Jeremy Ray Taylor is done being the “fat, funny kid” from It. With his latest role as Julian in Allan Ungar’s London Calling, the 22-year-old actor is stepping firmly into adulthood—and into the action-comedy spotlight. The film pairs Taylor with Josh Duhamel in a buddy-style story about a hitman forced to toughen up a crime boss’s timid son.

Jon Heder, forever etched into pop culture as the awkwardly lovable Napoleon Dynamite, takes an unexpected turn in Waltzing with Brando, Bill Fishman’s biographical drama about Marlon Brando’s little-known ecological dream. The film, based on Bernard Judge’s memoir, follows the unlikely friendship between Brando and Judge, a young Los Angeles architect enlisted to design a sustainable paradise on Brando’s private Tahitian atoll. Speaking with me, Heder admitted that stepping into Judge’s shoes was a balancing act.

Sean Whalen’s role in Pierre Tsigaridis’ Traumatika may be brief, but as the saying goes, “there are no small roles, only small actors” — and Whalen proves it. In the film, he plays Steve, the friend who understands the danger of the cursed African artifact at the center of the story. Steve’s role is to warn John, a middle-aged man going through a rough divorce, not to open the relic.

Kevin Lewis made a cult splash with Willy’s Wonderland, the gonzo horror-comedy that let Nicolas Cage loose on demonic animatronics. His new film, Pig Hill, takes him in an entirely different direction. Premiering at FrightFest 2025, the adaptation of Nancy Williams’s novel trades outrageous comedy for something far darker and more sinister, rooting itself in the eerie urban legend of Meadville, Pennsylvania.

The Hell House LLC franchise has always been a chilling exercise in atmosphere, lore, and lingering dread. With Hell House LLC: Lineage, the fifth and allegedly final installment, writer-director Stephen Cognetti takes the saga to theaters for the first time. The film arrives August 20, 2025, bringing back familiar faces, introducing new blood, and expanding the Abaddon legacy in startling ways.

Shannon Beeby delivers a commanding and deeply nuanced performance in Lilly Lives Alone, the haunting psychological thriller from writer-director Martin Melnick. In the film, Beeby embodies Lilly, a woman consumed by grief a decade after the tragic loss of her young daughter. Her life is a fragile routine of work, solitude, and self-destructive coping mechanisms, but as the anniversary of her daughter’s death approaches, strange occurrences and a fraying sense of reality pull her further into a spiral of paranoia, trauma, and possible supernatural danger.

Carlson Young has been a captivating presence on screen since her early acting days, with standout roles like the stylish and sharp-tongued Brooke Maddox in Scream: The TV Series. Over the years, she has transitioned seamlessly from in-demand actress to an accomplished filmmaker, showcasing her unique voice behind the camera. Her directorial debut, The Blazing World, was an ambitious psychological horror fantasy that premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, a project I personally found unforgettable in both its surreal imagery and emotional intensity.

For those of us who’ve followed Jett Klyne’s career from his breakout roles in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Marvel’s WandaVision, his latest turn in Shaman feels like both an evolution and a revelation. While he’s no stranger to emotionally charged performances, Shaman plunges Klyne into far darker territory as Elliot, a teenager overtaken by an ancient spirit after a disturbing encounter in a forbidden cave. The film demands a lot from Klyne, both physically and emotionally, and he rises to the occasion with a performance that is at once unsettling and deeply human.