Hope, the wild new sci-fi epic from The Wailing director Na Hong-jin, is coming to The Frida Cinema!
In the remote South Korean village of Hope Harbor, police chief Bum-seok and officer Sung-ae are called to investigate a mysterious creature wreaking havoc on the community. But all is not as it seems, and perceptions can be misleading. What begins as ignorance plants the seed of disaster, escalating through human conflict into a tragedy of cosmic proportions.
Starring Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, Hoyeon, Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell, Hope is a sprawling, genre-bending monster movie that mixes Korean thriller intensity with wild sci-fi spectacle. The film premiered in Competition at Cannes, where it received a six-minute standing ovation, and has already been hailed for its ferocious action and audacious filmmaking.
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Some wrong turns last forever.
We’re getting lost with a one week run of the buzzy new horror-mystery film It Ends!
A group of recent grads head out on a late night drive for grub, hoping to enjoy one final hangout before their paths diverge. Instead, they accidentally turn onto a never-ending, two-lane hellscape surrounded by untold horrors and cosmic forces beyond their understanding. Cramped together inside a Jeep Cherokee and with the miles stretching infinitely ahead, they face a choice: embrace their new existence or fight to escape it.
Premiering at SXSW all the way in Spring of 2025, It Ends announced an exciting new voice in horror with its young director, Alexander Ullom. If you’re a fan of the new trend of liminal horror films, this is right up your alley.
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There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer.
August’s Staff Pick comes courtesy of our new Box Office Manager Chris Martinez, who has chosen David Fincher’s chilling 2007 masterwork Zodiac!
Over the course of a decade, editors of the San Francisco Chronicle entice themselves in the murders of the Zodiac Killer. However, as time runs its course, interest in the case dwindles in the eyes of the professionals. The Killer stops interacting with the public. However, believing he has the answers, an amateur cartoonist from the initial sightings races against time to prevent what he believes is another murder.
Featuring extraordinary performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and an incredible ensemble cast of, Zodiac is less interested in the killer himself than the devastating impact of obsession on everyone left searching for him. With Fincher’s signature knack for meticulous attention to detail and stunning cinematography, the film has become one of the defining thrillers of the 21st century.
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Before Na Hong-jin returns to the big screen with his long-awaited new film Hope, revisit the modern masterpiece that cemented him as one of the most visionary filmmakers working in genre cinema. Released in 2016 to worldwide acclaim, The Wailing is an ambitious and utterly unforgettable descent into evil that continues to haunt audiences a decade later.
When a mysterious stranger arrives in a remote South Korean village, a series of brutal murders and unexplained illnesses begin to spread. Tasked with investigating the increasingly bizarre events, a bumbling local policeman finds himself caught in a waking nightmare.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films of the 21st century, The Wailing is occult horror at its finest and most tense. Its influence can be felt throughout contemporary genre filmmaking, and its final moments remain among the most chilling ever committed to film.
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This time the terror doesn’t stop at the screen.
The second film in our Sunday Scaries lineup for August is Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, presented by Play It By Fear!
Partially a sequel and partially a satire, New Nightmare follows Heather Langenkamp as a fictionalized version of herself as she discovers that Freddy Krueger has escaped the world of movies and entered our own. What unfolds is one of the smartest and most ambitious horror films of the 1990s about the monsters we create for ourselves.
Only two years after the release of this movie, Craven would make Scream, which is where Hollywood really became obsessed with meta-horror. But New Nightmare is a much more unsettling beast that deserves to be re-discovered on the big screen!
Enhanced Accessibility: this film has closed captioning capability!
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Frida Cinema favorite Kiyoshi Kurosawa is back, yet again, with his latest epic: The Samurai and the Prisoner!
When Lord Murashige (Masahiro Motoki) rises up against the tyrannical Oda (Bando Shingo), he finds himself besieged within the walls of his own castle. Isolated, he is confronted with a series of mysterious crimes that shatter the fragile order of his court, plunging the fortress into fear and suspicion. With Oda’s army closing in and a traitor hiding among his ranks, Murashige is forced into an uneasy alliance with Kanbei Kuroda (Masaki Suda), a brilliant yet dangerous strategist held prisoner in the dungeon. Helped by his wife Chiyoho (Yuriko Yoshitaka) and his most loyal generals, Murashige must uncover the truth before the castle falls.
A restrained samurai mystery that uses the genre to explore morality, The Samurai and the Prisoner boasts an impressive 94% on Rotten Tomatoesand was one of the major standouts at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Don’t miss your chance to see it on the big screen!
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Our second Volunteer of the Month pick for July comes via Avalon, who has chosen chosen the hallucinatory body-horror classic Videodrome from visionary filmmaker and certified sicko David Cronenberg.
As the president of a trashy TV channel, Max Renn is desperate for new programming to attract viewers. When he happens upon “Videodrome,” a TV show dedicated to gratuitous torture and punishment, Max sees a potential hit and broadcasts the show on his channel. However, after his girlfriend auditions for the show and never returns, Max investigates the truth behind Videodrome and discovers that the graphic violence may not be as fake as he thought.
Videodrome remains one of Cronenberg’s most provocative and unsettling works. Filled with unforgettable practical effects and audacious ideas, the film predicts a world consumed by screens while asking who controls the images we consume.
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Mark Jenkin (Bait, Enys Men) is back with his latest mind-trip, Rose of Nevada, starring Callum Turner and George MacKay!
A mysterious boat returns to a village 30 years after vanishing. Two men join its crew hoping for better fortune. After one voyage, they find themselves transported back in time, mistaken for the original crew.
One of the most distinctive voices in contemporary UK art cinema, Mark Jenkin has made quite the name for himself for his handmade aesthetic, and Rose of Nevada looks to be more of that strange, melancholy folk-horror hybrid that we continue to be fascinated by.
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Cutter does everything his way. Fighting. Loving. Working. Tracking down a killer.
Our Hallucinations series is detouring to the world of sun-soaked neo-Noir with Cutter’s Way!
Alex Cutter is a boozy, belligerent and deeply cynical Vietnam veteran whose encounter with a landmine during the war has left him minus an eye, a leg and an arm. When his drifter playboy friend Richard Bone is falsely accused of murder, Cutter sets out for revenge in his own inimitable style.
Cutter’s Way is one of the great overlooked neo-Noirs of the 1980s and an extremely cynical portrait of a country where power always seems untouchable.
Hosted by Polygon’s editor-in-chief Chris Plante, Hallucinations is a monthly event that spotlights movies that challenge our expectations of story, style, and “good taste”. We invite guests to bond over films that change what we expect from the medium, the world, and themselves. So come early, stay late, make friends, and watch something strange, surprising, or just shamelessly sick.
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From the eternal sea he rises. Creating armies on either shore. Turning man against his brother. Until man exists no more.
On 6/7/26, Play It By Fear is presenting a very special $6.66 screening of the 2006 remake of The Omen!
When American diplomat Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber) secretly adopts an orphaned newborn after a tragedy in the delivery room, he and his wife Katherine (Julia Stiles) attempt to build a normal life around their young son Damien. But as a series of increasingly horrifying events begin unfolding around the child, Robert is pulled into a terrifying conspiracy involving the possible arrival of the Antichrist himself.
Directed by John Moore, The Omen updates the dread-soaked atmosphere of the original for a new generation while retaining its mounting sense of inevitable doom.
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