Arrow in the Head’s Summer Horror Movie Preview looks ahead to releases like The Boogeyman, Haunted Mansion, and more
Spring has sprung, and that means it’s just about time for the summer movie season to begin. In fact, the summer movie season seems to start earlier and earlier every year – and with the recent releases of blockbusters Creed III and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, you might say summer is already underway as long as Hollywood is concerned. But we’re not looking at movies like that in this article. Instead, we have put together a little Summer Horror Movie Preview to remind you of the most notable horror movie releases coming down the line. Check it out!
THE BOOGEYMAN – June 2
It took the combined efforts of A Quiet Place, Malignant, and Black Swan screenwriters to craft The Boogeyman, which takes its title and basic concept from a short story by Stephen King, but looks quite different from the source material. That’s fine by King, who has said the movie has a “terrific screenplay”, despite how far it strays from his story. Directed by Rob Savage, the film stars Chris Messina, Sophie Thatcher, Marin Ireland, Vivien Lyra Blair, Madison Hu, and David Dastmalchian as people dealing with, yep, a supernatural boogeyman.
THE BLACKENING – June 16
Reaching theatres on Juneteeth weekend is this horror comedy about a group of friends who get together over Juneteenth weekend and find themselves being forced to play a game that has life-or-death consequences. Directed by Tim Story, The Blackening stars Dewayne Perkins and happens to have been inspired by a Perkins-scripted 3Peat comedy sketch that aired on Comedy Central in 2018. Also in the cast are Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Grace Byers, X Mayo, Melvin Gregg, Jermaine Fowler, Yvonne Orji, Jay Pharoah, and James Preston Rogers.
INSIDIOUS 5 – July 7
We assume Insidious 5 is sticking to its July 7th release date; at least, we haven’t heard otherwise yet. We actually haven’t heard anything about this movie since production wrapped several months ago. Here’s what we do know: after venturing off into prequel territory for a couple movies, the Insidious franchise continues with a “ten years later” follow-up to the first two films. Not only do Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Ty Simpkins, and Andrew Astor reprise their roles as the Lambert family, but Wilson also chose to make this movie his feature directorial debut. The returning Lamberts are joined in the cast by Sinclair Daniel, Peter Dager, and Hiam Abbass.
HAUNTED MANSION – July 28
Twenty years ago, Disney released a family-friendly horror comedy based on Haunted Mansion, the dark ride attraction than can be found at Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and Tokyo Disneyland. Now they’re releasing another movie based on the ride. This one was directed by Justin Simien and stars Rosario Dawson, Chase Dillon, Owen Wilson, Tiffany Haddish, LaKeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, Winona Ryder, Jared Leto, and Dan Levy. The set-up is very familiar: mother and son move into a strangely affordable mansion and discover the place is full of ghosts.
MEG 2: THE TRENCH – August 4
Like Insidious 5, this is a situation where we’re assuming the studio is sticking to the announced release date, even though we haven’t heard anything about Meg 2: The Trench in a long time. We do know the movie got made, it started filming in February of last year with director Ben Wheatley at the helm. Now we just need to see some marketing. The Meg star Jason Statham returns to fight another giant shark, and is joined in the cast by Cliff Curtis, Shuya Sophia Cai, Page Kennedy, Sienna Guillory, Skyler Samuels, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, and Wu Jing.
THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE DEMETER – August 11
Escaping development hell twenty years after the script was first written, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is the second Dracula movie Universal will be releasing this year (following Renfield in April). This one is based on a single chapter, the Captain’s Log, from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. André Øvredal directed the film, which is about Dracula wiping out the crew of a schooner as it takes him from Carpathia to London. Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, Jon Jon Briones, Stefan Kapicic, Nikolai Nikolaeff, and Javier Botet star.
THEY LISTEN – August 25
Director Chris Weitz’s horror film They Listen is a project we know next to nothing about. Filming began back in December with Blumhouse producing, but no plot details have been shared and all character details are being kept under wraps as well. We do know that the characters are being played by Katherine Waterston, John Cho, Lukita Maxwell, Riki Lindhome, and Havana Rose Liu… but we’ll have to wait a while longer before anyone will be willing to tell us what’s happening to them in this movie.
THE NUN 2 – September 8
The Conjuring Universe entry The Nun earned $365 million at the global box office on a budget of $22 million, so a sequel was only a matter of time. The only surprise is that it took four years to get The Nun 2 into production. But it’s heading our way later this year, and the director bringing the evil nun back to the screen is Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It). Bonnie Aarons reprises the role of the title character, Taissa Farmiga is back as Sister Irene, and they’re joined in the cast by Anna Popplewell, Katelyn Rose Downey, and Storm Reid.
So, what do you think of this Summer Horror Movie Preview? How many of these movies will you be watching? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
Originally published at https://www.joblo.com/summer-horror-movie-preview/
