You shuddered at Slender Man. You cowered from The Empty Man. You recoiled at the sight of Backrooms‘ Cap’n Clark. And now, brace yourself, for horror’s next urban legend/creepypasta/meme-based lanky nightmare is heading for a cinema near you. Yes, per Deadline‘s reporting, creature designer Trevor Henderson’s creepy cryptid Siren Head is getting the big-screen treatment. And what’s more, Weapons director Zach Cregger and Whalefall‘s Brian Duffield are joining forces to turn the spook some viral sensation into a cinematic chiller.
The cause of a heated five-way bidding war, Siren Head — which Duffield has co-written with Cregger and is set to direct himself — looks set to capitalise on a recent trend of wildly successful horror movies that lean into internet culture and urban legends with contemporary edge (see also: Talk To Me, Obsession, and movies like the above-mentioned Empty Man and Backrooms). Brought to wider internet prominence by Iron Lung filmmaker and YouTuber Markiplier, Siren Head is most commonly depicted as an incredibly tall, humanoid monster with, well, a siren head. Internet legend frames it as a predator who stalks rural North America, blending effortlessly into its surroundings as it stalks its unsuspecting prey, leading to many unexplained disappearances and tales of terror. It’s a pretty cool hook and concept that would seem to well suit both Barbarian helmsman Cregger and No One Will Save You man Duffield’s milieus — and one which has already yielded millions of views from fan-made content and internet ‘explainers’.
We don’t yet know when Siren Head will sound the alarm and hit cinemas, who will star in the movie, or even what its angle on the iconic meme will be. But with Cregger and Duffield aboard, there’s already plenty to get excited about. And we imagine by the time Cregger’s Resident Evil and Duffield’s whale-swallowed-man movie Whalefall reach out screens later this year, that excitement will only increase. In the meantime, we’re off to trawl Reddit for more on these very troubling sounding Siren Head sightings over the years. Seriously, you’d have thought someone would be looking into all of this by now…
