Jon B. Elliott’s dramatic debut feature went to camera this week in Vancouver, bringing together a stacked cast of Indigenous talent for a cross-border road trip story about identity and belonging.

Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant, How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and Phillip Forest Lewitski (Die My Love, Bones Of Crows) lead the film as two young Indigenous men who meet in a downtown Vancouver jail. Jesse, a white-passing mixed race Coast Salish college student alienated from his culture, lands there after a drunken fight. Russell, a political activist and graffiti artist from New Mexico, gets locked up for painting a politically charged mural. Despite wildly different upbringings, the two connect and hit the road to New Mexico, navigating hostile territory while grappling with personal demons.

The cast also includes Carmen Moore (Meadowlarks), Joel D. Montgrand (True Detective), and William Belleau (Killers Of The Flower Moon).

Photon Films is distributing in Canada. Producer Jessie Anthony is heading to the TIFF Market to shop the film for U.S. and international distribution on behalf of Vandal Productions and Pass Through Productions.

Skins Game is shooting across British Columbia through September, backed by Telefilm Canada, Creative BC, and the Canada Arts Council. It’s the kind of indie production that puts Indigenous stories and voices front and center, no compromise.

The masked killers are coming back.

Lionsgate is releasing The Strangers – Chapter 2 on 4K and digital October 13, picking up right where the last nightmare left off. Madelaine Petsch returns as Maya, the sole survivor who thought she’d escaped. She didn’t.

When The Strangers learn she’s still breathing, they come back to finish the job. No mercy, no reason, just pure relentless violence.

Director Renny Harlin takes over the franchise built on Bryan Bertino’s original characters, with Gabriel Basso and Ema Horvath joining Petsch in the cast. The 98-minute horror sequel promises the same senseless brutality that made the original a cult hit, only this time the stakes are personal.

The home release includes a 19-minute making-of doc and a 42-minute Q&A with the cast and crew for fans who want to go behind the masks.

For indie horror filmmakers, this is a reminder that sometimes the simplest concepts, executed with raw intensity, cut deepest. The Strangers franchise proves you don’t need elaborate mythology or backstory. Just pure, unrelenting dread.

A teenage cancer survivor gets shipped off to “chemo camp” against her will and finds the best summer of her life. That’s the hook for “Sunny Dancer,” a coming-of-age rom-com-drama hitting select theaters September 18th via Quiver Distribution.

Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us) stars as Ivy, a 17-year-old who’d rather be partying with friends than dealing with her parents’ well-meaning overprotection. Instead, she lands at summer camp surrounded by other young people who get what it means to survive something huge, then figure out how to actually live.

Writer-director George Jaques (Black Dog) built the film around an ensemble of rising talent, including Daniel Quinn-Toye, Earl Cave, Ruby Stokes, Conrad Khan, and Jasmine Elcock. The adult cast brings serious heat too: James Norton (Happy Valley), Jessica Gunning (Baby Reindeer), and Neil Patrick Harris round out the lineup. Este Haim and Zachary Dawes handle the score.

Jaques calls it “profanely funny” and deeply personal, a story about found family and wanting to fit in when life has other plans. It’s not about the illness. It’s about what comes after.

“Sunny Dancer” expands nationwide this fall following its initial release.

Remember Kevin Pickford from “Dazed and Confused”? Shawn Andrews is back on screen in a major way.

The actor joins “The Walking Dead: Dead City” season 3, episode 5 as Reverend Anthony, part of a new group called the ‘Dead Squad.’ It’s his biggest mainstream role since the 1993 cult classic that launched careers for Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, and Parker Posey.

Andrews has stayed busy in indie films like “Big Heart City” opposite Oscar nominee Seymour Cassel (which earned him festival best actor awards) and “Fix” with Olivia Wilde. But his “Dazed” character still pulls serious numbers online, with over 800 million TikTok searches for Kevin Pickford and 90 million for Andrews himself.

