Yeon Sang-ho is back in a building. The zombies can think now. And critics are mostly very happy about it.
The Film
Colony opened in US theaters August 28 via Well Go USA, running 122 minutes. Directed and co-written by Yeon Sang-ho alongside Choi Gyu-seok (Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula), the film follows Professor Se-jeong (Jun Ji-hyun/Gianna Jun), a biotechnology professor thrust into a nightmare when a rapidly mutating virus is unleashed during a biotech conference in a gleaming Seoul high-rise. Authorities immediately seal the building. Se-jeong and a small group of survivors must fight their way through horrific transformations and escalating danger, with no clear exit and no help coming.
The full cast includes Koo Kyo-hwan (Peninsula, Escape from Mogadishu), Ji Chang-wook, Kim Shin-rok, Shin Hyun-been, and Go Soo. The film carries a ₩17 billion budget (~$12 million) and grossed $24.9 million worldwide during its South Korean theatrical run. It had its world premiere in the Midnight Screenings section of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on May 15, before opening in South Korea on May 21 and the US on August 28.
The Big Twist: Zombies That Learn
Colony introduces a genuinely fresh idea to the zombie genre. The infected in the film can communicate, mimicking voices, reading messages, even typing on computers. They share information across a collective, meaning each new victim makes the entire horde more dangerous. Professional contemporary dancers, actors, and stunt performers were brought together to design the creatures’ movements, with choreography inspired by popping and breakdancing, creating a distinctly unnatural physical quality that sets Colony’s infected apart from anything seen in the genre before.
What Critics Are Saying
The consensus is warm but calibrated. Rotten Tomatoes summarises it well, Colony “lacks the vivid characterisations that distinguish director Yeon Sang-ho’s best work but mostly reaffirms his mastery over zombie mayhem.” The Consensus also notes it “layers modern anxieties about technology onto a nightmarish outbreak.”
RogerEbert.com frames the central question neatly, “What if the zombies could talk to each other? What if they could learn?”, calling the premise ripe for acrobatic carnage in Sang-ho’s hands, even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Train to Busan.
Flickering Myth is the most enthusiastic voice in the room, calling it “equally tense as it is disgusting, a blast, a reminder that the zombie genre can still be inventive,” and praising Jun Ji-hyun as excellent in the lead. Third Coast Review credits Sang-ho’s grasp of building geography, “we go from the sub-basement to the rooftop, which makes the stakes much clearer and the danger more palpable”, adding that he’s “simply one of the best” at managing dozens of characters, hundreds of extras, and more blood, slime, and vomit than any one biohazard container can hold.
Screen Daily offers the most measured take, calling it “fun, forgettable zombie horror”, enjoyable in the moment, unlikely to linger.
This is not Train to Busan. Critics are unanimous on that. But it is a well-crafted, inventive, and genuinely disgusting zombie film with a fresh central concept, and Jun Ji-hyun’s return to the big screen after 11 years is reason alone to see it. Colony is in theaters now.
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Which horror movie truly deserves to be called the scariest of all time? We rank five terrifying films that continue to disturb audiences long after the credits roll.
Patricia Highsmith gave the world Tom Ripley, Carol, and some of the most unsettling psychological fiction ever written. Now Helen Mirren is giving the world Patricia Highsmith, and the trailer just arrived.
A Talent for Murder opens in theaters via Bleecker Street on October 23, 2026, and plays at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. Director Anton Corbijn (The American, Control) directs from a screenplay by Joanna Murray-Smith.
A callow young literary agent from New York travels to Switzerland with one mission: persuade the reclusive Patricia Highsmith to write one final installment of the Ripley anthology. What unfolds is a “smouldering chamber thriller”, TIFF’s own description, that imagines a strange, charged confrontation between the two. Highsmith’s novels were the source material for Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Putting her on screen as a character rather than a subject is a genuinely bold idea, and Mirren is the only person in Hollywood who could pull it off.
The Cast
Alden Ehrenreich (Weapons, Solo: A Star Wars Story) plays the literary agent. Olivia Cooke (House of the Dragon, Ready Player One) also stars. The film is rated R for sexual content and violence, which, for a film about the woman who wrote some of the 20th century’s most psychologically disturbing fiction, feels exactly right.
