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HORROR PRESS ANSWERS: The Results Of Our Nastiest Bug In Horror Survey Is Here!

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I’m an insect who dreamt he was a writer and loved it, but now that dream is over… the survey answers are in! 

After two weeks of waiting, we’ve finally compiled answers from Horror Press readers all over, telling us what they thought the nastiest, most traumatizing, and by extension, best horror movie bugs are. So without further ado, let’s get into those answers and see who made it to the top five!

THE RESULTS OF THE BUG SURVEY ARE IN!

Honorable Mentions: MOTHRA (GODZILLA FRANCHISE) and DEBBIE (NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4)

I know most of you picked her because it sounded funny, but, votes are votes and you voted Mothra! It might be hard to believe, but The Guardian of Earth was adapted from a novel titled “The Luminous Fairies and Mothra” before she ever hit the big screen. From humble origins, the verifiable queen of the monsters has come a long way, so it’s only fitting to pay homage. 

There is one cheat answer I felt I had to acknowledge since Reader Andrew B. reminded me of it: one of the gnarliest deaths in all of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, the roach motel demise of Debbie Stevens. She’s not quite a bug, but the method of Freddy’s attack involves turning her into one and giving her a gooey, gross ending. It’s quite possibly the most meanspirited of any Freddy Krueger kill, and the fact that it involves the opening stages of a Kafka-esque bug body transformation just makes it so much worse.

Speaking of roaches…

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5. THE COCKROACHES (CREEPSHOW, 1982)

“They’re Creeping Up On You!” is the final segment of Creepshow for good reason: the bugs are a show-stealing and skin-crawling experience you have to see to believe. The visual of cockroaches crawling their way out of someone’s mouth will make even the most hardened exterminators shudder, and to think it was all done with real cockroaches is mind-blowing.

You would think getting ahold of the little crunchy buggers would be easy. But Romero’s work on the Creepshow segment was a horrifying comedy of errors that involved sourcing and wrangling an astounding 20,000 roaches, with entomologists working on the film having to travel to Trinidad to crawl through a waist-high pit of them and bring back thousands through customs. If that’s not reason enough to qualify as some of the most traumatizing, I don’t know what is.

Many of you submitted roach-relevant stories that paired nicely, but none were as bad as what reader Nicole R. left in a simple one-sentence horror story: a giant cockroach landed on my face in the shower once. And here I thought I was unreasonable for hating closing my eyes while washing up.

4. THE GRAY WIDOWER SPIDERS (THE MIST)

Beyond The Mist’s notorious ending which we’ve discussed here before, if there’s one thing Stephen King fans remember from the Frank Darabont feature, is its monsters. From the ravenous barbed tentacles of the loading dock to the larger-than-life and impossibly tall Behemoth, there are few we’d actually want to meet. But the insects from Todash space that have infested the town of Bridgton, Maine are the worst of the worst, And none are as bad as the gray widower spiders.

While the scorpion-fly’s venom is like mainlining acid, that seems preferable to the various methods of destruction the gray widower can wreak havoc on your body with. Their webs can slice through organic material like butter, and if you’re unfortunate enough to end up trapped by them, you’ll meet a fate that makes a xenomorph chest-burster seem like a walk in the park: being filled with thousands of rapidly growing eggs. Rest in peace to that MP in the pharmacy. Nobody deserves that.

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Oh, and I forgot to mention, on average, they’re the size of a German shepherd when fully grown. Good luck stomping one of those!

(RIP Julian Sands)

3. “THE GENERAL” AND HIS SPIDERS (ARACHNOPHOBIA)

Of course, it’s always the more realistic movie threats that sit with us. The gray widowers are bad, but I can reason away dog-sized spiders as being purely fiction. The leading spider of the movie Arachnophobia and his little eight-legged cohorts, however, are just plausible enough to keep me (and plenty of you who took the survey) awake at night—37.3% of us, to be exact.

We’ve even got a firsthand account from reader Jillian K., who relayed to us a lovely and truly horrifying story regarding her personal experience with spiders and the lessons that Arachnophobia has taught her: 

“Not many people know that I lived off-grid in an unfinished barn in the hills of Tennessee for two years with my now husband. During this time, we experienced a brown recluse infestation IN OUR BEDROOM. The General’s spiders remind me of how you need to approach life in the south – shake out all shoes; shake out all towels; definitely check your sheets; and while sweeping, be prepared to unexpectedly oust a massive recluse.”

Thank you, Jillian, for giving me a lifelong aversion to the state of Tennessee! Send all my love to the people of Nashville, because my enjoyment of the music will NEVER be enough to make me go there now. 

