For over twenty years, Alexander Zelenyj has been writing unforgettable fiction. His stories span the literary continuum, blending genres in new and unexpected ways to create what many critics have described as “unclassifiable” literature. Never afraid to venture to those places that few other authors would dare to explore, he weaves bold narratives that are by turns harrowing, insightful, and revelatory. They are stories that confront the most abhorrent of monsters, embrace the truth and the wonder of the human condition, and pose questions without answer.
These Long Teeth of the Night celebrates the first two decades of Zelenyj’s published short fiction. This special anniversary retrospective collects twenty-eight of his most remarkable stories, including new material and notes from the author that offer unique insight into the creative process.
Prepare yourself. The stories of Alexander Zelenyj are stories of the night. And it has teeth.

Top Horror Films You Shouldn't Miss Out On In 2023

As we are now in 2023, it’s that time of the year to take a look at the most exciting upcoming horror films that we will get to see this year. New releases are being announced almost every day, which means that 2023 is expected to bring plenty of action in the horror genre. Below you will find a list of the best horror films that you should add to your watch list in 2023. Although this is by no means a definitive list, you may discover some great films that you can watch with your friends on a spooky Friday night.

M3GAN

One of the most-anticipated releases of this year is M3GAN, which is bound to take you on a rollercoaster of emotions. You will join toy company roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams) as she creates an AI-assisted lifelike doll with the name M3GAN. Gemma gains custody of her niece after the girl’s parents die in a car crash. She then decides to let M3GAN spend time with her niece and help her process her grief. However, things don’t go as planned, when M3GAN takes a murderous approach any time someone comes between her and her friend. Time will tell if M3GAN will become the next horror icon that everyone is talking about.

Salem’s Lot

Another great film you may want to check out is Salem’s Lot, based on Stephen King’s novel from 1975. As Salem’s Lot is due to be released later in 2023, there are some fun activities that you can get involved with, that will provide you with a similarly thrilling experience. For example, there are various websites and gaming platforms that you can explore, such as OnlineCasinos.co.uk to find the best casino to play via mobile devices. OnlineCasinos.co.uk is a great platform, which will provide you with amazing mobile casino bonuses, allowing you to have the best online casino experience. You may also be able to find some fun horror-inspired slots that will leave you feeling even more excited.

Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey

Although you may be familiar with Winnie the Pooh, which is a 1926 children’s book, this film may change your perception of this story. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey is a new reimagining, which will turn your favourite childhood characters into something you haven’t thought about before. As you will notice in the trailer, Christopher Robin is heading off to college, so he will have to leave his pals behind. Ever since the trailer was released, many fans have been eager to see how the film will unfold.

Knock At The Cabin

Knock at the Cabin is another film based on a popular novel that you might have already read, ‘The Cabin at the End of the World’ by Paul Tremblay. If you are familiar with the novel, you know that you can expect a series of twists and turns. Watching the trailer will leave you feeling like there is more than meets the eye in this spooky story. The plot focuses on a young gay couple and their daughter, who leave for a getaway in the woods. Suddenly, four intruders break into the cabin where they are staying, which leads to more mystery and action you wouldn’t want to miss.

Scream 6

Ghostface is set to visit Manhattan once again following five successful films. After the last round, Samantha, Tara, Mindy, and Chad, who the audience will recognize from Scream 5, decide to move to New York so that they can start a new chapter. However, the plan quickly goes awry when the Big Apple becomes a setting for more murders and an action-packed story, which will leave you on the edge of your seat. It has been confirmed that Sidney (Neve Campbell) will not be returning for Scream 6, but you can expect Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox) to make an appearance.

Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool is coming soon, and it’s promising to bring a mix of horror, violence, and hedonism. The story follows a couple on what seems to be an amazing holiday at an all-inclusive island resort. A fatal accident soon reveals the real nature of the resort. This science fiction thriller film was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, and starring Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth. So, you should get ready for surreal horrors that will make you forget everything else and root for the main characters.

Evil Dead Rise

The latest film in the Evil Dead Rise franchise will take place in a city instead of a cabin in the woods as usual. You will follow two estranged sisters whose reunion has been cut short, as a group of demons arrives. This means that they now must do everything they can to survive in this primal battle. Evil Dead Rise is written and directed by Lee Cronin and is the fifth instalment in the series. It’s scheduled to be released in theatres on April 21, 2023, so you may want to save the date and prepare for this unbelievable fight against demonic creatures.

