>Three members of a black metal band ‘Invoking Yell’ venture into the woods to shoot a demo tape. What begins as a relatively innocent trip into the woods turns into a dark and satanic love letter. They hope to record paranormal phenomena as part of their album. The trio goes to unusual lengths to achieve this process and, as a result, tap into sinister forces. Invoking Yell is a found footage horror film that is slow to start but does find its footing to unleash a chill-inducing and downright creepy tale.

>The setting and story of Invoking Yell are confined and straightforward. Three members of a metal band, Ruth (Andrea Ozuljevich), Andrea (María Jesús Marcone), and Tania (Macarena Carrere), venture into the woods with the hopes of recording a phenomenon for their band. Right off the bat, thanks to the found-footage narrative, the movie creates an immediate claustrophobic intimacy. The deeper the characters venture into the woods, the more the feeling takes hold. While short on outright scares, the film excels at building tension through atmosphere in both sound and sight...

>Plot: On the eve of being ordained, three young priests, Paul (Austin Freeman), John (Charlie Prince) and Mark (Sam Sneary), are given one final test. They are surprised and question what the test could be but decide to ignore the warning. However, on their journey, they stumble upon a woman in need. She invites them into her home to help her possessed daughter by carrying out an exorcism.

>The three priests must deal with something unexpected as they are put through a series of trials. Each trial tests their faith as the men decide whether they are ready to graduate.

>Reviews: “This movie dives into religious connection right down to having the priests named John, Paul and Mark. It plays into the sensitive subjects revolving around how priests get ordained, almost like a hazing process. This becomes a very interesting concept and one which has surprises along the way. the best way to describe this movie is, a religious escape room.” Movie Reviews 101

>” …The Final Pact is an interesting film that plays out more as a supernatural drama than a fright flick. It benefits from some strong performances and interesting ideas. There isn’t much in the way of effects, but the cinematography, also by Rabbath, looks great and nicely frames the effects the budget allowed for. As long as you realize you’ll spend more time thinking than jumping out of your seat, you should enjoy the film.” ★★★½ Voices from the Balcony

>Haunted by a personal tragedy, home care worker, Shoo (Clare Monnelly) is sent to a remote village to care for an agoraphobic woman (Bríd Ní Neachtain) who fears the neighbours as much as she fears the Na Sídhe – sinister entities who she believes abducted her decades before. As the two develop a strangely deep connection, Shoo is consumed by the old woman’s paranoia, rituals, and superstitions, eventually leading her to confront the horrors from her own past...

>Fantastic Fest is fast approaching and that means a slew of new horror movies and interviews with their makers are coming your way! Last year’s fest happened during the SAG strike so there was no cast in attendance, but this year we’ll have cast and crew on the slab for you.

>It’s hard to narrow this list down to an arbitrary number because, more often than not, my favorite movies from the festival end up being the ones that were quite possibly not even on my radar before I sat in a darkened theater to be absolutely wowed by the unexpected. Last year’s When Evil Lurks was a prime example of this. That thing came out of nowhere to traumatize our minds and win our hearts. What will the big surprise be this year? Not knowing is half the fun. In the meantime, here are 16 new horror movies we can’t wait to watch with the Fantastic Fest audience...

>“If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” goes the famous line in Jennifer Kent’s 2014 horror classic of that name. Ten years after its original release, though, The Babadook’s storybook rhyme needs updating: Today, it’s in sitcoms, reality TV competitions, and stop-motion sketch comedy shows, too. Like Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), popular culture can’t get rid of the nattily-attired boogeyman; unlike mother and son, pop culture apparently likes keeping him around, if we go by the number of times he’s surfaced in unexpected places over the last decade.

>IFCFilms and ICONIC Events are re-releasing The Babadook to commemorate its 10th anniversary, two months ahead of its premiere in U.S. theaters; the movie debuted worldwide at the Sundance Film Festival’s 2014 edition, and did the rounds at other fests until its November opening. This is great news for the folks who missed the film at the time, comprising “most” on account of the scant number of screens it played on—a sign of the times, predating the horror new wave that crested later in the decade and continues to roll over the industry in 2024. To watch The Babadook now is to witness the seismic event that stirred the wave...

>When asked to picture “body horror,” we conjure images that are best described as repulsive: growths of new appendages, spurts of pus and blood, dermatological mutation into some abject new form. But therein lies the beauty of the genre: What if you couldn’t distance yourself from something horrific, because it’s impossible to escape your own flesh and blood? If you find yourself in a body-horror film — perhaps you shared a ride in a teleportation pod with an insect, or were propositioned by transdimensional clergy to expand your kink horizons — you are probably in the process of losing agency over freaky stuff happening to your skin, organs, or tissue. If you’re lucky enough to just be watching some other poor sod fall victim to an inhuman metamorphosis, you are probably terrified that this could all happen to you. You also have a body, after all, and have just seen firsthand a few gruesome reasons to be very suspicious of it. But maybe, in both scenarios, you find something liberating in a new perception of your body, skin, or consciousness. Body horror doesn’t just see the body as a site of violation, but of fascination; filmmakers have for decades plumbed a tactile intimacy that attracts as much as it repels, and focusing on the tension between these impulses has given us the best, freakiest, strangest looks into these sacks of flesh we carry around with us...

