Before the main feature even started, the theater delivered a full buffet of horror trailers—some promising, some puzzling, and at least one that looked like it crawled out of a fog machine's fever dream. Whether they teased demonic hauntings, masked killers, or psychologically unhinged woodland getaways, these previews set the mood for a night of jump scares and existential dread.
Together – A Twisted Horror-Romance Bound for Theaters July 30
Inspired by his relationship with his wife, Together marks writer-director Michael Shanks’ feature film debut. Its successful Sundance premiere—where Neon acquired it for $17 million, one of the festival’s most expensive deals ever—suggests this under-$20 million horror-romance could follow in the footsteps of Get Out and The Black Phone, reinforcing the post-pandemic resurgence of lower-budget horror at the box office.
The trailer opens with a couple, Tim and Millie (played by real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie), moving into a secluded house deep in the woods. Emotional distance is apparent from the start—Tim says “I love you,” and Millie replies with a flat “k.” In therapy, she admits they’ve drifted apart since the move. Tim is later seen leaving with his guitar, flipping through old photos from happier times. There’s a fleeting moment of connection—they hold hands, he gives her a hopeful “let’s do it” look, and she responds with hesitation. Their attempt at intimacy ends painfully as they have to peel their stuck lips apart.
Then, the unease begins. In bed, Millie complains he’s on her hair—but it looks like he’s choking on it. Tim wanders into the woods, disoriented, while two dogs silently stare each other down. A voiceover cuts in: “We spend our lives in search of our other half.” In the shower, his eyes roll back, he collapses, and is slammed violently against the wall—cut against a shot of Millie driving away, suggesting a force violently forcing them together. Later, at the kitchen table, Tim tells her, “I think something’s happening to us.” Millie stumbles upon grainy footage of people entering a cave, followed by disturbing scenes of cult-like figures gathered under green ritual light.
They’re shown together inside the cave, paralyzed by fear as a silhouetted figure stands motionless in an eerie blue glow at the entrance. Tim looks down at Millie as something unseen begins to take hold of her. In a tense moment, her hand clamped over his mouth, she urgently whispers, “We’ve got to get out—now,” but whatever’s happening is already beyond stopping. Soon after, Mia is seen twisted and contorted in a hallway, looking possessed. Meanwhile, Tim suffers increasingly grotesque torment: skin tearing, violent convulsions, and a disturbing shot of their eyelashes fusing together. In the trailer’s brutal final sequence, Millie straddles Tim, pours whiskey “for the pain” down his throat, and grabs a saw—her screams merging with his as the screen cuts to black.
This preview suggests a psychological and body horror narrative centered on relational decay, codependency, and identity dissolution. The eerie cave and cult imagery symbolize a descent into something primal or collective, while the physical fusions (lips, eyes) reflect emotional entanglement taken to terrifying extremes. It’s not just about possession—it’s about losing the boundary between self and other, lover and monster. The metaphor is clear, but the delivery is uniquely weird, making Together a surprisingly thoughtful (and hilarious) date movie… if you and your date share a twisted sense of humor.
Trigger Warning: Dog lovers should check out what the website Does the Dog Die has to say about this one before making the hike to the theater - maybe skip the pre-title sequence.
The Conjuring: Last Rites – One Final Haunting Arrives September 5
Based on the alleged haunting of the Smurl family and investigated by famed paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Conjuring: Last Rites is the ninth installment in the Conjuring universe and the fourth in the core series that began in 2013. Set five years after the events of 2021’s The Devil Made Me Do It, the film claims to chronicle the Warrens’ final case—though in reality, they continued their paranormal work until their deaths. This will mark the final film appearance of Patrick Wilson as Ed Warren.