Bleecker Street CEO Kent Sanderson described the project as “a captivating ode to not only Highsmith’s lively spirit, but her riveting work itself.”
A Talent for Murder opens in theaters October 23, 2026.
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Three weeks out from its September 18 release, Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil just received its official MPAA rating, and it makes a piece of franchise history in the process.
The Rating
No previous live-action Resident Evil movie had “bloody violence” listed among its R-rating reasons. The MPA has confirmed Resident Evil is officially rated R, with the rating stemming from “strong bloody violence, gore and language throughout” its reported 94-minute runtime. This continues the franchise’s 24-year streak of every live-action entry earning an R, but the specific language is new territory.
For context, the 2002 original was rated R for “strong sci-fi/horror violence, language, and brief sexuality/nudity.” Resident Evil: Apocalypse received its R rating for “strong violence/gore and language,” while Extinction cited “strong horror violence, some nudity and language.” Bloody violence, specifically, is a Cregger addition.
Why That Makes Sense
Cregger has said the movie leans on strange T-virus creatures and mutants, with only a small number of proper zombie sequences, putting it closer to the games’ bestiary than to the shambling crowds most people picture when they hear Resident Evil. He has also described the structure as essentially one long survival gauntlet, with the action starting very early and moving from set piece to set piece in a rhythm pulled from the games. A movie built that way spreads its gore across the runtime rather than saving it for a showcase. The rating is entirely consistent with that vision.
The Film
The film follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier tasked with delivering a package to Raccoon City General Hospital who finds himself trapped in a nonstop fight for survival as one horrifying night spirals into chaos around him. Rather than following the ensemble structure of past Resident Evil films, this version narrows its focus almost entirely onto Bryan’s singular perspective, a shift that lines up with reports describing green herbs, typewriters, infected dogs, and even first-person sequences woven throughout the film as direct nods to the games.
Joining Abrams in Resident Evil’s cast are Zach Cherry (Severance), Paul Walter Hauser (Black Bird), and Kali Reis (True Detective: Night Country). Cregger directs and co-wrote the screenplay with Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapters 3 & 4).
The Production
The production brings together Constantin Film, Vertigo Entertainment, and PlayStation Productions, with Columbia Pictures handling North American distribution through Sony Pictures Releasing. Robert Kulzer, Roy Lee, Miri Yoon, Carter Swan, and Asad Qizilbash produce alongside Cregger himself.
Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX on September 18, 2026.
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Vampire horror has never been limited to castles, capes, and legends, and the best films prove how creatures terrify us. Some turn darkness into a hunting ground, others mix bloodsucking with comedy, romance, or historical drama, while a few return to the raw folklore that started it all.
From isolated towns and doomed voyages to relationships and supernatural invasions, these eight vampire horror movies offer reasons to keep the lights on, making them ideal choices for your next horror marathon.
1. 30 Days of Night (2007)
If the idea of an entire town trapped in darkness sounds terrifying, 30 Days of Night takes that nightmare and removes almost every escape route.
Set in Barrow, Alaska, the story follows Sheriff Eben Oleson as an annual thirty-day polar night leaves the isolated community vulnerable to a ruthless clan of vampires. With daylight gone and outside help impossible, the survivors are forced into hiding while the creatures hunt through the streets, turning familiar spaces into death traps.
The film stands out for making its vampires feel feral and relentless rather than seductive, while the freezing setting adds another layer of danger, making every attempt to survive feel brutally temporary.
2. Abigail (2024)
Abigail starts with a kidnapping that seems almost routine until the criminals discover their twelve-year-old hostage is anything but helpless. After a group of would-be kidnappers takes the daughter of a powerful underworld figure and locks her inside an isolated mansion, their carefully planned ransom job turns into a fight for survival when Abigail reveals her true nature.
What makes the film especially appealing is how quickly it shifts from tense hostage thriller to gleefully bloody vampire horror, giving its ensemble plenty of room for paranoia, betrayal, and dark humor. Alisha Weir anchors the chaos as Abigail, making this a lively choice when you want vampire horror with a mischievous edge.
3. The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
Few vampire stories offer a setting as naturally claustrophobic as a ship trapped in the middle of the ocean, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter turns one of Dracula’s most famous passages into a maritime nightmare.
