In late February 2026 and through March 2026, some fun horror and strange fiction movies were released from thriving long-term franchises, book adaptations, and we even saw some original stories. At the tail-end of March, I also caught a horror series on Netflix.
Down below, we’ve got:
- Wuthering Heights
- The Strangers: Chapter 3
- Scream 7
- Undertone
- Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
- Some Non-Horror/Strange Movies
- Movies and TV Shows I’m Looking Forward to in April 2026
Here’s what to watch and what to skip.
Wuthering Heights
I caught this as Alamo Drafthouse which creates little no-voiceover video essays about the upcoming film and plays them with the trailers, so with very little intentional research, I learned that many, many, many adaptations have been made on Wuthering Heights, almost all of them focusing on the first half of the novel, which spans over decades. More happens when this movie ends!
But the ending of the latest adaptation does not align with the books—which I didn’t mind because I didn’t read it. I’ll be honest: I have a hard time with books written for people who could only read and reread epic-length fiction for entertainment. I need the shorter, punchier, suspenseful sentences of writers who know they’re competing with movies and TV shows.
Some controversy has arisen over Jacod Elordi’s casting in the movie. The producers have been accused of white-washing the movie and erasing the racial ramifications of the story. I do think that when we give white—or straight, or cis–actors—the roles that belong to their cultural counterparts, we are taking jobs away from an already disenfranchised group. Jacob Elordi, on the other hand, would absolutely have gotten another role. The proof is in our “actor’s fatigue.” This dude is everywhere right now.
But: When I watched this movie, I didn’t know any of that (aside from Alamo’s video essay content). I just took it at face value. And the face value is:
Upsetting, then sexy, then upsetting again.
“Haunt me, then,” a character says. “Take any form.” OW! That hurt very much; thank you.
There’s a lot that can be said about the modern influences in the costume and set design, the color blocking, but as much as I enjoyed this dark, pseudo-BDSM romance, I didn’t feel compelled enough by those aspects to write about them. I’ll let Vogue speak on that instead.
Wuthering Heights is now available to rent or buy on Prime, Apple TV, Fandango, and YouTube Movies.
The Strangers: Chapter 3
The Strangers: Chapter 3 is the third and final installment in the reboot/remake/maybe-or-maybe-not-prequel of The Strangers, an absolute work of art featuring Liv Tyler and that guy who played the love interest in Underworld opposite Kate Beckinsale. I tore Chapters 1 and 2 apart in “The Best and Worst Horror Movies of 2024” and “…2025,” respectively. This movie, if you can believe it, enraged me more than the others. At least Chapter 2 had some redeeming qualities.
Here’s my one-sentence review of The Strangers: Chapter 3: What a disappointment.
The movie reveals so little about the killers that I had to look up, actively, if this was a prequel or not. Why is that something I’m just now getting concrete answers for after seeing the trilogy’s final film?
Despite the “Chapter 1” and subsequent early chapter misnomers, this is apparently a reboot and not a prequel?
A reboot would make more sense, since Chapter 1 was basically a worse retelling of The Strangers, but I also feel like the producers knew exactly what they were doing with the title, especially with A Quiet Place: Day One coming out the same year. They saw the prequel popularity and wanted to ride the wave.
Either way, they didn’t deliver.
If I could rewrite this trilogy as a true prequel (taking some scenes from the Chapter trilogy as inspiration), here’s how it would go:
Chapter 1.
Our heroine is a teenager, on a family trip. Her father insists on “unplugging.” He’s a health nut. Her mother is a C-suite member at a big corporation and the trip is a thinly veiled attempt to get her to stop checking her emails, please god look away from your email app for a second, Karen. Our heroine also has a little brother, who is annoying, but in an endearing way. He likes his big sister but enjoys tormenting her more.
Scarecrow and Pinup stalk the cabin. Dollface is not among them.
Pinup knocks at the cabin door three times in slow succession. Our MC thinks it’s her annoying little brother until Pinup delivers the now infamous line, “Is Tamara there?”
This first movie centers on Scarecrow and Pinup as they terrorize the family, a subtle nod to The Strangers: Prey at Night, which was a killer sequel. Interspersed throughout this first film are flashbacks of the two stalkers as children, showing that they had a thirst for blood from an early age. In the flashbacks, we learn the origin story of “Tamara.”
Our MC’s father and mother are killed off. It’s just our MC and her kid brother left now. She drives them to the small town’s police station, where the Sheriff isn’t as helpful as she hoped. We see Scarecrow’s silhouette in an open doorway in the background.
