Thirty years after Habit, the independent horror filmmaker brings three of his most troubled creations together for a new monster movie arriving in November. When Universal Pictures brought Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolf Man together in films like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula during the 1940s, the studio created a tradition that horror filmmakers have revisited ever since. Now writer-director Larry Fessenden is assembling his own collection of classic monsters, although his creatures have considerably more emotional baggage than their Hollywood predecessors.
The result is Trauma Or, Monsters All, a new horror film bringing together characters from three earlier Fessenden productions: the vampire drama Habit (1995), the Frankenstein-inspired Depraved (2019) and the werewolf movie Blackout (2023). Rather than simply placing the monsters together for a series of confrontations, Fessenden has constructed a story about the fear, suspicion and hostility that erupt when a community discovers that the supernatural might be living next door.
Dark Sky Films has released the film’s trailer and confirmed a November 4, 2026, theatrical opening, beginning at New York City’s IFC Center. Additional engagements, including Los Angeles, will follow, with the film arriving on video on demand November 24.
Three Monsters and a Town Full of Secrets
Set in the fictional upstate New York community of Talbot Falls, Trauma Or, Monsters All follows Cassandra Lily-Jackson (Laëtitia Hollard), a writer who arrives in town to work on a book about scientist George Washington Carver. While supporting herself with a job at the local library, where she befriends Agnes (Aitana Doyle), Cassandra becomes increasingly interested in the strange behavior of her neighbors and the disturbing history surrounding the community.
Her curiosity eventually leads her to publish a newspaper article suggesting that actual monsters might be living among the townspeople. When the story attracts widespread attention, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, along with a wave of suspicion directed at the very creatures Cassandra has exposed. Those creatures are Adam (Alex Breaux), a man assembled through scientific experimentation; Charley (Alex Hurt), a man afflicted with lycanthropy; and Sam (Fessenden himself), a vampire whose story began more than three decades earlier.
The film also features Barbara Crampton, Addison Timlin, Joshua Leonard, James Le Gros, John Speredakos, Marc Senter and Micheál Neeson, along with several performers who have worked with Fessenden on earlier productions.
Habit (1995): A Vampire in New York City
Fessenden’s modern monster mythology began with Habit, a gritty independent vampire film that he wrote, directed and starred in. Set in New York City, the movie follows Sam, a troubled man whose already precarious existence begins to unravel after he becomes involved with a mysterious woman named Anna, played by Meredith Snaider.
Their relationship becomes increasingly disturbing as Sam experiences unexplained physical changes and begins to suspect that Anna may be a vampire. Yet Habit resists the conventional rules of vampire fiction, leaving room for uncertainty about whether supernatural forces are responsible for Sam’s deterioration or whether his alcoholism, grief and emotional instability are contributing to his experiences. Rather than presenting vampirism through Gothic castles, aristocratic villains or elaborate mythology, Fessenden places the story in a recognizable urban environment. The vampire becomes part of a larger portrait of addiction, loneliness and self-destruction.
In Trauma Or, Monsters All, Fessenden returns to the role of Sam, reconnecting the new film directly to the character who helped establish his reputation as an independent horror filmmaker. The vampire’s return is particularly significant because Habit was never designed as the opening chapter of a conventional franchise.
Depraved (2019): Frankenstein in Modern America
More than two decades later, Fessenden turned to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for Depraved, relocating the familiar story of a man assembled from human remains to contemporary New York. Alex Breaux plays Adam, a creature created by Henry, a former military field surgeon played by David Call. The film explores the moral consequences of Henry’s experiment while allowing the audience to experience much of the story through Adam’s fragmented consciousness.
Unlike the lumbering monster associated with Boris Karloff’s original Universal portrayal, Adam is a deeply confused and vulnerable individual attempting to understand his existence and the people responsible for it. Fessenden uses the Frankenstein story to examine medical ethics, trauma and the human tendency to treat those who are different as objects rather than individuals. Breaux reprises the role in Trauma Or, Monsters All, bringing the character into direct contact with Fessenden’s other supernatural creations.
Blackout (2024): The Werewolf Returns
Fessenden completed his trio of classic monsters with Blackout, which stars Alex Hurt as Charley Barrett, an artist struggling with the terrifying knowledge that he transforms into a werewolf.
Set in a small community, the film follows Charley’s attempts to understand his condition while dealing with personal relationships and a town already troubled by suspicion and social divisions. His transformations are violent, but the character’s awareness of what he might do to others gives the story a tragic dimension. As with Habit and Depraved, the supernatural creature is not simply an antagonist to be destroyed. Charley is a damaged human being confronting a condition he cannot fully control, while the people around him are often governed by fears and prejudices of their own.
Blackout also featured Barbara Crampton, who returns for Trauma Or, Monsters All. The new film revisits the fictional community of Talbot Falls and the consequences of the earlier story, connecting the werewolf’s experiences to those of Adam and Sam.
When the Town Turns on the Monsters
Although Trauma Or, Monsters All brings together three recognizable horror archetypes, Fessenden has approached the crossover from a different direction. Instead of making the creatures the central threat, he examines what happens when their existence becomes public knowledge and the people around them respond with fear and hostility.
The filmmaker has described the project as an examination of how people perceive and judge one another, using the creatures from his previous films to explore questions of identity and social division. In comments accompanying the film’s release, Fessenden explained: “I’ve spent my career reimagining classic monsters because they reveal something deeply human about us.”
He described the new film as bringing those stories together around memory, identity and emotional wounds. Speaking to the IFC Center about the film’s origins, Fessenden explained that he wanted to revisit familiar characters from an outsider’s perspective. That decision led him to create Cassandra, whose investigation transforms a community’s uneasy relationship with its past into an increasingly public conflict.
The premise also recalls an enduring element of classic monster movies: the frightened villagers who assemble to destroy whatever they cannot understand. In Frankenstein, that fear produces the torch-bearing mob; in Trauma Or, Monsters All, the catalyst is a newspaper article that spreads far beyond the town where it was written. The film premiered at the 2026 Overlook Film Festival and subsequently screened at Fantasia, where it was presented as the culmination of Fessenden’s long-running reinterpretations of Gothic horror.
A Monster Reunion Three Decades in the Making
For Fessenden, Trauma Or, Monsters All also arrives during a milestone year for Glass Eye Pix, the independent production company he founded in 1986. In addition to producing his own films, the company has been associated with such independent horror productions as The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers and Stake Land.
Beginning October 28, New York’s IFC Center will mark the company’s 40th anniversary with Optic Nerve: A Tribute to Glass Eye Pix, a seven-film retrospective leading into the theatrical premiere of Trauma Or, Monsters All. Fessenden is scheduled to participate in a question-and-answer session following the 7 p.m. opening-night screening on November 4.
The new film represents an unusual achievement for a filmmaker whose monster stories were created across three decades, with different casts, settings and concerns. What began with a troubled New Yorker encountering a possible vampire in Habit has expanded to encompass the consequences of scientific experimentation, the tragedy of lycanthropy and a community struggling with the presence of all three.
Audiences will be able to see how those stories come together when Trauma Or, Monsters All opens November 4, followed by its November 24 VOD release.
Sources for the Article
Dark Sky Films — official synopsis, trailer and photographs
Fangoria — October 16 trailer announcement and Fessenden comments
Fantasia — detailed synopsis and returning characters