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The feature debut of director Kourtney Roy, horror movie Kryptic premiered at SXSW last year, and Well Go USA brought the film home to Digital outlets over the weekend.

Whet your appetite for the goopy, slimy body horror madness of Kryptic by watching an exclusive kill scene below, and find the previously released official trailer underneath.

Kryptic is now available on all major VOD outlets.

“Kay is in trouble. A strange encounter in the woods has left her with no memory. Only one thing is certain: she is the spitting image of missing monster hunter, Barb Valentine.

“When an intruder breaks into her house, she runs, with no idea where she’s going; but she knows her only chance to reconnect is to shed more light onto Barb’s mysterious disappearance. Random encounters seem to point her in the right direction, but what was hoped to be a journey of...

The forest, its lore, and the creatures that lurk inside its darkness have long been an element of mystery for humans. They exist in a liminal space between civilization and the wilderness—a place full of fantasy, terror, and unexplained phenomena. As a Starla in Kryptic would say, something changes in you when you meet the Sooka. Dark femininity and the forest have seen analogous representation in the arts; Kryptic takes it a notch higher by blending high-concept sci-fi themes with the local myth of Sooka in Canada. Kryptic, directed by Kourtney Roy, is a Canadian horror-thriller that weaves psychological mystery into an almost Lynchian surreal horror. The film stars Chloe Pirrie in a dual role as Kay Hall and Barb Valentine, creating ambiguity for the viewers to decode questions about identity, evolution, and possession by ancient spirits.

Spoilers Ahead

What Happens In The Film?

Kryptic starts with protagonist Kay Hall,...

There’s a new murderous clown up on the big screen plus an acclaimed Shudder release now streaming at home, and that’s just the beginning of this week’s seven fresh horror offerings.

Here’s all the new horror that released on Friday, May 9, 2025.

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

The young adult slasher novel by author Adam Cesare comes to the big screen in Clown in a Cornfield, and Rlje Films and Shudder have released the film in theaters today.

Eli Craig (Tucker & Dale vs. Evil) directed the movie adaptation.

Katie Douglas (Ginny & Georgia), Carson MacCormac (Shazam!), Aaron Abrams (Hannibal), Will Sasso (The Three Stooges), and Kevin Durand (Abigail) lead the cast.

In the bloody slasher movie, “Quinn and her father have just moved to the quiet town of Kettle Springs hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she discovers a fractured community...

Cryptids are fascinating creatures, regardless of whether you believe in their existence or not. From Mothman and Bigfoot to the Fresno Nightcrawler and the Flatwoods Monster, these fantastical beasts have captured our imagination. In her feature film debut, Kryptic, director Kourtney Roy channels that fascination into her own creature full of ectoplasm and gooey ooze.

In the new film:

Kay (Chloe Pirrie) is in trouble. A strange encounter in the woods has left her with no memory. Only one thing is certain: she is the spitting image of missing monster hunter, Barb Valentine. When an intruder breaks into her house, she runs, with no idea where she’s going, but she knows her only chance to reconnect is to shed more light on Barb’s mysterious disappearance. Random encounters seem to point her in the right direction, but what was hoped to be a journey of self-discovery gradually becomes a hunt for the monster itself.

It’s that time again; our Summer Horror Preview 2025 is here! The 2025 slate of summer horror releases brings some of the year’s most anticipated releases and beyond, ensuring another packed season of horror ahead. As if that’s not enough, this guide comes packed with exclusive new peeks at summer’s biggest horror movies.

This guide covers the highlights of what’s already been announced, but as always, expect surprise streaming, Digital, and VOD releases to pop up in the coming months as horror continues to thrive and dominate.

Here are the horror movies you don’t want to miss in Summer 2025!

A Desert – May 2 (Theaters)

Photographer Alex Clark (Green Room’s Kai Lennox) embarks on a solo road trip to capture abandoned roadside structures and buildings in desolate stretches of Southwestern desert, hoping to reinvigorate his stalled career in director Joshua Erkman’s feature debut. Instead, Alex finds...

"People go missing 'round here... It's like the forest just swallows them up." Well Go USA has revealed the official trailer for an indie mystery thriller film called Kryptic, from last year's SXSW, marking the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Kourtney Roy. It's ready for release (direct to VOD) starting in May in a few months. A young woman searches for a missing monster hunter, realizing she has an inextricable bond with the creature being pursued. Sometimes when you go hunting for a monster, the monster finds you first. In Kourtney Roy's debut feature Kryptic, Kay's pursuit of a missing cryptzoologist leads to her riveting cosmic quest for identity. A horror film unlike any other... Starring Chloe Pirrie as Kay, Jeff Gladstone, Jason Deline, Ali Rusu-Tahir, Christina Meredith Lewall, Patti Allan, and Pam Kearns. All of The Little Red Riding Hood motifs are blatantly obvious in this footage, but is...

