Blumhouse is a company known for producing popular, low-budget horror films (Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Happy Death Day, Get Out, and most recently The Invisible Man).  So whenever they come out with a new title, it’s worth taking note.  While Blumhouse certainly produces things other than horror flicks (Whiplash, BlacKKKlansman, and The Normal Heart — all worth your time), for the purposes of this article, we’re just going to focus on the scary stuff.

Here are the current and upcoming Blumhouse horror projects you have to look forward to:

Welcome to the Blumhouse

Blumhouse made an exclusive deal with Amazon to debut a series of eight new films.  The first four are currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

The Lie is about two parents trying to cover up their daughter’s crime.  It stars Peter Saarsgard, Mireille Enos, and Joey King.

Black Box is about a man who loses his wife in a car crash and suffers memory loss.  He undergoes an experimental treatment that causes him to question his identity.  This one sounds existential and maybe even surreal.  I’m totally in!  The movie stars Mamoudou Athie and Phylicia Rashad among others.

Evil Eye is about a mother who is suspicious of her daughter’s new boyfriend.  Sounds Hitchcockian!

Nocturne is about a music student who starts to outdo her twin sister after she discovers a notebook from a dead classmate.

I love that they dropped these films in October.  I always hate it when there are no horror films playing on Halloween.

The second four will come out in 2021.

The Manor is about a woman who moves into a nursing home and suspects something supernatural is preying on the residents.  It stars Barbara Hershey and Bruce Davison.

Black as Night is about a teenage girl who discovers her confidence while battling vampires in New Orleans one summer.

Madres is about a Mexican-American couple who relocate to a migrant farming community in the 1970s.  The wife begins to experience strange symptoms and terrifying visions that may be related to a legendary curse.

Bingo is about a group of elderly friends fighting gentrification and a much more powerful force than money itself.

The Craft: Legacy

Blumhouse has proven they’re not afraid to put their own spin on a beloved property (The Invisible Man).  This time, they’ve tackled  the 1996 classic.  Zoe Lister-Jones wrote and directed this new version that is now available to rent and to own on VOD.  Like the original, they had an actual witch on set as a consultant to make sure rituals were authentic, and to close any energetic spaces opened up by said rituals.  As she said to Cinemablend, “Magic doesn’t know you’re acting.”  Another cool aspect of the film is the inclusion of a transgender character among the main group of friends.  She is played by trans actress Zoey Luna.

Freaky  

Blumhouse’s newest theatrical release is Freaky.  Appropriately, it came out on Friday, November 13.  I absolutely love the trailer for this one.  A serial killer played by Vince Vaughn switches bodies with a high school outcast.  She must stop him from killing her friends and classmates (now that he has the perfect camouflage).  I love Happy Death Day and this appears to be in the same vein: a high concept horror flick with a lot of humor.  Check out the trailer below.

The Vigil (February 26, 2021)

A youth watches over the dead body of a member of his former Orthodox Jewish community and is targeted by an evil spirit.  This movie was written and directed by Keith Thomas and is his directorial debut.

Five Nights at Freddy’s (April 16, 2021)

Based on the first game in the popular video game series, this movie has been in production hell since 2015.  It has switched production companies.  It has changed directors.  And gone through several scripts.  According to IMDb, it is now expected to come out next spring.  However, in an interview with Inverse, Jason Blum admitted that they are still figuring out the script.  So there’s a good chance the film will be delayed.  The game focuses on a Chuck E. Cheese-esque establishment where the animatronic characters come alive at night and become murderous.

The Forever Purge (July 29, 2021)

For those of you keeping score, this is the fifth and final Purge film.  (Unless it makes a boatload of money.  In which case, they’ll find a way to do a sixth one.). The premise of all five films (and the cable TV series) is that one night a year, all crime is legal.  No plot details have been revealed yet, so there’s no telling what the twist is this time.

Halloween Sequels

Halloween (2018) had such a satisfying ending that I’m kind of disappointed they’re making sequels.  Then again, I’m eager to see what they do with Jamie Lee Curtis’s character.  October 15, 2021 will bring us Halloween Kills, a sequel from the same filmmakers who brought you 2018’s Halloween.  Then on October 14, 2022, they’ll bring us Halloween Ends, wrapping up this trilogy of films.

These two movies have a lot to live up to.  I’m hoping they can deliver.  The new teaser trailer for Halloween Kills suggest they will.  (Don’t watch the trailer if you haven’t seen the last Halloween movie, though, as it contains major spoilers.)   In an interview with Forbes, Jason Blumhouse promised, “Halloween Kills is coming out next October come hell or high water, vaccine or no vaccine.  It is coming out.”

John Carpenter said of the movie, “The movie is something else.  It’s fun, intense, and brutal, a slasher movie times one hundred, big time.  It’s huge.  I’ve never seen anything like this: the kill count!”

Paranormal Activity 7

A new installment in the Paranormal Activity series arrives on March 4, 2022.  I love the first two films.  I haven’t caught up with the rest.  Paranormal Activity films usually revolve around a ghost haunting a family.  Traces of their spooky actions are often caught on camera but not seen by the family.  Previous entries include Paranormal Activity 1-4, The Marked Ones, and The Ghost Dimension.