Beyond acting, Andrews is releasing music. His debut single “Ride Like Thunder” was mastered by legendary engineer Howie Weinberg (20 Grammy wins, 200+ Gold and Platinum albums) and has racked up nearly 250,000 Spotify streams. It’s a retro rock throwback produced by Mathew Rucker.

For an actor who built his career on character driven indie work, landing a role in AMC’s zombie universe feels like the right full circle moment. Andrews proves you can disappear into smaller films for decades and still find your way back when the right project comes calling.

A home robbery turns into a fight for survival when the thieves discover their target is slowly transforming into a zombie.

Lionsgate drops “Turning Point” on VOD and digital today, starring DJ Qualls (“The Man in the High Castle,” Road Trip) as a neighbor who becomes an unlikely expert on the undead. The 87-minute thriller follows Margot and her partner, who break into the wrong house and find themselves trapped with a person mid-zombie transformation.

The film, directed and written by Joshua Wagner, stars Jillian Lee Garner and Mike Apple as the criminals, with Shane Brady (“Ballers”), Lydia Hearst (“Z Nation”), and Sanchita Malik (“Love”) rounding out the cast.

Here’s the setup: the burglars can’t escape, their hostage is mutating, and their only shot at getting out alive is Qualls’ oddball character, who somehow knows how zombies work. It’s a genre mashup that flips the home invasion formula on its head.

For indie horror fans craving something different than the usual haunted house fare, this one delivers gore, dark humor, and a fresh twist on the zombie playbook. Sometimes the scariest thing isn’t what’s outside, it’s what’s changing right in front of you.

A writer who spent decades building Marvel and DC franchises is taking his original stories indie.

Paul Jenkins, the crossmedia creator behind work on “Spider-Man,” “Wolverine: Origin,” “Batman: The Dark Knight,” and six platinum-selling video games, has launched Ten-6 Studios with producers Baker and Rosa Waite. The Atlanta-based company will house and produce Jenkins’ catalog of original IP, separate from his work for Marvel, DC, Sony, Disney, and Activision.

“For years, I’ve watched the value of my own work become part of larger companies and Hollywood studios,” Jenkins said. “Ten-6 gives us the opportunity to take ownership of what comes next and bring these stories to audiences on our own terms.”

The studio launches with a four-film slate. First up is “Burn,” a supernatural thriller targeting an overseas shoot in spring 2027. Casting announcements coming soon.

Jenkins will serve as CEO and lead creative, while the Waites handle finance and business operations. Industry vet Carrie Anne Hunt joins as chief talent officer.

The Waites see Ten-6 filling the gap between major studios and low-budget indies, pairing established IP with efficient mid-budget production. Jenkins brings Meta Studios, his award-winning crossmedia production house. The Waites bring RBL Entertainment, their film finance and production company.

For a creator who cut his teeth on “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” watching its indie creators retain ownership, this is full circle.

What happens when humanity goes extinct and the robots are finally free to live their lives in peace? One android Abraham Lincoln decides that’s not enough.

Image Comics is collecting the first four issues of *If Destruction Be Our Lot* into a trade paperback this fall. The sci-fi series comes from co-writers Mark Elijah Rosenberg (*Approaching the Unknown*) and Matthew Rosenberg (*We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us*), with art by Andy MacDonald (*Doctor Strange*), colors by Francesco Segala, and letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.

The story follows Abe, a robotic replica of Lincoln who refuses to accept the mundane existence of a post-human world. While other robots happily do their jobs without interference, Abe believes there’s something more beyond the city limits. So he sets out to find it, even if it means getting recycled in the process.

Think *The Murderbot Diaries* meets *Fallout*, with the meditative quality of *A Psalm for the Wild-Built*. Patton Oswalt calls it “a bleak, hilarious look at artificial intelligence, real history, and the messed up borderland in between.”

