delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital when an outbreak forces him to fight for his life. A new scene was shown behind closed doors at San Diego Comic-Con that saw Bryan pull over to the site of a wrecked cop car, only to engage in combat with a terrifying, fast-moving zombie woman.

Resident Evil hits theaters on September 18. For more, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies.

He might be taking on a new kind of terror with Resident Evil (which looks terrifying after the SDCC footage we’ve seen), but Amy Madigan's dear Aunt Gladys prequel is very much on the mind of Weapons director Zach Cregger.

While attending Collider's Directors on Directing panel (via The Hollywood Reporter), the brains behind one of 2025's biggest hits hinted at what we can expect when he does a deep dive into the red-haired witch who was last seen getting ripped apart by schoolchildren.

"First of all, I'm really excited about the Gladys movie, and I loved working with Amy," Cregger explained. "I loved that character. For the movie Weapons, it really made a lot of sense not to dive into her backstory because the device of Weapons was to keep her very mysterious."

Of course, there's always a risk of exploring the myth behind a horror monster, but it sounds like Cregger has got things figured out to keep audiences on their toes and their fingers embedded in their armrests.

"However, there's an amazing story to be told about where Gladys comes from and how she became what we know her as. It's got a lot of twists and turns, and mysteries and crazy things, like Weapons does. I think it's going to be great."

This isn't just an idea that's being kicked around in its infancy, either, as Cregger revealed that pages are already being scribbled down to take a look back into Gladys's back story before she stole a town full of children. "The script is in progress now, but we're taking that super seriously, and it's moving in the right direction. So yeah, it's being written, is the short answer."

It'll be a long time before we get that reluctant family reunion, so for now we'll just have to settle for what looks like a heart-pounding, bone-chilling adaptation of Resident Evil, which shuffles into theaters on September 18.

For every other SDCC update, keep an eye on our live-blog and schedule.

Zach Cregger has talked more about his upcoming Resident Evil movie – specifically why there is snow and an iPhone.

These two details in the trailer caused some consternation from fans as, since the movie is set alongside Resident Evil 2, both create issues in the lore. Resident Evil 2 takes place in late September – so snow would be pretty unseasonal – and it's set in 1998, long before the first iPhone.

"It takes place in the snow in 2026. That's why he has an iPhone. Because I took liberties to tell a story I wanted to tell and make the movie look the way I wanted to make it look," Cregger said at San Diego Comic-Con, via Discussing Film.

"I am not doing exactly a one for one Resident Evil 2 adaptation," he continued. "There are differences between this movie and the game. So I just want to acknowledge that. I don't think it makes the movie any worse. I think it looks really fucking cool to have a horror movie set in the snow. I don't see enough of those, I like it a lot. The snow, it's an aesthetic decision. It's just an aesthetic decision. If the barrier of entry is whether I do a one for one port, then I guess in that regard, I have failed. But I think the movie is stronger for it."

Cregger previously told GamesRadar+ that the movie takes place "on the periphery" of Resident Evil 2. "You know, where Raccoon City is having its big night, but tell just another story that could be happening in parallel to that," he explained.

At Comic-Con, a new clip of the film debuted, too, showing Austin Abrams's Bryan struggling to shoot a zombified woman.

Resident Evil arrives this September 18. For more, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies.

For now, check out our guide to all the most exciting upcoming movies for everything else that's on the way this year, as well as our SDCC 2026 schedule, our SDCC 2026 live-blog, and our SDCC 2026 predictions to make sure you don't miss a second of the action in San Diego.

A new clip from Resident Evil was shown during San Diego Comic-Con... and we're in for some new nightmares.

Director Zach Cregger introduced the clip, specifying that it takes place "early in the movie." The scene opens with Bryan (Austin Abrams) coming across a flipped cop car in a snowy field at night. Bryan asks as he crawls in the passenger side to check on the officer, as the door has mysteriously been left open. He goes to check the pulse and... the radio suddenly turns on (which jump-scared the audience).

"Hello, I'm not a cop, so I don't know what to say, but I have an emergency here. Can you hear me?" says Bryan, but there's no response. As he looks around the car, the tension builds, but instead of the police officer returning from the dead, a zombified woman appears outside the car window.

Bryan grabs the cop's gun and tells the undead woman to stop as she creepily crawls around the car towards him on all fours. Bryan kicks her in the face and tries to shoot her, but the gun doesn't fire. She chases him around the car, as he screams and frantically fiddles with the gun until he realizes the safety is still on. He accidentally fires the gun off to the side and almost drops it.

Suddenly, the zombie woman disappears. Bryan slowly makes his way around the car, looking for the zombie when she suddenly comes running out of the darkness. Bryan stumbles backwards, firing missed shot after missed shot, and ultimately falls over. Lying on the ground, he shoots the gun one more time, which knocks the zombie off her feet like a cannon. End of clip.

Cregger noted that the finished theatrical footage will be somewhat different from what was shown during the panel, and hilariously added: "They managed to cut about 25 f-words out of that clip."

Resident Evil hits theaters on September 18. For more, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies.

For now, check out our guide to all the most exciting upcoming movies for everything else that's on the way this year, as well as our SDCC 2026 schedule, our SDCC 2026 live-blog, and our SDCC 2026 predictions to make sure you don't miss a second of the action in San Diego.

A new Resident Evil trailer has been revealed, and it's given us more of an insight into the direction of Zach Cregger's new take on the franchise.

The teaser kicks off with Austin Abrams' Bryan as he heads on a new run as a hospital delivery orderly. However, not long into his journey, he encounters something terrifying. The undead are hiding around every corner as Bryan's horrifying night continues.

"Everything that has happened in this town transpired in a matter of hours," Paul Walter Hauser's character tells Bryan. "You've no idea what you've got there in your hands," he continues, seemingly referring to the hospital package he's delivering.

The trailer ends with the reveal of where Bryan is heading: Racoon City General. Looks like it's going to be a long night for this delivery driver...

It was revealed earlier this year that the new movie takes place on the periphery of Resident Evil 2. "You know, where Raccoon City is having its big night, but tell just another story that could be happening in parallel to that," Cregger told us on a set visit.

However, this has left a few fans confused. Resident Evil 2 takes place in 1998 (when the game was released) but the new movie clearly doesn't take place in the same date. This is revealed in the trailer as Bryan is using a smartphone, seemingly suggesting it's set in the modern day.

Fans have been reacting to the reveal with a lot of confusion. "I thought it took place in 1998 but I guess not," wrote one on Twitter while another on YouTube wrote: "Is'nt this supposed to be 1998? Wtf is this phone."

We'll have to wait and see what this all means for the final movie and how it relates to the franchise. Resident Evil hits theaters on September 18. For more, check out our guide to upcoming horror movies.

A new trailer for the DCU's first all-out horror movie Clayface has arrived, and I've never been more excited to have nightmares about my own skin sticking together.

In the brief clip, which can be viewed above, Hollywood actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) makes the mistake of getting with a mobster's girlfriend, which results in a brutal attack that leaves him scarred and unable to work. He decides to undergo an experimental treatment, at the hands of trusted doctor Caitlin Bates (Naomi Ackie), that has some, uh, side effects. One of the side effects in question includes his eyelids beginning to stick together, and he quite literally cuts them apart on an airplane that's undergoing turbulence. David Cronenberg would be proud.

DC co-CEO Peter Safran recently confirmed that we've actually met Matt Hagen before, as the Clayface in the animated series Creature Commandos is indeed the one we're about to meet in live-action. Given how terrifying the DCU decided to animate Clayface (taking inspiration from his haunting, toothy design in Batman: The Animated Series), we're about to see something unimaginably terrifying on our screens come October, and I'm stoked.

James Watkins (Eden Lake) directs from a screenplay penned by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. David Dencik, Max Minghella, and Eddie Marsan also star.

Clayface is set to hit theaters on October 23. Creature Commandos is streaming now in its entirety on HBO Max. For more, check out our guide to all of the upcoming DC movies and shows you need to know about.

DC co-CEO Peter Safran has confirmed that the Clayface we first met in Creature Commandos is the same one we're about to meet in the live-action horror movie.

"Yes, it is the same Clayface," Safran told Entertainment Weekly before going to confirm that "the events of Clayface predate Creature Commandos in the canon," and that the terrifying goopy nightmare we met in animated form is indeed the same one we're about to meet in live-action.

The confirmation comes just a couple of months after DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn hit like on a Threads post from a fan that theorized that live-action Clayface and Creature Commandos are one and the same.

If you're unfamiliar, Creature Commandos, despite being an animated series, is canon to the DCU, and some of those characters will indeed be appearing in a live-action project at some point (if they haven't already, i.e., John Economos and Rick Flagg). Clayface – though the horror nature of the film seems better suited to Robert Pattinson's Batman – is also canon to the main DCU storyline (whereas Pattinson's Batman, along with The Penguin, exist in what's known as the Elseworlds).

And if you thought Clayface's animation style in Creature Commandos looked similar to his design in Batman: The Animated Series, you'll be happy to know that the DCU's Clayface is Matt Hagen... the very same actor-turned-villain who haunted our childhoods in the early 2000s. Tom Rhys Harries plays the titular fleshy mess, with James Watkins (Eden Lake) directing from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan.

Clayface is set to hit theaters on October 23. Creature Commandos is streaming now in its entirety on HBO Max. For more, check out our guide to all of the upcoming DC movies and shows you need to know about.

It's well-known that DC's upcoming body horror Clayface was inspired by the classic Batman: The Animated Series two-parter Feat of Clay. But in a new interview, Matt Hagen himself, Tom Rhys Harries, has revealed that the Batman Arkham games' depiction of the shapeshifting Batman baddie was a touchstone for the DCU: Chapter One movie.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Harries not only name-checked the 1989 graphic novel 'A Serious House on Serious Earth' by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean as an inspiration for his take on Matt Hagen, but the Welsh actor also identified Rocksteady's 2009 franchise launcher Arkham Asylum as a touchstone for its depiction of a Clayface at “a really effective and psychologically jarring moment.”

Now, if you've played the Arkham games, you're probably wondering if Harries actually meant Arkham City, as Clayface isn't much more than a glorified Easter egg in Arkham Asylum, appearing briefly in a cell where he transforms into Quincy Sharp and Jim Gordon as the solution to one of the Riddler's many riddles. Arkham City, however, gives Basil Karlo a surprise starring role: in a late-game twist (spoiler alert!) Batman discovers that Karlo has been posing as the Joker all along – "the role of a lifetime," as he puts it.

It's curious that Harries has singled out Arkham's Clayface. While the first two games in particular are widely lauded for their Paul Dini-scripted stories, and Clayface undoubtedly plays the role of the Joker well (he had us fooled, anyway), there isn't much depth to the character in the Arkham-verse beyond the unexplored psychology of a man willing to embody a psychotic clown. In fact, he only has three lines of dialogue when he's not imitating the Joker – two of which are "encore" and, er, "let's do this" – so it's not clear what "psychologically jarring" moment Harries is referring to.