The feature debut of director Kourtney Roy, horror movie Kryptic premiered at SXSW last year, and Well Go USA is bringing the film home to Digital outlets beginning May 9, 2025.

Exclusively watch the official trailer for Kryptic below.

In the upcoming movie…

“Kay is in trouble. A strange encounter in the woods has left her with no memory. Only one thing is certain: she is the spitting image of missing monster hunter, Barb Valentine.

“When an intruder breaks into her house, she runs, with no idea where she’s going; but she knows her only chance to reconnect is to shed more light onto Barb’s mysterious disappearance. Random encounters seem to point her in the right direction, but what was hoped to be a journey of self-discovery gradually becomes a hunt for the monster itself.”

Chloe Pirrie, Jeff Gladstone, Jason Deline, Ali Rusu-Tahir, Kamantha Naidoo, Jenna Hill, Pam Kearns, Jane Stanton,...

It’s important to remember that the cryptid at the center of Kryptic is Not Bigfoot. It may look like bigfoot, it may live in the same surroundings as Bigfoot, and it may even have some of the same questionably interdimensional qualities as Bigfoot but it is definitely not Bigfoot. And to be fair. Bigfoot ain’t this strange, this horny(!), or this, uh, gooey…

Pulling from the craziest corners of the Bigfoot legend to create their own cryptid, director Kourtney Roy and writer Paul Bromley have crafted something entirely original that is pure high strangeness. When awkward hiker Kay (Chloe Pirrie) goes for a wander on “Krypto Peak” she encounters something that upends her entire reality. In a flash, her memory is completely wiped, her brains are scrambled, and something resembling semen begins oozing from her ear.

“Pure High Strangeness”

Kay slowly begins to piece her life together, finding...

Thea Hvistendahl’s atmospheric slow-burn “Handling the Undead” took top honors at this year’s Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival (Nifff), claiming the festival’s H.R. Giger “Narcisse” prize alongside the Silver Méliès for best fantastic European feature.

Toplined by “The Worst Person in the World” stars Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie, director Thea Hvistendahl’s feature debut repurposes walking-dead tropes, reimagining the traditional zombie movie as a more ambient reflection on family grief.

“Full of frail, mortal feeling and overcast last-days imagery, ‘Handling the Undead’ lingers coolly in the bones longer than many zombie films that offer more immediate, grisly gratification,” Variety’s Guy Lodge wrote out of Sundance. “It’s a living-dead nightmare with a brain and a heart, and, most importantly and indelibly, a soul.”

This year’s international jury – made up of sci-fi author Saul Pandelakis, filmmakers Ishan Shukla and João Pedro Rodrigues, festival programmer Annick Mahnert,...

The Count Of Monte-Cristo Photo: Fantasia International Film Festival

Cannes hit The Count Of Monte-Cristo is to screen at Fantasia next month, it was announced today. Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte enjoyed a 12 minute ovation at the French festival, and the work of Alexandre Dumas is hot stuff in North America following the recent success of Martin Borboulon's Three Musketeers adaptations - but this is just one entry in an exciting second wave line-up.

Other films in the selection announced today include Carl Joseph Papa's powerful animated exploration of trauma The Missing, Alice Maio Mackay's freewheeling Carnage For Christmas (which is edited by The People's Joker's Vera Drew), and South By Southwest shocker Kryptic, whose director Kourtney Roy told us she was very much in it for the monsters.

Festival favourite Elijah Wood will return as the washed-up illusionist father of a small girl...

Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival has unveiled its second wave of titles, which includes the world premiere of Ant Timpson’s “Bookworm” as the opening night film. This year’s edition, the 28th for the festival, will run from July 18 to August 4. More titles will be announced July 3.

Other world premieres included in the line-up are “The Beast Within” starring Kit Harington (“Game of Thrones”), which follows a young girl as she starts to question her atypical life in her family’s compound in England, and makes a shocking discovering about her dad; and “Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain,” with director Kenji Nakamura reviving the thrills of the original anime.

“Bookworm” stars Elijah Wood (“Yellowjackets”) and Nell Fisher (“Evil Dead Rise”). The official logline reads, “Mildred (Fisher), a precocious eleven-year-old bookworm, escapes her humdrum existence by immersing herself in novels where literary adventures abound, with a...

Bigfoot isn’t the only elusive cryptid in horror. Director Kourtney Roy‘s feature debut, Kryptic, centers around an amnesiac in pursuit of a missing cryptozoologist and the Canadian cryptid she was pursuing. Don’t expect a straightforward approach to this cryptid tale, though. Kryptic earns its title and then some, unfurling an esoteric psycho-thriller that uses its forest dwelling creature as an atypical monster metaphor.

