These new horror movies prove the slasher genre isn't dead
'Fear Street' trilogy
Divided into three parts ( 1994 , 1978 , 1666 ), the trilogy, based on R.L. Stine's popular Fear Street book series, traces the origins of the Shadyside curse back to the execution of Sarah Fier. Accused of witchcraft, her vengeful spirit possesses others to kill on her behalf.
Part of the trilogy's appeal is its reverence for slasher and horror movies that came before, evoking nostalgia in fans of the genre. Part 1: 1994 borrows elements from the Scream franchise. Part 2: 1978 , set in summer camp, pays homage to the Friday the 13th movies. And Part 3: 1666 incorporates elements of folk horror. 'Scream' (2022)
Jenna Ortega steps into her scream queen era in this clever, Gen Z-driven revival of Wes Craven's legendary slasher series. Set 25 years after the original Woodsboro killings, a new Ghostface begins targeting a group of teens. The attacks draw legacy survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) back into familiar—and deadly—territory as they help a new generation of victims survive the carnage.
See also: How Jenna Ortega nails gothic fashion with a nod to 'Beetlejuice', 'Wednesday' and more 'Scream VI'
After surviving the latest round of Woodsboro horrors, sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) try to rebuild their lives in New York City. But a change of scenery doesn't mean they've escaped the nightmare as Ghostface emerges to stalk them anew. In a direct callback to the original Scream sequel, familial revenge serves as the motive behind the killings in this update. Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) returns with Scream 4 alum Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere)—now an FBI agent—to assist in the investigation. 'Fear Street: Prom Queen'
R.L. Stine continues to terrorise a new generation with the latest addition to the Fear Street universe. Set once again in the cursed town of Shadyside, Prom Queen follows Lori Granger (India Fowler), an outsider at her high school who soon finds herself fighting for her life when the prom court starts turning up dead, one by one, at the hands of a masked assailant. With its blood-soaked blend of teen drama and mystery, Prom Queen nods to horror classics like Stephen King's Carrie —minus the pig's blood and psychic meltdown—and the 1980s cult classic Prom Night .
Don't miss: In 'Nosferatu', true horror lies within the human 'Final Destination: Bloodlines'
Already hailed as the best entry since the original, the opening set piece alone is guaranteed to fuel the anxiety of a new generation of viewers. The latest instalment in this horror movie franchise takes generational trauma to the next level, introducing a clever twist: life—and death—are inherited legacies. But as much as that adds a fresh new layer to the mythology, it's the deaths that steal the spotlight, each one unfolding like a morbid Rube Goldberg machine. 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' (2025)
Instead of a reboot, fans are getting a direct sequel when I Know What You Did Last Summer hits cinemas on July 18. While the film introduces a new cast of characters—led by Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders and Jonah Hauer-King—it's expected to revisit the original movie's core premise and tropes: a group of teenagers bound by a dark secret are picked off one by one by a hook-wielding killer. Legacy characters Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr) return to confront the past and help uncover who's behind the new wave of murders.
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Tatler Asia
2 days ago
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These new horror movies prove the slasher genre isn't dead
'Fear Street' trilogy Divided into three parts ( 1994 , 1978 , 1666 ), the trilogy, based on R.L. Stine's popular Fear Street book series, traces the origins of the Shadyside curse back to the execution of Sarah Fier. Accused of witchcraft, her vengeful spirit possesses others to kill on her behalf. Part of the trilogy's appeal is its reverence for slasher and horror movies that came before, evoking nostalgia in fans of the genre. Part 1: 1994 borrows elements from the Scream franchise. Part 2: 1978 , set in summer camp, pays homage to the Friday the 13th movies. And Part 3: 1666 incorporates elements of folk horror. 'Scream' (2022) Jenna Ortega steps into her scream queen era in this clever, Gen Z-driven revival of Wes Craven's legendary slasher series. Set 25 years after the original Woodsboro killings, a new Ghostface begins targeting a group of teens. The attacks draw legacy survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Dewey Riley (David Arquette) back into familiar—and deadly—territory as they help a new generation of victims survive the carnage. See also: How Jenna Ortega nails gothic fashion with a nod to 'Beetlejuice', 'Wednesday' and more 'Scream VI' After surviving the latest round of Woodsboro horrors, sisters Sam and Tara Carpenter (Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega) try to rebuild their lives in New York City. But a change of scenery doesn't mean they've escaped the nightmare as Ghostface emerges to stalk them anew. In a direct callback to the original Scream sequel, familial revenge serves as the motive behind the killings in this update. Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) returns with Scream 4 alum Kirby Reed (Hayden Panettiere)—now an FBI agent—to assist in the investigation. 'Fear Street: Prom Queen' R.L. Stine continues to terrorise a new generation with the latest addition to the Fear Street universe. Set once again in the cursed town of Shadyside, Prom Queen follows Lori Granger (India Fowler), an outsider at her high school who soon finds herself fighting for her life when the prom court starts turning up dead, one by one, at the hands of a masked assailant. With its blood-soaked blend of teen drama and mystery, Prom Queen nods to horror classics like Stephen King's Carrie —minus the pig's blood and psychic meltdown—and the 1980s cult classic Prom Night . Don't miss: In 'Nosferatu', true horror lies within the human 'Final Destination: Bloodlines' Already hailed as the best entry since the original, the opening set piece alone is guaranteed to fuel the anxiety of a new generation of viewers. The latest instalment in this horror movie franchise takes generational trauma to the next level, introducing a clever twist: life—and death—are inherited legacies. But as much as that adds a fresh new layer to the mythology, it's the deaths that steal the spotlight, each one unfolding like a morbid Rube Goldberg machine. 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' (2025) Instead of a reboot, fans are getting a direct sequel when I Know What You Did Last Summer hits cinemas on July 18. While the film introduces a new cast of characters—led by Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders and Jonah Hauer-King—it's expected to revisit the original movie's core premise and tropes: a group of teenagers bound by a dark secret are picked off one by one by a hook-wielding killer. Legacy characters Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr) return to confront the past and help uncover who's behind the new wave of murders.
Times
24-04-2025
- Times
What it's really like to be a footballer's wife in Saudi Arabia
It was July 2023, and Taylor Ward was on the last day of a summer holiday in Turkey when her husband, the Manchester City winger Riyad Mahrez, phoned with some bombshell news. ' 'Oh, by the way, I'm going to Saudi Arabia tomorrow.' I thought he was joking.' It wasn't a joke: Mahrez had just been sold to the Jeddah-based football club Al-Ahli for £30 million. Which meant she was going too. 'I just burst into tears,' she says. 'I was honestly inconsolable.' Fast forward nearly two years and the couple and their two-year-old daughter, Mila, are still based in Jeddah, the port city on the Red Sea, although when we speak 27-year-old Ward — chatty, charming, her face framed by (expensive) blonde hair — is back at the couple's Manchester home. She grew up nearby in Cheshire's Golden Triangle — an affluent area including the towns of Wilmslow, Alderley Edge and Prestbury — herself the daughter of a professional footballer. Her dad, Ashley Ward, 54, was a striker for Norwich City and Blackburn Rovers among other clubs. Her husband, Mahrez, 34 — a Premier League title winner with Leicester City and Manchester City (four times), a Champions League winner, the captain of the Algerian national team who grew up in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles — joins us on a Zoom call from Jeddah. He looks every bit the off-duty footballer in a white T-shirt and baseball cap; when he speaks he's more reticent than she is, his voice low, husky and French-accented. Even when they're not in the same room, the couple have great chemistry, toggling fluently between (light) bickering and tenderness. She does a good line in self- deprecation; he's mastered deadpanning in a second language. Their love story began in 2020 after Mahrez split from his first wife, Rita, with whom he has two daughters. He asked a mutual friend for Ward's number, and their first date was to see Scream at the cinema (a private one). 'She didn't know Scream,' he says, rolling his eyes. 'Everyone knows Scream, apart from her.' Long story short, they're very watchable, which is probably why they're the standout stars of Married to the Game, a frothy Amazon documentary series that follows footballers and their wives and girlfriends (WAGs) from gated mansions to (private) maternity wards. Ward and Mahrez's co-stars include Arsenal's Italian midfielder Jorginho and his fiancée, Cat Harding; his Brazilian team-mate Gabriel Magalhães and his wife, Gabrielle Figueiredo; and Chelsea's Spanish defender Marc Cucurella and his girlfriend, Claudia Rodriguez. Married to the Game emphasises the women's perspective — football's industrial content machine already gives us more than enough about the men. This inevitably involves playing up to certain stereotypes: cameras linger on walk-in wardrobes packed with Dior and Loewe; someone is invariably en route to a photoshoot. It's a megabucks existence that may not inspire enormous sympathy — in the first season, Harding sent a party planner on a two-and-a-half-hour round trip to collect 65kg of lemons for her birthday party — but the series does drive home how much these young women surrender to serve the football machine. They keep homes running, ensure milestones are celebrated and, in Ward's case, move a young family to an authoritarian state at a phone call's notice. 