A Grab Bag of Horror News, 19 to 25 Jan 2025

A selection of things that caught our attention in the world of horror this week

Bite-Sized Horror News

Horror Book Bits

Congratulations to all the horror authors whose work made it onto the 2024 Bram Stoker Awards® preliminary ballot.
Authors Eric LaRocca, Clay McLeod Chapman, EK Sathue, and Dennis Mahoney will be discussing spooky things on 8 February 2025 at An Unlikely Story’s Horror Fiction Fest, in Plainville, Massachusetts. Tickets are just $5 and can also be redeemed to get $5 off any of these author’s books on the night.
Godzilla is versing Hulk and Spider-Man in two new comics releasing in April 2025.
Actor William Katt is narrating the new audiobook version of Jeff Rice’s Kolchack: The Night Stalke

Horror Movie Morsels

Another Steamboat Willie horror adaptation has arrived. I Heart Willie will be in US cinemas for 1 night only on 26 February 2025.
The Substance scored 5 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Nosferatu picked up 4 and Alien: Romulus got 1.
The next movie for Robert Eggers’ is a 13th century werewolf horror, Werwulf. Eggers has co-written the movie and will also direct.
A Resident Evil movie reboot is coming, with 4 studios bidding for the rights.
Someone in the audience vomited during the premiere of body horror movie The Ugly Stepsister at Sundance 2025.
The trailer for The Monkey has over 109 million views across all platforms.
Bloody Disgusting has an Advance Screening Reaction Trailer of people watching Screamboat.
Ellen Ripley is not returning to the Alien franchise.
A24 is working on a new “revisionist and darkly comedic take” on Edgar Allen Poe’s, The Masque of the Red Death.
A live-action movie adaptation of Webtoon Stagtown is in the works.
Musical horror comedy movie Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead is getting a sequel, Poultrygeist 2: The Henpire Strikes Back.

Horror TV Treats

Paul Wesley, who played a vampire in The Vampire Diaries, is producing a new comedy series about a vampire who wants to be an actor.

Horror Festival Fare

Check out the SXSW 32 movie and TV lineup playing in Austin, Texas, from 7 to 15 March 2025.
Creep I.E. Con is on from 31 January to 2 February 2025 in Ontario, California. A variety of panels includes a 40th anniversary Re-Animator reunion. The weekend also includes celebrity guests, vendors, and plenty of merchandise.

“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”
G.K. Chesterton

Writing Horror

Some places accepting submissions

Vampire Hunters: An Incomplete Record of Personal Accounts (Speculation Publications)
Pays: 2 cents per word for stories, $20 per piece of art
Looking for: Diary/journal entry type stories from vampire hunters throughout history
Submissions close: 25 February 2025

Parsec Short Story Contest
Prizes: $200 first, $100 second, $50 third, $50 youth story
Theme: Roots. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories that include all types of roots: family legends, genetic inheritance, plant-like aliens, root directories, symbiotic mycorrhizal systems, etc.
Submissions close: 31 March 2025

Upcoming submission calls

Women of the Weird West anthology (Brigids Gate Press)
Pays: 10 cents per word for stories, $50 per poem, $50 per drabble
Looking for: original Weird West stories generally set in what approximates the “Old West” location and timeframe (North America circa late 1800s) with a strong speculative element, such as horror, fantasy and/or sci-fi.
Submissions open 1 April, close 30 April 2025

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Trailer Horror

A taste of things to come.

Horror TV Trailers

Yellowjackets, Season 3, trailer 2. Survival horror. High school girl soccer players descend into savage clans after their plane crashes in the remote northern wilderness. Twenty-five years later, they discover that what began in the wild is far from over. Showtime, 14 Feb 2025

Horror Movie Trailers

Bloat. Found footage horror. After a near-death drowning accident, a young boy is possessed by a legendary demon from the depths of the lake. VOD, 7 Mar 2025

The Devil’s Teardrop. Folklore horror. While filming a documentary on illegal mining in a Peruvian forest, four friends are warned by locals about the ‘Supay’, an ancient being from Andean mythology capable of taking various forms who has claimed the area and eradicated the miners for bleeding the earth. Release date TBA

Drop. Psychological horror. A widowed mother’s first date in years takes a terrifying turn when she’s bombarded with anonymous threatening messages on her phone during their upscale dinner, leaving her questioning if her charming date is behind the harassment. Cinemas, 11 Apr 2025

Hell of a Summer. Summer camp slasher. A masked killer is lurking on the Camp Pineway campgrounds, brutally picking counselors off one by one. Cinema, 18 Apr 2025

A Knight’s War. Medieval horror. A knight braves a deadly realm to save the Chosen One’s soul. Facing witches, demons, and brutal foes, he discovers her return could ignite chaos and doom humanity. VOD, 11 Feb 2025

Movie Theatre Massacre. Slasher horror. A group of employees are working their last week at a movie theater that is going out of business when someone begins to murder people. VOD, 4 Feb 2025

Mr. Buzzkill. Slasher horror. Years ago, the small town of Silver Grove witnessed a massacre like no other and the legend of Mr. Buzzkill was born. Today, a group of friends are about to meet the ultimate party crasher – and slasher. Premieres at HorrorHound, Mar 2025

Opus. Psychological horror. A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan. Cinema, 14 Mar 2025

Womb. Psychological horror. Trapped in a remote hunting cabin, a pregnant, recovering addict battles a deranged hunter obsessed with taking her baby. Released date TBA

Horror Game Trailers

Dream Cage. Psychological horror. A 50-year-old insomniac struggles with sleep paralysis and must grapple with his fears realized before his eyes over five terrifying nights. Steam, 7 Feb 2025

Fear the Reaper. Multiplayer survival horror. Seven regular players, each with a unique role, try to survive against the eighth player who is the Reaper, a more powerful Ghostface Killer-like hunter. Release date TBA

“Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

A Selection of Horror Books Released this Week

5 horror books this week. Themes: Supernatural, cosmic, serial killer, and graphic novel horror

See: A Selection of Horror Books Released, 19 to 25 Jan 2025

“A good book is an event in my life.”
Stendhal, The Red and the Black

A Selection of Horror Movies Released this Week

10 horror movies this week. Themes: Supernatural, summer camp, survival, western, body, shark, and zombie apocalypse comedy horror

See: A Selection of Horror Movies Released, 19 to 25 Jan 2025

“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”
Emily Dickinson

What We Were Thinking About this Week

Big List of Western Horror Books
Swan Song by Robert McCammon (novel)
The Head in the Pantry by Rex Burrows (short story, Cosmic Horror Monthly)
USA Pen Press: The Ghostwriting Scam of a Thousand Websites (article, Writer Beware)

“He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”
John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

And Now For Something Completely Different

Stephen Gillan (Step Hen comics) on Instagram

Horror-Themed Shopping

See the FearSome Fiction shop for horror designs available on a wide variety of T-shirts, tanks, sweatshirts, and hoodies, as well as bags, notebooks, phone cases, pillows, duvets, blankets, bath mats, and more.