To Be Determined…

The following films have been announced but none of them have release dates yet:

Black Phone

Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange) will direct and adapt with Robert Cargill.  The movie will be an adaptation of Joe Hill’s novella The Black Phone.  Hill will serve as an executive producer.  From the Amazon description of the novella:  “John Finney is locked in a basement that’s stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead. . . .”

Boogeyman Pop

According to Wikipedia, the film is about “a bat-wielding masked killer in a rusted-out black Cadillac [who] weaves in and out of three interlocking stories awash in sex, drugs, punk rock, black magic, and broken homes.”  The movie premiered at the Cinepocalypse Film Festival in 2018.

Dracula

Karyn Kusama has been tapped to direct this new take on the classic character.  Kusama has indicated that she plans to stick closely to the original novel, which features multiple viewpoints — but not Dracula’s.

Firestarter

This will be a remake of the 1984 film that starred Drew Barrymore, based on the Stephen King novel.  Zac Efron will play the father of a little girl with pyrokinetic abilities that the government wants to use as a weapon.  Keith Thomas is directing.  His directorial debut, The Vigil, comes out in February.

Happy Death Day 3 aka Happy Death Day to Us

Happy Death Day 3 isn’t officially on Blumhouse’s slate.  Yet.  In a recent interview with Inverse.com, Jason Blum said, “The reason it’s still alive is because I’m very passionate about it, I think we should do it.  It’s very rare that you make a second sequel after a movie that didn’t perform very well, but I want to do it because I thought the second movie was spectacular. It didn’t perform well for reasons having nothing to do with the film. I really want to make a third one and I think we’re going to figure it out.”  Universal passed on a third film after the second one underperformed.

As writer-director Christopher Landon told Empire, “The idea for the third film is not set in the same day, if that’s a big spoiler. So it can happen later. We’re not up against a really difficult clock right now. The other movies were hard… everybody had to look the same, be the same. The pressure is off there.”   Star Jessica Rothe even said she’s willing to come back to the role as a middle-aged woman in the style of Jamie Lee Curtis.  At the end of the second movie, there’s a post-credits scene that sets Danielle up as an unwitting test subject to be trapped in her own time loop.  This is presumably the plot of Happy Death Day 3.  As Cinema Blend put it, “Spread the love for the Happy Death Day movies so we can see the trilogy, please and thank you!”

Hurt 

Hurt is a slasher film that takes place on Halloween at a house in the woods.  A brief teaser trailer features a mask similar to the one from Happy Death Day but the tone of the movie seems to be much darker.

Insidious 5

Patrick Wilson is not only making a return to the series, he is making his directorial debut.  Scott Teems wrote the script.   Franchise co-creator Leigh Whannell (Saw) wrote the story.  I confess I haven’t seen any of the Insidious films even though I love Patrick Wilson in the Conjuring series.

M3GAN

Allison Williams, who starred in Get Out, will reteam with Blumhouse for this creepy film.  She’ll also be an executive producer.  Williams will play a robotics scientist for a toy company who develops a doll using AI to be a companion for children.  This has shades of Child’s Play all over it with a modern twist.

Imagine those My Buddy or Kid Sister dolls from the ’80s with artificial intelligence.  I had a cousin who refused to buy her child a My Buddy doll because it reminded her too much of Chucky.  Evil dolls and kids in peril always make for a chilling scare.

Run Sweetheart Run

A woman goes on the blind date from hell.  She finds herself navigating the streets of L.A. after hours on foot to get away from her suitor.  The movie premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  It will eventually be released on Amazon Prime.

Spawn 

This project has been in development hell, appropriately, for years.  Comic book creator Todd McFarlane will write and direct.  He has described his vision as being more of a horror/thriller movie than a superhero film.  Jamie Foxx will star as Spawn.  Jeremy Renner will play Detective Twitch.

The Thing

Blumhouse is remaking John Carpenter’s The Thing.  The script will reportedly incorporate elements of Carpenter’s film, the 1951 film The Thing From Another World, the 1938 novella Who Goes There? that both films were based on — and Frozen Hell, which is the recently unearthed novel the novella came from.

I just hope they keep the line about being strapped to the couch.  The story follows a group of scientists who encounter The Thing, an alien who can mimic other lifeforms.

This Is The Night

Not much is known about this one yet.  In 1982, a teenager embarks on a quest.  Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, and Method Man star.

Vengeance

Written, directed, and starring The Office‘s B.J. Novak, the plot of this movie is a well-guarded secret.  This one is more of a thriller than a straight-up horror film.  It also stars Issa Rae and Ashton Kutcher.

Wolfman

Leigh Whannel, who directed The Invisible Man, will reteam with Blumhouse to direct this remake of the Lon Chaney classic.  Ryan Gosling will star and produce.  His character is a news anchor and the film is being described as similar to Nightcrawler (one of Jake Gyllenhaal’s best performances with a chilling final act).

Of course, sadly, all release dates are subject to change.  (Except for Halloween Kills.)  While theater attendance is down and studios are reluctant to release new movies, it’s nice to know Blumhouse is cooking up some interesting projects for next year and beyond.

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