What's clear is that Clayface is something drastically different for the DCU and superhero cinema as a whole. The story of actor-turned-transforming-gloop-guy Matt Hagen, the R-rated movie will feature “the true body horror of a Cronenberg-type movie,” according to DC co-CEO Peter Safran. “We’re not just telling a villain story, but a real psychological unraveling.”

After Supergirl failed to fly at the box office, making less money than Morbius during its opening weekend, the DCU is currently on the back foot. No doubt Safran and Jame Gunn are hoping the upcoming one-two-punch of HBO series Lanterns and Clayface will turn the fledgling comic-book universe's fortunes around.

“Not everything’s gonna work," Safran admits in that same interview, referring to Supergirl's commercial failure. "But we don’t judge the success of our 10-year plan based on any individual project along the way." Instead, it's about "expanding the tonal range of the DC universe,” notes Safran.

The first Clayface trailer teased a body horror spectacle from director James Watkins (Speak No Evil) and writer Mike Flanagan (many a Stephen King horror), just don't expect Batman to show up, despite all the Gotham nods in the initial reveal.

Clayface releases in theaters on 23 October. For more, check out our breakdown of how to watch the DC movies in order and everything you need to know about upcoming sequel Superman: Man of Tomorrow.

UPDATE: The Other Mommy trailer is now online. Watch it above.

If you saw The Odyssey in theaters this weekend (and plenty of people did), you may have been traumatized by the chilling first trailer for Other Mommy – a new Blumhouse horror starring Jessica Chastain. And horror fans are already raving about the terrifying first look.

Directed by Rob Savage (Host, The Boogeyman), the movie centers on 8-year-old Bela, whose parents are going through marital difficulties when a sinister doppelgänger entity she dubs 'other mommy' emerges from her closet and terrorizes the family. We're already freaked out.

So were audiences, who turned up to the theater for the latest Nolan epic and were greeted by the face of fear. "My biggest takeaway from The Odyssey isn't anything about The Odyssey itself. It's the horror movie trailer that they showed right before for 'Other Mommy' that won't allow me to sleep for the foreseeable future," said @BarstoolHubbs on Twitter.

"Did anyone else s*** their pants at the Other Mommy trailer before The Odyssey?" @echochlo bluntly asked, summing up general sentiment.

In particular, a jump scare that opens the trailer is being singled out as either the scariest thing you'll see in a theater this year... or laughably bad (this is the internet, after all). "The movie I saw after it was so good I completely forgot about it, but I have to say the first jump scare in the trailer for OTHER MOMMY is a contender for Worst Of All Time," noted @akeltheartist.

"Guys, we're not talking enough about the trailer for the Other Mommy. Why isn't it online? There's a Jessica Chastain jumpscare that we could not stop laughing at," adds @dietcokestan. You can't please everyone.

Other Mommy debuted its first look behind closed doors at CinemaCon earlier this year. Expect the official trailer to release online in the near future, so you can judge for yourself. Alongside Chastain in a dual role, the impressive cast includes Backrooms' Jay Duplass, Severance's Dichen Lachman, Succession's Arian Moayed, and Indiana Jones legend Karen Allen.

Other Mommy releases in theaters on October 9. For more frights to come, check out our list of the most exciting upcoming horror movies.

Following the huge success of his feature film debut, Backrooms director Kane Parsons is in talks with A24 to lock down a first look deal, but other big Hollywood studios are interested too.

As per Puck News, Parsons is reportedly in talks for a 3-year first-look deal with A24 that could be worth upwards of $65 million, though the deal is still being negotiated. However, Warner Bros., Universal, and Sony have also set up meetings with Parsons, and Puck's sources say they are also interested in signing the 21-year-old director.

This is not surprising, as Parsons, who started out making shorts on YouTube, exceeded all expectations with his horror breakout earlier this year. After hitting screens in May, 2026, Backrooms earned a whopping $374 million at the worldwide box office against a production budget of just $10 million. The film is based on the creepypasta first posted on 4chan, depicting a creepy liminal world, which Kane expanded on in his YouTube series in 2022.

Backrooms is part of a recent shift in Hollywood, which has seen original movies with smaller budgets and new directors outperform major blockbusters. 2026 horror movie Obsession, directed by fellow YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Curry Barker, took over the big screen earlier this year, earning $428 million against a budget of less than $1 million. Whereas the new Star Wars movie The Mandalorian and Grogu, which was released around the same time, scraped $340 million against a much larger budget of around $165 million, before marketing.

Parsons and Barker seem to have started a trend, as 22-year-old YouTuber Alex Kister has since signed on to direct an adaptation of his The Mandela Catalogue web series for Amazon’s United Artists label and Amblin. Plus, another creepypasta, Siren Head, from artist Trevor Henderson, is being made into a movie over at Warner Bros.

As for what is next for Parsons, the director has shown interest in adapting the video game Portals, but is also thinking about making another Backrooms movie. As part of the deal, A24 reportedly wants the director to make at least two more films under its banner, and one of those projects could be a Backrooms sequel.

For more, check out our guide to the best horror movies, and keep up with other exciting upcoming horror movies on the way.

The Resident Evil movie runtime might have been revealed, and fans are very pleased with it.

AMC lists the film as 1 hour and 35 minutes (via IGN), which is a pretty slim runtime. "Love a tight 90," says one person on Reddit, with another agreeing: "Normalize 90 minute movies"

"This is about the perfect run length for most horror movies, in my opinion. I saw Evil Dead Burn last night, and while I thought it was decent, it definitely dragged a little towards the end and I think it would have benefitted from ten minutes or so being trimmed out," says someone else.

"90min is the sweet spot for action/horror imo. Evil Dead keeps it short and sweet (Burn is the only one longer than 90 minutes) and it's probably the most consistently good horror franchise," says another fan.

"Perfect, 90 minutes feels perfect for this type of movie," says another fan. "BRING BACK THE 90m MOVIE" is another person's thoughts.

"This pretty much confirms he's not exploring any of the Resident Evil lore. Just balls to the wall zombie survival horror movie," thinks another person.

"It feels like one gigantic sequence. Things pop off about five minutes in and it basically stays like that until the end," director Zach Cregger has previously shared. "What I love about the games is that you move from set-piece to set-piece. Every location has a unique challenge... I’m borrowing from the games directly in that rhythm, where you’re just running through a gauntlet."

Resident Evil hits theaters on September 18. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming video game adaptations for everything else that's in store.

You can take the director out of YouTube, but you can't take YouTube out of the director, as content creator turned filmmaker Kane Parsons says he edited his upcoming Backrooms extended cut like one of his YouTube projects.

"I had a lot of fun making Everything Must Go. The whale thing was made in just under two weeks. All Blender on my laptop. Only finished it like three days ago," said Parsons over on Discord, since posted on Twitter. "Super cool being able to follow the YouTube pipeline but have it delivered at such a ludicrously huge scale."

Not many big-screen movies have additional footage edited on a laptop, but Parsons is quite capable of whipping up something off the cuff, as he has shown over on his YouTube channel, KanePixels, which boasts 3.45 million subscribers. In fact, it was Parsons who made the legendary Backrooms web series based on the creepypasta story about scary liminal spaces, which in turn inspired the young director's first feature film.

The extended cut includes 15 minutes of extra content after the credits roll, pushing the movie over the 2 hours and 6 minutes mark, compared to the original 1 hour and 51 minute runtime. Parsons added that he started working on Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition after Backrooms had already hit screens.

We can guess that Backrooms' extremely impressive theatrical run is what prompted Parsons to make the extended cut. After hitting screens on May 29, Backrooms surpassed all expectations, opening to $81.4 million at the US box office against a $10 million budget. The film has so far earned over $330 million worldwide and holds an impressive 87% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition is out in US theaters now, available at Emagine Entertainment, Regal Cinemas, and more. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Resident Evil movie director Zach Cregger says it would be "inorganic" to place the likes of Leon Kennedy and Jill Valentine into his "self-contained story."

"To try and shoehorn in any of those characters would feel inorganic to this self-contained story," Cregger told Empire magazine. "I have to put the story first and foremost."

"The concept here is that we're following an idiot," Cregger said, referring to movie protagonist Bryan (Austin Abrams) and, apparently, not my attempts to skulk around the Care Center unseen in Resident Evil: Requiem. "Not that he's stupid, but he's not your typical game character." The director says Bryan has "no combat skills whatsoever" and is "completely inept at survival."

If you've been paying attention recently, you'll know Cregger – who has already stamped his authority on the horror genre with Barbarian and Weapons – is keen to move away from plots and characters already covered in established Resident Evil canon.

"It's an entirely original story," Cregger explained to Entertainment Weekly last year. "When you watch it, you'll be like, 'This is very Zach.' It's just [that] it takes place in the Resident Evil world. I don't think fans of the games are gonna be bummed."

For his part, Cregger has already got plenty of Resident Evil credit to his name. He beat Requiem twice not long after release, and has even snuck in a Resident Evil 4 Easter egg that only diehards would have recognized.

Cregger also revealed to GamesRadar+ that, sadly, the Nemesis wouldn't feature – despite the events of the movie running "parallel" to Resident Evil 2. So, no, we're unlikely to be seeing S.T.A.R.S during the horror movie's runtime.

Resident Evil opens in cinemas on September 18. For more, check out the upcoming horror movies coming your way very soon.

It seems as though Kane Parsons has started a trend with his hit A24 movie Backrooms, as Weapons director Zach Cregger is working on a horror movie based on another online urban legend.

Cregger is in the process of writing a movie based on the creepypasta Siren Head alongside Brian Duffield, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter, and it's a pretty hot commodity. After five studios entered a multi-million-dollar bidding war over the project, Warner Bros. Pictures has come out on top, winning the underlying rights.

Despite Cregger both writing and directing his breakout horror movies Barbrairan and Weapons, and directing and co-writing his upcoming Resident Evil movie, THR states that the plan is for Duffield to direct Siren Head. Duffield's upcoming whale feature, Whalefall, is already generating buzz, but the filmmaker is also known for No One Will Save You and for penning Netflix's horror comedy The Babysitter.

Siren Head is not technically a creepypasta, but it most definitely falls into the online urban legend space. The viral horror sensation kicked off when artist Trevor Henderson started sharing images of a tall figure with two siren speakers as a head. The monster is an aggressive, skilled predator, using its sirens to mimic voices and lure its prey.

Before long, theories about the cryptic creature spread across the web, just like with the original Backrooms image. Then came the YouTube short films. YouTuber Shutter Authority has created many Siren Head videos through the years and has compiled his best work into a 30-minute compilation so you can get a taste of what Cregger might have up his sleeve.

Siren Head is just the latest internet legend to be adapted. After Backrooms hit the big screens to rave reviews this May, already earning over $330 million at the box office worldwide on a $10 million budget, it looks like more horror directors have been delving into the world of creepypasta. The Pools is up next this December, based on the water-filled levels of the Backrooms.