Cut to black.
Chapter 2.
The movie picks up right where we left off. Our heroine must get her little brother to safety.
Interspersed are flashbacks of the Sheriff covering up the murders that his young son and his friend committed. He makes them promise “no more townsfolk.” The townsfolk know something is afoot, but as long as their people are safe, they turn a blind eye.
Our MC flees to a diner, her brother in tow. There, she goes to dial 9-1-1 but realizes where the call will be directed. She is at a loss, unsure what to do or where to go. The only server on duty is shady, shifting her gaze from our heroine to the large front window. Headlights shine over the tables and chairs, highlighting the emptiness of the space.
Scarecrow walks through the front door, like any other customer. Our MC’s little brother tries to run, but the server blocks his path. “Better you than me,” she says. In a tussle, our heroine must kill the server to get her little brother out of there, to anywhere else, and we see something flicker in her eyes, a hint of recognition as a steak knife severs a jugular vein, spewing blood over her face.
Another flashback, this time for our MC. “We’ll just tell your brother he ran away,” says the MC’s father, standing in the backyard over the family dog, lying on its side, its white fur marred with blood.
Chapter 3.
Our MC’s brother has been injured by Pinup. He’s not doing so hot.
He won’t stop crying. He’s old enough to keep his shit together, why is he crying so loud? He’ll give their position away. If he’s not quiet, Scarecrow and Pinup will find them and kill them both. The stalkers are right behind the wall of the diner.
Our MC covers the boy’s mouth with her hand, but he struggles, makes sounds through his nose. She covers his nostrils too. They’re both surprised by her strength. But she has to keep him quiet. She waits until she can’t hear the stalkers anymore.
By the time she releases her grip, her brother is dead.
She is surprised. But she is not sad. She does not show the appropriate level of devastation.
We see more flashbacks for our MC, of her terrorizing her little brother, when he was very small. She is the reason he became such a terror in his preteen years.
She leaves the diner in a daze. How could she have done that? Who is she?
On her path, the Sheriff pulls up behind her, exiting his police vehicle. “There you are,” he says. We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She runs without waiting, and his ruse lifts quickly. He chases her. They struggle.
Scarecrow shows up, Pinup not far behind. Our MC believes this is the end. But Scarecrow subdues the Sheriff, locks eyes with our MC, a knife in her hand. He holds him still for her. She accepts the offering, and kills the Sheriff.
When he falls to the floor, Scarecrow removes his mask. It’s no one we know. It’s just some kid, a teenager about our MC’s age. “You freed me,” Scarecrow tells our heroine.
“You freed me too,” our heroine admits.
Realization dawns on our MC. She liked killing more than she was willing to admit. But maybe she can accept all parts of herself now. Now that she has a real family.
“You’re like us,” Pinup says, then adds a welcome token: “Are you hungry?”
Our heroine nods her head.
The three enter the diner as the sun comes up, masks off.
The camera pans to the truck, through the windshield, at the dashboard. There lie the Scarecrow mask, the Pinup mask—and the Doll Face mask.
***
OK! And I wrote that in like, 20 minutes. Imagine what professional screenwriters could do with a clear idea, a clear vision, a clear purpose in the storytelling.
You could even throw the wild boar scene back in one of the movies for some flair, I don’t care. Almost anything else would have been better.
If you want to see it for yourself, this is also now available to rent or buy on Prime, Apple TV, Fandango, and YouTube Movies.
Scream 7
Scream was one of the first horror movies I ever watched. The image of Ghostface made me too scared to wander into dark corners of my own home, lest his looming white face emerge from the black. As a Scream fan, I have seen all the movies several times. I read a book in 2025 called Your Favorite Scary Movie about the making of the franchise, through Scream 6.
While Kevin Williamson, the original screenwriter, co-wrote Scream 7‘s screenplay, it is a relief that Wes Craven did not see what his franchise became.
Kevin, also, how could you do this to us? We were rooting for you.
Scream 7 is not wholly unredeemable. We got Neve Campbell back, and I thought we’d never see her in the franchise again, so that was a blessing. Courteney Cox Arquette was there. Thanks to AI-as-Ghostface’s-new-voice-distortion-device (a la Scream 3), we got to see David Arquette and, hello, Matthew Lillard, Stu in the original movie. That was cool.
