Misc
[REVIEW] The ‘Slayed’ LGBTQ+ Shorts Block at BHFF 2024 Tapped Into Queer Nightmares and Daydreams
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is over for another year, but many of the films I saw will linger long on my mind. That’s especially true for those that played as part of the annual ‘Slayed’ shorts block.
Horror Press was once again proud to sponsor ‘Slayed,’ which exists to elevate short films made by LGBTQ+ filmmakers and focusing on queer themes. If you couldn’t make it this year, check out our round-up of the block below.
Beach Logs Kill (dir. Haley Z. Boston)
A surreal daydream edges into nightmare territory in writer-director Haley Z. Boston’s Beach Logs Kill. The short centers on an always-in-detention misfit (Abby Quinn) who finds herself drawn inexorably to the school’s beloved quarterback, Number 36 (Ryan Simpkins). After a charged encounter in the locker room that may or may not have been in the misfit’s head, Number 36 heads out onto the field, where a horrific accident awaits them.
Beach Log Kills masterfully captures that muddled moment in all our queer awakenings when we can’t quite decide if we want to be with someone or be them — that place where desire and obsession collide, hesitation reigns, and anything could happen, but, inevitably, nothing does. Boston reclaims jock machismo through a queer, femme-forward lens, offering a locker room fantasy for every girl who ever watched their crush from afar, afraid to tell, along with one of the most memorable uses of a tampon in horror this year.
Lady Parts (dir. Ariel McCleese)
Some girls just make you wet. In the case of Iris (Ava Hase), dreaming about Ellie (Liv Mai) leaves her practically drenched. Writer-director Ariel McCleese takes this concept to the edge and beyond in her short Lady Parts, which combines elements of body horror and vaginal imagery with enough goop to make Cronenberg proud.
The short focuses on Iris’s struggle to confront her sexuality even as it threatens to spill over and consume all. An encounter with a boy, Ethan (Jake Holley), ends in tragedy, her body revolting. But what was forced and unpleasant with Ethan is beautiful and natural with Ellie, leaving them both reveling in the wetness.
Unsettled (dir. Bella Thorne)
The words “This is a true story” flash on screen like a punch to the gut at the end of Unsettled, a queer nightmare written and directed by Bella Thorne and based on the experiences of producer and star Jason Parks. Parks plays Jay, a young man whose night at a gay club in the Bible Belt of Oklahoma ends with him waking up bound in a bathtub, having been drugged and abducted by two men.
Thorne’s direction carefully balances frantic moments with quiet, breathless terror, and it will be interesting to see what she does with the material when she adapts it into her feature directorial debut, Color Your Hurt. Parks has said in interviews that making and watching the short was a “cathartic” experience, which is good to hear because the events depicted in it are truly horrifying. But the scariest part is the apathy of law enforcement and onlookers — and the haunting unspoken question of what might have happened to Jay/Parks if he didn’t break free.
Dream Factory (dir. Alex Matraxia)
The role of cruising in the gay community has faded over time as unambiguous queer bars and hook-up apps have proliferated. Writer-director Alex Matraxia’s experimental short film Dream Factory stirs the ghosts of this era, inviting viewers into a location that has long played an important role in the queer experience, both as a site to cruise in the relative obscurity of darkness and as a place to feel seen: the cinema.
Clocking in at around six minutes, Matraxia’s dialogue-free short doesn’t follow a conventional narrative, instead invoking a pervasive air of eroticism tinged with danger. Two men meet beneath the flickering light of the projector, while a cowboy and gangster, two archetypes of masculinity, fill the screen and a mysterious blonde figure roams the hall. The incessant hum of the projector underscores all as lips linger over ears and bodies stalk and crash.
Rat! (dir. Neal Suresh Mulani)
In addition to handling writing and directing duties, Neal Mulani stars in Rat!, a comedic horror short about the perils of provoking stan Twitter. Mulani plays Navin, an entertainment journalist who goes viral for posting a video criticizing a major pop star, Wally Max (Jacob Berger), for supposed queerbaiting. His editor may love it, but the star’s fans do not, leading some to hunt him down.
Rat! is especially interesting in its exploration of the gray areas of internet culture. Max’s fans are clearly in the wrong for taking fandom too far, but Navin isn’t entirely in the right, either. Mulani shows him looking up what others are saying about Max before composing his video, blatantly looking for an angle rather than expressing his true thoughts. And while there’s an important conversation to be had about the trend of real queer people (especially queer people of color) being shouted down by fans in these conversations, so is there a danger of making assumptions about the sexuality and gender identity of others.
Stink (dir. Matias Breuer)
There’s something so uncomfortable about the idea of being watched without your knowledge. Writer Drew Beckman and director Matias Breuer take voyeurism to a violating new level with Stink, an unsettling tale of unseen obsession.
The short opens on the beach, where a stalker (Beckman) watches the handsome Levi (Karan Menon) sunbathe. An eerie voiceover gives us a glimpse into the true depths of the stalker’s obsession as he draws closer to Levi, crossing more and more boundaries, dipping his fingers in a glob of saliva left behind in the sand and raising them to his lips. Things only escalate from there as the stalker enters Levi’s apartment while he’s in the shower, transfixed by his smell, desperate to taste. His thirst satiated for now, he moves on to his next obsession, but we’re left with the disquieting question of whether he’ll take things even further next time.
Girls (dir. Julien Hosmalin)
The soft, shy queer female gaze is juxtaposed with a leering, violent male one in Girls, directed by Julien Hosmalin, who co-wrote the script with Olivier Torres. This stylish French horror short centers around lounge singer Ally (Carmen Kassovitz), who runs away with Romane (Natacha Krief) on her motorbike, looking for a little peace. But when the bike breaks down, their getaway devolves into a nightmare as Ally is kidnapped by a sex trafficking ring and put up for auction.
With a truly satisfying climax, Girls is proof that the revenge subgenre needs more sapphic entries. If you’ve ever wanted to see a motorbike used as a weapon, this is the short for you.
We hope this recap convinces you to check out the ‘Slayed’ shorts block at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2025. Until then, keep an eye out for these shorts, and be sure to support the filmmakers behind them.
Misc
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) Limited Edition 4K UHD from Arrow Video
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
Misc
NYCC 2025 Horror Highlights: A Sneak Peek at ‘The Lost Boys’ Musical, ‘Resident Evil: Requiem,’ and More!
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.








