This Week in Horror: Victor Miller Signs Off, Resident Evil Shows Its Hand, and the Genre Counts What It Costs

We lost the man who wrote the blueprint. Victor Miller died at 86 this week, and the sentence “screenwriter of the original Friday the 13th” undersells what that credit set in motion. The rest of the week arranged itself around money and craft, which is not the usual shape of a news cycle. Sony started showing Resident Evil to people, Regal built a popcorn bucket out of an organ cooler, and four working filmmakers sat down and told us exactly what indie horror costs when nobody is rounding the numbers up.

There was also a lot of talk about preservation, both the archival kind and the kind that happens with 3D printers and UV paint. Severin’s David Gregory explained why the labs closing scare him more than the audience shrinking. Universal’s haunt team explained how you rebuild a Pillar of Souls that somebody already sold at auction. It was a week about the people holding horror together with their own hands.

Victor Miller, Who Invented Pamela Voorhees, Has Died at 86

Victor Miller died at 86, with his son Ian Miller announcing the news on Instagram and no cause disclosed. Miller wrote the 1980 Friday the 13th and created Pamela Voorhees, which means he wrote the twist that half the slasher genre has been quoting ever since. His work with Sean S. Cunningham started earlier, on the 1978 sports comedy Manny’s Orphans, and continued through the 1982 thriller A Stranger Is Watching, but most of his career ran through television, including One Life to Live, Guiding Light, General Hospital and Married… with Children, with Daytime Emmy recognition along the way. He co-wrote the 2017 thriller Rock, Paper, Scissors and served as an executive producer on the A24 prequel series Crystal Lake. Ian Miller called his father “almost always the smartest, funniest person in whatever room he was in” and said he “had a helluva run and will be missed dearly.” Read our full obituary.

Resident Evil Screened Its First 30 Minutes, and the Bullets Are the Point

Sony put the opening half hour of Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil in front of audiences on September 1 in Los Angeles, New York and Dallas, and the early word on that chunk was strong. Austin Abrams plays Bryan, a medical courier headed toward Raccoon City when the T-virus catastrophe closes around him, with Zach Cherry, Kali Reis and Paul Walter Hauser alongside him. The most useful detail is Cregger’s own, from a Reddit Q&A: “You will know how many bullets are in his gun. YOU will care when he misses a shot.” That is a director describing survival horror as a camera problem rather than a nostalgia problem, and it explains the shot design more than any teaser has. Keep in mind that these reactions cover the first thirty minutes and nothing after. The film opens September 18. iHorror has the reactions.

The Conjuring Series Has a Showrunner and Almost Nothing Else

HBO Max’s Conjuring series now has Nancy Won as showrunner, writer and executive producer, a job she took back in September 2025, with Peter Cameron and Cameron Squires writing alongside her and Warner Bros. Television, James Wan’s Atomic Monster and Peter Safran attached. What it does not have, publicly, is a cast, a premiere date, an episode count, a format, a confirmed answer on whether the Warrens turn up, or even a clear public status on the series order. The only official plot language since the 2023 announcement is that the show will continue the story established in the feature films. Won came up through Supernatural, Jessica Jones, Little Fires Everywhere and Sunny, which reads like a hire made for character work rather than jump construction. Everything past that is speculation, and our breakdown is careful about the difference.

Inde Navarrette Is Fighting Crocodiles, Aliens and a Nuke for Apple

Inde Navarrette will star in The Waffle House Index, a science fiction thriller from Plan B Entertainment for Apple Original Films, directed by Louis Paxton from Andrew Nunnelly’s own Black List script. The premise is a graveyard shift waitress whose night goes from an approaching storm to an armed intruder, mass flooding, killer crocodiles, a nuclear explosion, a magical underground bunker and aliens, which is either the best or worst logline of the year and possibly both. The title comes from the real FEMA metric that gauges disaster severity by whether the local Waffle House is still serving, and no partnership with the chain has been announced. Navarrette also takes her first executive producer credit here, following Obsession and her casting as Rogue in Marvel’s X-Men reboot. The film is not shooting yet, with a release expected late 2027 or spring 2028. Full story here.

Four Filmmakers Told Us What Indie Horror Actually Costs

Ask why anyone keeps making horror on no money and Michael J. Epstein answers “We’re very, very stupid,” then spends the rest of the conversation proving he means the opposite. Our roundtable with Epstein, cinematographer and director Sophia Cacciola, effects designer Jeff Farley and Mexico-based writer director Salvador Medina is the most useful thing published on this site all week, because it puts numbers where the vibes usually go. Cacciola has high five figures of her own cameras, lenses and lights that come with her to sets, and says kit fees are a thing of the past. Medina describes crews in Mexico waiting 60 or 90 days for payment. Epstein points out that cinematography rates now run below where they sat fifteen years ago, and that the two thousand dollar feature everyone brags about usually means somebody did not get paid. If you have ever wondered why so much indie horror looks tired, this is the answer. Read the roundtable.

David Gregory Would Rather Save Bloody Moon Than Citizen Kane

Severin Films turned twenty this year, and co-founder and CEO David Gregory marked it by explaining his priorities without apology: “I would rather see a beautiful edition of Bloody Moon…than I would Lawrence of Arabia or Citizen Kane.” Severin started in 2006 with Gregory, Carl Daft and John Cregan and now runs a warehouse in Arizona and works with collaborators across the US and Canada. The part of our interview that should worry you is the infrastructure. Gregory says the threat is not audience appetite, it is that the labs keep closing, with Technicolor and Deluxe among the losses, and that European negatives often cannot leave the country, so the scanner has to travel to the film. Color correction sometimes gets guided by VHS tapes and broadcast masters because the people who supervised the originals are gone. Every restoration is a race against a shrinking toolkit. Full interview.

Art the Clown Is Coming for Your Golf Game

Forebode Golf, a brand whose entire premise is that “golf is a horror movie you paid to be in,” has launched the first officially licensed Terrifier golf collection. Terrifier merchandise is not new, but sanctioned golf gear is, and the lineup covers four polos at $64.99, Art the Hat at $34.99, the Art’s Handiwork glove at $29.99, a driver head cover at $29.99 and a hat clip ball marker at $12.99. Pre-orders opened September 1 and close at midnight on September 5, with 10% off, free shipping and delivery expected mid October. It is a very funny idea and also a reminder of how completely Art has crossed out of horror aisles and into general merchandising. Details here.

And If You Just Want Something On

Our September streaming guide covers the full month, including Shudder original Parasomnia landing today and Mārama on September 11, American Horror Story: 13 on Hulu on September 24 and A24’s Backrooms on HBO Max on September 25. The weekend picks are up for September 4 through 6, and we spent some time this week arguing for ten 2000s horror movies that deserve another pass. On the review side, Soul Snatchers is a Puerto Rican production from director Julio Román that works better as spiritual drama than as a scare machine, and The Night Marchers is a 2001 Hawaiian found footage curiosity getting a worldwide streaming release this month.