Renfield

Nicholas Cage has had a significant presence in some of the best Hollywood films out there. If you are a fan, you have likely noticed that he embodies every role he plays. This won’t be any different in his new film ‘Renfield’. It promises to be an extremely violent comedy, focusing on Renfield, who is now ready to seek a life outside the shadows of the Prince of Darkness. Directed by Chris McKay, Renfield will make you forget all about Dracula and find out more about his tortured aide as he figures out how to end his co-dependency. Apart from Nicholas Cage, you will also get to see Nicholas Hoult as the titular character.

Cocaine Bear
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Lastly, you are unlikely to be disappointed by Cocaine Bear, expected to be released in February this year. The premise of this dark comedy is simple, and judging by the trailer, it’s supposed to be a blast for all horror fans across the world. A shipment of cocaine gets airdropped from a plane and is found by a 500-pound bear. After the bear eats a significant amount of it, it ends up going on a drug-fuelled rampage. This wild thriller is expected to be like nothing you have ever seen, so get ready for plenty of action, twists, and turns.

On Cocaine Bear and Other Human-Created Monsters


I wouldn’t call Cocaine Bear divisive, but the 2023 Elizabeth Banks-directed horror film about a bear who ingests cocaine and goes on a killing spree has definitely elicited some strong opinions. 


One camp, which includes me, is excited about the thrill ride of a film in which a motley crew of characters must band together to stop the drug-induced bloodbath. 


Another camp, which does not at all include me, is put off by the vapid premise of killer animals and the Hollywood treatment of something that is typically relegated to low-budget productions. (Think Sharknado.)


But I plan to watch Cocaine Bear and root for the people as well as for the bear. These things are not mutually exclusive.


Nature always wins


When I was a kid, my family had a video rental card, and I wasn’t afraid to use it. 


One of the earliest horror movies I watched was the 1976 film The Food of the Gods. The premise is that a fluid oozes from the ground on a remote island, and, when mixed with food, makes the chickens, wasps, and rats into giants that kill. The film ends with the same fluid making it into the milk supply, which is consumed by the schoolchildren, who are also susceptible to the liquid’s detrimental effects.


The B-movie was probably a decade old or so when I caught it for the first time, and it not only creeped me out, but it also changed the way I looked at the relationship humans have with other animals. It was the first time it hit me that humans are, in fact, animals, but animals who are supposed to be enlightened, with big, intelligent brains that allowed them to climb to the top of the food chain, above all apex predators, where they sit in dominion over all creatures. 


Many people even point to biblical justification for our dominion, in Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 26: 


”And God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’” 


Some of us believe it is our divine right to be predator and never prey, to have all resources on the planet at our disposal to be used how we see fit.


That’s why The Food of the Gods is terrifying. Because of the sheer size, brute force, and overwhelming population of common creatures we encounter daily, in this and other creature features like it, humans are reduced to fighting for their lives. Surviving, not thriving. And even when the characters are seemingly able to take back their position at the top of the food chain by the end of the movie, the cycle continues, because their children will be next. 


At the start of the global coronavirus pandemic, when the U.S. government was talking of containing the virus and stopping its spread, a good friend of mine said, “Nature always wins.” And I would agree. We have managed to not all die from SARS-Cov-2, but we were never able to contain it, we have simply survived it, and, in the process, we’ve lost more than a million people in the United States alone.


So, I tend to side with nature. Sure, the creatures rising up in these horror tales are frightening, but they are often the victims of humans first—military experimentation, unethical scientific practices, greedy and/or negligent governments and corporations. It’s a specific type of creature feature I’m drawn to, one in which humans have created the monster.


In the 1904 H.G. Wells novel, The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, which served as the source material for the 1976 film, scientists—Mr. Bensington and Mr. Redwood—create the substance in a lab and test it on an experimental farm. Bensington discusses his intentions:


“Really, you know,” he said, rubbing his hands together and laughing nervously, “it has more than a theoretical interest.

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“For example,” he confided, bringing his face close to the Professor’s and dropping to an undertone, “it would perhaps, if suitably handled, sell.”


Challenging the idea of genetic engineering and scientific interference in nature, the work and others like it are a warning about people lacking reverence for the earth and its non-human inhabitants. 


Which is another criticism of Cocaine Bear—that the film makes light of a real-life tragedy. And there is truth in that. I too have compassion for the bear the film is loosely based on. After all, it died by eating cocaine dropped from a drug smuggler’s plane, bricks of coke that had otherwise been on their way to poison people.