'Being married to a footballer, we're so privileged,' Ward says now. 'It's an amazing life, don't get me wrong. But there are parts that are hard as well, like moving abroad and being away from your family.' • Their big move to Saudi Arabia is a key storyline in the latest season. Mahrez is the only player in the show who plays in the Saudi Pro League, which is currently on a charm and cash offensive to poach (mostly) ageing players from European clubs for colossal money deals. His annual salary is close to £44 million. Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, 40, earns more than £170 million a year playing for Al Nassr in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Ahead of the 2023-24 season, Pro League clubs spent about £750 million on 94 players from leagues in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France. This importing of Europe's football culture is part of a wider project to diversify Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy through sport — and, critics argue, launder the country's terrible reputation for human rights abuses. Accusations of 'sportswashing' have accompanied Saudi Arabia's successful bid for the 2030 World Cup, as well as lucrative land grabs for golf, snooker and boxing. The Saudi football project has also led to an insatiable curiosity about the existences of young multimillionaires more used to life in velvet-roped VIP areas in Alderley Edge. What is it like to swap club nights for expat compounds, and champagne at brunch for brunches where champagne is banned? Ward and her family live in a quiet neighbourhood in Jeddah, in a vast house that has a lift and two kitchens — a monument to white stone, wood and glass that could be anywhere (very) wealthy. Inside is a palette of cream, from the sofas to the plush dining chairs, walls and throws — all Ward's work. The house has almost 50,000 followers on Instagram via an interiors account she runs. 'It was harder in Saudi Arabia finding a house small enough for us,' she says. 'They've got sixteen-bedroom houses. I was, like, 'This is ridiculous.' ' (Theirs has eight.) She has said she feels safer there than she did in Cheshire, where burglary gangs have targeted several footballers' homes. 'I can actually sleep at night now,' she told The Sun on Sunday last month. 'We've been burgled in the past and it puts you off having nice things. I used to say to Riyad, 'Please don't buy me a watch for my birthday, I don't want to be a target.' ' Surely the biggest adjustment to life in Saudi Arabia is the country's social conservatism. Ronaldo and his partner, Georgina Rodriguez, who now live in Riyadh's diplomatic quarter, had to get special dispensation to live together outside marriage. The abaya — a long cloak that used to be mandatory for women — is no longer seen on all Saudi and foreign women, although women are expected to cover their arms and legs when out in public. There is segregation in gyms and women cannot use the pools at some hotels. Mahrez is Muslim, so Ward was familiar with the modesty of Islamic culture. But she remembers 'the first trip I took to Saudi, I went with my sister and we had no idea what to wear. We put these outfits together thinking, 'Well, it's a different culture, you need to dress differently.' And actually, when I got there everyone dressed very normal, just respectful and modest. I felt a bit stupid. 'Why have I got this huge black sack on when other girls are just wearing jeans and a T-shirt?' But it was daunting.' She has picked up a bit of Arabic, though 'supermarkets are still a challenge — I can never find the ingredients I'm looking for'. She once drove the wrong way up a motorway — 'Traumatic,' she says in the show — in a country that only lifted its ban on women driving in 2018. 'But I feel the rest of it is falling into place now.' There is also the heat. 'I've never felt anything like it,' Ward says on the show when she steps into Jeddah's desert air for the first time. Mahrez calls it one of the 'hardest' things to adapt to. 'The weather and the routine. In England we sleep early and wake up early. Here it's more the opposite.' His games take place at about 8pm or 9pm owing to the heat: in August, when the season starts, the average daytime temperature in the country is about 41C. He's enjoying it now. 'It's different to the Premier League. It's exciting, the challenge to try and make one of the best leagues in the world with all the stadiums, the buildings, the training centres. I'm very happy.' But it is harder to build a real football culture — the passionate fandom, the alchemy of match day — from scratch. Some games have attracted crowds as small as 670 people. Alcohol is banned in the country, and while anyone who has travelled on a late train in a carriageful of football fans might consider this an upside, it's definitely a key change from the usual merriment. Some players struggle to adapt. The former Liverpool captains Steven Gerrard and Jordan Henderson — who managed and played, respectively, at Al-Ettifaq in Dammam — based their families in the island state of Bahrain, which has more permissive alcohol laws and is a 35-minute drive from Dammam via a bridge. Gerrard lasted eighteen months and Henderson just six before he