There’s something unholy about watching The Evil Dead in 2025 — not because of its gore (though the film still bleeds like a fresh wound), but because it reminds us how much horror has changed… and how much it owes to Sam Raimi’s twisted weekend in the woods.
Before franchises, before multiverses, before horror was a business plan — there was a group of friends in Tennessee, gallons of fake blood, and a Super 8 camera that barely held together. Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and producer Robert Tapert didn’t just make a film; they conjured one from sheer madness and duct tape. Every camera move, every shriek, every ash-smeared close-up feels like it was carved from the flesh of invention itself.
The Evil Dead isn’t just about possession — it’s about obsession. You can feel Raimi’s fever in every frame, the urge to push the medium past breaking point. Long before the word “indie” became shorthand for Sundance polish, this film was truly independent: reckless, raw, and glorious in its imperfection. Its claustrophobic energy turns the forest into a sentient entity, the cabin into a cursed organism. You can smell the wood rot, the sweat, the 16mm stock tearing in the projector.
What keeps it alive isn’t nostalgia — it’s rhythm. Raimi’s kinetic camera was punk cinema incarnate, years before digital tools democratised motion. That manic momentum, that willingness to risk everything for a shot, became the DNA of countless filmmakers who came after — from Peter Jackson’s Braindead to modern found-footage auteurs chasing the same fever dream.
Yet for all its brutality, there’s an innocence to The Evil Dead. It’s a film made by people who loved horror so much, they wanted to crawl inside it. Raimi’s signature blend of cruelty and comedy — later refined in Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness — starts here as an unfiltered scream. It’s clumsy, beautiful, and unforgettable.
In a cinematic age obsessed with IP and polish, The Evil Dead stands as a reminder that horror thrives on imperfection. It’s about spirit, not studio notes. It’s about throwing your friends into the mud and making something that feels like it might actually hurt you to watch.
The Prognosis:
Horror cinema has evolved in scale and sophistication, but few films still pulse with the same unhinged energy. Raimi’s debut is a masterclass in fearless filmmaking — a symphony of shrieks, sweat, and splintered wood that reminds us why terror should never feel safe.
Some monsters crawl back from the grave; others crawl from the sewer. With The Toxic Avenger (2025), writer-director Macon Blair has achieved something bordering on alchemy — turning the sludge of 1980s exploitation cinema into a molten reflection of our contemporary world. It’s less a remake than a resurrection: a grotesque, heartfelt eulogy for a time when bad taste was an act of rebellion.
The original 1984 Toxic Avenger was pure Troma chaos — an anarchic cocktail of slime, slapstick, and splatter. It was both anti-superhero and anti-society, gleefully dismembering the Reagan-era obsession with moral cleanliness. Blair’s revival doesn’t sanitise that legacy; it weaponises it. If the first film was a punk scream from the gutter, the new one is a howl echoing from the biohazard bin of late capitalism.
Peter Dinklage’s portrayal of Winston Gooze — a meek janitor transformed into a radioactive antihero — anchors the absurdity with tragic weight. Dinklage plays the part not for camp, but for catharsis: his deformity becomes the mirror of a system that feeds on deforming its own. Kevin Bacon’s villainous corporate baron, all Botox and bile, feels like a mutant descendant of every Troma CEO caricature — but here, he’s horrifyingly real.
Blair’s vision retains Troma’s vulgar spirit while finding unexpected poetry in the putrescence. His Toxic Avenger is as much about class rage and environmental collapse as it is about geysers of green goo. Every viscera-slick punch lands with the melancholy of a generation choking on the toxins it helped create. The violence is ludicrous, yes, but the laughter catches in the throat — this is camp reimagined as ecological despair.
What’s remarkable is how The Toxic Avenger feels simultaneously nostalgic and corrosively modern. Blair pays homage to Lloyd Kaufman’s transgressive humour, but refracts it through the aesthetics of contemporary superhero fatigue. His monster isn’t an accident of nuclear waste but of bureaucracy — a man destroyed by the very infrastructures meant to protect him. The film’s gore set-pieces are less about indulgence than excess as indictment: when the blood sprays, it sprays neon, irony, and sorrow.
