Horror films will always be tethered to the worlds of rock and metal, whether it’s via bands writing gore-soaked anthems to their favorite zombie flicks or movies featuring spike-covered punks and thrashers as the villains and/or victims. Now, in 2020, rock music and the horror movie seem to be having a resurgence in public appeal, with both cultural realms reinvigorated by mainstreams revealing themselves to be fans and classic icons returning to the stage (who knew My Chemical Romance and Michael Myers would be coming back within a year of one another?).

Seeing as 2020 is gearing up to be one of horror film’s most interesting in some time, we decided to pull together a list of horror movies that should be on every rock and metal fan’s radar. Here are 10 films that will scare the hell out of you this year…

Bliss

Young artist Dezzy is trying to fight through a creative block with late nights of hard partying. But after trying a strange new hallucinogenic drug, Dezzy finds that only one thing will calm her shake: human blood. In the vein (ha!) of George Romero’s Martin and Larry Fessenden’s Habit, Bliss takes old-school vampire legends to strange, edgy new places. Though initially released in 2019, the new horror movie by Joe Begos (The Mind’s Eye, Almost Human) will hit streaming service Shudder on January 30, thus entering the bloodstream of the horror movie world at large in 2020.

READ THIS: Horror punk – 19 songs you need to know



The Craft (2020)

For a generation of young goths, The Craft was an awesome empowerment story about four teenage witches learning — and failing — to control the forces they summoned. Now, Blumhouse, the studio behind the Paranormal Activity films and the latest Halloween movie, is working on a new version of The Craft, which some describe as a remake and others see as a sequel. Directed by actress, director, and writer Zoe Lister-Jones (Band-Aid, Life In Pieces), the film will explore the original’s topics of female strength and power through the lens of the modern feminist climate. “Zoe’s just really smart,” actress Michelle Monaghan said in a recent interview with Collider. “It’s spooky but also really timely and relevant, you know, in terms of what it’s about and how she reimagined it.”

The Invisible Man

Also produced by Blumhouse, 2020’s new incarnation of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi horror classic The Invisible Man looks to be one of the most terrifying movies of the year. This version is told from the point of view of Elisabeth Moss playing the estranged wife of the abusive, controlling, and eventually invisible scientist in question, whose fear of the man she thought she knew only intensifies when no-one can see him. A stark departure from the initial plans for the remake — Johnny Depp was scheduled for the titular role back before Tom Cruise’s terrible version of The Mummy scuttled Universal’s ‘Dark Universe’ concept — this film shows a terror that women know too well: having one’s abuse and turmoil go unseen, even when it’s standing right in front of everyone.

Death Rider In The House Of Vampires

Following the release of his “cult classic” horror film Verotika (read: so bad it was considered a triumph of schlock), Misfits frontman Glenn Danzig has wrapped up filming on his ‘vampire spaghetti western,’ currently titled Death Rider In The House Of Vampires. Starring Devon Sawa (Idle Hands, The Fanatic) and Danny Trejo (The Devil’s Rejects, Desperado), the film tells the story of a lone cowboy fighting, you guessed it, a coven of vampires. Given the title and tenor of the film, one can only assume that Glenn is embracing his outlandishly dark side — which is why we’re so excited.

Gretel & Hansel

With heavy doses of influence from Robert Eggers’s The Witch and Ari Aster’s Midsommar, this new telling of the classic fairytale looks about as creepy as it gets. Sophia Lillis (young Bev Marsh in the IT films) plays Gretel, an outcast trying to keep her little brother alive in a frightening forest. Sure enough, the siblings encounter a strange house with an old woman inside… only this one isn’t made of candy, and the woman is no cackling crone. In a whirl of stylized folk-psychedelia, Gretel must save her brother and escape her prison, or else end up dinner… or worse. The trailer alone will give you nightmares, and looks like an atmospheric doom album thrown on screen.



Color Out Of Space

Hot off of Panos Cosmatos’s insane 2018 heavy metal horror film Mandy, Nicholas Cage is giving himself over to another blast of neon weirdness, this time in Color Out Of Space. Adapted from the story by H.P. Lovecraft, and directed by Richard Stanley (whose version of The Island Of Dr. Moreau became such a disaster they made a documentary about it), the film tells the story of a meteorite landing on a family’s front lawn… and infecting the local water supply with an alien presence. This one looks to be super bizarre, so fans should make sure to go in with no expectations other than to be aghast by the end.

READ THIS: Thy horror cosmic - Celebrating metal’s obsession with H.P. Lovecraft



Morbius

With how well horror is performing at the box office, and due to the massive success of Venom, it was only a matter of time before Marvel took Spider-Man villain Morbius: The Living Vampire to the big screen. Jared Leto stars in this comic book adaptation as Michael Morbius, a scientist whose attempts to cure his rare blood disease instead infect him with a form of vampirism. Whether the Morbius of the films will be a supernatural vampire, and not the science vampire Marvel created in order to get past Comics Code rules against undead characters, remains to be seen.

VFW

Also from Joe Begos, whose film Bliss tops this list, VFW definitely leans more towards the throwback feel of recent underground hits like Wolfcop and Kung Fury. The movie stars William Sadler (Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, Die Hard 2, The Shawshank Redemption) as part of a group of veterans who are forced to defend their clubhouse against a horde of mutant punks looking for a bag of stolen drugs. The result is a Death Wish-style film in which insane, overwrought punk rockers go head to head with a crew of rickety old dudes ready for one last adventure. Colorful, bizarre, and full of gory death by insane weaponry, the movie looks like a thrash album made visual, and will probably become the most-watched item on Shudder in the coming year.

Halloween Kills

After the massive success of 2018’s Halloween reboot, there was no way that Blumhouse wasn’t going to continue this new era of the franchise. Not only does Halloween Kills see Jamie Lee Curtis returning as good girl-turned-badass Laurie Strode, it also sees the kids she babysat in the original film, Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace, coming back alongside her. Whether or not the new movies can continue with the same dignity and momentum that the 2018 film nailed remains to be seen, though it certainly helps that John Carpenter is ready to do the score. And let’s be honest: you’re going to go see a Michael Myers movie in October.

The new Evil Dead movie

When the TV show Ash Vs. The Evil Dead ended, star Bruce Campbell made it very clear that he has officially retired Ash Williams. But in a recent Reddit AMA, Evil Dead franchise founder Sam Raimi revealed that there’s another film in the works. “Bruce, Rob [Tapert] and I are working with a young filmmaker who is writing a new Evil Dead story that he will direct. As for me… I would love to direct a new Evil Dead movie… but I’d really like to do it with Bruce. And he says he’s retired the character. I hope not.” Fans can only hope that this film is wrapped and ready to go by the end of the year, as there is only so long a horror fanatic can go without a hit of the ol’ boomstick.

READ THIS: The 13 greatest horror movie samples in metal



Posted on January 7th 2020, 5:30pm