The trade hits comic shops October 7 and bookstores November 3. It’s a weird, witty take on what makes us human, told through the eyes of machines who outlived us.

Before zombies shuffled through malls or stumbled across TV screens, they meant something else entirely. Not monsters. Victims.

Maya Annik Bedward’s BLACK ZOMBIE digs into the buried history of the undead, tracing the figure back to colonial Haiti, where it was born as a living symbol of slavery and stolen will. The documentary, which premiered at SXSW, unpacks how Hollywood took a metaphor rooted in Black spiritual tradition and transformed it into one of the most profitable horror tropes of all time.

Bedward revisits iconic films like WHITE ZOMBIE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, and THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, weaving in archival footage and interviews with cultural historians, artists, and genre legends including Slash, Tom Savini, and Mambo Labelle Déesse. The result is part cultural reckoning, part horror remix.

The film opens September 11 in New York and Los Angeles via Kino Lorber, with a national rollout to follow. It’s a rare documentary that works as both film criticism and an act of reclamation, offering horror fans a deeper understanding of where the zombie really came from, and what it used to mean.

A real Alabama haunted attraction is getting turned into a horror film, and it looks seriously twisted.

“Hellbilly Hollow” was shot entirely on location at the actual Hellbilly Hollow haunt in Vincent, Alabama. Director Kevin Wayne (The Magnificent Seven, Outer Banks) came up with the idea while filming a commercial at the attraction, imagining a killer stalking victims through the eerie backwoods setting. That vision became this film.

Wayne directs and stars as Tickles, a disfigured, childlike clown. His co-star is rocker Kurt Deimer (Halloween, Scared to Death), who plays Bull, Tickles’ manipulative caretaker brother. The story follows paranormal YouTubers who visit the haunted attraction the night before Halloween, only to encounter something far deadlier than staged scares.

The production went all out with practical carnival-style kill sequences, including Wack-a-Troll, High Striker, Acid Darts, and a Car Dunk. The film features eight original songs performed by Deimer, plus a score by Roy Mayorga of Ministry. Sound design comes from Tom Boykin, who worked on John Wick: Chapter 4 and The Last of Us.

Atlas Distribution Company will release “Hellbilly Hollow” in select U.S. theaters on September 25. Wayne and Deimer are already positioning this as the start of a franchise built around the location and its two deranged killers.

For indie horror filmmakers working with limited budgets, shooting at an existing attraction with built-in atmosphere is a smart move.

Two survivors thought they escaped the horror. The golden mask has other plans.

Pornsak Pichetshote and Alberto Ponticelli are teaming up for *Exquisite Corpses: Lone Gunman”, a five-issue miniseries launching this November from Image Comics and Tiny Onion Studios.

The book picks up two years after the events of *Exquisite Corpses* season one. Laura and fellow survivors Xavi and Jason tried to disappear with her winnings, far from the twisted 13 Families who orchestrated their nightmare. But the past won’t stay buried. The legacy of the golden mask is coming for them again.

Pichetshote, who wrote *The Good Asian* and *Absolute Green Arrow*, is calling this “Season 1.5.” It bridges the gap between seasons while digging into the Lone Gunman’s backstory and the history of the 13 Families. New readers can jump in without reading the main series.

“What happens after you survive the twelve deadliest slashers of all time?” Pichetshote said. “It’s the ultimate Final Girl story.”

Ponticelli, known for his work on *Unknown Soldier*, said Lone Gunman is his favorite character in the series. He’s bringing a rough, textured visual style to match the story’s edge.

Jordie Bellaire is on colors, Becca Carey on letters. The first issue drops November 4 with covers by Ponticelli and Bellaire, plus variants from Rafael Albuquerque, Leandro Fernandez, and others. One variant comes polybagged with a trading card from the recently funded *Exquisite Corpses* board game.

*Exquisite Corpses* moved over 700,000 issues in 2025, making it the year’s biggest original IP launch.