August 2019 Brings Tons of New Horror, Including ‘Scary Stories,’ ‘Banana Splits’ and ‘Blair Witch’!
If you thought the horror genre would take a break just because summer is coming to a close, you were wrong. Dead wrong. August is chockablock with shocking scares across a variety of mediums and subgenres, and one of the most exciting releases is already out now!
Jennifer Kent’s long-awaited follow-up to The Babadook, a brutal and critically-acclaimed revenge thriller called The Nightingale, is about a wronged woman tracking the men who murdered her family through the Tasmanian forest. Meredith Borders reviewed the film out of Sundance, and gave the film an impressive 4.5/5 skull review:
“It’s a breathtaking success by a director who could have made anything after the success of her first horror feature, and who decided to make a bloody but contemplative period piece with no easy answers.”
If that’s too dire for you, what about something with clowns? It: Chapter One returns to theaters for two nights, August 3 and August 6, and it’s bringing eight new minutes of the sequel with it! Stay after the credits for the extended preview!
On August 9, Andre Ovredal (The Autopsy of Jane Doe) and producer Guillermo Del Toro present their adaptation of the classic, terrifying children’s book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, in which many of the iconic scares from our collective memories come to life to terrorize the cast. Wesley Lara recently reminded us why we love to be scared by Alvin Schwartz’s spooky stories and Stephen Gammell’s haunting illustrations.
47 Meters Down: Uncaged arrives on August 16, and expands on the unexpected success of the original film about a pair of tourists trapped in a shark cage underwater, surrounded by (what else?) killer sharks, by getting a whole new group of tourists stuck in an underwater city with the ferocious man-eaters.
Also on August 16, one of the most cheerfully horrifying kids shows ever made returns on Netflix. Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus! finds the title character, a diminutive and incompetent alien with a taste for world domination, unleashing his most diabolical plan ever. It’s the first new Invader Zim cartoon in thirteen years!
That’s not the only kids show making a horrifying comeback in August. The beloved, and decidedly not (intentionally) scary series The Banana Splits has been turned into a feature horror-comedy, in which the characters from the show turn homicidal after their series gets canceled. The Banana Splits Movie debuts on digital on August 13 before making its DVD/Blu-ray premiere on August 27.
Scream Queen extraordinaire Samara Weaving (Mayhem, The Babysitter) heads to the big screen for Ready or Not, a new comedic horror-thriller about a newlywed hunted throughout a gigantic mansion by her bloodthirsty new in-laws. The film comes courtesy of Radio Silence (Devil’s Due) and hits theaters on August 21.
Also arriving in theaters on August 21, after years in post-production hell (followed by a surprise debut on Dish), is the remake of the cult horror classic Jacob’s Ladder. Michael Ealy (The Intruder) stars as the veteran who begins to see vivid, terrifying hallucinations. Or are they much, much more? Meagan Navarro reviewed the new Jacob’s Ladder for us and gave the film a middling 2/5 stars, which is probably better than most people expected after the project was delayed for several years.
”For those unfamiliar with the 1990 film and/or those who prefer their psychological thrillers grounded in realism, this might warrant a one-time watch.”
Blumhouse returns with its latest low-budget, high-concept thriller Don’t Let Go (formerly titled Relive). The film stars David Oyelowo (The Cloverfield Paradox) as a detective receiving phone calls from a murder victim, his own niece, from two weeks in the past. The film comes out August 30, but Meredith Borders reviewed it for us out of Sundance, where she gave Don’t Let Go a whopping 3.5/5 skulls!
“Bolstered by great supporting performances from Alfred Molina and Mykelti Williamson, [Don’t Let Go] is a high-concept thriller that wisely places its characters above its concept, and it works all the better for it.”
And if that’s not enough horror movies for you, Fred Durst directed and co-wrote The Fanatic, starring John Travolta as an obsessed fan stalking his favorite movie star, with scary results. It hits theaters on August 30.
Is it still too hot to get out to the theater? You have a lot of terrifying options on television. David Fincher’s acclaimed series Mindhunter, about the FBI’s first forays into serial killer profiling, returns to Netflix on August 16. In an intriguing bit of synergy, the new season features Damon Herriman as Charles Manson, just a month after he played the cult leader in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The fourth season of AMC’s Preacher debuts on August 4, as Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy continue their search for God and their battle against The Grail. Also on AMC, the second season of The Terror arrives on August 12. The Terror: Infamy will tell an all-new historical horror story, this time set in a Japanese internment camp during World War II.
Over at Amazon Prime the dark fantasy series Carnival Row tells a serial killer story in an alternate Victorian England, where fantasy creatures live side-by-side with humans. Created by Travis Beacham (Pacific Rim), the series stars Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne and debuts on August 30.
But wait, there’s more: the long-running reality TV series Ghost Hunters returns on August 4, on A&E, after being off the air for three years. Also, Two Sentence Horror Stories expands to a full-length episodic television series at The CW, after making its debut in short form on CW Seed. The anthology horror show premieres on August 8.
And if you’re interested in something a little more interactive, don’t despair! The latest video game based on Blair Witch arrives on August 30 on PC and Xbox One, with first-person gameplay set in what appears to be the original forest from the original, classic film.
As cool as that sounds, the big horror video game release of August is clearly Man of Medan, the latest interactive horror thriller from the makers of the smash hit Until Dawn. The new game takes place on board a ghost ship, where the player takes on the role of multiple cast members as they try to stay alive. Man of Medan arrives on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on August 30!
That’s an awful lot of horror, and there’s no way we can catch it all unless we get started now! Happy hunting, horror habitués!