For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Obsession star Cooper Tomlinson has revealed what to expect from Curry Barker's next movie.

Anything but Ghosts, which has been filmed and stars Tomlinson and Barker as two fake paranormal hunters, may be set in the same universe as Obsession – but it's tonally very different from Barker's debut breakout hit.

“The movie’s like if Key and Peele walked into Hereditary. It’s a buddy comedy about these two guys, and it turns really scary," Tomlinson told Raiders of the Lost Podcast of the project, which also stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul.

He added, "It's about these con artist ghost hunters who encounter real ghosts. Then they have to step up and be the thing that they promised this family.”

Anything But Ghosts isn't the only project with Curry Barker's name attached. Fresh off Obsession's whirlwind – and historical – success at the box office, the director has inked a multi-million dollar deal with Universal for his third movie. Barker has also set his sights on a new take on horror mainstay The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

"I want to do something that's different, but not stray too far from what we know," Barker told GamesRadar+ at an exclusive Q&A with the director in April. "There's some really messed-up stuff happening at that farm. It's untapped."

Obsession, meanwhile, continues its box office success – despite now being available to watch digitally. As of writing, it's tallied up over $370 million at the worldwide box office. It's a figure that sees the horror pass Sinners to become the highest-grossing original live-action movie of the decade to date.

For more, check out the upcoming horror movies set to scare you silly very soon.

Obsession has officially surpassed Sinners to be the highest-grossing original film of the decade so far, and it's a good time to be a horror fan.

Obsession, written and directed by Curry Barker, follows a dude who sucks named Bear (Michael Johnston) who buys a novelty wishing branch and wishes for his crush, Nikki (Indie Navarette), to love him more than anything in the world. The wish works, but something takes over Nikki... and she spends the rest of the movie fighting whatever it is in the most violent way.

The movie was made for roughly $750,00, and has earned around $371 million (via Forbes) at the global box office. The cast includes Cooper Tomlinson, Andy Richter, Megan Lawless, Haley Fitzgerald, and Darin Toonder.

Sinners, directed by Ryan Coogler, earned $370.3 million worldwide against a budget of $90 million. The film also took home four out of a whopping 16 Oscar nominations, which also made it the most Oscar-nominated movie in history.

"I don’t want to go straight into Obsession 2," Barker said to The Hollywood Reporter, when asked if the movie will turn into a franchise. "I have such a cool idea for it that I won’t say. I’m not saying it has to be five, six years from now. But I think people would be just as excited for it if it came a little down the road. It’s a whirlwind, and I’m trying to figure it out."

Obsession is still in theaters. Sinners is streaming now on HBO Max. For more, check out our guide to the best horror movies, and keep up with other exciting upcoming horror movies on the way.

It sounds as though Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil movie will be a thrill ride from start to finish, just like the video game series it is based on.

"It feels like one gigantic sequence. Things pop off about five minutes in and it basically stays like that until the end," said Cregger to Empire. "What I love about the games is that you move from set-piece to set-piece. Every location has a unique challenge... I’m borrowing from the games directly in that rhythm, where you’re just running through a gauntlet."

However, even though the upcoming movie is set in the second game, 1998's Resident Evil 2, the feature will focus on a brand new character. Rather than following highly capable rookie cop Leon through the zombie-ridden Raccoon City, the movie will focus on a medical courier named Bryan out on delivery who suddenly gets caught up in the outbreak. Bryan is played by Austin Abrams, who previously collaborated with Cregger on the 2025 horror hit Weapons.

But, unlike Leon, Bryan is not your run-of-the-mill hero. "The concept here is that we’re following an idiot. Not that he’s stupid, but he’s not your typical game character, with no combat skills whatsoever and completely inept at survival," added Cregger. "Bryan is very much an everyman who happens to be burdened with this kind of sacred mission that’s going to take him into the heart of everything. It’s kind of like Frodo going into Mordor."

When we caught up with Cregger on the set of Resident Evil, the director told GamesRadar+, "I don't think that me telling a story that's not about Leon is a violation of the Resident Evil world, because the games do that all the time... I'm just going to tell another story that feels like playing in the world of the game, but I'm not stepping on the toes of any of Leon's storyline."

But Cregger's adaptation will stray away from the game in more ways than one. In the Resident Evil trailer, we saw Raccoon City covered in snow. The winter setting contradicts the game, which takes place in a heatwave during September.

Resident Evil arrives in theaters on September 18. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming video game movies and upcoming horror movies heading our way.

The first trailer for Nosferatu director Robert Eggers's new horror movie Werwulf is here, and it looks like his creepiest movie ever (no small feat).

The footage, which you can see below, is dark – both literally and figuratively – with a pulsing, terrifying score. Aaron Taylor-Johnson foams at the mouth, blood splatters, and Willem Dafoe speaks ominously of a "raving beast." But, we don't actually see the titular werewolf.

Along with Taylor-Johnson and Dafoe, the film stars Lily-Rose Depp, Ralph Ineson, and Bodhi Rae Breathnach.

Eggers has made a name for himself as a master of the haunting and atmospheric, so it's no surprise Werwulf already looks so striking.

"For me, going back to the old folklore is a way in, because you're going to find different stuff – the tropes aren't the same tropes that are so tired that they've become clichés," Eggers told Empire magazine of making a grounded werewolf movie. "So that in and of itself gives it some freshness.

"I've also struggled with the creature, because it's difficult in monster movies to make the monster convincing," he continued. "I think that's another pitfall of werewolf movies – they either look like guys in suits, or they look like CG. Are you willing to go along with that, knowing that they look seriously fake, or not? One of the best horror movies – and monster movies – of all time, is the first Alien, where it's about the monster being a mystery and in the shadows."

Werwulf hits theaters this Christmas Day in the US and January 1 in the UK. In the meantime, check out our guide to the best horror movies to scare yourself silly, or the most exciting upcoming movies.

After smashing box office expectations this May, Kane Parsons' horror movie Backrooms is heading back to the big screen with 15 minutes of extra content.

As per Phoenix Theatres, the Backroom release, which is titled 'Backrooms: Everything Must Go Edition,' hits the 2 hours 6 minutes mark, compared to the original 1 hour 51 minute runtime. The listing reads, "This special showing will include an additional 15 minutes of new, theatrically exclusive post-credit bonus footage from Kane Parsons."

It is not clear what the bonus post-credits footage will entail. It could be cut scenes, a blooper reel, a tease to another movie, or director's commentary. The extended cut heads to US theaters on July 3 and will be available at Emagine Entertainment, Regal Cinemas, and more.

After hitting the big screen on May 29, Backrooms has had an extremely impressive theatrical run, opening to $81.4 million at the US box office and totalling over $330 million worldwide. The film proved to be a major hit with horror fans, earning an impressive 87% on Rotten Tomatoes. That is quite the feat considering the film's $10 million production budget, and the fact that it is Parson's feature debut.

Based on the online urban legend of the same name, Backrooms follows an employee at a furniture showroom who finds a doorway leading to an endless network of interconnected rooms. But when he steps inside, he realises he is not alone. The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, and Lukita Maxwell.

For those unfamiliar with the original story, in 2019, an image was anonymously posted on 4chan, depicting an endless yellow room. Over time, internet writers expanded on the concept, documenting trips to the maze-like world. However, Parsons extended the lore in his hit Backrooms web series, which further explored the fear of liminal space.

Backrooms is still in theaters, with the extended cut arriving on July 3. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Kane Parsons made no secret that he's a big fan of Portal on the press run for his new movie, Backrooms. He spoke openly about how the legendary puzzler franchise was a huge influence on his work, which started on YouTube and led to the acclaimed Backrooms, a thriller set in the liminal spaces of a furniture showroom.

There were some reports that he was considering directing a movie based on the IP, too, and now it seems like we've got our biggest tease yet that it could be happening. Posting on his Instagram, Parsons shared two images of himself at Valve HQ.

He didn't add a caption to his stories, but in light of what he's been teasing about his love of Portal, it has set speculation alight among fans. Posting on Reddit, one wrote: "He's gonna get to make his Portal movie.. Bet." Another agreed, adding: "He's gonna propose his Portal movie project to them, isn't he?"

Speaking earlier this year, Parsons said that Portal 2 was his biggest inspiration for his horror movie Backrooms. "Portal would be the earliest influence," he told Letterboxd. "It's like the strongest influence over, like, everything I've done in my entire life. It's a two-game series.

"So, if anything, I would say Portal 2 is the bigger inspiration for me... It's inherently comedic and absurd, and that’s what I like about it. So many bleak creative choices come from an inherent humor."

All signs are looking positive for a new movie. Watch this space. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming confirmed video game movies on the way.

It sounds like a new writer has joined the next Five Nights at Freddy's movie.

That's according to star Skeet Ulrich, who has shared that some new blood is onboard for the third film.

"We're waiting on the third script to make the third film," Ulrich said at a Spawn of ScareFest Q&A. "The guy who wrote It and It Follows is writing it right now. Apparently, it's a lot of [Matthew Lillard] and I." Check out the comment below at around the 27:24 time stamp.

Now, this comes with a few caveats. For one thing, the screenwriter of It and It Follows are different people – David Robert Mitchell wrote It Follows, while three writers are credited for the 2017 It movie: Chase Palmer, Cary Joji Fukunaga, and Gary Dauberman. So, Ulrich probably misspoke, and means either It or It Follows.

Plus, it's unclear whether the new writer is actually taking over from franchise creator Scott Cawthon, or if they're working on the script with Cawthon, or rewriting a draft of his. Cawthon has been on writing duties for both films so far: the first film was written by Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, and Emma Tammi, from a story by Cawthon, Chris Lee Hill, and Tyler MacIntyre, while for the sequel, Cawthon is the only credited writer. So, if Cawthon is not contributing to the script for the third film, it would be a franchise first.

How a new writer affects the franchise remains to be seen, though Five Nights at Freddy's 2 holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of just 17%, down from the first film's 33%.

"Despite Five Nights at Freddy's 2 slightly bettering its predecessor in terms of scares and impressive animatronics, the sequel fails to understand that less is more. By stuffing as many storylines and characters as possible into its relatively brief runtime, the sequel feels messy and inconclusive, leaving FNaF fans shortchanged," reads our Five Nights at Freddy's 2 review.

There's no release date for Five Nights at Freddy's 3 just yet. While you wait, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies.

Just days after announcing that Blumhouse is finally moving forward with its Dead by Daylight movie adaptation, led by Icelandic filmmaker Thordur Palsson, CEO Jason Blum has had to defend the movie's director against fans who don't think he's up to the job.

"No one had heard of Emma before Five Nights at Freddy's, and that worked out pretty well," said Blum on Twitter. "Have faith, my friends."

Blum's Tweet is in response to Blumhouse's original post, which reads, "To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Dead by Daylight, we’re happy to share that Thordur Palsson will direct the film adaptation." Many Twitter users were quick to reply, "Who?"

