8 Horror Movies to Scare You Silly This Summer
Summer is a time for lounging in the sun, hanging out on the beach…and giving yourself nightmares at the multiplex. The next few months will deliver a diverse collection of horror movies designed to keep you up at night — and that’s even before the adaptation of Stephen King’s It hits theaters on Sept. 8. Read on for a guide to this summer’s scares:
Hounds of Love (May 12, also on VOD)
Arriving stateside after premiering to raves at the Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals, Ben Young’s stellar Aussie thriller concerns a young girl in 1987 Perth who, while rebelling against her mother because of her parents’ divorce, is abducted by a crazed married couple. Well crafted and psychologically twisted, it announces Young as a talent to watch.
Watch the trailer:
It Comes at Night (June 9)
Director Trey Edward Shults plumbed a clan’s conflicts in his breakthrough 2016 indie Krisha, and he’ll again turn his attention to fractured families with this horror film. Joel Edgerton is a man living with his wife and child in a remote cabin, hiding out from some unseen (apocalyptic? supernatural?) threat — a situation that’s complicated by the arrival of a new family in need of shelter.
Watch the trailer:
47 Meters Down (June 16)
Blake Lively fended off a great white in last year’s sleeper hit The Shallows. This summer, Mandy Moore and Claire Holt will find themselves in an even more perilous position when their diving cage snaps loose from a boat, and they wind up stranded in the deep surrounded by ravaging sharks.
Watch the trailer:
Amityville: The Awakening (June 30)
It’s hard to believe anyone still chooses to live in the infamous haunted house out in Amityville, Long Island. Nonetheless, in this latest installment in the long-running franchise (from Maniac director Franck Khalfoun), Jennifer Jason Leigh’s mom moves her daughter (Bella Thorne) and comatose son into the notorious abode, only to be beset by all manner of unholy terrors.
Watch the trailer:
Wish Upon (July 14)
From a script that landed on the 2015 Black List, Wish Upon focuses on a high-school student (Joey King) who discovers a mystical music box that grants her seven wishes. The catch is that the cost of each wish is horrifically high — and unsurprisingly, the teen doesn’t see that as a deal-breaker.
Watch the trailer:
Annabelle: Creation (Aug. 11)
A prequel to a spin-off of a horror hit, Annabelle: Creation’s lineage is more than a bit strained. Still, those scared of dolls (and who isn’t?) will no doubt find much to fret over in this second installment in the Conjuring-based series, which traces the origins of the demonically possessed plaything Annabelle.
Polaroid (August 25)
Old-school media once again plagues humanity in this Ring-style thriller. This time, anyone snapped by the title camera comes to a grisly end. Presumably, selfies are kept to a bare minimum in this horror show from first-time director Lars Klevberg, who’s adapting his award-winning Norwegian short.
Death Note (Aug. 25 on Netflix)
An American adaptation of a Japanese manga series, this thriller from Blair Witch director Adam Wingard charts the efforts of a kid (Nat Wolff) to use a supernatural notebook, which kills any person whose name is written in its pages. He’s aiming to off only the worst of the worst, but that do-gooder scheme is thrown for a loop by both an investigator (Lakeith Stanfield) on his trail, and by the dark spirit known as Ryuk (Willem Dafoe) that powers the journal.
