‘Bold Voice of Contemporary Horror’ Comic-Con Panelists Predict the Four Biggest Upcoming Trends in Genre Filmmaking — SkimNews
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- Bold Voice of Contemporary Horror held its Tenth Anniversary Edition panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, featuring Dan Stevens, Deborah Ann Woll, Zachary Wigon, and Dave Boyle, moderated by Overlook Film Festival's Michael Lerman and curated by founder Rachel Walker.
- Deborah Ann Woll, star of Shudder's upcoming thriller "The Cycle," championed genre-blending, citing "The Descent" as a film that shifts between psychological thriller, survivalist thriller, and creature feature to keep audiences discombobulated.
- Dave Boyle, director of SXSW audience award winner "Never After Dark," argued that cross-discipline experience translates — drawing specifically on his action-film background and a Japanese working method where directors draw the cuts directly onto the script page.
- Dan Stevens pointed to the proliferation of horror-comedy hybrids, comparing the current moment to the recent rise of funny-director-led horror from Zach Cregger and Curry Barker, and arguing humor introduces humanity that grounds even the most extreme scenarios.
- Zachary Wigon, director of Bleecker Street's "Victorian Psycho" (which debuted at Cannes), framed horror as a subgenre of mystery — a 'patchwork quilt' where withheld pieces only reveal their shared image in the final act.
- The panel included the debut of a new trailer for "The Cycle", Woll's upcoming Shudder release, tying the discussion directly to a project actively moving through the genre pipeline.
Why it matters: Each panelist is attached to an upcoming or festival-circuited horror project — Bleecker Street's 'Victorian Psycho,' Shudder's 'The Cycle,' SXSW winner 'Never After Dark,' and AMC's 'The Terror' — so the trends they describe aren't speculative but shape what's already in production. The article frames horror as 'red-hot at the box office,' and these four filmmakers' convergence on the same playbook (blend, borrow, withhold, add humor) functions as a roadmap for the next wave of genre releases rather than idle prediction.
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