It is true that those across the pond may not know much of Palsson, but the filmmaker has made a name for himself in Nordic cinema. Palsson is best known for his Netflix detective series The Valhalla Murders, which sits at an imprssive 75% on Rotten Tomatoes, and his 2025 monster movie The Damned, which scored 90%.

Just because Palsson doesn't have as much experience as others doesn't mean he isn't able to carry the adaptation. As Blum pointed out, Five Nights at Freddy's director Emma Tammi wasn't a household name before helming the 2023 video game adaptation. But Five Nights at Freddy's quickly became one of the highest-grossing video game horror movies of all time, and Blumhouse made a sequel in 2025.

Not much is known about the movie at this point, other than it is based on the Dead by Daylight video game franchise. The first game follows four survivor characters: office worker Dwight, an athlete Meg, a botanist Claudette, and a survivalist Jake, who must complete tasks in order to escape before they are murdered by the fifth player, known as the killer. To win, the killer, who takes shape as a number of different horror-themed monsters, must pick off the survivors and feed them to The Entity.

Although no cast announcements have been made just yet, the movie is said to start filming sometime in 2027. Crawl scribe Alexandre Aja and The Conjuring 2's David Leslie Johnston-McGoldrick are penning the script.

The Dead by Daylight movie does not yet have a release date. For more, check out our guides to the best video game movies and upcoming video game movies.

As Curry Barker's indie horror hit Obsession continues to dominate the box office one month after it released in theatres, the director says he has an idea for another movie, but he's not in a rush to make a sequel.

"I don’t want to go straight into Obsession 2," said Barker to The Hollywood Reporter. "I have such a cool idea for it that I won’t say. I’m not saying it has to be five, six years from now. But I think people would be just as excited for it if it came a little down the road. It’s a whirlwind, and I’m trying to figure it out."

Obsession follows a shy young man named Bear who buys a novelty wishing branch and wishes for his crush, Nikki, to love him more than anything in the world. Surprisingly, the wish works, but turns his true love into a crazy, obsessed succubus. Though the story may be over for a handful of Obsession characters, there is still a lot to explore in that world, especially when it comes to other users of the One Wish Willow.

At an early screening of Obsession hosted by GamesRadar+, Barker discussed the possibility of an Obsession series. "What really is exciting to me [would be doing] an anthology, like a one-hour episode," said Barker. "Each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails. Maybe I'll direct the pilot with the same DP, and then you could invite other filmmakers to give their spin at it. That would be really cool."

However, Barker seems to have his plate full at the moment. The director is currently editing his next film, titled Anything But Ghosts, starring Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul and Jurassic World's Bryce Dallas Howard. After that, Barker is making a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie for A24. Although he hasn't written the script yet, he told GamesRadar+ that he wants to focus on Leatherface's family.

Beyond that, the industry is Barker's oyster. "The opportunities were just unbelievable. I realized I can do whatever I want now," said Barker to THR. "The big conversation is: Do I want to do an IP movie? Or do I want to do my original? I have an idea for my original, but I have so many ideas for Chainsaw as well. I have a lot to weigh, and that’s where the stress really comes from. I don’t know what to do next."

Obsession is still out in theatres. For more, check out our guide to the best horror movies, and keep up with other exciting upcoming horror movies on the way.

The Dead by Daylight movie is finally moving forward at Blumhouse, as the studio officially greenlights the film, bringing on board a horror director to lead the project.

Alongside James Wan's production company Atomic Monster and video game developer Behaviour Interactive, Blumhouse has tapped Thordur Palsson to direct the film (H/T Variety).

Palsson is best known for his Netflix detective series The Valhalla Murders and 2025 monster movie The Damned.

In a statement, Blumhouse CEO Jason Blum said, "Thordur is the filmmaker we trust to carry ‘Dead by Daylight’ from the screen you play on to the big screen you watch in theaters."

Earlier this year, the project found its writers in Crawl scribe Alexandre Aja and The Conjuring 2's David Leslie Johnston-McGoldrick.

Not much is known about the movie at this point, but it is said to start filming sometime in 2027. The movie adapts the hit multiplayer game of the same name, which follows four players who must complete tasks to escape. However, five players take part, and one is selected as the killer. The killer's goal is to trap each survivor and sacrifice them to The Entity one by one.

In the original game, the survivor characters consist of former office worker Dwight Fairfield, super speedy athlete Meg Thomas, clever botanist Claudette Morel, and survivalist Jake Park. The killer characters consist of a Grim Reaper-like ghoul known as The Wraith, Leatherface-like chainsaw-wielder The Hillbilly, and a bear-trap-laying villain called The Trapper (kind of like Friday the 13th's Jason).

No cast announcements have been made at this moment, but fans have already been casting their favorites.

So far, fans seem to want either Joseph Gordon Levitt or Andrew Garfield to play Dwight, Evil Dead star Jane Levy or Margaret Qualley as Meg, Teyonah Parris or Zoe Kravitz as Claudette Morel, and either Steven Yeun or Osric Chau as Jake Park. In terms of the killers, fans think someone strong should play The Trapper, such as Henry Cavill, and think Jamie Lee Curtis should voice the Entity.

The Dead by Daylight movie does not yet have a release date. For more, check out our guides to the best video game movies and upcoming video game movies.

The Evil Dead franchise is known for not holding back when it comes to gore, but it sounds as though the next installment may be the most gruesome yet, as Evil Dead Burn director Sébastien Vaniček says one scene was so violent, he had to cut it out.

"There is a scene that is not R-rated," Vaničekin said in the latest issue of SFX magazine (which has House of the Dragon season 3 on the cover). "It’s a really, really hard scene. And I have to cut it, unfortunately, so you just won’t experience it as brutally as it is right now because I need to have the R-rated movie. So we are trying to find a good balance."

At the time of the interview, Vaniček was in the middle of getting the movie rated by the Motion Picture Association. The goal was to achieve an R rating in the US (which equates to a 15 or 18 age rating in the UK), in line with the rest of the franchise.

Vaniček didn't give any clues on what the scene entailed, but if it was too much for an R-rating, we can only imagine the level of gore. Evil Dead Rise contained a scene where a possessed victim grated their face with a cheese grater, and the 2013 Evil Dead remake showed a girl cutting her own arm off with an electric carving knife. Still, both movies managed to earn an R-rating in the US and an 18 rating in the UK. So, the cut Evil Dead Burn scene must have been extremely graphic.

Evil Dead Burn follows a grieving woman who has recently lost her husband, and in search of comfort, visits her in-laws at their secluded family home. However, the family reunion soon turns into the trip from hell as the Book of the Dead transforms them into Deadites one by one. Evil Dead Burn does not act as a sequel to Evil Dead Rise, but the first trailer did contain a cheeky nod to the 2023 movie.

However, fans of gore may still be able to see the cut scene one day, as Vaniček is already thinking about releasing Director's Cut later down the line. "The director’s cut will be way more violent than what we will have in the theater," said the director, who promised that the movie heading to theaters will still have its fair share of carnage.

Evil Dead Burn releases on July 10. In the meantime, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Unexpected horror breakout hit Obsession is still proving hugely popular at the box office.

With a gross of $234.5 million globally, the film has broken into the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2026, coming in at number nine (Backrooms, another viral horror sensation, is at number 10).

Plus, Obsession has made it into IMDb's ranking of the best movies ever, currently sitting in 248th place with a rating of 8.1 from 83 thousand viewers.

According to TheWrap, Obsession also made more domestically on its 25th day in theaters than Avengers: Endgame, The Force Awakens, or Spider-Man: No Way Home. The Star Wars movie made $3.1 million on its 25th day, while Endgame made $3.2 million, and Spider-Man: No Way Home made $2.4 million. In comparison, Obsession made $4.2 million (though, of course, in total, the Star Wars film and Endgame both grossed over $2 billion globally, while No Way Home made $1.9 billion worldwide).

Obsession revolves around a man named Bear who, after breaking the magical One Wish Willow, forces his crush Nikki to fall obsessively in love with him.

"Obviously I have a couple more things that I'm excited about next, but I do see Obsession 2 maybe, or even… What really is exciting to me [would be doing] an anthology, like a one-hour episode," director Curry Barker previously told us. "Each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails. Maybe I'll direct the pilot with the same DP, and then you could invite other filmmakers to give their spin at it. That would be really cool."

Obsession is in theaters now. For more, check out our guide to the best horror movies to scare yourself silly.

It has been eight years since Ari Aster's Hereditary blew horror fans away, but the director has revealed that he has plans for more movies set in that universe and has even written a prequel.

"I wrote a prequel to this," said Aster during a Herediary Q&A at The American Cinematheque’s annual Bleak Week (Gold Derby). "It never feels like the right time. It’s a prequel, not a sequel, so I don’t know where this goes."

The 2018 movie centers on a family cursed by their late grandmother, who promised the family's firstborn male to an ancient demon. But the film concluded in tragedy, so a prequel would make a little more sense. Especially if Aster wanted to invite back star Toni Collette. Who knows, the prequel might focus on the witchy grandmother's (Kathleen Chalfant) dark past, just as Zach Cregger's Weapons prequel is set to follow Gladys' origins.

One thing is for sure, though, the original will be hard to top. Hereditary is often considered one of the greatest modern horror movies, ushering in a new era for the genre. Many think of it as 'elevated horror', which is not a term Aster uses himself. "I hate the term elevated horror, especially because it’s sort of a box that I was put in, and horror fans took umbrage. 'Who do you think you are?' I didn’t say it, I didn’t say it," added Aster. "I was just trying to make a really good horror movie."

Nevertheless, the movie was a breath of fresh air and a celebration of original horror. However, it seems as though we are going through a bit of a horror renaissance right now, with Curry Barker's $750,000 indie horror Obsession and fellow YouTuber turned movie director Kane Parson's Backrooms currently taking over the box office. Aster has noticed the change in the genre.

"This is a really interesting month with Curry and Kane. I hadn’t seen Kane’s shorts until Backrooms came out. He’s really interesting. He’s 20 years old... I think, he’s clearly following a vision. I’m thrilled to see that," said Aster. "That’s so exciting." You can read more on the trend in our feature about how Hollywood is benefiting content creators swapping social media for filmmaking.

For more, see where Herediatry places in our guide to the best horror movies of all time, and keep up with upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Backrooms director Kane Parsons, fresh off his horror sensation storming the box office, is seemingly considering a Portal movie in his future.

This all stemmed from an interview on The Town, wherein Parsons noted how he wasn't interested in taking on IP next "barring one or two things" from his childhood – and early talks are happening.

Speculation soon intensified that Parsons may have been talking about Portal, the legendary puzzler franchise from Valve, Kim Swift, and Erik Wolpaw that sees players navigate increasingly nefarious test courses using portals.

Soon, The New York Times reporter Kyle Buchanan chimed in with his own scoop: "I’ve seen people speculate that Kane Parsons is referring to a potential Portal movie here," Buchanan began on Twitter. "I asked him in early May if he’d be interested in directing that and he said he was already looking into it 'with a lot of caution and a lot of curiosity.'"

