It’s finally happening: the final countdown to the greatest time of the year is officially upon us! With the seasonal changes looming in the distance and Halloween drawing closer with each passing day, I can’t help but get excited by the fact that this weekend marks the start of September, because that means October is just four weeks away. With a new month comes a new slate of digital and VOD releases, and September’s offerings are an interesting lot, as there seems to be a little bit of everything coming out during the month, which should keep all types of genre fans busy.
September 2018’s digital releases kick off with Dead Envy on the 3rd, and then a fearsome foursome arrives the very next day: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Lake Placid: Legacy, Sick For Toys, and Hostile. Both Mara and Cold Skin come home September 7th, and a week later, we’ve got another quartet of releases arriving on the 14th: Don’t Leave Home, Final Score, The Basement, and e-Demon. For those who may have missed it in theaters, The First Purge makes it digital debut on September 18th, and the month closes out with Beyond the Sky on the 21st, Skyscraper on the 25th, and the latest from Jeremy Saulnier—Hold the Dark—arrives exclusively on Netflix on September 28th.
Dead Envy (Random Media) – September 3rd
Aging Rock artist David Tangier's sense of identity is all but destroyed as he works cutting hair to provide a comfortable life for himself and his wife. His sound and age bind him to the Rock of the 2000's, where his band Katatonic Spin once ruled the scene. David cannot tolerate that his entire existence has fallen prey to the persona of "the has been".
By taking one last long shot at maintaining his integrity, David sets out to organize the follow-up album that he never had the chance to make. When Javy Bates, a mysterious young musical talent shows up for a job at David's salon, this Rocker thinks he has found a solution to his alienation. Initially guarded, Javy soon opens up... as he has an agenda of his own.
Hostile (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment/4Digital Media) – September 4th
A worldwide epidemic has killed most of the planet’s population. The few survivors struggle to find food and shelter. But they are not alone. On her way back from a scavenging mission, Juliette (Brittany Ashworth) has a terrible accident. Stuck in her car, with a broken leg, in the middle of an unforgiving desert, she must survive the perils of the post-apocalypse, while a strange creature prowls around.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Universal Studios Home Entertainment) – September 4th
Owen and Claire return to the ruins of the Jurassic World theme park to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from a looming volcanic extinction.
Lake Placid: Legacy (Universal Studios Home Entertainment) – September 4th
When a group of young explorers venture to a mysterious lake, they discover an island harboring an abandoned lab facility with a horrific legacy: the island is home to a deadly predator. Before they can turn back the crew gets dragged into a battle for their lives – former enemies will quickly need to put their egos aside and work together if there is any hope for survival.
Sick For Toys (Freestyle Digital Media) – September 4th
Roy is the nice guy who finishes last. Sick of his current situation, he accepts an invitation to have Christmas dinner with the beautiful and strangely alluring Emilia. Once at dinner, Roy realizes that Emilia and her oddball brother (Edward) are not what they seem.
Cold Skin (Samuel Goldwyn Films) – September 7th
On a remote island in the Antarctic circle, a young man finds himself trapped in a battle for his life against nightly invasions of unknown creatures that emerge from the ocean.
Mara (Saban Films) – September 7th
From a producer of Paranormal Activity and Insidious comes this shock-filled descent into fear. After a man is seemingly strangled in his bed, criminal psychologist Kate Fuller (Olga Kurylenko) interviews the sole witness, the victim’s eight-year-old daughter, Sophie. When asked to identify the killer, Sophie says, “Mara.” As Kate digs into the case, she unearths a community of people who claim to be tormented by a shadowy menace, a centuries-old demon who kills her victims as they sleep.
The Basement (Uncork’d Entertainment) – September 14th
Craig is abducted and wakes up in a basement. His captor, Bill, is a twisted serial killer who wishes to reenact his own capture, with Craig playing the part of Bill and Bill playing everyone else. As Bill tortures Craig, he cycles through a number of personas, all while Craig tries desperately to find a way into Bill's pathology in order to save himself.