Through lecture halls and old audio equipment, there's a lingering sense that the Warrens are contemplating retirement—reflecting on the thousand-plus cases they've taken on over the years. But now, they return for one final, terrifying investigation—suggested to be their most personal and dangerous yet. The trailer opens with familiar imagery: a mailbox labeled “Warren” as people approach their home, and Ed—perhaps giving a tour—warns not to touch anything in their artifact room. Close-ups of cursed and haunted relics from past films—Annabelle, the Crooked Man’s zoetrope, the Nun’s portrait, a ritual mask—foreshadow the inevitable: something will be touched, and evil will be unleashed.
As they take on the Smurl haunting, the supernatural activity quickly escalates. A ceiling light crashes onto the table as the family gathers—likely sharing their story with the Warrens. Mr. Smurl seems to be at the center of it all; he’s seen sitting in bed as the door creaks open, and later, levitating above the mattress while his wife sleeps beside him. Though the trailer is filled with terrified reactions, the only visible entity is a demon in overalls, flashing a wide, unsettling grin as it stalks across the floor. Lorraine begins to sense that something is different this time. Her visions suggest a link not only to their past cases, but to their daughter Judy, who may now be in danger. During dinner, Lorraine sees a ghostly hand rest on Judy’s shoulder, and in another vision, a sink overflows with blood as she drops a locket containing her daughter’s photo into it. Judy, too, begins to experience strange phenomena: trying on a wedding dress, she finds herself surrounded by funhouse mirrors, and later, alone in a dark room, she sees Annabelle’s reflection rocking in a chair behind her.
The imagery becomes more intense—holy objects, demonic possession, and spiritual trauma. A cross bursts into flames as a voiceover recites the Lord’s Prayer. Ed reads scripture, but the Bible ignites in his hands. In a callback to the first Conjuring film, the youngest Smurl daughter follows a baby doll crawling across the floor. As she watches, it flips onto its back, sits up, and then levitates behind her. When she turns around, she’s met with a ghastly figure with long gray hair, holding the doll, grinning. Chaos unfolds in the attic: one of the daughters hangs mid-air from a noose until someone cuts her down with a saw, and she with several others, plunges through the floorboards. In the final moments, a carousel zoetrope spins ominously as another Smurl daughter appears to fall under its influence. Lorraine watches, horrified, as a demonic voice growls, “We’ve been waiting so patiently for you”—just before the possessed girl lunges at her.
The trailer ends with a final title drop accompanied by a music box chime and the abrupt stop of a cassette tape. A closing line invites viewers to “find out why this was their last case,” leaving the audience with an air of finality and dread.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 – The Masked Mayhem Continues September 26
I feel like a terrible horror fan. I started writing this article thinking The Strangers: Chapter 2 was a sequel to the original 2008 film The Strangers. Nope! Turns out there was already a direct sequel—2018’s The Strangers: Prey at Night, which veered into straight slasher territory and disappointed many fans of the original’s unsettling realism. Then, in 2024, came The Strangers: Chapter 1, a glossy reboot (or "requel") meant to launch a new trilogy.
Unfortunately, Chapter 1 didn’t land well with most horror lovers. Critics and fans alike felt that its reliance on dramatic music, fog machines, and tired horror tropes dulled the creeping dread that made the original so terrifying. Gone was the raw, quiet tension that evoked our most primal fear: that violence can invade even our safest spaces.
But this isn’t about that—this is about Chapter 2, hitting theaters on September 26. Will it improve on the missteps of its predecessor? Maybe. But I’m not holding my breath.
If you missed the mid-credits scene from Chapter 1, here’s the gist: Maya is still alive, recovering in the hospital, and the masked killers are still on the hunt—leaving a trail of gratuitous violence in their wake. The trailer opens in a quiet diner, where a waitress asks the local sheriff about the young couple who were killed. He replies, “The girl didn’t die,” cutting to a scene from the first film where Maya, bloodied and cornered, asks the killers why they’re doing this. Their chilling response—“’Cause you’re here”—sets the tone for the random, ritualistic violence still to come.
