MONTH IN REVIEW: NOVEMBER 2025

It's not always easy to keep track of the world of horror day-to-day. So here's a round up of what's happened last month and a glimpse of what we can expect in the coming weeks...

Spooky season is officially over (boo!) and the Christmas build up is now fully underway. Well, let’s face it, that sort of began about 6 weeks ago, didn’t it? I swear I saw Christmas stuff being sold in shops in late September. Depressing. Anyway, that’s not to say that we’ve been devoid of any horror in November – far from it. And looking ahead to December, there’s plenty to look forward to as well. More on that later though, first let’s get stuck into what went down this month…

The first release of November was Predator: Badlands, which has performed rather well. We all agree that the original Predator (1987) is bloody brilliant, but the sequels it spawned have ranged from decent to pretty poor. Dan Trachtenberg revived the franchise with the excellent prequel Prey (2022), and although Badlands is notably different in tone and story, it’s gone down well with critics and fans. Despite being a little whimsical, it’s a solid space-slasher and has taken $160m at the box office, which is a strong return.

Edgar Wright’s The Running Man (more sci-fi action than horror but whatever) hasn’t fared quite as well – earning only half of its estimated $100m budget in ticket sales. It’ll continue for another week or so in theatres and international revenue may raise the total, but those figures are still disappointing. The film itself? It’s fine. Not quite as dynamic or tense as hoped, but still an entertaining watch.

Osgood Perkins returned in November with Keeper, a film whose trailer revealed almost nothing. It turns out the set-up is relatively straightforward; couple visit a cabin in the woods for an anniversary trip, strange occurrences follow. But it’s an odd film. There are flashes of brilliance and an effectively eerie tone in the first half, yet it lacks real bite in the final act. It’s probably Perkins’ weakest effort to date and hasn’t even hit $5m at the box office either. Ouch.

Sisu: Road to Revenge closed things off from a genre perspective at the end of the month. Jalmari Helander’s outrageously violent original was a smash hit back in 2022 and this follow-up gives us more of the same, which isn’t a bad thing by the way.  It’s a wild mixture of a war movie, a western, a post-apocalyptic chase, and a slasher film. And a Road-Runner cartoon. And it’s all the better for it. It’s very unlikely to score big at the box or stick around long on cinema screens, but it deserves the praise that it’s got and should have garnered more attention for what it is.

There are a couple of releases that we haven’t reviewed this month (hangs head in shame). Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein hit Netflix early in the month and has received generally positive reviews. We really need to watch this. Inexcusable really. And the final instalment of the wildly inconsistent Hell House LLC franchise arrived on shudder too. Lineage has had a pretty lukewarm response from audiences though, which is a bit of a shame. Oh well, at least we’ll always have that terrifying first film.

Although we all enjoy non-genre Christmas classics in December, let’s be honest – there’s only so much heart-warming, family-friendly fluff one can handle. Thankfully Santa has some suitably rancid offerings in his sack this month to scratch those horror itches.

On the 5th, we have a host of releases. Reflection in a Dead Diamond, a French mystery thriller and homage to 60s Eurospy films, arrives on Shudder. It follows a retired spy living in a luxury hotel on the French Riviera who is compelled to investigate the disappearance of one of his new neighbours. There are (hopefully) a couple of VOD releases on the 5th too; Man Finds Tape – a found-footage film about siblings who discover mysterious video clips and uncover a disturbing secret spreading through their Texas town. This one feels like it could be a sleeper hit. Bryan Fuller’s Dust Bunny, starring Sigourney Weaver and Mads Mikkelsen, is also out. A bit more family-friendly, this – it follows an eight-year-old girl who asks her neighbour to help kill the monster under her bed that she believes ate her family. The biggest release, however, is undoubtedly Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, which we imagine will be entirely forgettable but will make an absolute fortune (the first took nearly $300m!).

On the 12^th, Influencers comes to Shudder. A sequel to 2022’s Influencer, this one is about murder and identity theft and envy all sorts of other vacuous stuff. At the cinema, Silent Night, Deadly Night comes out. This is the second remake of the infamous 1984 slasher of the same name. The plot is essentially unchanged, so you may wonder whether we need another version. And the answer is yes, because it’s about a man dressed as Santa killing people in gloriously over-the-top ways.

