4 New Horror Movies Releasing This Week Including ‘Dracula Untold’ Director’s First Feature in 10 Years

This week is a bit of a “calm before the storm” situation, as the new horror releases are about to pick up big time on the road to Halloween. You can expect both September and October will be PACKED with new horror, including to-be-announced titles that aren’t even on our radar at this time. But first we’ve still got a few more weeks left of the summer movie season.

Here’s all the new horror releasing August 15– August 20, 2023!

And don’t forget: the biggest new release of the week isn’t a movie but rather a video game. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: The Game (read our review) is available this Friday!

For daily reminders about new horror releases, be sure to follow @HorrorCalendar.

Set on Halloween 1938, the new movie from Dracula Untold director Gary Shore is titled Haunting of the Queen Mary, and the horror movie officially sets sail on Friday, August 18. The film will be released in select theaters as well as On Demand.

The film is based on the real-life ocean liner, said to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Shooting took place aboard the actual Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.

A luxury ocean-liner graced by generations of the rich and famous, HMS Queen Mary is now celebrated – and feared – as “One of the World’s Most Haunted Places” (Time Magazine). In the early twentieth century, shipping lines competed to be the fastest to complete a transatlantic crossing. But among the most famous record-holders was the RMS Queen Mary, which held the record for fourteen years, but now stands encased in concrete at Long Beach, California, where it has been used for many years as a luxury hotel and tourist attraction. The ship has a lengthy history of visitors reporting seeing ghosts and visions in its rooms and on its decks, making it the perfect setting for paranormal goings-on on the big screen.

The upcoming horror film “is a psychological horror which explores the mysterious and violent events surrounding one family’s voyage on Halloween night (1938) and their interwoven destiny with another family onboard the infamous ocean liner present day.”

The two families will become “violently entangled” in the haunting ghost story.

Alice Eve (“Star Trek Into Darkness”), Joel Fry (“Game of Thrones”), Nell Hudson (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre”), William Shockley (“Death in Texas”) and BAFTA award-winner Lenny Rush (“Am I Being Unreasonable?”) star in Haunting of the Queen Mary.

The film’s screenplay was written by Gary Shore and Stephen Oliver.

Writer/Director Stewart Thorndike’s 2014 film Lyle introduced a contemporary riff on Rosemary’s Baby. Thorndike’s latest, Bad Things, continues the filmmaker’s horror explorations of motherhood, this time through Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. 

Bad Things premieres on Shudder on Friday, August 18.

The film tells the story of a group of friends whose trip to a snowy resort for a weekend getaway devolves in a psychological tailspin and ends in a bloody nightmare.

“With ‘Bad Things,’ I wanted to create a world of women and non-binary people who shake off polite conditionings and finally roar,” Thorndike said in a statement. “Where are all the female Travis Bickles and Jack Torrances? ‘Bad Things’ answers that.”

“At the heart of ‘Bad Things’ is a dark celebration of motherhood and all its splendid viscera. Shudder was the perfect partner for this tale of female rage,” Thorndike also said.

Bad Things stars Gayle Rankin (“Glow”), Hari Nef (“Barbie”), Annabelle Dexter-Jones (“Succession”), Rad Pereira (“Betty”), Jared Abrahamson (“Ramy”) and Molly Ringwald (“Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”).

A brand new take on the classic tale of Frankenstein, Sundance horror movie birth/rebirth is on the way from IFC Films and Shudder, arriving exclusively in theaters on August 18.

The companies preview, “This standout directorial debut from Laura Moss reimagines Mary Shelley’s classic horror myth Frankenstein with such a contemporary understanding that it becomes something exciting, terrifying, and singularly new.”

In the film, “Rose (Marin Ireland) is a pathologist who prefers working with corpses over social interaction. She also has an obsession — the reanimation of the dead. Celie (Judy Reyes) is a maternity nurse who has built her life around her bouncy, chatterbox six-year-old daughter, Lila (A.J. Lister). When one tragic night, Lila suddenly falls ill and dies, the two women’s worlds crash into each other. They embark on a dark path of no return where they will be forced to confront how far they are willing to go to protect what they hold most dear.”

birth/rebirth has been officially rated “R” by the MPA for: “Disturbing material and gore, some sexual content, language and nudity.” Brendan J. O’Brien wrote the script.

Director Alex Herron’s Dark Windows introduces a conventional slasher setup that pits a masked killer against vacationing teens but teases a potential twist: what if the teens aren’t so innocent? Brainstorm Media’s horror thriller will release in Select Theaters and On Demand this Friday, August 18.

The film is said to “take audiences on a ride of passion, loss, terror and horrific, unthinkable ways of seeking revenge.”

In Dark Windows, “A group of teenagers take a trip to an isolated summerhouse in the countryside. What starts as a peaceful getaway turns into a horrific nightmare when a masked man begins to terrorize them in the most gruesome ways.”

Written by Wolf Kraft, Dark Windows stars Anna Bullard (Marinette), Annie Hamilton (The Wolf of Snow Hollow), Rory Alexander, Jóel Sæmundsson, and Morten Holst.

“I like exploring the choices that young people make and the consequences of those choices,” said Herron previously. “In Dark Windows, Tilly and her friends have made one of the worst choices of their young lives and are about to face the most extreme punishment for it. ”