News

Horror Pride Month: Kevin Williamson and the Horror Renaissance of the Late 1990s

Published

5 years ago

June 21, 2021

That early 1990s was a weird time for horror. After the “Golden Age” 80s with all its splatter and slasher goodness, the beginning of a new decade seemed somewhat lost and rudderless. We were waiting for something, someone, to step onto the scene with a new, fresh perspective, and Kevin Williamson was ready to fill that need.

Now, I’m not saying the early 90s didn’t produce some quality entertainment. We had Misery, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Candyman, In the Mouth of Madness, and The People Under the Stairs, but the films felt like holdovers from the previous decade rather than something new set to usher in a new millennium of entertainment. Williamson was poised to fit that bill beautifully.

Kevin Williamson was born in North Carolina and spent his formative years in Port Aransas, Texas. He was a storyteller from an early age, but decided what he really wanted to do initially was act. He earned a BFA in Theater Arts from East Carolina University and moved to New York to start a career.

Between the Big Apple and Los Angeles, Williams had a number of small roles and appearances in music videos, but it was not the career he wanted. In 1992, he wrote and sold a script titled Killing Mrs. Tingle, based on Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin, which unfortunately sat on a shelf for a number of years.

Then in 1994, reportedly inspired by a true life case of serial murder, Williamson wrote Scary Movie which would eventually become Scream, released in theaters on December 20, 1996. Gone were the days of stumbling in the dark by characters who apparently had never seen a horror film in their lives. These characters knew the genre inside and out and those who didn’t, failed to survive.

It was exactly the breath of fresh air that the genre needed. Not only did it spawn a franchise that recently wrapped on its fifth installment, but Williamson became one of the most sought-after writer/creators in Hollywood seemingly overnight.

In 1997, he gave us Scream 2, but also penned the script for I Know What You Did Last Summer. The latter, based on another novel by Lois Duncan, introduced an entirely new set of teens dealing with the consequences of covering up what happened late one night on a lonely road after their graduation. This too, would spawn a franchise, though it failed to hold onto the magic of that first film, perhaps because Williamson was not involved after the initial installment.

The following year, Williamson teamed with director Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Til Dawn) to bring The Faculty to theaters. The standalone film took place at a high school where students and faculty alike are slowly being taken over by an alien parasite.

The Faculty boasted a serious roster of older and new talent including Jon Stewart, Piper Laurie, Famke Jannsen, Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, Clea Duvall, Jordana Brewster, Elijah Wood, Shawn Hatosy, Usher, and Josh Hartnett, who appeared in Halloween: H20 the same year as Laurie Strode’s son. Though it never gained quite the status as some of Williamson’s other work, it is arguably one of his best in that early line-up. The balance between know-it-all speed-talking teenagers and horror hit a sweet spot and produced a genuinely terrifying film.

In 1999, Williamson stepped into the director’s chair when he was given the opportunity to finally make Killing Mrs. Tingle–though the title would be changed to Teaching Mrs. Tingle by the time the film was released due largely in part to the shooting at Columbine High School which happened the same year.

The film starred Helen Mirren as Mrs. Tingle, a hateful history teacher who is the only one standing in the way of Leigh Ann Watson (Katie Holmes) from taking the top spot as Valedictorian of her class and earning her scholarship to Harvard. When an attempt to cull the teacher’s favor goes horribly awry, Leigh Ann and her two besties, played by Barry Watson and Marisa Coughlan, end up stepping way over the line.

Sadly, Teaching Mrs. Tingle did not live up to Williamson’s other projects, but it did little to stop the the demand for his work as a writer, though the early 2000s were the epitome of a rough patch. Scream 3 debuted in 2000. It was the first film in the franchise not directly written by Williamson and the film suffered because of it. Then, in 2005, Cursed was released, and…well…that’s a whole article on its own. Let’s just say it didn’t go well.

Thankfully, Williamson was still working as a producer on Dawson’s Creek–a show he created–and 2011 brought his star back in a big way.

Scream 4 took audiences by storm. It had been over a decade since we’d seen one of the films. The original cast reunited for the venture written by Williams and directed by Wes Craven yet again. The film surprised us all when it felt just as fresh as that first outing and it reaffirmed Williamson’s talent as a writer for anyone who thought he was out of the game.