Whatever comes next there is, understandably, considerable buzz around 20-year-old Parsons, who became the youngest filmmaker to ever reach number one at the U.S. box office with Backrooms.

Backrooms, which navigates the unique horror of liminal spaces bolstered by a cast including Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, has already grossed almost $150 million at the box office from a reported $10 million budget.

Portal, meanwhile, has largely laid dormant as a franchise since its 2011 sequel, save for guest appearances or Easter eggs in other titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Minecraft. But maybe we'll be thinking with portals once more?

For more, check out the upcoming horror movies heading your way. Then dive into the new PS5 games on the horizon before the packed Summer Games Fest schedule invariably adds dozens more.

Backrooms director Kane Parsons has made no secret of how much he likes Valve's games, calling Portal 2 the single "biggest inspiration" for the instant-hit film. In a new interview, he says the whole house of Steam is a creative touchstone for him, praising Valve's commitment to artistic intent.

Speaking with Matt Belloni on his show The Town, Parsons clarifies that "there's no one path that I look at and personally say, 'I want that for me,'" when it comes to other creatives. Rather, he has more of a "desire to take things one step at a time."

If he had to distill things down to a creative philosophy, he'd take a page from Valve's book. "The closest comparison that I would call a north star would be the way that Valve conducts themselves with their projects," he explains. "Obviously, that's on the game side of things. But I think the integrity they've expressed with a lot of their, I guess, philosophy of, don't make it if there's not a meaningful reason motivating it behind the scenes".

In its history as game developer, hardware manufacturer, and Steam shepherd, Valve has repeatedly argued the importance of new projects accomplishing something new and, in particular, having a bespoke reason to make new games. Half-Life: Alyx is probably the clearest example. (Shoutout to Artifact, too.)

The first Half-Life game in years not only wasn't Half-Life 3 or Half-Life 2: Episode 3, it was a VR exclusive that told a fairly different story. Around its reveal, Valve staff like level designer Dario Calasi said that Alyx was made, in large part, to tackle the challenges and opportunities of VR – and in the end, Valve produced arguably the greatest VR game ever made.

Belloni compares Parsons' description of Valve to recent remarks from Spider-Man star Tom Holland, who argued that the Christopher Nolan approach to filmmaking could serve some of the Marvel films. "We need to know why we are making this movie beyond the fact that it’s Spider-Man 4 and they make loads of money and we're going to just have a big summer," Holland said.

Parsons reckons that should be a "baseline" for creatives on any project. "But I also think that Valve specifically, they take it to such an extreme where it's obviously motivated by the hardware and the tech aspect," he continues. "So, I'm not solely into film. I just like media curation in general. I like creating experiences for people by whatever means necessary. I do a lot of music work as well and I'd love to look at games in the future."

A24's Backrooms leads to a surge in players for two co-op horror games inspired by the viral creepypasta.

Scary Movie 6 brings back the Wayans family after 25 years away from the franchise. Directed by Michael Tiddes and written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans, and Rick Alvarez, the movie is being billed as a legacy sequel to the first two films – but does it live up to expectations?

Unfortunately, reviews for the horror parody have been decidedly negative, debuting to a low 20% Rotten Tomatoes score. While it's not being called an all-out failure, several critics have been lukewarm in their critiques, saying few jokes land and the parody doesn't always feel timely. This being said, there is a fair amount of praise for the surprise celebrity cameos and this is not the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score in the franchise, either.

Empire gave the movie two stars, writing that "the posters – inspired parodies of recent horror films – are wittier than the film, suggesting that maybe next time get those ad creatives into the writers' room." Their critic Kim Newman added that it's only in the last 10 minutes that the movie "almost start[s] to be funny".

IndieWire criticized the movie for not being cutting enough in its parody. "Nobody should be looking to Scary Movie for nuanced geopolitical analysis, and only a dumbass would be genuinely offended by what the Wayans didn't mock in this movie," reviewer Alison Foreman wrote. "But great satire is often defined as much by what it excludes, and refusing to engage with any actual controversy at Paramount (outside of one very weak line involving Neve Campbell), Scary Movie 6 manages to come across as thoughtless and toothless at the same time."

Variety was lukewarm on the sixth movie in the franchise, citing it having fairly few funny gags. "I didn't laugh out loud too much at Scary Movie, which is a lot less funny than last summer's Naked Gun reboot, though it's got the relentless energy of a mad-dog comedy," critic Owen Gleiberman wrote. "The majority of the jokes come off as more asserted than delighted."

Deadline's Pete Hammond says the jokes "feel as old" as the 25-year gap that the franchise has been without the Wayans family as writers. "We get a flat-footed and predictable satire that looks like the Wayans just threw whatever tired ideas they had at the wall to see what still sticks," he writes in his review.

The Wrap's William Bibbiani writes: "Sucky or not, Scary Movie is still a broad comedy, and a lot can be forgiven if it's funny. It's frequently funny. Some of the jokes backfire, horribly, and others are so tired they're pathetic, but one out of every four punchlines hits hard. The celebrity cameo in the pre-credits sketch is inspired."

For more upcoming movies, check out our guide to all the new horror movies arriving in 2026 and beyond.

Backrooms director Kane Parsons has slammed generative AI.

The new horror film is one of the surprise breakout hits of the year, already standing at around $135 million at the worldwide box office.

"I think I'm in the same boat as most well-adjusted people," Parsons told The Australian (via Deadline). "If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me."

Though Parsons acknowledges the potential for AI to help with some VFX tasks, he explained "right now it's difficult to discuss objectively because there's so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening."

It sounds like AI has sparked ideas for what Parsons wants to do next, however. "What interests me more is interrogating it artistically," he shared. "We already live in a world where you walk outside and there are billboards and signs that are obvious AI slop. That's become part of our visual reality. To me, generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.

"I'm interested in using that iconography in art – not using AI to make the art itself, but examining what it represents," he added. "I definitely want to explore it further in future projects."

Backrooms is an A24 horror movie based on the internet creepypasta, and it stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, and Finn Bennett.

"I didn't have any thoughts, really, about the viral nature of it," Ejiofor told GamesRadar+ recently. "I just thought that it was a fascinating world to explore, [with] fascinating characters."

Backrooms is in theaters now. For more, check out our guide to the best horror movies to scare yourself silly.

It looks like original horror is taking over the big screen, as in addition to Obsession having another successful weekend, Kane Parson's Backrooms has smashed an A24 record during its opening.

After hitting screens on Friday, May 29, Backrooms grossed a whopping $81.4 million during opening weekend in the US, and over $118 million worldwide, as per BoxOfficeMojo. This marks the biggest opening for an A24 movie ever, almost tripling Civil War's $25.7 million opening. Not only this, but as Backrooms is now the number one movie in the world, meaning that at 20 years old, Parsons is the youngest director ever to hold this title.

As for Obsession, Curry Barker's feature directorial debut continues an almost unprecedented run at the box office. After beating its opening weekend with an impressive second weekend on the big screen, the indie horror has done it again, bringing in $26.4 million in the US during its third weekend. This is a 10% rise from last week, bringing its domestic total to over $104.7 million and $148 million worldwide.

This is bad news for The Mandalorian and Grogu, as despite the new Star Wars movie being the number one film in the US last week when it first premiered, it is now sitting in third place behind Backrooms and Obsession. The new film, which just so happens to be the first Star Wars movie since The Rise of Skywalker seven years ago, saw a 69% drop during its second weekend, pulling in $25 million in the US after earning $81.6 million on opening weekend.

What makes two original horror movies outperforming a major Disney blockbuster even more impressive is that both movies had much smaller budgets. Obsession cost just $750,000 to make, meaning it has made almost 200 times its budget back, making it one of the most profitable movies of all time. Backrooms had a reported budget of $10 million, so it has made just under 12 times its budget back. The two horror movies were also shown in far fewer theaters than the Star Wars flick.

The Mandalorian and Grogu, on the other hand, reportedly cost Disney and LucasFilm $165 million to make, according to Collider. Despite the film earning a huge $246.5 million so far worldwide, its big budget means it has only made its budget back 1.5 times over so far.

For more, check out our guide to movie release dates for 2026, and keep up with new movies and upcoming horror movies heading your way this year and beyond.

Director Kane Parsons says Portal 2 serves as the biggest inspiration for the upcoming horror movie based on his viral YouTube series of the same name.

"Portal would be the earliest influence," Parsons said in an interview with Letterboxd. "It's like the strongest influence over, like, everything I've done in my entire life. It's a two-game series. So, if anything, I would say Portal 2 is the bigger inspiration for me... It's inherently comedic and absurd, and that’s what I like about it. So many bleak creative choices come from an inherent humour."

Portal is a first-person puzzle game that first debuted in 2007. Portal 2 was released in 2011. In both games, you play as a test subject trapped in the Aperture Science Laboratory, taunted as you complete puzzles by an evil (but very funny) computer overseer. The lab seems to be a death trap with no way to escape – until you start finding hidden spaces where you're not "supposed" to go.

You can definitely see the influence on Parsons' viral YouTube series, which centers on a '90s company called The Complex, which is essentially a web of liminal spaces where people go missing after being pulled in.

"The general set construction of the Portal games has been in my brain for so long. I frequently have dreams where I’m just in the [game]," he continued. "By the second game, [the environment] is rotting and totally falling apart but it's vast. It feels like an eternal indoors that goes on in all directions that is just absurd in its scope. It’s very similar to Backrooms on that front. You can probably tell [those games are] special to me because I won’t stop rambling about them." You can check out the full interview below.

Directed by Parsons, the movie sees a therapist (Renate Reinsve) venture into an otherworldly dimension in search of her missing patient (Chiwetel Ejiofor). The cast includes Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell, and Avan Jogia. The screenplay was penned by Westworld writers Robert Patino and Will Soodik.

Backrooms hits theaters on May 29. For more scares, check out our list of upcoming horror movies.

Backrooms is already lining up to be a huge hit for A24 as the new horror movie directed by Kane Parsons tracks for a big box office opening. Based on the creepypasta internet theory about a space called The Backrooms and a YouTube web series, the new sci-fi horror stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve as they navigate an otherworldly dimension of never-ending office spaces.

This is director Parsons' debut film at the tender age of just 20 and as a result there have been some unfounded internet rumors circulating about his role. This is especially the case because the film is produced by several well-known filmmakers, including Insidious' James Wan, Deadpool and Wolverine's Shawn Levy, and Longlegs' Osgood Perkins.

One of the film's stars Mark Duplass has now responded to these, calling out a Twitter user who wrote: "Promising but we all know Kane Parsons absolutely didn’t direct this movie. But the needle is moving in the right direction."

He replied on the social media site, "Hmmm, with all due respect I don't remember seeing you on set. When I was there, Kane was 100% in control. More so than many directors 3x his age."

