The first quarter of 2023 is over, but Shudder is just picking up steam with a brand new slate of films coming to their already impressive catalogue! From obscurities to fan favorites, there’s something here for everyone. Check out the full calendar of relase below, and let us know what you’ll be watching when April rolls around.

Shudder Calendar 2023

April 3rd:

The Slumber Party Massacre: A female high school student’s slumber party turns into a bloodbath, as a newly escaped psychotic serial killer wielding a power drill prowls her neighborhood.

Magic: A ventriloquist is at the mercy of his vicious dummy while he tries to renew a romance with his high school sweetheart.

April 4th:

Don’t Panic: On his 17th birthday, a boy named Michael has a surprise party thrown by his friends, where a session with a Ouija board accidentally unleashes a demon named Virgil, who possesses one of them to go on a killing spree. Michael, now plagued by violent nightmares and premonitions, sets out to try and stop the killings.

April 6th:

Slasher: Ripper: The new series on Shudder takes the franchise back in time to the late 19th century and follows Basil Garvey (McCormack), a charismatic tycoon whose success is only rivaled by his ruthlessness, as he oversees a city on the cusp of a new century, and a social upheaval that will see its streets run red with blood. There’s a killer stalking the mean streets, but instead of targeting the poor and downtrodden like Jack the Ripper, The Widow is meting out justice against the rich and powerful. The only person standing in the way of this killer is the newly promoted detective, Kenneth Rijkers, whose ironclad belief in justice may wind up being yet another victim of The Widow. 

April 10th:

Bog: Dynamite fishing in a rural swamp revives a prehistoric gill monster that must have the blood of human females in order to survive.

April 14th:

Kids vs. Aliens: All Gary wants is to make awesome home movies with his best buds. All his older sister Samantha wants is to hang with the cool kids. When their parents head out of town one Halloween weekend, an alltime rager of a teen house party turns to terror when aliens attack, forcing the siblings to band together to survive the night.

April 17th:

Final Exam: In a small college in North Carolina, only a select few students are left to take mid terms. But, when a killer strikes, it could be everyone’s final exam.

Primal Rage: A baboon escapes from a Florida campus lab and starts spreading something bad with a bite.

Darklands: A reporter investigates ritual profanations and finds himself involved with a Druidic cult.

April 28th:

From Black: A young mother, crushed by guilt after the disappearance of her young son 5 years previously, is presented with a bizarre offer to learn the truth and set things right. But how far is she willing to go, and is she willing to pay the terrifying price for a chance to hold her boy again?

Averaging about six weeks from screen to streamer, movies are finding a new template for the lifespan of a film. For instance, the ice has barely melted in your soda from your theatrical viewing of Cocaine Bear and now you can rent it on VOD only a few weeks later. It’s insane!

That doesn’t even include streamers such as Peacock and Paramount+ who offer their studio-owned properties to subscribers at no added cost just a few weeks after the cinema premiere. It’s a new age!

The recent surprise is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest mystery Knock at the Cabin which opened theatrically on February 3. The movie was available on VOD just three weeks later. NBC Universal sent out an announcement today that the movie, starring Dave Bautista, will stream on Peacock starting March 24.

The film will also be available to own digitally March 24, and on Blu-ray™ and DVD May 9.

But, if you have Peacock enjoy the show for free with the price of your subscription which is about the same as renting the movie online— not sponsored, not affiliated!

Besides Bautista, the movie stars Tony Award® winner Jonathan Groff (Hamilton), Ben Aldridge (Pennyworth, Fleabag), BAFTA nominee Nikki Amuka-Bird (NW), newcomer Kristen Cui, Abby Quinn (Little Women, Landline) and Rupert Grint (Servant, Harry Potter franchise).

While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.
 

In perhaps one of the weirdest genre news stories to come out since we first reported on it two years ago, The Hollywood Reporter announced Barbie Ferreira (Euphoria) and Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things) will star in a Faces of Death remake.

For those who don’t have the number 19 at the start of their birth year, and may not know what Faces of Death is about, it is a “found-footage” documentary of people and animals dying in a myriad of horrific ways. All apparently non-produced and real. We know now that was a false claim and most of the material was (effectively) manufactured

About eight years ago iHorror talked to Michael R. Felsher, owner, and founder of Red Shirt Pictures, a production company that provides documentaries, director commentary, and bonus content for DVD and Blu-Ray distributors. He went into detail about his experiences with Faces of Death and its director, Conan Le Cilaire (nee John A. Schwartz), who provides the commentary for the Blu-Ray edition.

“One of the things that I found really fascinating about [Faces of Death] was talking to both the special effects crew who worked on the movie and also the editor,” Felsher told iHorror at the time, “who had a really interesting task in that he had to blend stuff that existed at the time, and also sometimes create something out of whole cloth.”

What?! The footage isn’t entirely real? Gen-Xers were duped? For a period of time in the mom-and-pop video rental era, Faces of Death was one of those grails hidden behind the counter and only rented out if you were cool enough to be trusted by the cashier.

The content was so disturbing the film was banned in several countries. One famous triggering scene involves a monkey and a dining table with a small hole in the middle, used as a pillory for the animal’s head. Dining guests then beat the monkey’s head with small mallets until it became unconscious and dined then on its brains. Of course, all of this was fabricated with cauliflower substituting for primate gray matter.

Scenes like this would help the film become fodder for the video nasty era and get it banned in the U.K. The censorship only flamed the hype and Faces of Death became an underground cult classic with a few sequels to follow. But it is the original that remains the jewel in the crown of the franchise, having earned over $60 million in its lifetime.

Schwartz (Le Cilaire) passed away in 2019, but apparently, his legacy will live on in a new “re-imagining” of his original film. There are no details on what that means. Only that it will be written by Isa Mazzei and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (Cam).

We will keep you updated.

In the meantime, check out our story about the secrets of Faces of Death HERE.