 2. GRABOIDS (TREMORS SERIES)

We can spend all day and night debating Graboid taxonomy if you want, but the facts are the facts: they’re big, dusty brown, and underground. They’re worms. And these worms won an impressive 38.8% of the votes!

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And what’s not to love about the Graboids? These kaiju of great 90s American horror are sandworms from prehistory brought to the present day, and unlike most of the insects we deal with daily, a can of Raid simply won’t be enough. It takes high firepower and a lot of ingenuity to outsmart these creatures (or, at the very least, standing on a stable rock). On a visual effects level, Amalgamated Dynamics knocked it out of the park with their craft, using a mix of cable puppets, hand puppets, and quality animatronics to bring them to life.

While nobody mentioned it in their response, I must say that Doctor Jim’s death in the first Tremors movie always got to me the worst. It’s like combining all the elements of dying by quicksand with all the elements of dying by being eaten alive, and your loved one gets to watch! How’s that for “two for the price of one”?

 1. BRUNDLEFLY (THE FLY, 1986)

In some of his last lucid moments before succumbing to the final stages of his teleporter mutations, Seth Brundle expressed that he’d like to become the first insect politician. And if this were an election, we’d be having a half-man/half-fly for president!

Coming in with a whopping and landslide 59.7% of the votes, Brundlefly was the clear winner. The tale of Seth Brundle’s ambition and hubris is a tragic one, and his slow and painful downfall from the top of the world’s most important scientific development is an unforgettable tale—with an even more unforgettable monster as he slowly mutates into a horrific and melty insectoid creature. 

While the film is up for debate as being David Cronenberg’s finest work, the design of the Brundlefly and its execution on screen is undoubtedly special effects artists Chris Walas’ and Stephan Dupuis’ magnum opus. 

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The design of the Brundlefly captures a distinct and depressing feeling of both primal fear and pity for Brundle’s predicament and the monster he becomes. It’s no wonder the effects here netted the film an Academy Award for Best Makeup. It’s a legendary creature, and rightfully earns its spot as the most traumatizing bug in all of horror.

Make sure to keep your eyes peeled for the next Horror Press survey to make your voice heard. And for the latest in all news horror movies, television, and more, stay tuned to Horror Press and The Horror Press Podcast! Happy reading, horror fans!

 

Luis Pomales-Diaz is a freelance writer and lover of fantasy, sci-fi, and of course, horror. When he isn't working on a new article or short story, he can usually be found watching schlocky movies and forgotten television shows.

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Misc

Our Halloween Giveaway Is Here!

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Halloween and our final giveaway of the month is also here to spice up your Fall before the Holidays take a snowier, and less creepy turn. So be sure to enter now for a chance to win this prize that’ll be sure to keep the thrills going all season long! Don’t miss out—grab your costume, some BBQ and join the fun.

Enter Our Halloween Giveaway!

How to Enter:

Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK AND JOIN OUR FACEBOOK GROUP!

Step 2. LIKE AND SHARE the giveaway post!

Step 3. This is the most important step, email us at contact@horrorpress.com with your FULL Facebook name (so we can verify you’re in the group) and who your favorite character is from the Texas Chainsaw franchise.

**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**

**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**

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What You’ll Win

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video

  • 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
  • Original DTS-HD MA 7.1 and 5.1 surround audio and lossless stereo audio
  • Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • Brand new audio commentary with Dread Central co-founder Steve “Uncle Creepy” Barton and co-host of The Spooky Picture Show podcast Chris MacGibbon
  • Archival audio commentary with director Marcus Nispel, producer Michael Bay, executive producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form and New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye
  • Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, director of photography Daniel Pearl, production designer Greg Blair, art director Scott Gallager, sound supervisor Trevor Jolly and composer Steve Jablonsky
  • Archival audio commentary with Marcus Nispel, Michael Bay, writer Scott Kosar, Brad Fuller, Andrew Form and actors Jessica Biel, Erica Leerhsen, Eric Balfour Jonathan Tucker, Mike Vogel and Andrew Bryniarski
  • Reimagining a Classic, a brand new interview with director Marcus Nispel
  • Shadows of Yesteryear, a brand new interview with cinematographer Daniel Pearl
  • The Lost Leatherface, a brand new interview with actor Brett Wagner
  • Masks and Massacres, a brand new interview with makeup effects artist Scott Stoddard
  • Chainsaw Symphony, a brand new interview with composer Steve Jablonsky
  • Chainsaw Redux: Making A Massacre, a making-of documentary
  • Ed Gein: The Ghoul of Plainfield, an in-depth look at the infamous killer who inspired the character of Leatherface
  • Severed Parts, a look at the cutting room floor and some of the scenes excised from the final edit
  • Deleted scenes including an alternate opening and ending
  • Screen tests for Jessica Biel, Eric Balfour and Erica Leerhsen
  • Behind-the-scenes featurette
  • Cast and crew interviews
  • Theatrical trailers and TV spots
  • Concept art galleries
  • Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
  • Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Aaron Lea
  • Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Michael Gingold
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NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!