Speaking in an Instagram video, Duplass then elaborated more on this. "So a lot of takes going around right now about whether Kane Parsons at the tender age of 19 actually directed the Backrooms or whether it was more ghost directed by one of his more experienced producers," he said. "I was there, I suspect one of the reasons I was hired is because I mentor a lot of young filmmakers and they may have thought it would be good to have someone there who is sensitive to that and I was prepared to help out."

The Morning Show star then continued: "What happened was he didn't need any of us. He was intensely prepared. He spent the last five years of his life building out one of the most detailed mythologies I've ever been a part of, worked incredibly closely with his crew, particularly his DP and shot design, and was very sensitive and calm and smart dealing with actors. So for those of you who have all these thoughts, were you there?"

Ahead of the new movie, star Reinsve opened up to GamesRadar+ about the creepy set of the horror and actor Ejiofor shared what it was like working on something with such a viral following.

Backrooms is released on May 29. For more scares, here's our round up of all the upcoming horror movies to have on your radar.

After hitting screens on May 15, Curry Barker's Obsession managed to earn over $17 million across the US and $27 million worldwide during its opening weekend, which is a pretty big feat, seen as though its reported production budget falls under $1 million. This made Obsession the cheapest movie to top the box office in 17 years since the first Paranormal Activity in 2009, according to Forbes.

However, its second weekend went even better, as Obsession managed to pull in $22 million from US theaters ($28.2 million if you count Memorial Day on Monday, too), as per BoxOfficeMojo. This means that Obsession has so far generated over $58 million in the US and $74 million worldwide. That's over 74 times its production budget, making it one of the year’s most profitable releases, as found by Variety.

What makes Obsession's success more impressive is that it is writer and director Curry Barker's first feature film, as the YouTuber moves from short social projects to the big screen. The horror movie follows a young man who wishes that his crush would love him more than anything in the world. But he soon gets more than he bargained for when his wish invites sinister forces into his love life. The film stars Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette.

It seems as though original horror is taking over 2026, as the best-rated scary movies on Rotten Tomatoes this year all seem to bring something different to the table, including Sam Raimi's work trip gone wrong, Send Help, Damian McCarthy's witchy folk horror Hokum, and animal attack gore-fest Primate. Obsession tops the list, currently standing at a 95% score.

Luckily for horror fans, Barker isn't done with the genre yet. Next up for the young director is A24's Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. In an interview with GamesRadar+, Barker teased his interpretation, "I want to do something that's different, but not stray too far from what we know," adding, "There's some really messed-up stuff happening at that farm. It's untapped."

The director has also shown interest in revisiting Obsession. At an early screening of Obsession hosted by GamesRadar+ and Total Film, Barker teased a sequel and an anthology series based on other people's wishes. "What really is exciting to me [would be doing] an anthology, like a one-hour episode. Each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails," said Barker, "Maybe I'll direct the pilot with the same DP, and then you could invite other filmmakers to give their spin at it. That would be really cool."

Obsession is out now. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Spanning 25 short films, Kane Parsons' popular YouTube series Backrooms has amassed a whopping 197 million views since the first video dropped in 2022. When filming the live-action adaptation, though, star Chiwetel Ejiofor felt no pressure to live up to fans' expectations.

"I didn't have any thoughts, really, about the viral nature of it," the Marvel actor tells GamesRadar+, ahead of the horror film's release. "I just thought that it was a fascinating world to explore, [with] fascinating characters.

"As you were saying before, [it] had this deep psychological resonance. [It's] almost that thing that you feel that's on the tip of your tongue, you know? It's an emotion that you haven't quite articulated. [Director] Kane [Parsons] is sort of reaching around in this area that's a combination of memory, emotion, past, successes, failures, and all of the things that you carry with you. I just thought it was remarkable. It was sitting in that that I was really about when we were doing it, and Kane felt like he was completely in control of that."

Helmed by the now-20-year-old, Parsons' big-screen Backrooms follows Ejiofor's "complicated" Clark, who's been living in his furniture store in Santa Clara Valley since his wife kicked him out of their house. When the power in the shop starts flickering one night, Clark ventures down to the sub-level to check the circuit breaker and stumbles across a creepy, corner-filled dimension that seemingly goes on and on and on.

Much of Parsons' original series centered on random people accidentally "no-clipping" into said realm, as a mysterious organization called Async investigates its origins and purpose. There's a little of that in the movie, but for the most part, it explores Clark's psychological response to the titular space AKA The Complex – and how he involves his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), who's navigating her own traumatic past, in his manic search for answers.

"He was really taking care of all the details. I remember hearing him talk about the wires and the specificness of the lighting, the specific color of the wallpaper," Reinsve says of Parsons. "Everything was so thoroughly worked through. So it actually felt very led by [Kane], and [we] could relax and just focus on the emotional journey."

Backrooms releases on May 29. In the meantime, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

In Kane Parsons' upcoming horror movie Backrooms, it's not just the titular space – known to fans of his original viral shorts as 'The Complex' – you have to fear. Though it's definitely the thing that creeped Renate Reinsve out most during production.

"I was a little concerned that I would actually go a little bit insane in there, and that would be good for the character," the Oscar-nominated actor tells GamesRadar+ when we ask how the 30,000 square-foot set impacted her performance. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone that excited when I came on set. [Kane] was just, like, tripping, seeing what he had built on his computer, built around us – and it was truly a scary, eerie place to be. I wouldn't actually go alone anywhere."

In Backrooms, Reinsve plays Dr. Mary Kline, a therapist whose client list includes down-and-out furniture shop owner Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Since his wife left him, Clark has been sleeping at the store, and one evening, he stumbles across a yellow-wallpapered, seemingly endless dimension. All corners, uncanny-looking household goods, and not-quite-right signage, the only thing keeping him company in there is the buzzing of the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Well, that's what he thinks initially, anyway...

Finn Bennett and Lukita Maxwell round out the supporting cast.

"It's surprisingly existential on a lot of different levels. I think you can read it into a lot of things, the way culture and AI and technology is developing," continues Reinsve, cautiously trying to avoid slipping – or should we say, no-clipping? – into spoiler territory. "There's this extrapolated world, where you don't see an ending to it, that is scary. [But] it's also about the psychology of these characters and how things can get distorted but kind of look the same, and how you sometimes can only make sense of something irrational with something else that is irrational. It has a lot of layers."

Backrooms releases on May 29. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Director of the new Resident Evil movie Zach Cregger has opened up about the mixed reaction to the upcoming movie's first trailer. The movie tells a new story in the zombie universe, taking place parallel to the events of the second game. However, Weapons director Cregger has been clear he doesn't want to bring in game characters to his film.

Speaking in a new interview with Obsession director Curry Barker, Cregger opened up about his new adaptation, admitting that the response to its trailer has surprised him. "I feel great about it," he explained. "I really like the movie a lot. It's been a wild week since the teaser came out to see the divided reaction online."

He added: "There's so many people that clearly really want the video game, meaning the characters and story from the video game, and anything different than that is really not welcomed. I didn't realize how passionate some people were about that."

However, the director went on to say he thinks he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't stick to the games. "If I did that I don't think I'd be creatively fulfilled, and I don't even think they would enjoy it," he added. "If I just did the story of the games, I think the most diehard fans would be bummed. So I don't know what to do about it."

Speaking to us during our set visit last year, Cregger confirmed that it takes place "on the periphery" of the second game. "You know, where Raccoon City is having its big night, but tell just another story that could be happening in parallel to that."

Starring Austin Abrams as a courier on the worst shift of his life, Resident Evil takes place over the course of a night. Abrams' Bryan is tasked with delivering a medical package when he starts encountering some terrifying creatures.

Resident Evil arrives in theaters on September 18. Check out our guide to the other upcoming video game movies to add to your watchlist.

One month after the Longlegs sequel was announced, Nicolas Cage has finally broken his silence on the upcoming horror movie.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cage suggested that he wouldn't want anyone else playing the eccentric serial killer. "I guess you could say I have the pride of ownership of that character," said Cage. "That character is personal to me because I was influenced by my mom – not that my mom was crazy like that, she wasn't satanic, but I don't want someone else playing my mom, so if they're gonna do it, you're doing it with me."

Directed by Osgood Perkins, Longlegs follows Maika Monroe's troubled FBI Agent who is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case linked to the occult. However, as she gets closer to finding out who the elusive killer is, she begins to uncover personal connections to the case. Cage plays the dollmaker slash serial murderer known as Longlegs, who shook audiences with his striking look and rather odd behaviour.

The horror movie was a huge success and became an overnight social media sensation, striking an impressive 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. Perkins, who has since extended his filmography with Stephen King adaptation The Monkey, will return to write and direct Longlegs 2. Despite the first movie being released under Neon in 2024, Paramount is backing the sequel.

Plot details are under wraps, with Cage admitting that he doesn't "know what the story is." According to THR, the "mystery project" isn't being billed as a sequel, but another movie set in the same universe as the first Longlegs.

However, since Cage's killer died in the first movie, it is not clear how the star will return this time around. That being said, the first movie is set around curses and unexplained happenings, so it wouldn't be too surprising if Longlegs were to be brought back from the dead. The sequel could also explore his past and what kick-started his killing spree.

Longlegs 2 is set to hit screens on January 14, 2028. Next up for Cage is Amazon's Spider-Noir series, which will hit MGM+ and Prime Video on May 25 and May 27. For more, check out our guide to the best horror movies, and keep up with upcoming horror movies on the way.

Hideo Kojima has shared his verdict on Return to Silent Hill – and he says a lot with very few words.

"Watched 'Return to Silent Hill' on Amazon Prime," he wrote on Twitter. Ouch.

Kojima is known for his long, poetic reviews for movies he loves, but he never posts a negative review. When he posts shorter, sparser summaries, then, fans immediately assume he hates what he's just seen (by contrast, for example, Kojima's glowing review of Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk clocked in at 219 words).

And he wouldn't be the only one to have a less favorable view of Return to Silent Hill. The movie has a score of only 18% on Rotten Tomatoes, with our own Return to Silent Hill review giving the film 1.5 stars. Our reviewer criticized "a confusing plot, mediocre visual effects, and over-the-top acting" in director Christopher Gan's new take on the franchise.

Loosely based on the 2001 video game Silent Hill 2, Return to Silent Hill stars Jeremy Irvine as James Sunderland. The movie does what it says on the tin, as James returns to the town of Silent Hill after he receives a letter from a former lover. But, when he gets there, he finds that the town is now covered in fog and most of its inhabitants have left or died due to a mysterious disease.

Return to Silent Hill is now available to rent at home. For more, check out our guide to the best upcoming video game movies on the way in 2026 and beyond.

Markiplier's Iron Lung adaptation is getting an exclusive YouTube release very soon.

The film stars Markiplier, AKA Mark Fischbach, and it's also written and directed by him. It grossed over $50 million against a $4 million budget.

Markiplier himself announced at a Cannes Film Festival panel moderated by Deadline that Iron Lung will be available for purchase on YouTube on May 31, and it's an exclusive release. That's no surprise, considering Markiplier made his name as a YouTuber. "I'm pretty loyal to it," Markiplier said during the panel.

