Speaking with Aleyse Shannon feels a bit like watching a great performer switch instinctively between instruments. She listens with intention, answers with care, and carries a presence that’s both grounded and quietly electric. After talking with her, I walked away even more excited about Decibel, the new sci-fi thriller from director Zac Locke, and now more curious than ever about revisiting Black Christmas during the upcoming holiday season.

There is a special energy that comes from talking with filmmakers who truly understand horror, people who do not just love the genre but respect its craft, its history, and its emotional weight. Sitting down with Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams, the trio behind Dream Eater, felt exactly like that. They were thoughtful, open, generous with insight, and always ready to laugh. It made discussing a film this unsettling strangely comforting.

For decades, Nolan North has been one of the most celebrated and versatile performers in entertainment. His voice has shaped characters across more than 350 titles in games and animation, including Raphael in TMNT and Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, which made him a household name. Yet in A Chuck E. Cheese Christmas, North steps into an entirely different kind of role as Jasper Jowls, and the result is something warm, funny and genuinely heartfelt.

Between 1967 and 1972, more than 130 American airplanes were hijacked. For a brief, surreal stretch of history, the skies were as lawless as the old frontier — a place where a man with a note, a gun, and a half-baked plan could change the course of his life. When filmmakers Eli Kooris and Joshua Shaffer first stumbled across Martin’s tale — via Danny Wicentowski’s The Final Flight of Martin McNally — they were stunned not just by the wildness of it, but by the fact that Martin was still alive to talk.

For Kenn Williams, the journey to running one of the most talked-about new physical-media labels did not begin with licensing deals, directors’ cuts, or rare film elements hidden in storage. It began with a simple video rental shop. “I started the company in 2022 as just a video rental store,” Kenn recalls, describing what originally began as something fun to “screw around with” before the venture took off.

At just 15, Mila Harris is already proving she can hold her own opposite Hollywood veterans like Justin Long and Kate Bosworth, and do it with poise well beyond her years. In Coyotes, the new horror comedy from director Colin Minihan, Harris stars as Chloe Stewart, a sharp, artistic teenager trapped with her parents in their Hollywood Hills home as a pack of bloodthirsty coyotes closes in. “I was actually really excited when I first read the script,” Harris said.

In Long Shadows, director William Shockley and actor Dermot Mulroney bring new life to the Western, crafting something less dusty and more soulful. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing American West, the film explores redemption, mercy, and the enduring power of family through the story of a wounded outlaw and a young man searching for purpose. Shockley, known for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Showgirls, says he wanted to make “a beautiful Western, not a dirt Western.”

When filmmaker John Spottswood Moore set out to chronicle Austin’s eccentric world of public access television, he had no idea the journey would span ten years, or that it would culminate in a sold-out world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025, just days before his wedding. “It was cosmic coincidence,” Moore laughed during our conversation. “Fantastic Fest was the dream festival for this film, and somehow the dates just lined up.”