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This week opened with Keanu Reeves in talks for a James Wan serial killer movie and closed with the genre losing the captain of the Nostromo. In between, Martin Scorsese’s gothic horror film picked up a pop star, A24 finally showed us what Jeremy Saulnier has been hiding inside a haunted attraction and FX decided American Horror Story isn’t finished.
If anything ties it together, it’s age. Hell House LLC and Green Room both turn ten this month, and both are heading back to theaters. Dragula is a decade old too. I’m not going to build a grand theory out of that. It just means a lot of this week’s news came from people deciding which old things deserve another night out. Here’s what mattered.
Tom Skerritt Gave Alien Its Most Human Death
Tom Skerritt died Wednesday, October 21, at 93. His family said he died of natural causes. Horror audiences know him first as Captain Dallas in Ridley Scott’s Alien. He also played the small-town sheriff in David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone and turned up in Poltergeist III. Our obituary covers the rest of a career that ran from M*A*S*H to Top Gun to an Emmy for Picket Fences.
Dallas works because Skerritt never plays him like a hero. He’s a tired man running a hauling job, and he makes the calls a real middle manager would make, including a few bad ones. When he climbs into the air ducts with a flamethrower, you believe he’s doing it because it’s his job and nobody else will. That ordinariness is why his death hits so hard, and it’s what clears the floor for Ripley. So much of Alien’s terror depends on believing these people clock in for a living. Nobody on that ship sold it better.
Shudder Keeps the Whole Haunted House Together
Shudder signed a three-year deal with Terror Films Releasing that makes it the exclusive streaming home of the Hell House LLC franchise in its territories through November 2029. The original, The Director’s Cut, The Abaddon Hotel and Lake of Fire join Hell House LLC Lineage, and Shudder’s exclusivity on Origins: The Carmichael Manor was extended. There’s no arrival date yet for the newly licensed films. You can still rent or buy all of them from digital retailers. Our report also covers the original’s first nationwide theatrical run, which puts it in as many as 400 U.S. theaters from October 29 through November 1.
The bigger story is what found footage has become. Stephen Cognetti’s film started as a 2016 digital release. Five films and a director’s cut later, the franchise has become a remarkably durable piece of found-footage horror. Found footage is cheap to make and easy to extend, because every new tape adds a location and a piece of lore that sends people back to the old ones. Shudder already does this with V/H/S. Keeping the whole Hell House shelf together means the next entry arrives with its entire back catalog sitting beside it. For fans that’s one subscription instead of several. I’d still like an actual date.
Jeremy Saulnier Gets a Trailer and a Birthday
A24 released the full trailer for Slayground, the film previously titled October. Scare actor “Metal Mike” Graves wakes up inside a haunted attraction surrounded by his dead coworkers with no memory of what happened, and a statewide manhunt closes in. Cory Michael Smith leads a cast that includes Chase Sui Wonders, Sophie Wilde, James Badge Dale, Imogen Poots, Stephen Root and Macon Blair. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross wrote the music. It opens January 29, 2027.
On October 30, Alamo Drafthouse is running tenth anniversary screenings of Green Room at select locations. Each screening opens with a new interview featuring Saulnier, Alia Shawkat, Macon Blair and SFX artist Mike Fontaine. Ticket holders also get a Slayground popcorn bucket and a themed food and drink menu. Pairing the two is smart marketing, and it’s also accurate, since Poots and Blair carry over from one film to the other. Green Room is still one of the most stressful movies of the last decade. Seeing it with a crowd beats seeing it alone, where you’ll be clenching your jaw by yourself.
American Horror Story Will Not Stay Dead
FX renewed American Horror Story for season 14 on October 20, ahead of the season 13 finale on Thursday, October 29. There’s no premise, cast or premiere date for the new season. FX did say the season 13 premiere was Ryan Murphy’s biggest launch ever on Hulu and Disney+.
Renewing before the finale tells you FX isn’t waiting on reviews. Fifteen years in, the anthology format is still the show’s best trick, because every season gets to pretend it’s a fresh start. The real question is which version of the show turns up next.
Quick Hits
- Richard Riehle has died. The Office Space and The Fugitive actor died Thursday, October 15, in Los Angeles at 78, of natural causes according to Variety. The news didn’t break until Monday, October 19. He had more than 400 credits.
- Romero’s lost debut gets a premiere. The George A. Romero Foundation will give Expostulations its first public screening on March 26, 2027, at Pittsburgh’s Byham Theater, the former Fulton, where Night of the Living Dead premiered in 1968. The 21 surviving minutes will play with a new live orchestral score by Christian Kriegeskotte.
- Ghoulies clears its lawsuit. Jefery Levy says the Ghoulies reboot can now move toward production. Financing and a start date are not confirmed.
- Two J-horror masters, one anthology. Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Takashi Shimizu each direct an episode of Night Tales Club, a six-part Disney+ series due in January 2027.
What’s Coming
The Cycle lands on Shudder today, and Joe Bob’s Halloween House Party airs live there tonight at 9 p.m. ET. Devon Sawa hosts the FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards live on Shudder Sunday, October 25. The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula season seven premieres October 27 on Shudder and AMC+, and our interview with the Boulets explains this season’s shot-for-shot recreations of famous horror kills. Breeder opens October 28. Hell House LLC runs in theaters October 29 through November 1, and Green Room returns to Alamo Drafthouse screens October 30.
The Last Word
Horror has spent plenty of money trying to manufacture the next big thing. This week was a reminder that people are still showing up for the films that got under their skin ten years ago. Hell House LLC gets its first nationwide theatrical run. Green Room gets another chance to make a room full of strangers deeply uncomfortable. Neither movie needs to prove anything anymore. People just want to see them again.
Which ten-year-old horror movie would you actually buy a ticket to see this Halloween?