Scream 7 took a tip from the success of the Final Destination series and got creative with a few of its kills. I won’t spoil them here because, despite how disappointed I am in this film, I still think it’s worth watching if you’re a Scream fan. This is the cross we bear. We must watch and report back to one another.
So, what’s wrong with the movie? For starters, the new main character, Tatum, who is Sidney’s daughter, is just…Sidney’s daughter. She has no identity besides her connection to Sidney, the franchise’s OG final girl. They repeat about four times that Tatum was named after Sidney’s best friend from the first film, who got her head crushed in the garage. That—and the limited and lackluster marketing push for this movie—make me wonder if the producers wanted to just get this to streaming services.
In the movie, Sidney doesn’t want to talk about her past, understandably—a LOT of her homies died. But Tatum feels entitled to the information Sidney withholds to protect herself. Tatum believes that if her mom tells her about her horrific experiences…Sidney would in turn prepare her for the upcoming trauma of dealing with Ghostface…because someone will inevitably don that mask at another point in her future to terrorize her. (And that someone who dons the mask is not set up very well in Scream 7 at all. It’s like, Wait, who is that again? Someone we met in the first act, once, and then never saw again? OK?)
There is no rest for the wicked, or Sidney Prescott. That made me very sad. It made me worry that, by watching, I was complicit in Sidney’s continued trauma. And there’s something to be said about that, about calling out the voyeurs who consume horror media (which The Troops by Nick Cutter does very well). But rather than making me think about the genre and what it means to me, it made me wonder…Should we just let this franchise die? Can we let Sidney Prescott rest? Can we move on to new stories?
We have Heart Eyes now, which is basically Scream but funnier. Let’s just move forward with that for a while, until again, we realize we’re beating a dead heroine.
If you’re down to watch this one, it’s ALSO available to rent or buy on Prime, Apple TV, Fandango, and YouTube Movies.
Undertone
What Undertone lacks in originality, it absolutely makes up for in execution.
When I first saw the trailer for Undertone, I thought it was an adaptation of the podcast drama The Black Tapes (which is riveting storytelling for seasons one and two, but I wish season three had never happened). In The Black Tapes, you have the skeptical character, Richard Strand, who dangles the promise of a $100,000 prize to anyone who can “prove” the supernatural exists, and then you have Alex Reagan, the podcast host, who isn’t a believer but also isn’t the militant atheist that Strand claims to be.
Likewise, in the trailers, we see Evie Babic play a skeptic in a podcast called Undertone, which investigates the supernatural. Her counterpart Justin is much more willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. The trailer plays a series of unsettling sounds that reminded me of the “un-sound” from The Black Tapes, which causes anyone who hears it to die within a year.
After immediately looking up if Undertone was an adaptation of The Black Tapes (which would have excited me), and seeing that, although there was quite a bit of overlap, the two were unrelated, I stopped consuming Undertone marketing materials, so I could go into the movie as untainted as possible.
Instead of playing the “un-sound,” Undertone’s podcast hosts listen to recordings sent to them by an anonymous source. The recordings are of couple Jessa and Mike who are investigating Jessa’s sleep talking. In those recordings, Justin hears hidden messages in children’s songs that play in the background, especially when the songs are played backwards.
Undertone relies on an urban legend that dates back to at least the ’80s when folks would play their records backwards to discern satanic messages in reverse lyrics. The reverse incantations in Undertone call to a demon, whose name may be new to popular horror but whose goal—stealing children or corrupting the sanity of those children’s parents—is not.
That said, I watched Undertone through my fingers. I held my breath. I screamed. I let the dread wash over me until I felt sick with it. A movie has not made me frozen with anticipation, waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop, since the first time I saw The Conjuring in theaters (though the original Smile came close).
What the production achieved with only two on-screen actors and maybe five additional voice actors blew my mind. The simple set design was incredibly effective. No gore is shown outright, but that leaves your imagination to fill in the gaps, which arguably makes the movie more intense.
Because the horror relies so heavily on sound design, I felt confused at first as to why the producers didn’t simply turn this into its own audio drama. However, after seeing it, I have to say that I’m so glad this was a movie. The visuals absolutely add to the film’s unsettling tone.
It isn’t perfect, and I suspect, with every rewatch, this movie will lose its power (unless, as my boyfriend predicts, there are hidden messages in the audio for ambitious viewers to decode), but on this first viewing, I give this movie at least 3.5/5 stars.
If you don’t want to see this one in theaters, it’s available to rent or buy on Prime, Apple TV, Fandango, and YouTube Movies, but it’s due for a release on HBO sometime over the summer. If you watch it at home, I suggest wearing headphones—and then report back to me in the comments!