We next see Maya waking up in a hospital bed, disoriented and alone. Unsettling sounds echo from the hallway. When she opens the door, the corridor is dark and empty. As she fumbles with a locked exit, the lights cut out and a familiar voice whispers, “Is Tamara here?”—signaling that the nightmare is far from over. Trying to escape through a dim service corridor, Maya sees the masked man with the axe—the same one who put her in the hospital—and flees in terror.
Drenched in rain, she’s picked up by a car full of strangers. One asks if she’s the girl everyone’s been talking about. As tension builds, she notices a small smiley face tattoo beneath one man’s ear. A voiceover continues: “What did it feel like, getting stabbed?” Over this, Maya is seen stitching her own wound, biting down on a stick. Her answer is chilling: “It felt like they liked it. Like it was some kind of ritual.”
As flashes of the townspeople’s faces appear, Maya again asks, “Why are you doing this?” One of them responds, “Does there have to be a why?”—suggesting a deeper connection, possibly hinting that the killers are people she already knows. What follows is a series of brutal, frantic moments as Maya fights back: one scene shows an attacker yanking out a fistful of her hair through a cracked door as she tries to escape.
In the final shot, she manages to slam a door shut on one of the masked intruders—only to turn around and find another standing silently right behind her.
All three chapters in the trilogy were filmed at the same time, treating the process like one long movie, so if you liked Chapter 1, you’ll probably enjoy Chapter 2. But if you didn’t... why put yourself through it again?
Black Phone 2 Rings in Terror This October 17
The Black Phone (2022) was a breakout hit, earning over $161 million worldwide on just an $18 million budget. With Ethan Hawke's chilling turn as The Grabber, Joe Hill’s haunting source material, and a gritty, sepia-toned 1970s setting, the film struck a nerve with audiences. But The Grabber died—so how do you make a sequel?
Writer-director Scott Derrickson returns with Black Phone 2, set a few years later. Mason Thames and Madeleine McGraw reprise their roles as Finney and Gwen, still dealing with the trauma of their past. The trailer opens on an eerie, isolated phone booth with a rotary payphone nestled among snow-covered mountains beside a frozen lake. The haunting stillness is shattered by a young boy in a yellow jacket sprinting through the snow, only to fall, and another boy's pale face appears beneath the ice.
From here, the preview stitches together a ghostly timeline: Finney, now older, walks past a convenience store when an "out of order" payphone inexplicably rings. Meanwhile, an older woman pulls sepia-toned photos of three boys from a Bible—perhaps victims or lost children. A burst of Super 8 footage shows kids mid-snowball fight, abruptly turning to terror as one is yanked away, his expression frozen in horror.
Gwen, in conversation with Finney, reveals that she has had another bad dream. The grainy home-movie aesthetic follows her as she stands outside in pajamas, and then inside the familiar Black Phone basement, the phone rings once more, and the Grabber descends the stairs. But this can't be the present, as later we see the Black Phone’s basement, now deserted and vandalized. The setting broadens to a car driving down an isolated snowy mountain road as a pamphlet for "Alpine Lake Youth Camp" appears—suggesting a new haunting ground, or perhaps the location of past abductions, or both.
When Finney answers the ringing phone, the Grabber appears outside with a horrifying new “frozen” mask. Gwen screams. A search party trudges through a blizzard-lit forest. The Grabber taunts: “Did you think our story was over?” to which Finney defiantly replies, “You’re dead.” In Super 8 footage, Gwen stands in the snow and spots the bloodied yellow jacket from the boy in the opening sequence, then sees a vision of him, dead and bloody, under her bed. “You of all people know that dead is just a word,” the Grabber sneers, reinforcing the trailer’s theme: death here is permeable, cyclical, and vengeful.