Kay Hall (Chloe Pirrie) can’t remember anything before the bizarre encounter in the woods that wiped her memory and left her traumatized. A return to where it began, Krypto Peak, stirs up scattered but visceral memories of an eerie Sasquatch-like creature, and a tour group notes Kay’s uncanny resemblance to missing cryptozoologist Barb Valentine. It sparks Kay’s quest to seek out and find the real Barb, hoping it’ll bring answers and fill in her missing memories. The closer she gets to uncovering the truth,...

Chloe Pirrie (“The Queen’s Gambit’) headlines psycho-thriller “Kryptic,” which will have its world premiere at SXSW’s Midnighter strand. A first clip has been unveiled for the film.

The film follows Kay (Pirrie), who is in trouble. A strange encounter in the woods has left her with no memory. Only one thing is certain: she is the spitting image of missing monster hunter, Barb Valentine. When an intruder breaks into her house, she runs, with no idea where she’s going; but she knows her only chance to reconnect is to shed more light onto Barb’s mysterious disappearance. Random encounters seem to point her in the right direction, but what was hoped to be a journey of self-discovery gradually becomes a hunt for the monster itself.

Written by Paul Bromley (“Ouija”), the film is directed by Kourtney Roy (“Slice of Heaven”). The cast also includes Jeff Gladstone (“Resident Alien...

The latest edition of the SXSW Film Festival kicks off later this week in Austin, Texas, unleashing an expansive slate of film programming an experiences- emphasis on expansive. For the horror fan, the fest offers so much more beyond the Midnighter programming section, and this SXSW 2024 preview guide should help.

The 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival’s Opening Night TV Premiere is the highly anticipated Netflix series 3 Body Problem created, executive produced and written by Emmy Award winners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and Emmy Award nominee Alexander Woo. The Midnighter category includes buzzy titles like Samara Weaving-starring Azrael and Sundance favorite It’s What’s Inside. The fest’s Headliner section comes packed with highly anticipated titles like Immaculate, Cuckoo, and Arcadian. But all of this only scratches the surface of titles to get excited about.

Whether you’re heading to Austin this week or keeping track...

March fest announces multiple competition sections.

SXSW announced on Wednesday that Netflix series 3 Body Problem from Game Of Thrones co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss is the festival’s opening night TV premiere, while Universal’s action comedy The Fall Guy with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is the centrepiece screening.

Top brass at the Austin, Texas, festival (March 8-16) also unveiled feature and short competitions and Midnighters and Global sections, as well as select titles from other categories and Xr Experience for the 31st edition.

Headliners selections include world premieres of Pamela Adlon’s Babes starring Ilana Glazer,...

This year’s SXSW Film Festival, taking place in Austin, TX, just unveiled their lineup, and what a massive year for horror.

The 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival’s Opening Night TV Premiere is the highly anticipated Netflix series 3 Body Problem created, executive produced and written by Emmy Award winners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and Emmy Award nominee Alexander Woo. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg for what’s in store.

The fest unveiled its Midnight lineup, which includes the Samara Weaving-starring Azrael. Elsewhere, look for Neon’s highly anticipated Cuckoo set to make its premiere.

Read on for the genre titles included in SXSW 2024’s lineup, and stay tuned for additional programming announcements.

Narrative Spotlight

Unforgettable features receiving their World, North American, or U.S. premieres.

Cuckoo (Germany)

Director/Screenwriter: Tilman Singer, Producers: Markus Halberschmidt, Josh Rosenbaum, Maria Tsigka, Ken Kao, Thor Bradwell, Ben Rimmer...

Renowned photographer Kourtney Roy makes feature film debut.

XYZ Films has added the psychothriller Krypto to the sales slate of its New Visions label launching in Cannes to champion bold cinematic voices and has released the first two first-looks.

Paris-based Canadian photographer Kourtney Roy makes her feature film debut on the Canadian-uk co-production about a woman’s search for a missing monster hunter and her growing realisation that she is inescapably linked to the creature being pursued. Chloe Pirrie stars and Paul Bromley wrote the screenplay.

Amber Ripley of Goodbye Productions produced Krypto alongside Sophie Venner of the UK’s Taletime Pictures and Josh Huculiak,...

"No Time to Die" actress Léa Seydoux, poses for the July 2021 issue of "Madame Figaro Paris", photographed by Kourtney Roy:  

"...in 'No Time To Die', opening October 8, 2021, 'James Bond' (Craig)  has left active service when his friend, the 'CIA' officer 'Felix Leiter'...  "...enlists his help in the search for a missing scientist.

"When it becomes apparent that the scientist was abducted, Bond must confront a danger , the likes of which the world has never seen before..." 

"No Time to Die" is  produced by Eon Productions, starring Craig in his fifth performance as 'MI6' agent 'James Bond', with Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Rory Kinnear, Jeffrey Wright and Seydoux reprising their roles from previous films. 

...Rami Malek, Ana de Armas, Lashana Lynch, David Dencik, Dali Benssalah and Billy Magnussen also join the cast.

Click the images to enlarge...

"James Bond" Comic Books...