“Brahms: The Boy II”
Cast: Katie Holmes, Ralph Ineson, Owain Yeoman
Synopsis: After a family moves into the Heelshire Mansion, their young son soon makes friends with a life-like doll called Brahms.
What You Need to Know: It isn’t as common in this dog-eat-dog marketplace that a middlingly-reviewed horror film with just an okay box office return would warrant a sequel being greenlit. But, stranger things have happened, and for STX Films, a sequel to a January 2016 horror release that barely anyone remembers isn’t the worst bet. It appears that other than the connective tissue of the premise (the soul of a deceased young boy is living inside this doll), the sequel is a complete overhaul with a new cast (though director William Brent Ball returns). One has to wonder how well this will fare, considering it’s out less than a month after another “haunted doll” film, and a more popular property at that. But again, stranger things have happened.
Release Date: July 26
“The Nightingale”
Cast: Sam Claflin, Aisling Franciosi, Damon Herriman, Ewen Leslie
Synopsis: Set in 1825, Clare, a young Irish convict woman, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. On the way, she enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker named Billy, who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
What You Need to Know: After making an astonishing debut in 2014 with “The Babadook,” we’ve been eagerly anticipating what writer/director Jennifer Kent was going to do next. Based on the premise, it seems like her focus on the broken hasn’t changed, but the expansion of her scope has. It may be splitting hairs to say that “The Nightingale” is more of a straightforward revenge thriller than a horror film, but given Kent’s previous endeavor and the horrific nature of what the film is about, it’s worthy of this list, and August cannot come soon enough.
Release Date: August 2
“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”
Cast: Zoe Margaret Colletti, Michael Garza, Austin Zajur, Dean Norris
Synopsis: A group of teens faces their fears in order to save their lives.
What You Need to Know: Horror fans went nuts when it was announced that Guillermo del Toro would be producing and co-writing a film based on Alvin Schwartz’s anthology novels that many grew up with. Couple that with director André Øvredal of the underseen-but-beloved-to-those-who-have-seen-it “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” you have the potential for a late-summer hit in the making. From the looks of it, it seems like a fun, sweet-but-edgy teenage-appropriate horror movie that if done well (or even half-decent), will inspire a new generation of fans for the books. The only question that seems to be on everyone’s minds: does the film cover all three books, or are they banking on a sequel happening?
Release Date: August 9
“47 Meters Down: Uncaged”
Cast: John Corbett, Sophie Nélisse, Nia Long
Synopsis: Four teen girls diving in a ruined underwater city quickly learn they’ve entered the territory of the deadliest shark species in the claustrophobic labyrinth of submerged caves.
What You Need to Know: “47 Meters Down” was a surprising hit for new distributor Entertainment Studios in 2017, so a sequel isn’t entirely surprising, though as “Jaws” has proven, it’s really difficult to make sequels to shark attack films. To be fair, “47 Meters Down” is no “Jaws,” but it is entertaining in its own right and knows exactly what kind of film it is. And with director Johannes Roberts returning (who also directed the better-than-it-had-any-damn-right-to-be “The Strangers: Prey at Night”), this could potentially be another fun ride, and a perfect time to release a film to scare everyone from going into the water as the summer begins to wrap up.
Release Date: August 16
“It: Chapter Two”
Cast: Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, Bill Skarsgård, Bill Hader
Synopsis: Twenty-seven years later, the Losers Club have grown up and moved away, until a devastating phone call brings them back.
What You Need to Know: We know. Trust us, we already know. This is a massive cheat. One of the biggest cheats that has ever cheated. The first week of September is not summer, nor is it fall. The movie stuck in between the end of the “Summer Movie Preview” and the beginning of the “Fall Movie Preview.” But, since school will likely start on Tuesday (or Wednesday), and no one will be in that mode yet, it’s likely that “It: Chapter Two” is looking to match, if not surpass, the mammoth opening that its predecessor opened to on the same weekend two years ago, and for that, it warrants its inclusion. Like Stephen King’s doorstop novel and the miniseries before it, the Losers Club reunites 27 years later (now James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, among others) after their first encounter with Pennywise (Skarsgård) to vanquish the evil once and for all. The cast that director Andy Muschietti is stellar, and hopefully, they can overcome the weaker aspects of the book and previous miniseries to make a satisfying closure to this story (and leave out the extended Chinese food sequence, for sanity’s sake).
Release Date: September 6