There’s an undercurrent of empathy that never existed in the original. Blair, ever the humanist even amidst the carnage, treats his freaks with tenderness. The mutants, misfits, and malformed are no longer punchlines; they’re the ones inheriting the Earth — or what’s left of it. It’s as though the spirit of Troma grew up, got angry, and learned how to aim its sludge cannon.
The Prognosis:
In the landscape of 2025 horror, where clean franchises and polished dread dominate, The Toxic Avenger feels like a badly needed contamination. It reminds us that horror’s job isn’t always to terrify — sometimes, it’s to repulse, provoke, and unsettle in the service of truth. Blair’s remake drips with the very stuff most studios would rather wash away.
And that’s precisely why it matters. Because amid the algorithmic uniformity of modern genre filmmaking, The Toxic Avenger dares to be disgusting — and in doing so, it becomes pure again.
Across five films, Stephen Cognetti has quietly built one of the more curious mythologies in modern horror — a patchwork of haunted architecture, cursed tapes, and cyclical tragedy orbiting the ghostly epicentre of the Abaddon Hotel. Hell House LLC: Lineage seeks to close this circle, but in doing so, becomes trapped within it.
Forsaking the found-footage style that once defined the franchise, Cognetti’s latest entry opts for a more traditional, narrative form. It’s an understandable evolution — and yet one that inadvertently severs the series from its greatest source of dread: immediacy. Where Hell House LLC (2015) thrived on grainy footage and fractured perspective, Lineage feels distant, almost elegiac. Its horrors unfold with the politeness of recollection rather than the panic of experience.
At the centre is Vanessa Shepherd (Elizabeth Vermilyea), a woman tethered to Abaddon by blood and dream, her life dissolving beneath the weight of inherited trauma. Vermilyea brings a weary conviction to the role, grounding the supernatural within something painfully human — grief as a form of haunting. Around her, Cognetti threads familiar motifs: the flicker of dying light, the whisper of unseen presences, the inescapable architecture of fate. These moments remind us why the director’s early work resonated — his ability to make space itself feel sentient.
But Lineage, for all its ambition, buckles under the burden of its own mythology. The film drifts between closure and repetition, explaining away its mysteries rather than deepening them. The Abaddon myth — once an unknowable wound — becomes over-articulated, every secret illuminated until nothing remains in shadow. What was once terrifying for its ambiguity now feels embalmed by overexposure.
Cognetti’s direction still glimmers with craft — a movement in the periphery, a dissonant hum in the sound design — yet the sense of discovery is gone. Lineage isn’t so much a haunting as it is a requiem, mourning what the series once was: a small, scrappy miracle of lo-fi horror ingenuity.
The Prognosis:
Hell House LLC: Lineage closes the curtain with a sigh rather than a scream. It is a ghost story about the exhaustion of storytelling itself — beautiful in fragments, hollow in execution. The Abaddon Hotel may still echo, but the fear has long since checked out.
When Saw II was released in 2005, it had an impossible task: to follow the breakout success of James Wan’s original and prove that Saw wasn’t just another low-budget horror one-off, but the beginning of something larger, more sinister, and self-sustaining. Against all odds, Darren Lynn Bousman’s entry did exactly that — sharpening the film’s identity, expanding its mythology, and cementing the Jigsaw Killer as a horror icon for a new generation.
Picking up not long after the first film’s shocking conclusion, Saw II takes the bones of its predecessor — moral punishment, psychological manipulation, and fiendish traps — and amplifies them to grotesque, crowd-pleasing extremes. This time, the carnage unfolds within a locked house where eight strangers must endure a gauntlet of Jigsaw’s cruel “games.” Meanwhile, Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) squares off with the captured Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) in a battle of wits that quickly devolves into psychological warfare.
It’s here that the Saw mythology truly begins to click. Bell’s chilling, deliberate performance transforms Jigsaw from a mystery man into a complex, almost philosophical monster. His calm demeanor and twisted logic give the sequel an intellectual edge — a villain not motivated by chaos, but by ideology. Bousman understands this perfectly, letting Jigsaw’s moral justifications simmer beneath the bloodshed, giving the film a strange sense of purpose amid its brutality.