>Bridging the divide between the horror and science fiction genres, The Veil is a haunting tale about the mysteries of identity and perception told in the cadence of the classic American ghost story. As a powerful solar storm descends on the valleys of rural Pennsylvania, bathing the rustic pines in the shimmering emerald glow of aurora borealis, a retired priest named Douglas (Sean O'Bryan) rouses awake to urgent knocking at the door of his isolated farmhouse. His unexpected midnight visitor is Hannah (Rebekah Kennedy), a young Amish woman desperate for shelter after a personal crisis drives her to flee her insular community...

>Not everything is as it seems at the old Royal Fulton Hotel. Norman Forrester, played brilliantly in a career-defining performance by the iconic Corey Feldman, is finally going to meet his girlfriend’s family at her father’s lavish birthday party. But what was supposed to be an important step forward in their relationship doesn’t exactly go as planned; he’s not on the guest list, his girlfriend is ignoring him, and her father doesn’t like him at all. Rejected and heartbroken, Norman wanders away from the party, only to find something far more sinister than his girlfriend’s family lurking deep within the churning bowels of the ailing hotel: an ancient evil that threatens to bring about the end of the world...

>Popular social media platforms and video streaming services pose serious risks to user privacy, with children and teenagers most at risk, the Federal Trade Commission found in a report published Thursday.

>The report, which stretches more than 100 pages, details the data, advertising and recommendation-system efforts by these companies, and how they rely on information about users to sell ads. Users also “lacked any meaningful control over how personal information was used for AI-fueled systems” on the companies’ platforms, according to the report.

>“While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release...

>Here's another look at gameplay from Ritual Night in this latest trailer for the upcoming social deduction game meets roguelite with no player elimination. Ritual Night will be available on PC in 2024, and a demo is out now on Steam. In Ritual Night, through teamwork and betrayal, attempt a ritual to summon Cthulhu. Watch out! Someone is an icky human who wants to sabotage the ritual. After every round, the game evolves, granting potent magic powers to each side to deduce or deceive.

>Decadent is an atmospheric exploration, Lovecraftian horror that sees players take the role of John Lorn, a royal explorer and a veteran of the Great War, who has become an occultist. During one of his occult experiments he has become host to a mysterious parasite, one that gives him strange abilities at the expense of his sanity. As he follows the lost Miskatonic University expedition to find his missing son, John will walk the fine line that separates good and evil and sanity and insanity.

"The Bureau of Meteorology is shifting the way it communicates about climate phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña, because global heating is making predictions based on the past less reliable.

This week the bureau kept the country on a “La Niña watch” and said if the climate system in the Pacific does develop, it’s likely to be short-lived and weak.

Historically, La Niña events – where warmer waters gather to the north of Australia – have been associated with cooler and wetter conditions from across north-western Australia to the south-east. El Niño events are often warmer and drier.

But Dr Karl Braganza, national manager of climate services at the bureau, said climate change and the amount of heat being added to the oceans made those old relationships less reliable.

Climate change may not have “broken” them, he said, “but the number of times when the climate is inconsistent with what we saw in the past will only increase”...

"Summer has increased by an average of 36 days across Spain over the last 50 years.

Spain is slipping into a desert climate, according to a new study into the relationship between global heating and drought.

The Mediterranean country is clearly on the frontlines of climate change in Europe. Now researchers at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona have delved deeper into its climate vitals.

By 2050, they predict that rainfall will decrease by up to 20 per cent compared to current levels. This would tip Spain from a temperate Mediterranean climate into a steppe- or even desert-like one, as per the Köppen system which divides the world into five different climate zones based on plant growth.

“The warming process resulting from climate change has been very pronounced in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, representing a true hotspot,” the researchers write..."

>A party game turns into a supernatural nightmare in the upcoming supernatural horror movie Spin the Bottle, featuring Justin Long (Barbarian) as the local authority savvy to the paranormal. Paramount has debuted the new trailer today, giving a closer look at the haunted rules.

>The film’s official synopsis: “When a group of friends plays spin the bottle in a house marked by a brutal massacre, they unknowingly unleash an evil spirit and start dying in terrifying ways. Now, the survivors must stick together to uncover the house’s dark secrets and end the bloodshed.”