negotiated a move back to Europe to play for the Dutch team Ajax. Still, with its Michelin-starred restaurants, luxury hotels and upmarket fitness studios, Saudi Arabia is very geared up for moneyed young people. For Mahrez and Ward, daily life can be unremarkable to the point of monotony. His days revolve around training from 3pm, unless there is a game that evening. Ward takes Mila to nursery, then works out, works on Astalia — the jewellery brand she runs with her sister, Darby — or films content including paid brand collaborations for her 2.8 million Instagram followers. The family dines out a lot, although Ward has been learning to cook using TikTok recipes, which she does in a marble-floored kitchen that is incredibly ordered, with pasta and pulses arranged in tall, labelled jars. She watches home games at Jeddah's Alinma Stadium from the VIP seats — otherwise the family will head to the cinema or go bowling. 'We literally go bowling once a week,' Ward says. 'I'll be ready for the world championships at this rate.' She misses her Manchester friends. 'At City we had a big friendship group and did a lot of stuff together.' These days, she and Mahrez 'laugh because I'm, like, 'Woo, we've got three friends!' ' She knows a 'few' of his team-mates' partners (Al-Ahli's squad includes the former Brentford striker Ivan Toney and the former Liverpool forward Roberto Firmino). No wonder she escapes to Dubai a lot, where the couple have yet another place, to play padel with girlfriends and sunbathe at the Sal beach club. Jeddah sounds like a retirement village in comparison. As well as being raised in the game, Ward has reality-TV pedigree: her mother, Dawn, 51, starred in The Real Housewives of Cheshire, on which Ward and her three sisters also appeared. Did she always think she'd marry a footballer? 'No. My dad was quite against it. He was, like, 'I know what footballers are like. It's just not for you.' But I think Riyad broke the mould of what his typical footballer man is.' 'An oaf,' Mahrez clarifies. 'Of all his worries, Riyad is not one. So they have a nice relationship, don't you? My dad gives you a lot of advice, and Riyad rips him about his football career.' Mahrez's own father died of a heart attack aged 54, when he was 15. His mother and two sisters appear in a few episodes of the show, as do Ward's mum and dad, and the families are close. Mahrez moved in with Ward's family during Covid. Ward started French lessons when they got together, so she can speak to her mother and sisters-in-law in their native language. The family have had plenty of opportunities to get together: Mahrez and Ward have had three weddings. There was the religious one in Manchester in 2022, presided over by an imam and attended by a few friends and family. Then there was a legal wedding in London in 2023, which 'was actually meant to just be the signing of the papers', Ward says. 'But as Riyad will say, I always take things far too far.' It became a ceremony and dinner for 30 at the Londoner Hotel in Leicester Square. But the headliner was a three-day party in Lake Como last July for 160 guests, hosted at Villa Balbiano, a palazzo on the lake's edge, culminating in a pool party. She has a sense of humour about the excess. On her (final) wedding day — filmed for the show — she starts crying when she sees her dad ready to walk her down the aisle. 'I've had so much practice!' she wails. 'What's going on?' Despite the cameras, things feel natural-ish. During Mahrez's wedding speech in Como, he tells Ward how beautiful she looks but she's too busy breaking up a fight between Mila and her half-sisters to notice. 'It's not like Housewives, where they want the drama and you can come across in the wrong light,' she says. 'They're there to make a nice show.' Still, she had to convince Mahrez to take part. 'I know a lot of TV shows about the wives,' he says. 'Me, I'm private, I don't like to show much about my life. And in football, you need to focus on your game.' He relented. 'I was, like, 'It's good for you to do some things. So I will try to support you, even though I don't like being in the light too much.' ' 'It wasn't the first show that had come to us,' Ward says. 'I always felt like it was more about the men and football, and you're just the wife. We want to break the stereotypes that footballers' wives just go shopping every day and drink champagne, because that's not real life.' In the show she does go shopping and drink champagne — but not in Saudi Arabia — but the family also navigates bigger things, such as the death of her grandfather. 'You see the highs, the lows. They don't just glamorise everything.' The future is uncertain. At 34 Mahrez is in the twilight of a footballer's short career. His contract is up in two years. 'Maybe I'll keep going, maybe not,' he says. They plan to move to their Dubai place when he stops playing. 'That is the difficult thing about football,' she says. 'You never know how long you've got left. So I think you've just got to kind of enjoy it while it is what it is.' It's a strange old life: glamorous, moneyed, rarefied, but also lonely, itinerant and unpredictable. Does Ward really feel as though she's married to the game? 'I have now uprooted my whole life to Saudi Arabia,' she hoots. 'So definitely.' Married to the Game is on Amazon Prime