Human malice is one reason horror films and books are cultural necessities. They hold up a mirror to the monsters inside us, our wicked ways that we often take for granted, our vile practices that sometimes go unnoticed. And human retribution tales, in particular, beg the question—does dominion mean violence?


Whether the movie is an entertaining, coked-out flick like Cocaine Bear, or a thought-provoking meditation on human vulnerability written shortly after World War II like Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds, human violence against nature is an additional lens through which to view these stories.


There are several works of horror fiction featuring creatures that are the direct result of human interference in nature, phenomena that often make news headlines but then are lost to time. 


The Host (2006): Military chemical dumping

Directed by Bong Joon-Ho, of Parasite fame, The Host features a mutant monster created by chemicals the American military dumped in South Korea’s Han River. The film follows one family and the way the beast’s arrival devastates their lives. 


And guess what. In 2000, the U.S. military admitted to disposing of 20 gallons of formaldehyde in Seoul’s wastewater system near the U.S. military base, an episode that drew protests by local activists, who accused the U.S. military of dumping far more than 20 gallons and not in the wastewater system, but in, you guessed it, the Han River.


Eight-Legged Freaks (2002): Corporate chemical spills

This horror comedy’s source of toxic waste in the river that creates the giant, killer spiders is a chemical spill from a truck in a bankrupt town. We’ve seen this story several times in the news before—Exxon-Valdez, anyone?—and often humans, especially poor and/or marginalized people, are the victims of corporate poisoning. 


Deep Blue Sea (1999): Animal testing

Scientists experimenting on shark brains in search of an Alzheimer’s cure accidentally increase the sharks’ intelligence, and the animals are now capable of coordinated attacks as they rise up against the humans in their underwater lab. 


The Humane Society estimates that more than 50 million animals are used in experiments in the United States each year, and the animals are typically killed at the end of the experiment. As of late 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration no longer requires animal tests before human trials. Although sharks are not the animal of choice for most experiments, works of fiction like Deep Blue Sea force the audience to consider the rats, mice, monkeys, and dogs that are used in our labs.


Night of the Lepus (1972): Animal culling

Based on the Russell Braddon book The Year of the Angry Rabbit, this film’s science-experiment-gone-wrong might sound extreme—scientists are trying to reduce the rabbit population without also hurting the land around it. But in real life, the Australian government unleashed the myxoma virus on the rabbit population in the 1950s, and, over time, the rabbits developed immunity to it (though the virus might be evolving to outmaneuver the resistance). In the film, scientists inadvertently create mutant, killer rabbits. 


Reducing an animal population by finding some way to execute large swaths of them is known as culling, and it is common. Just type “culling” and…say…“male chicks” into a search engine, and you’ll get a better idea of this practice around the world. 


Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds (1952): Climate crisis
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The bird attacks resemble WWII air raids, and the setting in Daphne du Maurier’s 1952 version is South of London, not Bodega Bay in the San Francisco Bay Area like in the Alfred Hitchcock film. Through a modern lens, the story can be viewed as a meditation on human-induced climate change, as if du Maurier’s vision could stare down decades into the future—”I have a notion the weather will change. It will be a hard winter. That’s why the birds are restless.” 


And after the first attack in his home, on which Nat Hocken blames the weather, his wife challenges that assessment:


“But Nat,” whispered his wife, “it’s only this night that the weather turned. There’s been no snow to drive them. And they can’t be hungry yet. There’s food for them, out there, in the fields.”


“It’s the weather,” repeated Nat. “I tell you, it’s the weather.”


And shortly thereafter, Mrs. Trigg discusses the same:


“Can you tell me where this cold is coming from? Is it Russia? I’ve never seen such a change. And it’s going on, the wireless says. Something to do with the Arctic circle.”


Whether you believe The Birds’ pages infer climate change or that humans are responsible for the current climatic upheaval on this planet, the story is a taut, suspenseful read and is worth exploring if you haven’t, and again if you have.


By this point, you may have surmised that I maintain a plant-based diet. And as a writer, I often explore animal retribution narratives. In my story collection and recent novella, I look at the pets that no longer want to be “owned,” military-altered salamanders mutating to become killers who can possess their victims, killer zombie bats, trees that find a way to go after the people who chop them down, because I not only believe beasts could topple our planet’s hierarchy, but also that nature coming back to kill us is already happening. Nature always wins.