The crew believes they are carrying ordinary cargo, but strange events soon reveal that something vicious is moving among them, leaving the sailors isolated in the middle of the sea with nowhere safe to run. Because the story unfolds aboard a confined vessel, every dark corner, creaking corridor, and empty stretch of ocean becomes part of the threat, while the dwindling crew steadily loses its ability to fight back. For viewers who prefer atmospheric vampire horror, this is a particularly grim voyage.
4. Renfield (2023)
Renfield offers a very different route into vampire horror by asking what happens when Dracula’s loyal servant finally decides he has had enough. Nicholas Hoult plays the long-suffering Renfield, who has spent centuries procuring victims and obeying the demands of Nicolas Cage’s extravagantly monstrous Dracula.
When Renfield begins trying to build a life outside his master’s control, the story mixes supernatural violence with broad comedy and a surprisingly recognizable look at an abusive relationship. The result is less interested in traditional gothic dread than in turning Dracula into an outrageous, scene-stealing menace, making the film an easy pick for viewers who want their vampire horror fast, funny, and unapologetically bloody.
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5. Sinners (2025)
Set in 1932 Mississippi, Sinners centers on twin brothers Smoke and Stack as they return home and try to build a new future by opening a juke joint, only for their plans to collide with a supernatural threat. The film uses vampires as the engine for a much larger story about music, community, identity, and cultural exploitation, giving its horror a strong historical foundation.
Michael B. Jordan leads the film in a dual role, while Ryan Coogler combines period drama, gangster storytelling, blues, and visceral vampire violence into something different from tradition. For anyone looking beyond traditional vampire mythology, Sinners offers a rich horror experience for viewers with plenty of bite.
6. Byzantium (2012)
Some of the most popular vampire stories are built around ancient castles and sprawling mythology, while others find their power in intimate relationships and the struggle to survive. That is where Byzantium makes its mark, focusing on Clara and Eleanor, two mysterious women who have spent centuries surviving on human blood while running from the past.
After taking refuge at a rundown seaside resort, the pair begin building a new life, but their secrets soon attract dangerous attention and threaten to expose everything they hide. The film is particularly compelling because it treats vampirism as something bound up with family, survival, isolation, and the relationship between mother and daughter. Directed by the man who gave us “Interview With The Vampire,” Neil Jordan, Byzantium is a strong choice for when you want vampire horror with drama and emotional weight.
7. Nosferatu (2024)
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu returns to one of cinema’s foundational vampire stories and gives it a gothic, deeply unsettling atmosphere. The film follows Thomas Hutter as his journey to meet the mysterious Count Orlok draws him into a nightmare that reaches far beyond an ordinary business trip, while Ellen Hutter becomes increasingly connected to the supernatural danger surrounding them.
Rather than presenting Orlok as a charming immortal, the film leans into the vampire’s grotesque, corpse-like presence and the sense of disease and death that surrounds him. With Bill Skarsgård inhabiting the iconic monster, Nosferatu is an ideal choice for lovers of the original movie and viewers who want their vampire horror dark, eerie, and rooted in old folklore.
8. Let the Right One In (2008)
A quiet friendship between two lonely children becomes something far more unsettling in Let the Right One In. The movie introduces Oskar, a lonely twelve-year-old boy living in a Stockholm suburb who finds an unexpected friend in Eli, a mysterious girl who moves in next door. Their connection grows as Oskar deals with bullying and Eli struggles with the demands of being a vampire, creating a relationship that is tender, unsettling, and increasingly dangerous.
Set against a cold Swedish winter, the film uses its quiet surroundings to make the violence feel even more shocking, while its central bond gives the story an emotional depth that goes beyond conventional vampire horror. For something haunting and intimate rather than purely aggressive, this Swedish original remains an excellent choice here.
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Summer of 1986. A hot Australian night. A college acceptance worth celebrating. And a jealous cousin who decides a cruel prank is a good idea. What follows is a night of bloodshed, revenge, and very bad decisions.
Penny Lane Is Dead premieres on Shudder this Friday, August 28. Writer-director Mia’Kate Russell makes her feature debut with the project, an Ozploitation-inspired horror throwback with punk rock energy and a mean streak to match.