Before long, he had spearheaded the cult-based thriller series The Following and was tasked with developing The Vampire Diaries for the CW.

More recently, Williamson created Tell Me A Story, a series that weaves together fairy tales in a modern horror thriller narrative and worked as a producer on the newest Scream film which is due out next year.

Of course, some of you are enjoying the trip down memory lane but still perhaps wondering why it is I’m writing this as part of our Pride series here at iHorror. The reason is simple. Kevin Williamson is gay. It was, in fact, a gay man who gave 90s horror a distinct look and vibe of its own.

Why is this important?

Two reasons:

First, it’s part of our history and an awful lot of people have worked very hard to make sure the LGBTQ+ community has no history. A people without a history do not matter and have no power. So, by acknowledging Kevin Williamson, we’re acknowledging a part of our power.

Second, there are an awful lot of homophobic horror fans out there who like to pretend that queerness and horror are mutually exclusive when in fact they’ve been constant bedfellows from the beginning. There’s an undeniably petty part of me that just loves reminding them of that from time to time.

Regardless, Kevin Williamson and his work will be intertwined with the horror genre for generations to come, and we here at iHorror salute him for Horror Pride Month.

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

You must be logged in to post a comment.

News

ITCH Is the Outbreak Film That Actually Gets Under Your Skin

Published

4 hours ago

April 22, 2026

Luna Gray

No one would blame you for looking at ITCH and filing it under zombie film. Because it is. The outbreak spreads person to person. People stop being people. The world ends a little bit. You know how it goes.

What Bari Kang actually made is something with a different mechanism at its center. The contagion does not spread through biting. It spreads through scratching. You scratch yourself. This makes you sick while it is happening. You scratch because someone near you scratched and something in your brain said that looks right.

I talked to Kang about it. Turns out it was not a deliberate subversion. “It was never meant to be a zombie film,” he told me. “That happened along the way.” The idea came during COVID. He watched someone scratching in a store and could not stop thinking about it. “What if that’s how something spreads?” He started writing from there and somewhere in the process the zombies arrived. “All of a sudden I had these zombies running around.” He went that route without going that route.

Why the Scratch Works

We all get how zombies work. They bite, someone hides their bite, sometime later everyone is dead. Kang’s instinct was that the scratch would do something different. “It’s really visceral and contagious,” he said. “I figured if I could lean into that, that might work well.” He was right.

There is something about watching someone scratch that is harder to look away from than watching someone get bitten. You feel it on your own skin. The sympathy itch is real and ITCH knows it and uses it without being cute about it. That is craft. For a film Kang wrote, directed, produced, and starred in himself, that is not a small thing.

Who Is Bari Kang

The short version: he decided he wanted to be an actor, spent a year auditioning and booking nothing, and then casting director Judy Henderson, who was in the middle of casting Homeland at the time, told him to go write his own stuff. “I was like, oh, you can do that,” he told me.

He said: “Nobody’s coming to give you a hand. There’s no handouts. It seems like we need permission or something to do it, but you just gotta get out there.” Yeah. That.

The Rule About Lore

There were versions of ITCH that explained what the itch was, where it came from, who started it. Kang cut all of it. The less he showed, the more the film asked audiences to do the work themselves. And audiences who do the work are more scared than audiences who are shown everything.

ITCH does not explain itself and it does not need to. A film about a contagion that spreads through something you cannot stop yourself from doing, made in the aftermath of a pandemic everyone lived through, does not require a mythology breakdown. It requires you to sit with what it is suggesting. Which is worse.

ITCH is available now.

News

ShoStak Opens the Door for Filmmakers to Build and Own Their Stories

Published

20 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Anthony Pernicka

A new platform is stepping into the streaming space, but instead of trying to become the next Netflix or TikTok, ShoStak is built around a much bigger idea.

“Cinema does not need another platform. It needs a new model.”

ShoStak operates across two sides of its ecosystem. ShoStak.tv is the viewer-facing platform where audiences can watch content and discover new series. ShoStak.world serves as the creator hub, where filmmakers can develop projects, submit ideas, and take part in programs designed to help bring those stories to life.

Together, they form what ShoStak describes as a cinematic ecosystem. A space where stories are not treated as disposable content, but as worlds that can grow, evolve, and sustain themselves over time.