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As soon as New York Comic Con announced that its 2025 theme would be “haunted,” I started lacing up my comfy shoes and making a beeline for the Javitz Center! Horror has always been represented at the con, but it felt fitting that it should play a central role in this year’s event at a time when the genre seems more popular than ever. 

From beloved family-friendly properties like The Nightmare Before Christmas to pants-dampening titles like the upcoming Resident Evil: Requiem, horror appeared in countless shapes and forms. Here are all the best and scariest insights I gleaned from the show floor, panel rooms, and pop-ups of New York Comic Con 2025! 

Our NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights

Resident Evil: Requiem Is Going to Test Your Bladder Strength

Full disclaimer: I’m not a gamer. I’m honestly pretty bad at games, which made my Resident Evil: Requiem play session all the more frightening because I was convinced that everyone around me would realize I’m a fraud. But with easy-to-grasp controls, even for a newb like me, the latest installment in the iconic horror franchise quickly sucked me in and left me on edge for entirely different reasons. 

During my 30-minute session, I was introduced to FBI analyst Grace Ashcroft, Requiem’s central character. She swims to consciousness to find herself strapped upside down on a gurney with a needle in her arm, siphoning her blood. After Grace managed to free herself, the controls were handed over to me to explore the creepy facility through Grace’s eyes, looking for a fuse. Some spaces were bathed in red light; others were lit only by flickering bulbs that left me white-knuckling the controller, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows and swallow me whole, not helped by Grace’s anxious, stuttering breathing in my ear. 

I took a moment to appreciate how detailed video games have become since my childhood experiences playing Evil Dead: Hail to the King on the original PlayStation (seriously, you can see the dust drifting in beams of light now?!), only for the sound of movement somewhere in the facility to yank me back to the present. I renewed my frantic search for the fuse, only to run blindly into a pitch-black room and encounter something enormous that dragged me into the darkness. Sorry, Grace!

You can find out what happens next when Resident Evil: Requiem releases for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 on February 27, 2026.

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Megan Fox Is Among the New Cast Members in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2—And Blumhouse Hasn’t Given Up on Its Other m3gan Yet

Blumhouse made several announcements at their NYCC panel, most notably that Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body) is voicing Toy Chica in director Emma Tammi’s highly anticipated sequel Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, coming to theaters on December 5. Other new additions to the cast include YouTuber Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, who cameoed in the first movie and will voice Toy Bonnie, and Kellen Goff, who has voiced multiple characters in the game series and will now lend his pipes to Toy Freddy.

I’m interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, not least because my best friend is terrified of the franchise and makes a wildly entertaining moviegoing companion—but I’m more interested in the future of another Blumhouse franchise, M3GAN. After the sequel underperformed, likely due in part to its hard genre pivot away from horror and into action territory, the future of the killer doll is uncertain. But in a special industry presentation on “The Business of Fear,” Jason Blum revealed that “we’re all working to keep M3GAN alive,” adding that Blumhouse is exploring other potential mediums before trying to resurrect her on film. 

Does that mean a M3GAN video game might come our way in the future, or perhaps a TV series? I don’t know, but I have a feeling this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the silicone diva.

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

The Lost Boys: A New Musical Will Feature Flying Stunts and a Live Vampire Band

My queer heart is a sucker for musical adaptations of horror films I love, so you can be certain that I’ll be heading down to the Santa Carla Boulevard—aka Broadway’s Palace Theater—for The Lost Boys: A New Musical, which begins previews on March 27, 2026. At their NYCC panel, producer Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring franchise), director Michael Arden (Maybe Happy Ending), and cast members LJ Benet, Ali Louis Bourzgui, and Maria Wirries revealed why they feel Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic translates so well to the stage, and what audiences can look forward to. 

“There’s something that I see with both horror movies, musicals, and superhero movies—there’s an element of melodrama that’s really rewarding,” says Wilson, who began his career in musical theater and worked with Schumacher on the director’s 2004 film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. “Some people view it as camp, but there’s a reality of it being heightened that felt like this story cemented itself so much to being a musical.”

“They’re a biker gang, after all, and there’s a level of theatricality to that in and of itself,” says Arden. “Our biker gang also happens to play instruments.” 