The setup is deceptively simple. Seventeen-year-old Penny Lane celebrates her college acceptance with her closest girlfriends. Her troubled cousin spikes their cupcakes. A thoughtless prank spirals into something far darker, and by dawn, nothing will be the same. The film is lean, visceral, and propulsive in exactly the way a great siege horror should be.
The cast includes Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn, Tahlee Fereday, Alexandra Jensen (Talk to Me), Bailey Spalding, Steve Le Marquand (Vertical Limit), Fletcher Humphrys (Wolf Creek), and Ben O’Toole (Hacksaw Ridge).
Russell said of the release- “It’s exhilarating that my feature directorial debut is being released by Shudder, one of the most fearless and bold distributors out there. The Shudder team has such a keen understanding of genre films, and are the perfect partners to unleash this powerful film with audiences.”
The film world-premiered at Fantasia International Film Festival in July, where it earned strong notices. Bloody Disgusting’s own Fantasia review called it “visceral, propulsive, and a strong debut in terms of style and energy.”
Penny Lane Is Dead streams exclusively on Shudder from August 28, 2026.
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The horror movie Pinocchio Unstrung is making its transition to home viewing, becoming available on digital platforms in the United States on Tuesday, August 25, 2026.
Release Background
The film originally hit cinemas on July 24, 2026, pulling in a modest worldwide box office total of $815,655. Despite the quiet box office performance, it earned positive notices for its reliance on practical effects and old-fashioned animatronics rather than CGI.
Plot and Setting
Set inside an elite London prep school, the story follows an obsessive character named Geppetto and a sinister Cricket. Pinocchio embarks on a violent campaign to carve himself into a real boy piece by piece, similar to his brother.
Cast and Crew
Richard Brake stars as Geppetto, while horror legend Robert Englund provides the voice of Cricket. The title character is voiced by Jude Evan Lloyd and brought to life through a practical animatronic designed by Todd Masters. The wider cast features Cameron Bell, Jessica Balmer, Jack Art Gray, and Peter De Souza-Feighoney. Rhys Frake-Waterfield wrote and directed the film, producing it alongside Scott Jeffrey under Jagged Edge Productions.
Franchise Context
Pinocchio Unstrung is the fifth installment within the “Twisted Childhood Universe”,frequently called the “Poohniverse”, following previous entries like Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, its sequel, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, and Bambi: The Reckoning. Additional projects, including Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 3 and the crossover event Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble, are currently in development.
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The Alien franchise has spent decades expanding its mythology, but Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus brings the series back to something much simpler: a group of desperate young people trapped in a place where almost everything wants them dead. Set between Alien and Aliens, the film follows a crew of scavengers who enter an abandoned Weyland-Yutani space station hoping to recover equipment that could help them escape their bleak lives. Instead, they uncover the remains of a biological nightmare that turns their escape plan into a fight for survival.
The station, divided between the Romulus and Remus modules, becomes the perfect setting for the film’s horror. Its dark corridors, abandoned laboratories, failing systems, and industrial machinery create a constant feeling of confinement. Álvarez understands that the Alien creature is most effective when it is not fully visible, allowing shadows, movement, and silence to do much of the work before the horror finally reveals itself.
The film also returns to one of the franchise’s most enduring ideas: corporate ambition without ethical limits. Weyland-Yutani’s obsession with exploiting the Xenomorph remains at the center of the story, while synthetic technology and experimental compounds introduce new consequences for those willing to treat living organisms as scientific resources. The result is a survival story that combines creature horror, body horror, and the familiar anxiety of being trapped somewhere humanity was never meant to control.
What Works ✅
Tactile, Atmospheric Horror: Álvarez gives Alien: Romulus a physical quality that makes the station feel genuinely lived-in and dangerous. The creature effects, practical sets, facehuggers, machinery, and grimy industrial environments create a world that feels connected to the original films without simply recreating them.
The attention to physical detail also makes the horror more immediate. Every corridor feels functional, every piece of equipment feels capable of malfunctioning, and every dark corner seems capable of hiding something.
Strong Suspense Sequences: The film is at its best when it slows down and lets the situation become increasingly impossible. One standout sequence involving zero gravity and Xenomorph blood turns the creature’s most famous biological feature into part of the environment itself, forcing the characters to think carefully about every movement.