In one of the longest continuous shots in the trailer, the Grabber skis out of the darkness, wielding an axe. Gwen is then trapped in the phone booth as the axe shatters glass around her, and her body is thrashed about in a sequence that mirrors Nightmare on Elm Street–style dream horror, because we see this is happening to her in real life as she dreams. Finney screams her name into the phone and is shown being taken into the Grabber's black van with his ominous black balloons.
The final images are harrowing: the Grabber approaches Gwen again in grainy Super 8 footage, proclaiming, “Vengeance is mine.” In a final grotesque reveal, he removes the bottom half of his mask to expose a frostbitten, gangrenous, inhuman face—less a man than a spirit of vengeance clawing his way back from whatever frozen hell he came from. Does Gwen have to solve the mystery of the murdered boys to survive? Is the Grabber there to help, or is he the culprit from long ago?
With snowy, Shining-like visuals and themes reminiscent of Sinister (from the same director and lead actor), Black Phone 2 dives deeper into the supernatural while keeping the dark realism of the original. Arriving just before Halloween, it looks to be one of the season’s most anticipated—and unnerving—treats.
Predator: Badlands Hunts Theaters November 7 – A Sci-Fi Showdown for the Ages
It's a Predator renaissance! With highly positive reception and Rotten Tomatoes score, the Predator: Killer of Killers animated series on Hulu debuted June 6th and contains an ending that leaves the possibility for a sequel or tie-in with other Predator films. Then there is the possible Predator content coming in the new Alien: Earth series debuting next month, also on Hulu. With Predator Badlands coming in November, that as much Predator action in five months than we've had in the last twenty-five years!
In Predator: Badlands, writer/director Dan Trachtenberg—who delivered arguably the best Predator film since the original with Prey (2022)—introduces a young Predator warrior named Dek, and his unlikely companion, a newly repaired synthetic named Thia (played by Elle Fanning), fresh out of the Weyland-Yutani labs of the Alien universe.
The trailer opens in a dim lab where Thia is being rebooted. As a spaceship roars into the sky, we cut to Dek, a lone Predator, standing atop a mountain, heat blade drawn. Thia’s voice overlays the scene: “So this is your first hunt?” Dek methodically lays out an arsenal of deadly weapons. Stepping into a hostile and unfamiliar world, strange flora and towering fauna loom around him as Thia warns, “You’ve come to the most dangerous planet in the universe.”
He’s soon battling lethal vegetation and aerial predators—killer trees drag him through the forest as a pterodactyl-like creature swoops in. Before it can strike, something takes the bird down off-screen—and Thia’s synthetic face appears as its killer. Thia tells Dek he’s hunting something more than just beasts: “You’re after the creature that can’t be killed—the apex predator.” Dek stares up at an enormous, unseen force tearing through the canopy beyond. Offering to help, Thia reaches out to him. With her lower half missing, he lifts her effortlessly. They lock eyes in a rare beat of levity—before he casually drops her. She shrugs it off, wishing him luck.
Montage-style, we see their bond form: Thia now strapped to Dek’s back as they trek across rugged terrain, battling increasingly terrifying creatures. One resembles another Predator wielding a heat sword. Thia warns: “Here, you're not Predator... you're prey.” A human army is seen charging into battle against an enemy they can’t see—and can’t stop. Dek snarls: “I am prey to no one.”
The trailer crescendos with flashes of brutal combat, alien weaponry, and chaos. Just as the apex predator—a towering, monstrous beast—lunges toward Dek, Thia’s voice returns: “We might not be alone in this hunt.” A massive mech suit, reminiscent of the Aliens universe, stomps into view, joining the fight.
With stunning alien landscapes, imaginative new monsters, and creatures challenging the top spot of sci-fi badassery, Predator: Badlands looks poised to be the sci-fi action movie of the year!
By the time the movie finally began, I felt like I’d already survived a cinematic endurance test. Between dream-stalking killers, fused-together couples, and intergalactic hunt-fests, one thing became clear: the real horror is realizing how many of these I actually want to watch. Pray for my fall movie budget