Instead of chasing algorithms or studio approval, the platform is built around a simple but ambitious goal. Give creators ownership of their work, their audience, and the revenue they generate from it.

The Competition Offering a First Look

As part of its early rollout, ShoStak is hosting a creator competition where audiences can vote on which projects move forward, giving fans a rare shot at directly influencing what actually gets made.

Projects are introduced as series concepts or pilots, with creators competing across multiple rounds. Audience participation helps determine which entries gain traction and continue developing.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Dunedin Int. Film Festival (@diffestival)

Ownership at the Center

One of the platform’s defining ideas is simple but powerful. Creators should own what they create.

ShoStak emphasizes a model where filmmakers:

Retain ownership of their intellectual property
Build and grow their own audience directly
Earn revenue tied to engagement and support from that audience

This removes a layer that has traditionally stood between creators and success. Instead of relying on studio approval or algorithmic luck, filmmakers have a clearer path to building something of their own.

It’s a shift that could be especially meaningful for independent creators who are used to giving up control just to get their work seen.

Building a New Kind of Pipeline

ShoStak is not just focused on hosting content. It’s working toward building a system where ideas can grow from concept to fully realized projects.

Through its creator hub and development programs, filmmakers can:

Introduce new story worlds directly to audiences
Build a following around those stories
Expand their projects over time without losing ownership

It creates a pipeline that feels more open than traditional systems. Instead of waiting for approval behind closed doors, creators can develop their work in front of an audience and grow it organically.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @shostak.tv

Why This Matters for Horror

Horror has always lived a little outside the system.

Some of the most memorable films in the genre came from creators taking risks, working with limited resources, and finding ways to connect with audiences on their own terms.

ShoStak’s approach could give horror filmmakers a new kind of playground:

Test ideas as short-form series
Build loyal fanbases around original concepts
Expand those concepts into larger projects over time

For a genre that thrives on originality and experimentation, having more control over both the creative process and the outcome could make a real difference.

ShoStak is not just trying to launch another streaming service. It’s trying to rethink how stories are created, shared, and sustained.

By focusing on ownership, long-term world-building, and direct connection between creators and audiences, it’s offering a different path forward.

Whether that model succeeds remains to be seen.

But if it does, it could give filmmakers something that has been increasingly difficult to hold onto.

Control.

News

The Evil Dead Burn Trailer Is Here and It Is Everything

Published

1 day ago

April 21, 2026

Luna Gray

The teaser for Evil Dead Burn is attached to Lee Cronin’s The Mummy in theaters right now, which means you have to earn it. Go see The Mummy. You will probably enjoy that too.

Here is what we got. A young girl crawling across an apartment floor desperately trying to stay alive in a room with a Deadite. It is hard to tell, but the whole thing may be one continuous shot of her trying to get away from all of it. It is action packed, and it is gory, and ultraviolent in a way we have never seen in the franchise. For a teaser. That is a thesis statement. That is Sébastien Vaniček telling you exactly what kind of film this is going to be.

Evil Dead Burn opens July 10.

Why Vaniček Was the Right Call

The director is Sébastien Vaniček, who made Infested in 2023. Infested is a French spider horror film set entirely in a crumbling apartment building, and it is one of the better creature features of the last decade. It is relentless.

A single girl crawling across a dirty apartment floor with Deadites closing in is exactly the kind of scene Vaniček was built for. He does not need big spaces or big budgets. He needs a person, a threat, and no way out. That is Evil Dead. That has always been Evil Dead.

He co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard, his Infested collaborator. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert produce through Ghost House Pictures. Bruce Campbell and Lee Cronin are executive producers. The whole institution showed up for this one.

What the Film Is About

A woman loses her husband in a car accident and goes to stay with her in-laws at their remote house. The in-laws find the Book of the Dead. You already know what happens after that. You have always known.

Souheila Yacoub leads the cast, joined by Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Tandi Wright, and George Pullar. The film shot in New Zealand between July and October 2025 and is the sixth installment in the Evil Dead series.

Evil Dead Rise proved the standalone approach works. It did not need you to have seen anything. Burn looks like it is doing the same thing and doing it in a filthier, more confined space, which is exactly where this franchise lives best. If the teaser is any indication, Vaniček understood the assignment from the first frame.

Evil Dead Wrath follows in 2028, directed by Francis Galluppi. The pipeline is full. I am not complaining.