The 2024 Horror year has been hit or miss. A new wave of horror original thought-provoking films attempted to usher in a more high brow reach to the genre. Late Night With The Devil and In A Violent Nature were both refreshing and slightly underwhelming. Abigal and The First Omen brought in good box office numbers while The Strangers: Chapter 1 was utterly abysmal. Stephen Graham-Jones put out a stunning conclusion to his Indian Lake Trilogy novels with The Angel of Indian Lake, and the King recently returned with the terrifying anthology, You Like It Darker. While the opening six months of the year put out a lot of forgettable entries, the second half of 2024 is fear filled with promise. Terror titans, West, Shyamalan, Alvarez, Malerman, and Chizmar will all be hanging dark stars for fans to gaze upon in the second half of the year.
June 25: Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
The bestselling author of BIRDBOX returns with a haunting read in the style of the Amityville Horror. Young Bela strikes up a relationship with “Other Mommy.” Bela’s family must stay strong before they are torn apart.
July 5: MaXXXine from Ti West
Maxine Minx, after fleeing a real-life horror shoot, arrives in Los Angeles to finally pursue her dream of becoming a star. Once she lands the role of a lifetime, Maxine’s dark past creeps in from the shadows along with a very real killer that is targeting actresses in the city of angels.
Ti West wraps up his terrific trilogy with MaXXXine. The film promises a roller-coaster ride through the seedy productions of 1980’s horror films, while exemplifying the nightmare that young talent goes through to capture their dreams.
July 16: I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER by Stephen Graham-Jones
Tolly Driver is a good kid that has been left on the outside by a desolate Texas town. Tolly tells the tale of how he becomes an outright killer.
Graham-Jones has become the slasher king and will no doubt deliver another great slash and hack saga. But will this sub-genre become repetitive or does the master sinister storyteller deliver another masterpiece of the macabre?
August 2: TRAP from M. Night Shyamalan
A father is taking his daughter to a world-famous pop singer’s concert. When dad notices the more than usual security forces cloaking the arena, he becomes suspicious. Come to find out, the concert is actually a trap to catch a serial killer. A serial killer who is now in on the game.
Mr. Shyamalan has torn the Horror Nation in two. While some adore his films, others find them bland. One thing is for sure, plenty of twists and turns will flutter through his new film.
August 16: ALIEN: ROMULUS from Fede Alvarez
A group of young space travelers receives a distress call. Upon boarding an abandoned vessel, the crew finds a deadly alien species that is out for blood.
The plot of Romulus has been kept tightly under wraps, but horror fans are super stoked to have Alvarez behind the lens. The Evil Dead and Don’t Breathe director will surely bring more of a horror element to the highly anticipated sequel, which is set between Alien and Aliens.
August 20: CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD 3: THE CHURCH OF FRENDO by Adam Cesare
After the attacks at her university, Quinn is convinced that the only way to find peace in her life is to completely destroy the cult of Frendo once and for all. This trip will bring the brave final girl directly into the belly of the beast in a final confrontation with the Frendo clan.
The original Clown in a Cornfield set the bar for YA horror novels. While entertaining, the sequel read as a forced entry that attempted to capitalize on the success of the original. Hopefully, Cesare returns to a more intimate plot as he wraps up this terror trilogy.
October 11: TERRIFIER 3 from Damien Leone
Art the clown, horror’s newest icon, is back this October! Art returns during the Christmas season to slash and slay his way through the holidays.
Terrifier has become an indie sensation, pulling in seven figure numbers off of low six figure budgets. Little is known about this third entry. Only that the film will be set during the Christmas season and several characters from the first two films will return to face off against the psycho clown. Leone went overboard in the second film but promises to return to a quicker paced atmospheric slasher that stole the dark hearts of the horror world in the original.
October 18: SMILE 2 from Parker Finn
Only recently has news broken on this sequel. The only information currently available is that actor Kyle Gallner will return to reprise his role of “Joel” from the original film, along with writer/director Parker Finn.
October 22: MEMORIALS by Richard Chizmar
Three college students take a journey into the deep regions of the Appalachians to film a documentary for their American Studies class. The deeper they venture into the foreboding forest, the more they start to realize that their subject matter is something more sinister than simple roadside memorials.
Richard Chizmar has owned the last two spooky seasons with his terrific Boogeyman books. Memorials is a new tale that will take the reader into the dark heart of Appalachia in the summer of 1983. Readers can expect a dark descriptive narrative that they have become quickly accustomed to by the bestselling scribe.
December 25: NOSFERATU from Robert Eggers
In 19th century Germany, a young woman becomes obsessed with an ancient Transylvania vampire. Their love brings forth an unspeakable horror that threatens to haunt the world for eternity.
Horror director darling Robert Eggers brings his incredible eye to this reimagining of the immortal classic. With stars, Willem Dafoe, Bill Skarsgard, and Lily-Rose Depp starring, expectations will be high for the birth of a new modern classic.
(All release dates are subject to change. Keep up to date at Horror-Nation.com and on all of our socials for date changes)