Your Daily Horror Digest for July 23, 2025
Bait and Switch (to a different movie)
updated on
Table of Contents
Welcome to another daily horror digest from Creepy Catalog! Today’s movie recommendation of the day is Dangerous Animals, which just started streaming yesterday. But today’s actual Movie of the Day is, for reasons explained below, something completely different. Take a look below, and keep reading for daily news and trivia!
Movie of the Day
Yesterday two new horror movies hit streaming. I’d already seen one of them, Dangerous Animals, and I’ve written about it a few times already. It’s an excellent film, and you should watch it if you haven’t. But, since I’ve already said what I want to say about that, today’s Movie of the Day is the other film that began streaming yesterday. That movie is titled Bait, and I was hesitant about it from the start.
Before I spent my money and clicked “play” to watch Bait, I looked it up on IMDB. It’s directed by Andrea M. Catinella whom I’ve become familiar with over the past few months. Just this year he’s had four horror movies released. Including Bait, he also directed Mouseboat Massacre, Hook, and Piglet. None of those movies did particularly well in my ongoing ranking of every horror movie I watch in 2025. The good news is that Bait is his best movie so far this year. But just barely.
Bait is about a family of four traveling through the countryside to visit family. They have a nasty car crash which is the result of a trap set by a mysterious man, and when they wake up they’re trapped inside a large storage room. A man in a gas mask walks in and leaves an injured woman on the floor. The woman is promptly eaten (well, partially eaten) by a monster. Horrified, the family soon learns that they’ll all be fed to the beast, and they’ve been given the night to decide who goes first.
The premise is totally fine. Pretty good even. It just feels like it takes forever for the story to move along. The family discusses their situation for a while, but nothing of substance is accomplished during that time. There’s a parallel plot line happening in which the brother of the mother in the family is searching for her, but that thread goes nowhere. We also get to know the man who is keeping the family captive as food for his pet monster, but that also barely does anything for the story.
Star Rating: 2 out of 5
The final sequences have some fun blood and violence, but the few dramatic connections the story sets up don’t make much of an impact. There’s just not enough substance to the story. It’s like there’s enough content to fill out a short film, but it’s stretched to feature length, and that makes it feel like it takes forever to get to its conclusion. If you want to check it out, Bait is currently streaming as a digital rental on Prime Video. I’d suggest waiting until it inevitably shows up on Tubi.
In the News
- Ozzy Osbourne passed away yesterday at the age of 86. Ozzy has been associated with horror even since the formation of Black Sabbath, the band he formed with Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, and Bill Ward which was named after the Mario Bava movie Black Sabbath. In film, Ozzy had a memorable cameo in Trick or Treat (1986) as an evangelist denouncing heavy metal, and he voiced an unseen Good Boy in We Need to Do Something (2021).
- Director Sébastien Vaniček announced via Instagram that filming on Evil Dead Burn is currently underway! The movie is scheduled to be released on July 24th, 2026. (Bloody Disgusting)
- Zach Cregger, the director of the next Resident Evil movie, says that he’s never watched the other movies. Rather, he’s a huge fan of the video games. He says his movie will honor the “experience you get when you play the games.” His Resident Evil movie is expected to be released on September 18, 2026. (Deadline)
- Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice) is reportedly in talks to be the female lead in the upcoming Clayface movie. (Deadline)
- Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle earned the highest ever single-day box office gross in Japanese history with $11.13 million (JPY1.65 billion) on July 18th. It went on to earn $49.4 million over Japan’s four day weekend of July 18-21 (which includes the Marine Day holiday). The animated film will be released in US theaters on September 12, 2025. (Variety)
- Cristin Milioti (Black Mirror, The Penguin) has been cast in the indie horror thriller Buddy. (The Hollywood Reporter)
- Prince Amponsah (Station Eleven) has been cast in the satirical horror film How Dare You. (Variety)
Birthdays
Charisma Carpenter was born on July 23, 1970. Charisma is best known as Cordelia Chase in the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and four seasons of Angel (plus one episode from season five). She also voiced Cordelia in the audio drama Slayers: A Buffyverse Story, and she recently started a podcast titled The Bitch is Back in which she talks about Buffy, Angel, life, and everything.
Also celebrating a birthday today is Allen Danziger. Born on July 23, 1942, Allen played Jerry in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Jerry was the guy who found Pam in the freezer and then took a hammer to the head from Leatherface. Allen recently lent his voice to the indie film Cannibal Comedian (2023) as the narrator for a Texas-Chainsaw-like introductory text crawl.
Woody Harrelson was also born on this day, in 1961. Woody hasn’t been in many horror movies, but his starring roles in Zombieland (2009) and its sequel are definitely memorable. My favorite movie of his will probably always be Natural Born Killers (1994). It’s not a horror movie, but there are moments that move right up to the edge of horror.
Other actors born on July 23rd include:
- Daniel Radcliffe (1989) – The Woman in Black (2012), Victor Frankenstein (2015)
- Marlon Wayans (1972) – Scary Movie 1 & 2, A Haunted House 1 & 2
- Chuck Courtney (1930) – Billy the Kid in Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966)
- Erika Blanc (1942) – Kill Baby Kill (1966), The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)
- Julie Mitchum (1914) – House on Haunted Hill (1959)
Events on This Day
The Haunting was released in North American theaters on July 23rd, 1999. This was the second film to adapt Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. As a huge fan of the 1963 film and of the original novel, I think it’s safe to say that this is the second best feature-film version of the story. The Haunting is on MGM+.
M. Night Shyamalan’s Old was released in theaters on this day in 2021. Though probably more of a thriller, there’s a body-horror element to the story of people aging rapidly while stuck on an isolated beach. This one took a little time to grow on me, but I enjoy it overall. You can stream Old on Peacock.
Leprechaun was released in the United States during January, but IMDB lists the release date for Leprechaun in Ireland as July 23, 1993. I couldn’t find anything to corroborate this information, but if true, I thought it would be something worth mentioning today. Leprechaun is available to rent on Prime Video.
Other movies released on July 23rd include:
- Proteus (Video, 1996)
- Teke Teke (Japan, 2009)
- Impetigore (Shudder, 2020)
- Blood Red Sky (Netflix, 2021)
Thank you for reading! Take a moment to listen to some Black Sabbath and solo Ozzy music today.