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
Although there is a book out with the exact same name, the series Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is not an adaptation. Stranger Things’ The Duffer Brothers helped bring this original series to Netflix.
Listen, before I poke holes in the “logic” of the story, I want to say for the record: I enjoyed the act of watching this. The first two episodes were so disturbing that I could not physically binge the show. When the tone shifted to something more playful, I welcomed the change. It wasn’t as abrupt as Justin Long’s appearance in Barbarian, and I think that medium-subtly here worked in the (hopefully) limited series’ favor. It kept me watching.
The casting was perfect. It was great to see Jennifer Jason Leigh in this. She has a generally unsettling presence which worked as well here as it did in Annihilation and The Possessor. Adam DiMarco, who plays Nicky in this and Justin in Undertone, is sweet and infuriating, so great job there. Camilla Morrone looks so much like Victoria Pedretti of Mike-Flanagan-anthology fame that I kept looking up what else Camilla had been in to see where I recognized her. And then, Victoria Pedretti ended up playing Camilla’s mom in a flashback! Perfect.
Even when the mystery is subverted about halfway through the series, I still watched the show like it was a mystery because the rules of the supernatural forces at work were so difficult to follow.
Not that they were so especially complicated. It was just…it didn’t really feel thought through?
Spoilers ahead: Here are my qualms with the “rules” of this supernatural universe:
- Everyone in Rachel’s family has to marry their soulmate on their wedding day by nightfall, or they will die. My boyfriend and I argued about this rule until the final episode. What if a couple got engaged but never set a date? Is the acceptance of a proposal, in itself, a death sentence? What if they set the wedding date ten years in the future? It’s just such a weird and arbitrary deadline for something so serious.
- How is this bloodline continuing without passing down the knowledge of the curse? Surely, someone before Rachel would have been like, “Hey, so, a bunch of our family members over literal centuries have died on their wedding day. That’s pretty weird, right?” You’d think that people would develop a fear of marriage at the very least and just stop trying. And then everyone could have their babies out of wedlock, which is like, fine now, right? Who cares?
- So, The Witness left his wife at the altar, who was Rachel’s ancestor, and that cursed her family. It passed the curse from him to her. But his price is that he had to witness that family’s lineage endure the curse. OK. Alright. But it’s never explained that this would happen to Rachel if she left her fiance at the altar. Her known options were: marry Nicky and die if he’s not her soulmate, or leave him at the altar and doom his family. (And I did immediately wonder about his family members who were already married, so that bloody ending made sense to me.) HOWEVER. Nicky leaves Rachel at the altar. And then she just refuses to get back together with him as the sun is setting because he said she was hard to love and a whole bunch of other terrible things that you can’t come back from. She actually says (and I think this might be important), “I deserve a second chance.” And then people start dying all over the place, the family members who are related by blood not marriage (again, makes sense; I’m following). But death sort of finds each of the blood-related family members one at a time, at a snail’s pace. Death is just one guy with a big job to do, meandering and taking his sweet time around this mansion. The matriarch is the first to go, and then Portia is next for some reason? Death is taking ages to get to Nicky or Jules.
- Then for some reason The Witness changes the rules? They force Rachel to get married because she already said her vows earlier, before the sun went down… OK? Is that how weddings work? You can just be gotcha-ed into getting married? So then Rachel immediately starts hemorrhaging, but also it’s too late for Portia. But is it too late for her because she had already started bleeding out? Someone says something about it being too late since “it” had already started, so why would The Witness do Rachel like that? Didn’t he want to save her? That’s why he warned her with that haunting delivery of, “Are you sure he’s the one,” right? Why is he relishing in her suffering?
- OK, so THEN, Rachel dies. And she is dead. But then, she is not dead? She takes The Witness’s place? Was she always going to take his place because she “left’ Nicky at the altar? Or because she “made a bargain with death” when she said, “I deserve a second chance”? And she just like, accepts this new role. The immortality. Even the witness’s car keys. OK? You’re happy now, girl? You’re cool with this? Like, just what is she supposed to do in between witnessing cursed marriages? Does she get a job? Finish her PhD program? How does she know when the next cursed marriage will take place? Does an invitation mysteriously come in the mail? HOW DOES DEATH KNOW HER ADDRESS?