"It's releasing exclusively on YouTube Movies, because I figured you guys are already here anyway," Markiplier also explained in a YouTube video. "It made the most sense. They were the people that would talk to me, because I don't know how many other companies would've, or even give me a chance at doing something like this."

Iron Lung, adapted from the video game of the same name, stars Markiplier as a man trapped in a submarine, traversing through an ocean of blood.

Markiplier has previously indicated that the movie will be available for physical purchase. "We're still getting the wheels turning for you to get it at home," he said back in February. "The whole translation thing is going to take some doing… But as far as getting it ready and packaged up for a home release, DVD, Blu-ray, and having it be purchasable, that is all underway."

While you wait for Iron Lung, check out our guide to all the upcoming video game adaptations worth getting excited about.

Soon, we will finally see YouTuber Kane Parsons' popular Backrooms universe expand as the A24 horror movie hits the big screen. However, Parsons isn't forgetting how he got here, as the director promises that the feature will respect the web series' lore.

"For where I wanted to go, I have a lot of loyalties to my online fanbase and the people who have already invested in the story," said Parsons in the latest issue of SFX Magazine. "So it was non-negotiable that whatever happened had to be in strict continuity with that."

In 2022, Parsons kick-started his found footage YouTube series titled The Backrooms based on the creepypasta of the same name. Much like the original story posted on 4Chan in 2019, Parsons' series explores the concept of liminal spaces and what happens when people get lost in never-ending rooms that harbour sinister secrets.

The movie stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, who one day finds a door to a liminal world. But when he starts to explore the wide yellow rooms, he finds out that it's really easy to get lost in the Backrooms. However, just because the concept is heading to the big screen doesn't mean that Parsons is going to spell out what the Backrooms really are or where they came from, which those online have been trying to crack for years.

"It comes down to who is authorised to give answers. I have immense faith in audience members to piece things together contextually," he continues. "I don’t personally believe in true answers. You can describe just about anything in a way that feels like one – and people need that, they appreciate that, they look for it, and they obsess over it. "And, generally speaking, in the Backrooms there’s always been more of a focus on that obsession than on the answers themselves. Not to say there aren’t any."

Parsons is just the latest YouTuber to jump ship. In 2022, Michael Philippou and Danny Philippou seemed to kick off the trend with their movie Talk to Me, and since then, Curry Barker and Markiplier have followed suit. However, as explained by Ejiofor, working with a director who knows the source material inside out, as Parsons does with Backrooms, makes for a completely original filmmaking experience.

In an interview with GamesRadar+, Ejiofor said, "I don't know if I've ever worked with somebody who's built the world that they're exploring; who gets every nook and cranny. Who's built that world in such a granular way. From the ground up. It was really exciting to know you're working with somebody who's literally the only person on the planet who knows how to tell this story. It was pretty remarkable."

Backrooms releases on May 29, 2026. For more, check out our guide to all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.

With reviews so rave it's earned 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, nerve-shredding horror Obsession is currently the highest rated movie of the year so far. But director Curry Barker isn't relaxing just yet when it comes to its follow-up projects: Anything But Ghosts and a new Texas Chain Saw Massacre flick.

"Even now I'm stepping into bigger shoes than I'm used to. Every movie has kind of been like a step for me," the 26 year old, who made a name for himself making horror-comedy shorts on YouTube, tells GamesRadar+ at our exclusive screening and Q&A. "I really try not to think too much about the pressure of it all, because when I made The Chair or Warnings or whatever, if it sucked, I just probably wouldn't post it. Or I would post it and just be like, 'Well, I didn't get as many views as this one', right?

"But, now, everyone's gonna see this movie, and they're gonna say, 'What's Curry Barker's next movie? What's that like?' There's this new pressure of, like, 'It has to be good'. You really can't focus on that because the moment you do, you'll crush under the pressure. I just try to keep it creative and try to take as many risks as I did back then."

Starring Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston, Obsession combines sinister storylines from The Simpsons and Fairly Odd Parents, as it sees shy guy Bear get more than he bargained for when he wishes his crush liked him back. Megan Lawless and Cooper Tomlinson round out the supporting cast.

Elsewhere in our chat, Barker said he'd love to return to his roots and make an action comedy, though he's quick to insist that he doesn't feel boxed in by horror. "Even if I did an action comedy, it would have so many dark elements to it that people would probably call it a dark comedy," he laughs. "The horror genre is so vast; you could do a Western horror, sci-fi, you could do anything. I would just make it darker anyway."

Obsession releases in cinemas on May 15. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Curry Barker's long-hyped horror Obsession may have not released in theaters yet, but the YouTuber-turned-filmmaker already has big ideas on how to expand on the movie's mythology.

If you're here, you're presumably aware of what goes down in the movie: shy guy Bear (Michael Johnston) wishes on a retro-looking toy that his big-time crush Nikki (Inde Navarrette) loves him back. Turns out, the One Wish Willow isn't just a novelty trinket... and Bear quickly comes to regret the flippant, morally questionable request.

Early on in the flick, when Bear buys the One Wish Willow, the store clerk jokes that people who've been buying them have frequently come back to complain. "What? Because it doesn't work?" Bear laughs nervously, to which the assistant replies: "Or, because it did? Ruined their lives... made them wish they were dead..."

"I mean, it's kind of a plothole," chuckles Barker, when we ask him whether he ever pinned down the unseen wishes behind the scenes during GamesRadar+'s exclusive Q&A. "It's something I don't like to think about too much, because it totally doesn't make sense. If there's a world of people just making wishes, it really doesn't make any sense at all.

"If the One Wish Willow actually works, which it does in this lore, and people are just making wishes left and right, there would be some crazy… like, dragons would exist, right? There's none of that. The world is pretty normal from what we see in this movie. So it doesn't really make sense. I try not to [think about it], but no one ever says that. Now you said it..."

Barker goes on to say that he suggest that "every time someone makes a wish, they enter into an alternate reality." With that, no one experiences anyone else's wishes but their own. For spoiler-heavy reasons we won't go into here, though, he quickly shuts down his own theory: "Yeah, it's broken!"

"But no, obviously I have a couple more things that I'm excited about next, but I do see Obsession 2 maybe, or even… What really is exciting to me [would be doing] an anthology, like a one-hour episode. Each episode is a different wish that goes completely off the rails. Maybe I'll direct the pilot with the same DP, and then you could invite other filmmakers to give their spin at it. That would be really cool."

We agree, very Twilight Zone-esque. It'd be especially neat if he does a Ryan Murphy or Mike Flanagan, too, and brings back Johnston and Navarrette to play different characters in said premiere. "I would love to work with Curry [again]," Navarrette tells us in a separate interview. "As we grow and as he grows, I would like to see how things evolve and how he finds his pockets and rhythm. I think that would be super cool, because we already got the opportunity to see the beginning. It'd be super cool to work with him [again] down the line."

Obsession releases on May 15. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

"Every video we did was helping us build up to making a film," the Philippou brothers said in an interview with GamesRadar+ back in 2022. The duo was just about to burst onto the big screen with buzzy Aussie horror Talk to Me, having previously made a name for themselves via their stunt-heavy YouTube channel therackaracka – and in the four years since, a whole bunch of content creators have followed in their footsteps.

2026 has already seen big box office success for game vlogger Mark 'Markiplier' Fischbach's self-funded Iron Lung adaptation. Now May is set to mark the release of both Curry Barker's Obsession, which sparked a fierce bidding war between Focus Features and A24 at TIFF last year, and Kane Parsons' Backrooms. Far beyond that, there's Dylan Clark's Portrait of God movie, a sci-fi thriller from Together's Michael Shanks, and Sam Evenson's Mora, as well as a Talk to Me sequel to look forward to. The new wave of horror filmmaking talent is here, and they were raised on creepypasta.

"We all had the same cultural references," actor Inde Navarrette smiles, reminiscing about Obsession's high-energy crew. "Our version of horror was similar, and we all had a lot to prove. [Curry] knew what he wanted but, at the same time, he allowed us this freedom. Since he comes from a comedy background, he knows how much fun improv can be. It was just phenomenal working with somebody who let us breathe but also gave us structure. It was a really good balance."

Outside of their low-budget savvy (Barker wrote Obsession as a film he could still make with his buddies if the studio's greenlight fell through) and established fanbases, it's no wonder YouTubers are catching the eyes of Hollywood executives; it's clear they're tapping into what modern audiences want. The most widely accessed video streaming app in the US, the platform generated over $60 billion in revenue in 2025, largely through ads and new sign-ups to YouTube Premium. In comparison, Netflix made $45 billion while the global box office is estimated to have pulled in $33.5 billion, a 12% increase over the previous 12 months.

According to Hanna Kahlert, a senior analyst at Midia Research (via BBC), YouTube is "one of – if not the – most-used of all digital offerings, with over 70% of international consumers using it weekly, and over 50% using it daily." These vloggers are well-versed in high-volume, high-speed production. Combine that with the knowledge that Gen Z is the most active theatergoing generation, as pointed out by a 2026 Fandango survey, and that 91% of that group engages with YouTube, and the crossover potential is stronger than M3GAN vs. Chucky.

"It seems to be an attempt of people from one branch of the entertainment industry sort of capitalizing on another branch, without bringing them together quite as fully as they were in the comic book movie boom, says University of Bristol lecturer Dr. Pete Falconer. "But who knows, in a few years' time, maybe something similar will have happened."

Fresh frights

Huge financial gains don't seem to be the only appeal for studios, though – and it's not like it's guaranteed anyway. Talk to Me, which cost around $4.5 million to make, may have racked up $92 million worldwide, but other horror titles made by YouTubers haven't been so fiscally successful. Together bagged Neon $34.5m, despite being fronted by A-listers Dave Franco and Alison Brie, while Chris Stuckmann's Shelby Oaks made $8.1m. (For reference, big-budget sequel The Conjuring: Last Rites earned almost $500m).

A profit is still a profit, however, and horror is notably one of the most reliable, least expensive genres to produce films in. While Focus Features acquired distribution rights for $15m and spent a small fortune on its marketing, Obsession was brought to the big screen for just $1m. As it stands, it's tracking a $7-10m debut, with Backrooms projected to pull in double that from a $10m budget.

Numbers aside, horror titans Jason Blum, who executive produced Obsession, and James Wan and Osgood Perkins, who backed Backrooms, seem genuinely eager to boost the careers of those finding fresh ways to send shivers up people's spines. Starring Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston, the former movie centers shy guy Baron 'Bear' Bailey, who wishes that his crush Nikki "loved him more than anyone in the entire f***ing world"... and soon comes to regret it.

It's a genuinely nerve-shredding flick that flirts with themes of consent, identity loss and weaponised affection, and is packed full of eerie sound design and uncanny visuals.