Stylistically, Bousman builds on Wan’s blueprint but injects it with a slicker, more frenzied energy. The editing — all whip cuts and strobing flashbacks — feels very much of its era, yet it works to maintain a sense of claustrophobia and panic. The traps are nastier, more elaborate, and more narratively integrated, a formula that would define the Saw sequels for years to come. The infamous needle pit alone remains one of horror’s most viscerally memorable moments.
Shawnee Smith’s return as Amanda adds emotional texture to the series, elevating what could have been mere torture porn into something approaching tragedy. Her character’s deepened arc — and the film’s final twist — deliver one of the franchise’s most satisfying payoffs, setting a gold standard for the Saw saga’s trademark rug-pulls.
While it lacks the lean precision and bleak originality of the first film, Saw II compensates with confidence and scope. Bousman proves himself adept at juggling the franchise’s moral ambiguity with its appetite for shock, crafting a sequel that’s both grimly entertaining and foundational to what Saw would become.
The Prognosis:
A deftly executed sequel that turned a clever horror film into a cultural phenomenon, Saw II expanded the lore and gave the Jigsaw Killer his voice. Darren Lynn Bousman’s confident direction, Tobin Bell’s chilling gravitas, and Shawnee Smith’s tortured return all combine to make this one of the series’ strongest entries. It’s the moment the Saw machine really started to hum — and slice.
From the sinewy shock of Barbarian, Zach Cregger already marked himself as a horror director to watch. With Weapons, he doesn’t just advance — he detonates expectations. This second feature is not merely a follow-up; it’s a recalibration. It announces that horror’s pulse today beats in the fissures beneath the suburban façade, in the worn edges of trust, in the vanishing of innocence — and in the uncomfortable realisation that the scariest weapon might already be inside us.
Disappearance as the new nightmare
The opening image of Weapons is deceptively simple: at exactly 2:17 a.m., seventeen third-graders leave their homes in a quiet Pennsylvania town and vanish. One child remains. One teacher becomes suspect. One grieving parent begins to hunt. On paper, it’s a disappearance-mystery. In execution, it becomes a sprawling meditation on what gets lost when the promise of security dissolves. Wikipedia+2High On Films+2
Here, Cregger takes the school as a metaphor for safety, the teacher as a figure of authority, the parent as wounded faith. But the vanishing children — they become more than victims; they are the unlost ghosts of generational damage. As one analyst proffers, the “weapons” of the title are not just guns or hooks, but systems: fear, manipulation, the warp of hope. High On Films+1
Style, structure and the fracture of form
What distinguishes Weapons is how formal mechanics mirror thematic unease. Cregger and cinematographer Larkin Seiple create a visual rhythm that is at once pristine and off-kilter: children running in long-takes, snow-white lawns under dawn light, the teacher caught in surveillance shots, the father hidden behind phone-screens. NME+1
The narrative fractures into multiple perspectives: the teacher (Julia Garner), the parent (Josh Brolin), the cop (Alden Ehrenreich), the one remaining child (Cary Christopher). The result is less a linear mystery and more a mosaic of dread. As one review put it: “It’s a puzzle you’re almost too afraid to solve”. Heaven of Horror+1
This is significant because horror today often demands instantaneous clarity; Weapons gives the opposite. It gives blur, ambiguity, the feeling that you’re running in corridors of your own assumptions. In its uncertainty lies its power.
Grief, legacy and the weight of genre
Cregger has admitted that the film was born of very personal trauma — the sudden death of a close friend. Polygon+1 This grief is not neatly transmuted into “the monster”, but folded into the film’s architecture: the teacher slipping into alcoholism, the parent’s rage, the town complicit in its own blindness.
In this sense, Weapons speaks to horror’s evolving ambition. No longer content with jump-scares or superficial transgression, it invites emotional excavation. The “missing children” are shadows of lost futures; the investigation is a metaphor for the long haul of trauma. That it arrives with mainstream box-office success (grossing in the hundreds of millions) means more: it signals that audiences are open to horror that doesn’t just frighten — it unsettles and lingers. Wikipedia
Why it matters for Halloweekend
As you craft your Halloweekend marathon, Weapons deserves a place not just as a scare-ritual but as a statement piece. It isn’t the easiest watch — the payoff is less about shock and more about reflection. But that makes it an essential counter-balance to more straightforward fright-fests.