These sequences demonstrate Álvarez’s understanding of suspense. The danger does not always come from the creature attacking directly. Sometimes it comes from the characters realizing that the environment around them has become just as deadly.
Rain and Andy’s Relationship: Cailee Spaeny gives Rain a grounded performance that keeps the story emotionally connected to the characters rather than allowing the film to become a simple creature feature. Her relationship with Andy, played by David Jonsson, provides the film with its strongest emotional thread.
Andy is particularly interesting because his role as a synthetic creates uncertainty around his loyalty and decision-making. Jonsson brings enough vulnerability and complexity to the character that his evolving relationship with Rain becomes almost as compelling as the Xenomorph threat.
Where It Falls Short ❌
Too Much Franchise Nostalgia: Alien: Romulus sometimes struggles to separate homage from repetition. The film contains numerous references to earlier entries, some of which feel naturally integrated while others seem designed primarily to remind longtime fans of what came before.
This becomes particularly distracting when the film revisits familiar dialogue, imagery, and franchise mythology instead of trusting its own material. The result is a movie that occasionally feels caught between being a new Alien story and a collection of memories from the old ones.
Supporting Characters Feel Familiar: Outside Rain and Andy, several members of the crew are not given enough personality to make their eventual fates particularly affecting. Their roles often resemble familiar horror archetypes, leaving the central pair to carry most of the emotional weight.
That does not make the ensemble ineffective, but it does make parts of the film feel predictable. Once the group enters the station, it becomes fairly easy to anticipate who will survive and who will not.
⚖️ Final Verdict: 3.5/5
Alien: Romulus is a tense and atmospheric return to the survival horror foundations of the franchise. Fede Álvarez delivers impressive creature work, inventive suspense sequences, and a strong central relationship between Rain and Andy, even if the film occasionally relies too heavily on nostalgia.
Its supporting characters could have used more depth, and some of its callbacks feel more distracting than meaningful. Still, the combination of practical effects, claustrophobic atmosphere, and relentless creature horror makes Alien: Romulus an effective reminder of why the Xenomorph remains one of cinema’s most enduring nightmares.
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The Further bled into the real world this weekend. Here’s how it performed.
The Numbers
Insidious: Out of the Further opened to $25.3 million domestically from 3,303 North American locations, making it the fifth time in six films that the Insidious franchise has opened above $20 million. It earned $10.6 million on Friday, $8.6 million on Saturday, and $6 million on Sunday.
It’s the franchise’s lowest domestic debut since Insidious: Chapter 3 opened with $22.7 million in 2015, and comes in well below Insidious: The Red Door’s $33 million opening in 2023, which previously held the franchise benchmark. The film also collected $3 million in Thursday previews, below the $5 million The Red Door earned in previews ahead of its strong debut.
Sony projections heading into the weekend had it around $23 million, so the final $25.3 million slightly overperformed studio expectations.
Competitors
Spider-Man: Brand New Day held off the Deadites for a fourth consecutive weekend at number one, pulling $39 million, a genuinely rare four-peat. The total domestic box office for the weekend hit $126.5 million, a remarkable 61% ahead of the same frame last year.
Jason Statham’s Mutiny opened in fourth place with a $7.4 million debut from 2,703 screens, below Statham’s recent comparable titles like 2024’s The Beekeeper ($16.5 million) but above 2026’s Shelter ($5.2 million).
The Franchise Context
Here’s how the six Insidious films stack up at domestic opening weekends-
The original 2011 Insidious opened to $13.2 million and legged out to $54 million. Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013) set the franchise high watermark with a $40 million debut and $83 million domestic total. Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) opened to $22.6 million. The Last Key (2018) opened to $29.5 million. The Red Door (2023) opened to $33 million. Out of the Further at $25.3 million sits fourth in the franchise’s opening weekend rankings.
The Silver Lining
The film carries an $18 million production budget, meaning it needs very little to turn a profit. The horror genre remains one of the most consistent box office draws, and the Insidious franchise’s cumulative worldwide total now exceeds $740 million across six films. It also holds a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, notably better than The Red Door’s 40%. Better reviews, modest budget, and a franchise audience that consistently shows up, Out of the Further will be fine.
What’s Next
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