"I'm always chasing uncomfortability," says Barker, who wrote, directed, and edited the film, when we ask how he honed his unique sense of scary. "To me, the modern jump scare is three or four moments where I can make the audience go, 'That was weird. I didn't like that. I don't want to see that.' I kind of discovered my voice through [short films] The Chair and Warnings, and even Milk & Serial – and my bread and butter is making you feel weird. That feeling of unease when something is just slightly off? That really excites me."

Hear from Backrooms' Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve on working with Kane Parsons:

Parsons' Backrooms, which is based on his viral series of shorts, is a similarly strange affair. It follows Chiwetel Ejiofor's furniture store owner Clark, who's struggling to make ends meet. One evening, self-destructive Clark stumbles on a yellow-wallpapered, eerily infinite space connected to the shop. Reinvigorated by the discovery, he embroils his therapist, Dr. Mary Kline (Renate Reinsve), in his frantic, and sometimes bloody, search to find out all he can about the titular dimension.

"You want a director to deeply understand the world they're exploring," Ejiofor notes. "[It] makes the difference in a project – and I don't know if I've ever worked with somebody who's built the world that they're exploring; who gets every nook and cranny. Who's built that world in such a granular way, you know? From the ground up. It was really exciting to know you're working with somebody who's literally the only person on the planet who knows how to tell this story. It was pretty remarkable."

Community vibes

It may seem surprising that many YouTubers, even the ones who started out in comedy, have graduated to cinematic horror movies, but it's worth remembering that a key corner of the platform was founded on spooking people. Videos that build to a jumpscare, otherwise known as 'screamers', were an early trend on the site before giving way to arguably the most popular type of upload: the reaction video.

Initially, there'd be reaction videos of people being subjected to screamers, which were played for fright-laced laughs. Later, subscribers would regularly tune in to see what their favorite internet personalities thought of the latest trailers or plot twists in Game of Thrones – and well, it's no secret that horror movies spark the most visceral of reactions. "My screen time has been exponential these past couple of weeks because I just love seeing people reacting to it," Fischbach told BBC Newsbeat, when asked what he made of the reception to his directorial debut, Iron Lung.

Horrors tend to be the films that people most want to watch collectively, too, so it's not that bizarre of a transition; YouTube is all about community, after all.

For Parsons and Barker, specifically, creative control doesn't come at the expense of collaboration. "We all gave 110%... you know, working really late. Curry had such a playful energy on set," says Johnston, who plays Obsession's Bear. "The film is so heavy but behind the scenes, everything was so chill and fun. It just gave us that extra boost that we needed to push ourselves."

As Navarrette points out, a lot of the movie's crew were made up of Barker's pals, all of whom were under 30 years old. It also co-stars Cooper Tomlinson, who launched YouTube channel That's A Bad Idea with Barker in 2018. "Cooper grounds me," says Barker, "because it was a little intimidating at first. I remember the first day, the set designers were putting wallpaper on the wall. They were putting picture frames up. Then I go downstairs to the camera department, and they're putting together all these monitors. And I'm just like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm in charge of this whole thing? This is crazy'. But then it's like, 'Oh, this is the guy I do stuff online with,' you know? Then it's so normal for me. You're just constantly reminding yourself you've been doing this for a while."

As A24's youngest-ever director at just 20 years old, Parsons is a little less experienced, so he was keen to soak up as many tips as he could during production. "[Kane] was so humble. At the end of every day, he would ask, 'What could I do better?'" Reinsve recalls. "Because it was his first time directing actors, and I heard him ask that to everyone on set. So he was a great leader in pulling us through his specific world and his vision, and also very [acknowledging] of being in the process of learning how to make a movie. It was very inspiring to watch."

Attention to retention

In our 2022 chat with Danny and Michael Philippou, the duo remembered sweating in the edit room when Talk to Me's runtime started creeping over the hour-and-a-half mark. "I think we do still have that YouTube mentality. The film only runs for 89 minutes... 94 minutes with credits, ha! We cut 20 minutes out." They got braver with their follow-up, Bring Her Back, which comes in at 104 minutes, but it's evident they're not in the business of crafting bladder testers like Midsommar or The Substance, which clock in at close to two-and-a-half hours each. Barker admits to feeling the same pressures and how content creation made him hyper aware of attention span drop-offs. When you're not competing against a plethora of thumbnails and someone's actually sat down with popcorn to watch your movie, though, he likes to believe you can let your movie "breathe" a little bit.

Almost in response to all the schlocky remakes – The Ring, House of Wax, and The Hills Have Eyes to name a few – that permeated the 2000s, the horror genre saw an uptick in more serious, slow-burn or socially satirical offerings in the 2010s. Think Get Out, The Witch, and Hereditary.

Perhaps it's less that YouTubers are reinventing horror, then, but rather reacquainting the genre with the delights of the fast-paced thrillride. "There is an appetite for shorter, punchier, less self-important movies, but I'd argue that that appetite has remained within the fandom fairly consistently," says University of Bristol lecturer Dr. Pete Falconer. Some horror fans, myself included, have been turned off by the kind of pretensions of elevation. There's stuff to be said for a lot of 'elevated' horror movies. But the term itself is kind of offensive to the genre, and the 90-minute genre movie remains, I think, the ideal."

Maybe there'll come a day when content creators aren't reliant on studios to fund their flicks. Fischbach, whose YouTube channel has over 38.6 million followers, coughed up the $3m Iron Lung cost to make personally – and despite its mixed reviews, it managed to make $51.2m.

"It is a win for YouTubers because it's like, the more that this happens, the more normalised it becomes," he proposed to Newsbeat in February.

For now, though, it seems like the majority of YouTubers-turned-horror filmmakers are opting for a more traditional pipeline. Parsons has teased Backrooms follow-ups, while Barker has just inked a first-look deal with Blumhouse and is writing a new Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie.

"What's interesting to me is that my journey doesn't feel that different [from] David Fincher or Steven Spielberg's," Barker tells GamesRadar+ with a grin. "The only difference is that I used YouTube as a platform that helped spread [my work], right? So what I think it really comes down to is YouTube [being] a really helpful tool to get your work out there. We're lucky enough to have that in our day and age." We'll like and subscribe to that sentiment.

Obsession releases on May 15, while Backrooms lands in theaters on May 29. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Curry Barker isn't a fan of conventional jumpscares. The director of upcoming horror Obsession, which is already being hailed as one of 2026's best movies, is so against them in fact that he's trying to invent whole new ways to send shivers up cinemagoers' spines.

"[This is] not something that people say, I'm just making this up, but I have kind of my own modern jump scare that I try to pursue – but it's not a jump scare at all. It's just, like, my version of a jump scare is," Barker tells GamesRadar+. "It's like, if you have two or three, even four, moments in your movie where you can make the audience go, 'Oh, I didn't like that. That was weird. That made me feel… To me, that's a modern jump scare."

Starring Michael Johnston, Megan Lawless, Inde Navarrette, and Barker's longtime collaborator Cooper Tomlinson, Obsession follows shy guy Baron 'Bear' Bailey, who wishes on a retro toy that his crush Nikki liked him back. Or, more accurately, "loved him more than anyone in the entire f***ing world"... and quickly comes to regret it.

Bear's dream quickly turns into a nightmare as Nikki's new unrelenting devotion not only threatens to ruin his life but those of everyone around him, too.

It's a genuinely nerve-shredding flick that's packed full of uncanny visuals and strange sounds – and feels like it has the potential to usher in a new kind of genre flick. If you've watched any of Barker and Tomlinson's short films over on their YouTube channel That's A Bad Idea, especially The Chair or Warnings, you'll already have an idea as to the kind of chills to expect.

"Jump scares can be kind of predictable, and sometimes unearned, you know?" Barker continues. "Someone opens a closet and a ball falls out but because the music is loud, it's supposed to be a jump scare? A modern audience kind of rolls their eyes [at that], right? I mean, I do. I can only speak for myself, but I'm a huge audience for horror, so I try to ask myself, 'How would I react?' If I don't think it would be good, then I wouldn't put it in my movie.

"You won't see it coming," he grins. "Because what's the point of a jump scare you can see coming, right? My job is to trick you, and that comes from comedy. Tricking someone is kind of how you make someone laugh. You make them think that something's going one way, and then if you surprise them, you'll usually get a laugh."

Obsession releases on May 15. While we wait, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Upcoming horror spin-off Insidious: Out of the Further is set to introduce a new villain to the long-running franchise, star Lin Shaye has revealed.

The demon, named Cyrus, will be brought to life by A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms actor Sam Spruell on the big screen – and unlike the dialogue-less Red Face Demon that terrorized Dalton and the rest of the Lambert family in earlier movies, he's "disarmingly funny" and "sort of like Dracula."

Fear not though, genre fans, frights are still in abundance. "[He] was truly scary," Shaye told Entertainment Weekly, as she recalled seeing Spruell in costume for the first time. "When I met him on the street, I had a visceral response, which was crazy. So it's a whole new catalog of people and ideas."

"There's this enfolding and this bigness. I did say to [Spruell] it feels like Shakespeare," she continued. "It feels very otherworldly, bigger than life, but very rooted in reality. I think that's a perfect combination for an antagonist who is gonna be really awful."

Directed by Come Play's Jacob Chase, Insidious: Out of the Further follows Gemma (The Haunting of Bly Manor's Amelia Eve), a single mother who discovers she can bring lost souls dwelling in the titular realm back into the real world. Her unusual and unwanted gift catches the attention of Cyrus, who uses it to blur the lines between dimensions.

Shaye reprises her role as medium-turned-spirit guide Elise Rainier in the movie, honoring the tradition of her appearing in every installment despite Elise being killed in the 2010 original. Island Austin, Laura Gordon, Brandon Perea, Maisie Richardson-Sellers (DC's Legends of Tomorrow) round out the supporting cast.

Insidious: Out of the Further releases on August 21. For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.

Legendary director James Cameron is eager to revisit and re-release Aliens in 3D.

"We are thinking about converting Aliens [to 3D], because I know now that the tools are so much better than they were for creating depth maps," Cameron told Letterboxd. "We're probably going to wind up converting Aliens, which will be a fun experience."

Speaking on the film's longevity, a sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, and Lance Henriksen, Cameron said, "That film seems to be evergreen. People still go back to it a lot. If people remember a movie that I did 38 years ago, I think I've already won [an] argument."

Cameron has been one of the leading figures in 3D cinema, most notably helping pioneer and popularize the format to a global audience with his work on 2009's Avatar and the subsequent sequels.

The director has also dipped into his back catalogue in the past for 3D re-releases of classics Titanic and Terminator 2, but there's no set timeline yet for when Aliens – an action-heavy masterpiece – might roar into cinemas.

Alien fans can rest easy that, even if we don't get an Aliens 3D release, there's plenty of xenomorphs still nestling in the shadows.

An Alien: Isolation sequel is in the works from developers Creative Assembly, with a new tease being released as recently as last week. Alien: Earth season 2 has been greenlit, while a sequel to Alien: Romulus is on the way, too.

For more, check out the new horror movies getting ready to scare you silly very soon.