It offers:
Depth – an exploration of communal wounds rather than a lone killer.
Style with substance – formal horror mechanics married to emotional weight.
Conversation starter – the kind of film viewers will talk about long after the credits.
This is the horror film that proves the genre still has places left to unearth. In between the classic chills and the fun cult throwbacks, Weapons is the grown-up scare that stays with you when the children have finally gone to bed.
The Prognosis:
Weapons may not offer the catharsis of a neatly tied-up thriller, but perhaps that’s the point. In a world where so much is unresolved, to leave with a question instead of an answer is the greater horror and the greater gift. Cregger invites us into a house of mirrors — only to show that the reflection we fear is our own. Watch it not just for the chills, but for the echo that follows.
When Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) first hit cinemas, it seemed like a sure thing. Eddie Murphy, still one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, teaming up with horror maestro Wes Craven — fresh off New Nightmare and on the cusp of Scream — for a supernatural horror-comedy that promised both chills and laughs. On paper, it sounded like a bloody good time. In execution, however, it became a messy, tone-deaf experiment caught between two creative egos and a studio unsure of what it wanted.
Murphy, who also co-wrote and co-produced the film, was eager to move beyond the wisecracking cop persona that had defined his career. He envisioned Vampire in Brooklyn as a darker, more serious take on horror — a stylish Gothic thriller with him at its centre as the suave, seductive vampire Maximilian. Paramount, however, saw something very different: a horror-comedy vehicle for its bankable star. What emerged was an uneasy hybrid that fails to find its footing, unsure whether to scare or to entertain.
Craven, ever the craftsman, tries valiantly to balance the clashing tones. There are flashes of his visual flair — an eerie opening sequence aboard a derelict ship, the crimson-lit interiors of Maximilian’s lair, and a few moments that recall his knack for the grotesque. Yet, it’s clear he’s wrestling with a script that doesn’t know what film it wants to be. The result is a workmanlike effort from a director capable of brilliance, dulled by interference and conflicting visions.
Murphy’s performance doesn’t help matters. As Maximilian, he is clearly struggling to play it straight in a film that refuses to let him. Worse still, his multiple side characters — including a shapeshifting preacher and a slick Italian hood — are cartoonish distractions that undercut any atmosphere the film manages to build. The humour feels forced, the scares are neutered, and the pacing plods.
The film’s saving grace is Angela Bassett, whose portrayal of Detective Rita Veder adds depth and gravitas where the script provides little. Bassett commands every frame with her trademark intensity, grounding the absurdity around her with genuine emotional weight. In a better film, her character’s arc — caught between duty and seduction — might have resonated as a modern Gothic tragedy. Here, it merely hints at what Vampire in Brooklyn could have been.
Wes Craven would rebound just a year later with Scream, proving his instincts were still razor-sharp when given the right material. Vampire in Brooklyn, by contrast, feels like a creative crossroads for all involved — a misfire born from too many competing intentions and not enough cohesion.
The Prognosis:
A muddled mix of horror and humour, Vampire in Brooklyn never finds its bite. Caught between Murphy’s comedic impulses and Craven’s horror pedigree, it flails when it should fly. Angela Bassett alone keeps the film from turning to dust, but even she can’t save this lifeless experiment from the shadows.
In the mid-’90s, the serial killer genre was everywhere — a time when Seven and The Silence of the Lambs defined the psychological thriller as both intelligent and unnerving. Nestled among these giants was Jon Amiel’s Copycat (1995), a sleek and surprisingly tense entry that continues to hold up thirty years later, largely thanks to its powerhouse performances and sharp sense of restraint.
Sigourney Weaver stars as Dr. Helen Hudson, an agoraphobic criminal psychologist who becomes the target of a copycat killer recreating the crimes of history’s most infamous murderers. When Detective M.J. Monahan (Holly Hunter) enlists Helen’s help, the two form an uneasy alliance that becomes the film’s emotional anchor — a pairing as compelling as it is understated. Hunter brings grit and quiet empathy, while Weaver’s portrayal of trauma is as convincing as anything she’s ever done. Together, they elevate what could have been a routine procedural into something hauntingly human.
