6. “Alien: Covenant”
What You Should Know: James Cameron‘s sequel might have brought the franchise into a more action-movie mode, but whenever its father, Ridley Scott, has approached an “Alien” film, he’s turned in a horror movie, and there’s no suggestion that’s going to change with his third trip into this universe. The wildly variant quality of his previous two forays (the immense “Alien” and the immensely disappointing “Prometheus“) mean it’s difficult to predict exactly where on the axis this will lie, but it’s heartening that this sequel to “Prometheus” retains that film’s most impressive asset while also showcasing a new cast: Michael Fassbender‘s android David is found years later on the uncharted planet by a new crew (including Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Carmen Ejogo, Demián Bichir, and um, Danny McBride) who will duly be terrorized by the evolving beasties, and very possibly by David himself. Scott is hopefully back on form following the hugely enjoyable “The Martian,” and the last time he teamed with screenwriter John Logan, they made “Gladiator,” so while we were burned by our anticipation of “Prometheus,” we do think the omens are good here.
Release Date: May 19th
5. “It Comes At Night”
What You Should Know: Trey Edward Shults‘s striking debut “Krisha” was not a horror movie per se, but in his portrayal of the unraveling of one already unbalanced estranged family member during a Thanksgiving celebration, Shults showed immense facility for frightening the living bejaysus out of us through heightened filmmaking. So it’s appropriate that his follow-up should wholeheartedly embrace the genre, and he’s assembled a terrific cast too, with Joel Edgerton and Riley Keough headlining and Carmen Ejogo and Christopher Abbott in support. It’s the slightly generic-sounding story of a father who must protect his wife and son from a malevolent force on their doorstep, but with a logline that sketchy, there’s plenty of room for interpretation (even shades of Edgerton’s own terrific “The Gift“), and with superdistribs A24 on board as producers (it’s the first of a two-picture deal they signed with Shults), we’re expecting big things.
Release Date: None yet, but with this pedigree, you should look out for a festival debut prior to its theatrical release.
4. “Thelma”
What You Need To Know: There’s always been a certain ghostliness about the films of Joachim Trier — astonishing debut “Reprise,” mournful follow-up “Oslo, August 31st,” and especially the haunting, deeply underrated “Louder Than Bombs” — but he’s never taken on the supernatural in a literal way. That changes this year with “Thelma,” which sees the director return to his native Norway after making “Louder Than Bombs” in the U.S. The film stars Eili Harboe (“The Wave”) as a young woman who falls in love, only to learn that she has terrifying powers. Things remain under wraps beyond that, and we suspect that this will hit other genres beyond horror, and be a quite different take on the horror film even when it does touch on it — it could end up closer to “Personal Shopper” than, say, “The Orphanage.” But either way, we’re thrilled to see what Trier turns out.
Release Date: Hopefully Trier will be back at Cannes, where “Louder Than Bombs” premiered.
3. “Raw”
What You Should Know: The most striking genre debut of last year finally gets a March release stateside 10 months or so after it premiered in a Cannes sidebar and built a growing base of um, ravenous fans on the festival circuit thereafter. Julia Ducournau‘s deliciously grisly horror, about a strictly vegetarian young woman who gets a taste for the most forbidden of fleshes when she joins her older sister at vet school and undergoes a series of hazing rituals, suggests the immediate arrival of a fully formed filmmaker: Not only is the premise spry, simple and strikingly original, but the execution is imaginative and assured, from the extremely convincing gore; to the surreal, bacchanalian party scenes; to the offbeat, unnerving way she shoots and edits even the most seemingly banal of conversations. Starring a tremendous Garance Marillier as the sullen protagonist overtaken by irresistible urges she doesn’t understand, the film is an instant midnight classic and we can’t wait to see Ducournau’s star go supernova as a result.
Release Date: March 10th
2. “Suspiria”
What You Need To Know: With last year’s crowd-pleasing thriller “A Bigger Splash” being followed by the ecstatic reviews from Sundance of his love story “Call Me By Your Name,” a film that already looks likely to play into the award race, Luca Guadagnino is on something of a roll. And he’s celebrating by taking a real left turn, remaking one of the most beloved horrors of all time, Dario Argento’s “Suspiria.” Originally planned to be done by David Gordon Green, this went into production late last year with “A Bigger Splash” star Dakota Johnson in the lead, Guadagnino’s muse Tilda Swinton also returning, and Chloë Grace Moretz, Mia Goth and the original film’s lead Jessica Harper also involved. We’re anti-remakes in general, and particularly anti-remakes of “Suspiria,” but if anyone had to do this, Guadagnino seems like potentially the perfect choice, and is sure to make something that flatters and assaults the senses in the same way that Argento did way back when.
Release Date: Amazon are releasing, but haven’t announced a date. Expect a Venice premiere, though.
1. “Get Out”
What You Should Know: Jordan Peele‘s racially charged horror screened as the surprise movie in Sundance to almost universally positive reviews, but to be honest, it would have taken an awful lot of intense negativity to put the slightest dent in our enthusiasm, which was born the second we watched the terrific first trailer, and has only ramped up since. Starring “Sicario“‘s Daniel Kaluuya and “Girls” alum Alison Williams, and featuring apparently standout turns from the ever-outstanding Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, the story follows a young couple — he’s black and she’s white — who go to visit her parents in their house in the country, where they discover that a lot of previous visitors have gone missing, all of them black. Comedy and horror are closely related genres — both rely on surprise and an element of psychology, and Peele’s bona fides in terms of racially alert comedy were proven on the much missed “Key and Peele.” The consensus is that he’s brought both the scares and the smarts to his directorial debut, which might just be the most politically provocative horror of the year.
Release Date: February 24th
There’s a few movies here that we excluded simply because we weren’t quite sure if they qualified fully as horror movies. They include Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” follow-up “Annihiliation” starring Natalie Portman, Guillermo del Toro’s merman romance “The Shape Of Water,” Darren Aronofsky’s reportedly thriller-ish “Mother,” Cate Shortland’s Sundance hit “Berlin Syndrome,” and Jake Gyllenhaal/Ryan Reynolds astronaut pic “Life.”
Among some of the ones that didn’t make the cut are Olivier Assayas’ “Personal Shopper” (not 100% horror, but also Jess wasn’t a massive fan at Cannes); sequel spin-off “Annabelle 2,” which could see a “Ouijia: Origin Of Evil”-style improvement given that it’s from the director of “Lights Out;” Sundance outback horror “Killing Ground;” midnight movie “The Void;” Tom Cruise facing off against “The Mummy;” and this year’s second Stephen King Netflix movie, the Thomas Jane-starring “1922.”
There’s also Greg McLean’s corporate horror “The Belko Experiment” (which Kevin was cool on at TIFF), franchise reboot “Saw: Legacy,” long-delayed Matt Smith/Natalie Dormer zombie horror “Patient Zero,” the fourth “Insidious” movie, and a few pics from the Blumhouse factory: “Delirium,” starring Topher Grace and directed by “The Hills Have Eyes” helmer Dennis Iliadis, the “Battle Royale”-ish “Prey,” the “Groundhog Day”-style “Half To Death,” and the Akiva Goldsman-directed “Stephanie.” Hardcore genre fans might be curious about “Death House,” billed as “The Expendables” of horror, but the trailer looks pretty ropey to us.
Anything else you think we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments.