Welcome back to Horror Happenings, friends! Lots of fun movie news hit the web this week so let’s get to it.

The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan Stars in Creepy Doll Movie The Boy

I don’t know about you, but evil doll movies don’t really scare me all that much. However, I am never opposed to being successfully creeped out by any kind of movie and by the looks of the first trailer, The Boy may end up doing just that. The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan stars as an American nanny who takes a job in a remote English home. When she arrives, she learns that the child she will be caring for isn’t really a child at all, but a life-sized doll made as a stand-in for a couple who lost their son twenty years earlier. There are a list of rules by which she must abide and if she doesn’t, she will face the consequences.

Since this is just the first look, it may be too soon to tell, but what I like already is that the movie could tap into the scariest thing about creepy doll movies: the people who own creepy dolls. Seriously, what kind of person would have a life-sized child doll in the first place and then go ahead and hire someone to babysit it? A really screwed-up person, that’s who. A person who is probably capable of all kinds of scary shenanigans.

The Boy comes from director William Brent Bell who brought audiences the infuriating The Devil Inside. However, Bell also directed the little known (and pretty solid) werewolf movie Wer, so I’m definitely curious to see his latest. In the meantime, if you haven’t seen Wer and are looking for a new spin on the werewolf myth set in modern day, give it a whirl on VOD.

The Boy, starring Lauren Cohan, hits theaters on January 22, 2016.

Universal’s New Mummy Movie Might Feature A Lady Mummy Creature!

This week, The Hollywood Reporter got hungry monster fans a bit of an update on the long-in-development remake of The Mummy spearheaded by mega-writer Alex Kurtzman. After it was announced that Kurtzman’s Mummy movie would actually serve to jumpstart a much larger shared monster universe (think The Avengers but with, you know, the Wolfman) release dates moved and we hadn’t heard much. Now we are learning that the actual creature in the new film may actually be a lady mummy!

Set in the present day, THR is saying that there are two potential stories for The Mummy reboot: one with a lady creature and one with a gentleman creature. According to their sources, it will all come down to which actor or actress is the best fit for the role.

If I may, horror friends, I like Alex Kurtzman a lot and I know he’s a fan of the source material. I also recently revisited the classic Universal Monsters last year and I have to say, of all of them, The Mummy has not aged well (that was not a goofy mummy joke). I would also be lying if I said I didn’t love the 1999 reboot, because I totally do. It takes all of the best parts of the original Karloff film and infuses them with action and adventure, which is what a good remake should do. The idea that the creature in the new movie could be a woman is extra exciting to me, especially as a lady horror fan. Perhaps it will turn out to be Anck-Su-Namun instead of Imhotep this time around? Or maybe it will be a new character all together.

In any case, my fingers are crossed for some great casting and another bad-ass Mummy movie for a new generation. The Mummy, written and directed by Alex Kurtzman, is slated to open in theaters on March 24, 2017.

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Featured Image Credit: DeviantArtist Grimbro

Clarke Wolfe writes Horror Happenings for Nerdist every Sunday. You can follow her on Twitter @clarkewolfe.