Jon Amiel directs with a cold precision, avoiding sensationalism in favour of tension that feels methodical and real. There’s a creeping paranoia throughout — wide, sterile spaces become cages for Helen’s fears, and the film’s rhythm mirrors her anxiety, fluctuating between moments of stillness and sudden panic. Dermot Mulroney and Will Patton lend solid support, but it’s Harry Connick Jr. who leaves the deepest scar. As Daryll Lee Cullum, the unhinged killer from Helen’s past, Connick gives an unexpectedly chilling performance — all sleaze and psychopathy, laced with just enough charisma to make the skin crawl.
While Copycat never reached the cultural heights of its genre peers, it arguably deserves more recognition. It’s intelligent without being pretentious, disturbing without resorting to excess. Its greatest strength lies in its empathy — the way it treats trauma and obsession not as spectacle but as psychological weight.
Thirty years on, Copycat remains a taut and classy thriller that bridges the gap between mainstream suspense and thoughtful character study. In an era of imitators, Amiel’s film proved that imitation itself could be both the weapon and the wound.
The Prognosis:
A tight, mature thriller carried by two phenomenal leads and a chilling supporting turn from Harry Connick Jr. Copycat might have arrived in the shadow of greater hits, but time has revealed its precision and heart.
When Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 arrived in 2000, it was less a haunting continuation than a jarring detour — an ill-fated attempt to capitalise on the cultural storm whipped up by The Blair Witch Project just a year earlier. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Joe Berlinger, known for his work on true-crime investigations, the film promised a layered, self-aware dissection of horror fandom. Instead, it spiralled into a confused and heavy-handed meta-experiment that buried any sense of dread beneath studio interference and incoherent storytelling.
Set in a world where The Blair Witch Project is treated as a fictional film, Book of Shadows follows a group of obsessed fans who embark on a tour of Burkittsville’s cursed woods. After a night of drinking and ritualistic dabbling, they awaken with no memory of what occurred — only to discover that something unspeakable has followed them back to civilisation. It’s a concept that could have worked, especially given Berlinger’s fascination with media, hysteria, and the blurred line between truth and fiction. But what unfolds is a tonal nightmare: part supernatural horror, part psychological thriller, and part MTV-era montage stitched together under studio panic.
Gone is the quiet, creeping terror that made The Blair Witch Project revolutionary. In its place are slick edits, forced symbolism, and a heavy-metal soundtrack that feels more Hot Topic than haunting. The atmosphere never gels; Berlinger’s original vision — a slow-burn descent into mass paranoia — was hacked apart in post-production, leaving behind something neither smart nor scary.
Even the performances, led by Jeffrey Donovan and Kim Director, struggle against the chaos. There’s a glimmer of an idea buried in there — a commentary on obsession and media manipulation — but it’s drowned by overwrought exposition and desperate attempts to shock.
Twenty-five years later, Book of Shadows remains one of horror’s most perplexing sequels: too ambitious for its own good yet too compromised to deliver. Whatever spirit haunted the woods of Burkittsville was lost in translation — and Elly Kedward would indeed be spinning in her grave.
The Prognosis:
A muddled, misguided sequel that confuses provocation with profundity. Berlinger’s vision was strangled by studio meddling, leaving behind only echoes of what might have been.
As Halloween draws near, horror once again becomes a shared ritual — a season of remembrance for stories that refuse to stay dead. Surgeons of Horror continues its Halloweekend celebration by exploring two of the year’s biggest horror sequels — The Conjuring: Last Rites and I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) — both of which resurrect familiar spirits for a new generation. Each film proves that in horror, the past is never truly buried. It lingers, waiting to be summoned.
In horror, nothing stays buried for long. The genre thrives on return — the killer who rises again, the curse that refuses to fade, the franchise that won’t go quietly into the night. As Halloween approaches, two recent releases — The Conjuring: Last Rites and I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) — embody that familiar resurrection instinct. Both reach back into the collective unconscious of horror fandom, summoning their mythologies for one more invocation. The result? A cinematic séance with two very different spirits.