Don’t Leave Home (Cranked Up Films) – September 14th
After recently unveiling her new sculptural exhibit on Irish urban legends, artist Melanie Thomas is contacted by Father Alistair Burke, a reclusive Irish priest who, legend has it, once painted the portrait of a young girl who later disappeared on the very day her image vanished from the painting. Now, summoned by Burke and his cohort to the Irish countryside for a special art commission, Melanie eagerly accepts the offer, never stopping to consider that some urban legends might be true.
e-Demon (Dark Cuts Pictures) – September 14th
Kendra, AJ, Mar, and Dwayne are old college friends who find themselves growing apart. Attempting to hang on to their good old Ohio State days, the gang gets together online for a night of stories, pranks and drinking via webcam. As the evening progresses, they unknowingly release a deviously clever demon that had been trapped for centuries in Salem, Massachusetts. Since the demon can possess multiple people at once, the group of friends must determine who they can still trust in order to survive the demon’s dark and twisted mission.
Final Score (Saban Films) – September 14th
Believing his traitorous brother Dimitri (Pierce Brosnan) is somewhere in the stadium, Arkady (Ray Stevenson), the former leader of a revolution in the Russian state of Sukovia, locks down the Boleyn Ground during the European semi-final between West Ham United and Dynamo FCC. In the crowd with his niece, Danni (Lara Peake), is US- veteran Mike Knox (Dave Bautista), who stumbles upon the plot and goes about taking out Arkady’s heavily armed team. Can he get to Arkady before Arkady gets to Dimitri? The fate of 35,000 people inside the stadium – and many more in Russia – depends on it...
The First Purge (Universal Studios Home Entertainment) – September 18th
To push the crime rate below one percent, the New Founding Fathers of America test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community.
Lost Child (Breaking Glass Pictures) – September 18th
LOST CHILD, written/directed by Ramaa Mosley (THE BRASS TEAPOT) along with producer/writer Tim Macy, stars HUNGER GAMES and True Detective alum Leven Rambin and follows an army veteran, Fern, who returns home in order to look for her brother, only to discover an abandoned boy lurking in the woods behind her childhood home. After taking in the boy, she searches for clues to his identity, and discovers the local folklore about a malevolent, life-draining spirit that comes in the form of a child.
The Toybox (Skyline Entertainment/Steel House Productions) – September 18th
Jennifer (Denise Richards) and her family go on a summer road trip in a used RV with her husband's estranged father and brother. Along the way, they find Samantha (Mischa Barton) and her brother, broken down on the side of the highway. After driving into the middle of nowhere, the RV takes on a mind of its own, crashing and stranding them in the scorching and isolated desert. Little by little, the unsuspecting group of travelers is blindsided by the terrible secrets within the walls of the RV and find themselves fighting to survive.
Beyond the Sky (RLJE Films) – September 21st
Chris Norton has a powerful and traumatic connection to alien abductions since his early childhood, but, in his gut, he knows they are not real. Setting out to disprove the alien abduction phenomenon once and for all, he attends a UFO convention to meet alleged abductees and reveal the truth behind their experiences. It is only when he meets Emily, who claims to have been abducted every seven years on her birthday, that Chris realizes there may be more to these claims than meets the eye. With Emily’s 28th birthday only days away, Chris helps her to uncover the truth as they come face to face with the reality that we are not alone.
Epidemic (Breaking Glass Pictures) – September 25th
A deadly pathogen is unleashed and unknowingly carried to Dana’s 30th birthday party, where her estranged father, Rufus, is coming to make amends. What begins as a family drama soon escalates to a horrific turning point as the epidemic spreads and Rufus fights to save his daughter’s life.
Skyscraper (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment) – September 25th
Will Sawyer (Dwayne Johnson) finds the tallest, safest building in the world suddenly ablaze, with his family trapped inside.
Hold The Dark (Netflix) – Exclusively On Netflix September 28th
Retired naturalist and wolf expert Russell Core (JEFFREY WRIGHT) journeys to the edge of civilization in northern Alaska at the pleading of Medora Slone (RILEY KEOUGH), a young mother whose son was killed by a pack of wolves. As Core attempts to help Medora track down the wolves who took her son, a strange and dangerous relationship develops between the two lonely souls. But when Medora's husband Vernon (ALEXANDER SKARSGARD) returns home from the Iraq War, the news of his child's death ignites a violent chain of events. As local cop, Donald Marium (JAMES BADGE DALE), races to stop Vernon’s vengeful rampage, Core is forced on a perilous odyssey into the heart of darkness.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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