There are three physical media releases worth noting in the run up to Christmas, all out on the 15^th. Francis Lawrence’s excellent adaptation of The Long Walk is one of them and Shelby Oaks (directed by Youtube film critic Chris Stuckmann) is another. If you insist on knowing the third well…it’s The Strangers: Chapter 2. Which I can’t imagine is on anyone’s Christmas list to be honest…

The eagerly anticipated second series of Fallout lands on Prime on the 17th and that’s it before Christmas. However, on Boxing Day we should get a couple of cinema releases; The Housemaid, based on the novel by Freida McFadden, about a woman who takes a live-in job at a wealthy couple’s estate only to uncover sinister secrets. And then we have the Anaconda remake, starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd, which appears to have its tongue firmly in its cheek. On Shudder, supernatural slasher sequel The Jester 2 also arrives. Early reviews suggest it’s an improvement on the first, which we thought was actually a perfectly decent little horror movie – so that’s encouraging.

November News!

• Cult icon Udo Kier has sadly passed away aged 81. The actor, renowned for portraying eccentric and often villainous characters, was perhaps best known for his collaborations with Gus Van Sant, though he also appeared in numerous horror films including Suspiria (1977) and Halloween (2007).

  
  

• Christopher Pike’s 1991 novel Die Softly has been optioned by Shatterproof Films for a movie adaptation, with John Berardo attached to write and direct. The 1991 novel Die Softly follows a high school photographer whose secret act of voyeurism turns deadly when he realizes his camera may have captured a murder in progress.

  
  

• Amazon MGM Studios has greenlit a new adaptation of Stargate, which will be written and executive produced by franchise veteran Martin Gero.

  
  

• Insidious 6 has wrapped production in Melbourne, Australia, and is slated for an August 2026 release. The film stars Lin Shaye, Amelia Eve, and Brandon Perea. Alien: Earth has also been officially renewed for a second season, with creator Noah Hawley returning as showrunner. Production is expected to begin in London in 2026.

  
  

• A V for Vendetta TV series is in development at HBO, with James Gunn and Peter Safran executive producing. The project, based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, will be written by Pete Jackson. It will be a modern reimagining set in a dystopian Britain ruled by the fascist Norsefire party. So essentially, what the UK may look like in five years anyway.

  
  

• Filming for Orphan 3, titled Orphans, officially began on November 5, 2025, in Budapest, Hungary. Isabelle Fuhrman returns to play Esther, with William Brent Bell directing and David Coggeshall writing the screenplay. 

  
  

• Steven Spielberg is producing a new Gremlins film, Gremlins 3, set for release on November 19, 2027. Original writer Chris Columbus will direct and produce, with Spielberg returning as executive producer through Amblin Entertainment. The film is confirmed as a direct sequel to the first two entries and will be released by Warner Bros.

November also saw the release of a handful of trailers too.

• Scream 7, in which a new Ghostface emerges in the quiet town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life, placing her daughter in the killer’s sights. Here’s hoping it improves upon the previous two mediocre instalments.

  
  

• Herman, a psychological horror about a grizzled recluse living in an isolated mountain cabin whose sanity is tested by late-night visitors during a brutal winter storm, forcing him to confront a mysterious “dark force” and his own inner demons.

  
  

• Torment, which follows a security guard seconded to the Coroner’s office for a terrifying night shift in the morgue. Count us in.

  
  

• The Strangers: Chapter 3. At this stage, who really cares? But the trailer for the third and mercifully final instalment of this unnecessary reboot franchise is now available.

  
  

• Kraken, a live-action sci-fi monster movie set in a deep Norwegian fjord, where a marine biologist encounters a giant, mythical creature. Looks cool.

  
  

• Night Patrol – described as a Vampire cop thriller. It basically looks like Training Day with vamps. Oh and Justin Long is in it. 

And there you have it! Plenty to look forward to for horror fans throughout the festive period. We’ll also be publishing our ‘Best of 2025’ and ‘2026 Horrorscope’ articles before the year is out. A great way to look back on what has been a pretty decent year for the genre and what titles we can expect to see next year. In the meantime, have a wonderful Christmas.