Where The Conjuring franchise has become synonymous with ecclesiastical dread and the poetics of possession, Last Rites marks its most reflective chapter yet. It is less about the shrieks in the dark than the quiet toll of faith under siege. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga return with a weary grace, embodying spiritual endurance as Ed and Lorraine Warren face a final reckoning. The film’s success — the highest-grossing in the series to date — suggests that audiences still crave the sacred amid the spectral. Horror, after all, has always been the Church of the uncertain.
Director Michael Chaves, whose previous entries divided fans, appears here at his most composed. The film leans on ritual and rhythm, crafting its horror from slow encroachment rather than surprise. Where early Conjuring installments sought to make the invisible visible — the demonic literalised through spectacle — Last Rites internalises the terror. It becomes about spiritual corrosion and the limits of belief. The scares are fewer, but the unease lingers longer, like a stain that refuses absolution.
THE CONJURING: LAST RITES: BUY OR RENT NOW
If The Conjuring franchise operates as a gothic cathedral — all solemnity, candlelight, and conviction — then I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is its neon-lit funhouse mirror. Twenty-eight years on from the original, the slasher that once defined late-’90s cool has been reborn for a postmodern audience weaned on legacy sequels and self-awareness. The returning players — older, guiltier, carrying the weight of past sins — are now haunted less by the killer with a hook than by the cultural echo of their own youth.
The new Summer trades the slick polish of the original for something darker and more psychologically knotted. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson injects a contemporary anxiety into the glossy nostalgia — an unease about memory, mythmaking, and the impossibility of escape in a world where the past is always trending. It’s a film about being haunted by an earlier version of yourself, both on-screen and off. If The Conjuring: Last Rites examines faith as a haunted institution, I Know What You Did Last Summer dissects nostalgia as a haunted emotion.
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER: BUY OR RENT NOW
Taken together, the two films form an accidental dialogue about horror’s relationship with repetition. The genre has always been cyclical — the curse that returns, the scream that echoes — but in 2025, the loop feels newly self-conscious. We no longer revisit the past merely to reanimate it; we revisit to interrogate it. What does it mean that we find comfort in repetition? That audiences continue to gather for another exorcism, another confession, another reckoning with sins once buried? Perhaps the modern horror franchise is the truest ghost story of all: one where the spectre is the story itself, forever refusing release.
It’s telling that both films found such success not by reinventing their formulas but by leaning into legacy. The Conjuring: Last Rites positions itself as a summation — the solemn benediction of a franchise that once defined a new wave of studio horror. I Know What You Did Last Summer, meanwhile, taps into the ironic nostalgia economy, where a wink to the camera can coexist with genuine bloodletting. Between them lies the spectrum of modern horror’s obsessions: belief, guilt, and the inability to let go.
As studios mine familiar IPs for one more scare, it’s easy to be cynical. Yet these films remind us that the franchise model, at its best, functions like folklore — stories retold, reshaped, and reinterpreted for each generation. Every return is an exorcism, every revival a confession. And as long as we keep watching, the ghosts — cinematic or otherwise — will keep coming back.
In this year’s crowded Halloween line-up, Last Rites and I Know What You Did Last Summer stand not as nostalgic curios, but as mirrors reflecting horror’s restless soul. The genre’s truest power has never been novelty, but endurance. Horror doesn’t die — it reincarnates, forever compelled to haunt itself.
Saul Muerte
This article is part of Surgeons of Horror’s 2025 Halloweekend coverage — a series of features and retrospectives exploring horror’s many faces, from sacred hauntings to nostalgic revivals. Stay tuned for upcoming deep dives into Weapons, The Toxic Avenger, Freakier Friday, The Evil Dead, and HIM — because Halloween isn’t just a night. It’s a ritual.
Halloween rarely stays confined to a single night. The ritual of the Halloweekend—a three-day communion of darkness, nostalgia, and popcorn—has become an annual rite for horror fans. It’s a time when the barriers between the cinema and the living room dissolve, and the flicker of the television once again becomes our campfire glow. This year, as October 31st falls on a Friday, it’s the perfect excuse to transform your home into a theatre of the uncanny.
From franchise resurrections and genre experiments to reanimated cult icons and family-friendly frights, this year’s home entertainment line-up offers a spectrum of screams for every taste. Whether you crave dread-laden mythology, subversive satire, or a gentle chill that still lets the kids sleep at night, here’s your guide to building a Halloweekend Movie Marathon worthy of the season.