That’s right: the vampires will be playing instruments live on stage, which made casting twice as hard. Ali Louis Bourzgui, who plays David, the character portrayed by Kiefer Sutherland in the film, reveals that he plays guitar. And that wasn’t the only unusual request in the casting call: auditions included a flying test. (Presumably wires were involved, unless Arden has found himself a real cabal of vampires in his cast.)

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Other highlights that fans can look forward to include killer music from one of Arden’s favorite bands, The Rescues. You can listen to the song “Have to Have You” right now, featuring instrumentals from Slash. The director also teases that many fan-favorite moments from the film will feature in some way in the musical, including the bridge scene and, yes, even the sexy saxophone guy. 

Greg Nicotero’s Guts & Glory Marks a New Challenge for a Legend of the Business

If you like looking at gnarly practical effects in horror movies, chances are you’re familiar with Greg Nicotero’s work, whether you realize it or not. The legendary SFX artist has worked on everything from George Romero’s Day of the Dead and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II to Kill Bill and, more recently, The Walking Dead. The impressive extent of his resume was made clear at the panel “Shudder is Here to Scare the S*** Out of You,” in which almost any film mentioned by the other panelists was met by a small smile and a humble murmur of “worked on that” into the mic, often followed by a wild anecdote. Nicotero seems like the most interesting man in the world to grab a drink with, and his new horror competition show for Shudder—Guts & Glory—will let us see more of the man behind the makeup brush.

Guts & Glory is one of the most fun times I’ve had on a show,” Nicotero says, teasing that the series is “part Sam Raimi, part Halloween Horror Nights, and part Survivor.” 

In the six-episode first season, contestants are dropped into an Alabama swamp, where there’s an urban legend about an evil spirit. “One of the contestants gets possessed by the evil spirit, people start dying off, but in the meantime, they’re still competing and there’s a prize,” Nicotero explains.

Guts & Glory is effects-heavy, which was challenging to do in an unscripted series relying on real people’s real-time reactions. “You do a movie, you can cut and try it again,” Nicotero explains. “[This] was completely out of my wheelhouse and out of my comfort zone, but I’m really, really proud of it.”

Nicotero’s Creepshow was one of the first original shows to debut on Shudder, so he’s truly part of the DNA of the horror streamer, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year. Guts & Glory premieres on October 14 as part of Shudder’s Season of Screams programming.

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Horror Short The Littles Deserves the Big-Screen Feature Treatment

Some short films are perfectly suited to their bite-sized format, while others contain the seeds of something much bigger. At the New York Premiere of The Littles, a new short written and directed by American Horror Story producer Andrew Duplessie, I could immediately see the potential for the feature film that Duplessie hopes to make. 

Equal parts charming and unsettling, The Littles stars M3GAN’s Violet McGraw as a little girl with a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One night, a scuffling sound and a crack of light between the boards lead the little girl to discover that her family isn’t alone in the house… 

Duplessie says The Littles was inspired by his own experiences growing up in a creaky old house with a no-doubt overactive imagination. The short features creepy-cute stop-motion animation from Anthony Scott (The Nightmare Before Christmas), puppets by Katy Strutz (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio), and some truly adorable miniature sets by Aiden Creates, all blended perfectly with the live-action scenes. Check it out if it’s playing at a festival near you, and watch this space for a (fingers-crossed) future feature! 

Photo taken by Samantha McLaren.

Disney Publishing’s New The Nightmare Before Christmas Tie-in Novel Welcomes Younger Fans into the Scary Fun

NYCC’s horror happenings weren’t all geared toward an adult audience. Disney Publishing took over Daily Provisions Manhattan West for a pop-up experience inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas, featuring themed food and drinks like a delectable Pumpkin Potion coffee that I could honestly drink all season long. 

At a media and creator event in the space, I took a look at the newly released Hour of the Pumpkin Queen from New York Times best-selling author Megan Shepherd, who also wrote the official novelization of The Nightmare Before Christmas for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2023. In this new tie-in novel, Sally and her rag doll apprentice, Luna, embark on a time-bending adventure to save Jack Skellington and Halloween Town after falling through a mysterious portal.

I was gifted a copy of the book by Disney, but all opinions are my own here. I’m looking forward to giving it a read during the inevitable Halloween hangover that takes place in November, before likely passing it on to my young nieces when they’re old enough. It’s a full novel, not a picture book, so definitely geared more toward a YA audience, but between the beautiful artwork on the cover and the seasonal theme, it might just be the perfect gift for the budding horror lover in your life. 

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That’s a wrap on New York Comic Con 2025! Be sure to bookmark Horror Press if you haven’t already so you never miss our coverage of conventions, festivals, and more. 

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