THE WEEKLY SHIVER

FRESH CUTS 🩸

• The Conjuring: Last Rites just rewrote the record books. $194M worldwide in its opening weekend, making it the biggest horror debut of all time. It even knocked It (2017) off the throne. If you want in on the hype, it’s still in theaters everywhere, but it’ll hit Max later this fall.

• Guillermo del Toro nearly lost his private collection in the California wildfires, and now he’s auctioning off a chunk of it. Rare props, concept art, and horror history itself. If you’ve got the money (and the nerve), Sotheby’s has the blood on its hands.

• Jordan Peele’s next nightmare, HIM, drops September 19. Horror colliding with the world of football. Nobody’s tried this before, and knowing Peele, it’ll be less about touchdowns and more about what happens when your body stops feeling like your own. In theaters first, then headed to Peacock.

CREATOR SPOTLIGHT 👁️

Rebekah Kennedy: Scream Queen on the Rise

Kennedy headlines Traumatika, opening today. It’s being sold as “extremely violent” possession horror — the kind that crawls under your skin and doesn’t leave. She’s been carving out a place in indie and streaming horror, playing fragile characters that crack into something feral.

Next up, she’s circling two indie features and a rumored return to anthology horror — the kind you’ll stumble across on Shudder at 2 a.m.

DEEP DIVE 🔪

The Long Walk Finally Gets Its Teeth

Stephen King’s The Long Walk has been floating around as “unfilmable” for decades. Now it’s here — bleak, brutal, and uncomfortably relevant. Kids forced into a death march for entertainment. Sounds like our TikTok era already.

Key points:

• Written in 1966 under King’s “Richard Bachman” alias, it predicted reality-TV cruelty before reality TV existed.

• Adaptation takes a minimalist approach — the road, the march, the collapse.

• Lands on Netflix today, giving a whole new audience front-row seats to its slow-motion execution.

Why it matters: The Long Walk is horror stripped bare — no monsters, just people obeying rules they should have burned.

HORROR HISTORY 👻

15 Years of Paranormal Activity

It’s been 15 years since a $15,000 found-footage flick turned into a $193M juggernaut. Paranormal Activity reshaped horror, teaching studios you didn’t need gore — just static cameras, silence, and a door moving half an inch at 3 a.m.

Legacy impact:

• Proved micro-budget horror could dominate box offices.

• Cemented found footage as the 2010s horror language.

• Paved the way for Blumhouse’s empire.

Even now, you can feel its shadow in Skinamarink, Host, and every “is this footage real?” TikTok creep short. Stream the original on Paramount+.

MONSTER MANUAL 🧟

Possession Horror: The Body as Battlefield

It never dies — because nothing’s scarier than your body betraying you.

Evolution:

• 1970s: The Exorcist makes vomit and Latin terrifying.

• 2000s: Found footage (Paranormal Activity, REC) ties possession to surveillance culture.

• 2020s: Films like Talk to Me and now Traumatika merge demonic control with mental illness and trauma.

Possession’s real power? It’s the fear that we’re just passengers in our own skin.

WHAT TO WATCH 📺

NEW RELEASES

• The Long Walk: Stephen King’s dystopian death march finally brought to screen (Netflix)

• Traumatika: “Extremely violent” possession horror starring Rebekah Kennedy (Theaters only)

• Weapons: Julia Garner leads a fractured anthology of horror brutality (Max / VOD)

HIDDEN GEMS

• Good Boy: A haunted house story told from a dog’s perspective (Shudder / Limited Theatrical Oct 3)

• Moonflow by Bitter Karella: okay, not a film — but it feels cinematic, a cult horror trip waiting for an adaptation (Bookstores / Kindle)https://amzn.to/4nxsCis

• Vanpyrz on a boat: Sara and Max's new whirlwind romance is interrupted by a vampire outbreak on a medical research ship. Max will stop at nothing to get back the girl of his dreams, even if it means several heads will roll. https://thebstream.com/programs/vampyrz-on-a-boat-trailer

LEAVING SOON

• Hell House LLC: Found-footage favorite, disappearing from Shudder end of September. If you’ve been putting it off, now’s the time.

READING LIST 📚

NEW RELEASES

• Breathe In, Bleed Out (Brian McAuley): A wellness retreat peels back into blood ritual.

• Acquired Taste (Clay McLeod Chapman): Dark short fiction from one of horror’s most twisted voices.

CLASSIC REVISITED
House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski). Twenty-five years old this fall. Still the most disorienting haunted house ever written — and still whispering into the DNA of every analog horror video online.

GAME OVER 🎮

Silent Hill: Ascension’s Rot Spreads

Konami confirmed more content for Silent Hill: Ascension, the interactive horror experiment that blends streaming and player choice. Fans are split — some call it a gimmick, others say it’s the closest horror has come to possession through a screen. New “chapters” are rolling out across PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC this fall.

HORROR HAPPENINGS 🎭

• Fantastic Fest: Austin, TX | Sept 19–26 | Premieres include V/H/S/Halloween before it hits Shudder in October.

• Brooklyn Horror Film Festival: NYC | Oct 10–17 | Spotlighting indie body horror and international nightmares.

FINAL THOUGHT 💀

Horror’s not just thriving — it’s mutating. Franchises (Conjuring) break records while oddballs (Good Boy, Moonflow) slip under the skin. That’s the beauty of it: big or small, polished or grimy, horror never really lets us feel safe. It waits, quiet, until you realize your own reflection blinked first.