The Franchises Return: Evil Never Dies, It Just Streams Differently
Sequels are the lifeblood of the horror ecosystem, and 2024–2025 has delivered them with unholy enthusiasm. The Conjuring: Last Rites has become the highest-grossing entry in the franchise—proof that James Wan’s universe of haunted faith still has audiences under its spell. The film closes the Ed and Lorraine Warren saga with ritualistic grandeur, blending theological terror with operatic spectacle. It’s horror as folklore, deeply Catholic yet oddly romantic, and best watched with the lights off and the volume indecently high.
Hot on its spectral heels comes I Know What You Did Last Summer, the long-awaited sequel that trades the 1990s teen slasher sheen for something darker and more mournful. Age has crept into its survivors, and the sins of the past feel heavier, more human. Together, these two films form the perfect one-two punch for a Friday night of ghosts and guilt—two hauntings from opposite ends of the horror spectrum.
If you still have stamina after that, revisit The Black Phone. Scott Derrickson’s original remains a masterclass in slow-burn suspense, and Ethan Hawke’s masked performance feels destined to be rediscovered each Halloween.
Weapons of Fear: The New Face of Prestige Horror
For those who prefer their terror thoughtful, Weaponsstands as this year’s dark horse—a meticulously constructed nightmare that unfolds with existential precision. Director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to Barbarian dissects masculinity and violence through a lens of cosmic dread, proving once again that the most terrifying monsters are often human. It’s not just horror; it’s arthouse apocalypse.
And just beyond the horizon lurks HIM—available to pre-order now and set to release in early November. Word from festival circuits teases something Lovecraftian, something deeply unsettling. If Weapons is about human violence, HIM promises to explore the unfathomable violence of the universe itself. For the serious horror aesthete, these two titles belong at the heart of your Halloweekend viewing.
Horror Meets Humour: The Body Horrific
Sometimes the only way to survive the darkness is to laugh through the blood. Together, starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, does exactly that—fusing body horror with relationship disintegration in a way that’s both hilarious and grotesque. It’s Cronenberg by way of couple’s therapy, proof that the boundaries between love and revulsion remain dangerously thin.
Then there’s The Toxic Avenger (2025), the riotous revival of Troma’s most beloved mutant. Director Macon Blair reimagines the cult classic for a new age of environmental anxiety and pop-cultural absurdity. With Peter Dinklage and Kevin Bacon leading the chaos, it’s a delirious love letter to 1980s splatter cinema—messy, magnificent, and defiantly unclean. Expect a full-length exploration of this one soon on Surgeons of Horror, because The Toxic Avenger deserves more than a mere mention; it’s a mutation worth celebrating.
Family Frights: When the Night Belongs to Everyone
For those who prefer their ghosts gentle and their monsters misunderstood, Halloween can still be a shared experience. Freakier Friday offers body-swap comedy with a spectral twist—perfect for a family-friendly movie night that nods toward the macabre without the nightmares. Meanwhile, Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride remains a perennial classic, a gothic romance that continues to delight and haunt with its delicate stop-motion melancholy.
Pair these two for Sunday evening—an epilogue of warmth after the chaos, proof that the spirit of Halloween can be cosy, not just cold.
Classics Reawakened: Blood and Memory
No Halloween is complete without returning to the foundations. The Evil Dead (1981), Sam Raimi’s kinetic debut, remains one of the most visceral horror experiences ever committed to film. Its mixture of slapstick terror and relentless energy forged the DNA of modern horror filmmaking. Forty years later, its influence is still bleeding into the genre’s veins. Watching it today is like summoning the raw essence of what makes horror eternal: audacity, invention, and the thrill of transgression.
Curtain Call: The Comfort of Fear
Halloween on screen has evolved beyond simple scares—it’s a shared ritual, a space for collective catharsis. The modern horror fan might binge on supernatural sequels, dissect social allegories, or seek comfort in gothic animation. Yet the result is the same: we gather in the dark to feel alive.
This Halloweekend, the ghosts aren’t outside—they’re waiting in your queue. So dim the lights, queue up your terror of choice, and let the screen glow like a candle in the night.
Surgeons of Horror 