- WHY IS NICKY ALIVE? Jules is fine, and the implication is that he’s OK because he married his soulmate, Nell, a beautiful irony because all they do is fight and they are in the middle of getting divorced. And that’s a sweet thought. It’s very sweet. EXCEPT NICKY IS ALIVE TOO. Did he marry his soulmate when he married Rachel? Can’t have, right? Because Rachel immediately died. If one half of the couple is the other’s soulmate, then surely the reverse applies too? So, does that mean that the curse was effectively paused when Nicky forced Rachel to marry him? And Portia was already a goner by the time he said, “I do”? Our last image of Nicky is him hugging a stuffed bear that Rachel gives him as an apology present, and then we just leave him, and the writers leave us with no explanation.
- Also, a much smaller qualm: We know Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character is dying since episode three of this eight-part series. She goes into a coma before the wedding, but! That happens at the end of an episode, and she goes into that coma…with her eyes open? So, it looks very intentionally like she has died. And then magically, she wakes up right before the wedding. Her husband was going to euthanize her, but Rachel is like, “No, wait and see if she wakes up.” And then she does wake up…off-camera. That’s kind of a big thing to happen off-camera. Off-camera things only happen in weird stories like this if something about that awakening will be revealed in a plot twist of some kind later. But no. The matriarch is awake-awake, with seemingly no health issues. And it seems like the writers just woke her up to get her to be the reason Nicky wants to marry Rachel again after leaving her at the altar. (Which was appropriately gross within context. Out loud, on Rachel’s behalf, I was like, “Oh, you wanna marry me now because your mommy’s making you?”) But then Nicky’s mom just dies. She was already going to die, but then she died in a much worse way than she was going to. It was just a lot of back-and-forth with, Is she dead or not? that just exhausted me. The writers could have effectively gotten the irony across without the weird coma and even weirder awakening in time for the wedding. She could have just been awake with her brain tumor until the end when she dies of hemorrhaging.
Non-Horror/Strange Movies
I also saw Hoppers and Project Hail Mary, and they were both heartwarming and hilarious. The “science” of Hoppers did not science at any point, but the writers knew that and leaned into the absurdity. The same was not really true of Project Hail Mary (How did Rocky understand Ryan Gosling???), but the rock alien is so adorable that I forgive the film. We love the Rocky Gosling bromance around here.
Movies and TV Shows I’m Looking Forward to in April 2026
Here are the upcoming horror and strange fiction media I’m looking forward to watching.
These came out at the end of March, but your homie had been too busy hustling to partake:
They Will Kill You: From what I can tell from the trailers, it appears a group of rich people are hunting a woman for sport, but joke’s on them because this lady went to prison and knows how to fight.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die: A man allegedly comes from the future to save the world from their own choices, but obviously people don’t believe him because his get-up is giving tin-foil hat.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come: This is the sequel no one asked for featuring Kathryn Newton from Abigail, Lisa Frankenstein, Big Little Lies, and a bunch of other stuff lately. But! I enjoyed the first movie. It was a good time. So, why not? I’ll let y’all know if it’s worth it.
The Drama: Zendaya! Robert Pattinson! An tumultuous relationship? Building tension as we approach a wedding? A24?! That’s all I need to know. Everyone shut up about it until I’ve had the chance to see it.
Here’s what’s coming up in April:
Hokum: I loved Oddity so much, and I’m so psyched to see what that movie’s creator and Adam Scott do together.
Faces of Death: I’m excited to see Barbie Ferreira play someone other than Kat from Euphoria.
Euphoria, Season 3: I’m thrilled that these characters are finally, at minimum, 18 years old. Thank god. It was so weird to love a show so much that porn-ified high schoolers. Also, my biggest issue with season two was that Rue stole money from a sociopathic drug dealer and then zero consequences befell her. But in season 3, it comes full circle. I can’t wait to see how (if!) she gets out of this.
The Mummy: Another remake! And I’m part of the problem because I’m going to see it. Why not? We’re all gonna die.
Apex: Exceptional actress Charlize Theron is being hunted by a serial killer in the Australian outback. This movie looks upsetting, so I’m down.
You know what I do not care about at all? The Devil Wears Prada 2. How could they bastardize a classic like this? The trailer didn’t even make me smile. Oh, Miranda Priestly is acting like she doesn’t remember anyone from the first movie, to be catty? Shut the hell up.
Want to read more of my long-form thoughts on movies? Check out my Media Crit page.
Want to ask me to review your movie? Page me.
Want to hire me to edit your horror or strange fiction novel? I’ll carve out time for you.
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