>While some audiences may view PG-13 horror movies as restrained, unable to let loose for full-on frights, the best supernatural movies in this category rely on technical competence and premise development to secure the scares. The paranormal plots of the genre invite audiences to imagine a reality where occult creatures exist behind a veil only revealed under the most dire of circumstances. From hauntings to taxing psychological what-ifs, the best PG-13 supernatural movies allow audiences to focus on the unsettling atmosphere and tension-building sequences instead of the overwhelming violence and gore found in their R-rated counterparts.

>The skepticism of the paranormal put in competition with the intrigue of possibility makes for an intoxicating and enticing watch that ultimately goes home with the viewers versus slasher or body horror movies where the frights are left onscreen instead of attaching to their reality. Whether adapted from source material or a franchise continuation, the supernatural films in this canon operate so successfully within their limits that the rating is secondary...

>If you're a horror fan, you're familiar with Blumhouse Productions (cited as Blumhouse from here out). Even if you're not a horror fan, you've probably watched a Blumhouse film without knowing it ("Whiplash?" "Jem and the Holograms?" "Tooth Fairy?"). Jason Blum's nightmare factory is synonymous with today's mainstream horror pillars, securing the rights to everything from "Halloween" to "The Exorcist" and beyond. Indeed, it's impossible to banter about our contemporary horror era without acknowledging how prevalent and prodigious Blumhouse has become — so why does it feel like it's ghosting us this year?

>Blumhouse decimated last year's horror movie market. In 2023, Blum's juggernaut scared up nearly $800 million worldwide in box office totals. Emma Tammi's video game adaptation "Five Nights at Freddy's" boasted a high score of $297 million on a $20 million budget — one of nine films released by Blumhouse. Now, there's no metric for reporting for streaming titles like "Totally Killer" (Prime Video) or "The Passenger (MGM+), so that $800 million-ish haul only considers "Five Nights at Freddy's," "The Exorcist: Believer," "Insidious: The Red Door," and "M3GAN." Anywhere you looked, whether in theaters or on multiple streaming platforms, Blumhouse was crushing the competition.

>How about 2024? It's like night and day.

>The last time I remember really noticing Demi Moore in a movie was in Margin Call. The film was an excellent (and unfortunately still timely) portrait of the type of Wall Street backbiting and greed that precipitated the 2007 housing collapse. It’s also an ensemble where Moore stands out while still being positioned in support of male co-stars like Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey, one of whom scapegoats Moore’s character in her biggest scene. Before that film, it was The Joneses and Mr. Brooks, where Moore twice played “the wife,” which often is Hollywood code for the most underwritten character in a movie.

>I bring this up because not one of these pictures was released in the last 10 years. Two of them not even in the past 15. It’s a remarkably depressing thing, especially when one remembers Demi Moore was among the biggest stars of the ‘90s. And she radiates still, ferociously so, when given the chance. Well, Coralie Fargeat just provided her a great one in The Substance, the most original, and pitiless, horror movie I’ve seen this year...

>There are so many try-hard reboots and hollow sequels in horror that it can be hard to remember that some legacy properties can (and should) be properly dusted off. In that spirit, Vulture has compiled a list of scary-movie remakes that are truly worth your time: thrill rides that improved upon their source material, matched wits with the classics that came before them, or, in a few cases, nobly committed to turning bad first movies into highly entertaining second efforts. From alien parasites lurking in Antarctic research facilities to girls getting picked off on sorority row, here are the horror remakes that will make you glad Hollywood took a second stab at...

"Several residents of Mexico shared shocking video footage of a UFO seemingly hovering to the ground, drawing a mixed response.

Videos on social media captured what appeared to be an oval-sized object hovering over the western city of Zitácuaro on September 8.

The footage shows the UFO-like figure hovering near a tree while a second recording captured it slowly moving in front of the overcast skies.

The alleged flying saucer sightings were reported in the neighborhoods of El Naranjo and Manzanillos..."

"The Senate Armed Services Committee is looking to hold a UFO hearing after the November elections, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) office confirmed to The Hill.

The hearing announcement follows an increase in sightings of what’s officially known as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, including one purportedly near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. It would also come more than a year after an explosive House hearing in July 2023, when three former Pentagon officials testified about their experience with or sightings of UAP, warning that a lack of information on the phenomena could pose national security risks.

Now Gillibrand, who in 2022 helped start the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) — created to assess reports of UAP — wants a progress update on the office’s work.

“It’s a priority for me. I think it’s very important that we continue to make things publicly available,” Gillibrand earlier this month told Matt Laslo’s D.C. “Ask a Pol” podcast.

She wants “a progress report on how many unidentified aerial phenomena we’ve assessed and analyzed” and for the office to “give examples of what we have identified and give examples of what we haven’t identified.”

Gillibrand, who chairs the subcommittee under the Senate Armed Services Committee on emerging threats and capabilities, added that she wants AARO “to continue to build credibility.”

Her office confirmed Tuesday to The Hill that there will be a hearing, likely in November..."