By Mo Moshaty
Coyotes (2025) ⭐️⭐️⭐
Trapped in their Hollywood Hills home, a family fights for survival when caught between a raging wildfire and a pack of savage coyotes.
Wildfire, blackout, and a pack of blood-hungry predators: Colin Minihan’s Coyotes doesn’t waste time trapping a family in suburban hell. Premiering at Fantastic Fest 2025 before its October 3 U.S. release via Aura Entertainment, the horror-comedy stars Justin Long as Scott, Kate Bosworth as Liv, and Mila Harris as their teenage daughter Chloe. The ensemble also features Katherine McNamara (Kat), Brittany Allen (Julie), Keir O’Donnell (Devon), and Norbert Leo Butz (Trip). Shot in Bogotá, Colombia, the film smartly leans into survival spectacle, even when its family dynamics stumble.
Scott is the film’s familiar center: a bumbling, distant dad whose arc is telegraphed from the jump; watch him stumble, then bleed, then emerge as a reluctant hero. Long has carved out a career in horror precisely on that line between affable everyman and hapless disaster magnet. He stretches his range again here, but half the fun is deciding if you want to root for him or just shake your head at yet another mess.
Bosworth’s Liv anchors the film with a steadier hand, though their parenting style borders on “gentle” to the point of parody. Chloe, meanwhile, is written with such hyper-sass and eyeroll overdose that the attitude wears thin fast. If you’re that miserable, girl, the door’s right there. Still, Harris leans into the material, making the archetype at least entertaining.
The standout, though, is Brittany Allen as Julie, a sex worker who stumbles into the wrong neighborhood at the worst time. She’s funny, ruthless, and refreshingly selfish. Julie’s out to save her own skin, and she’s not about to apologize for it. Katherine McNamara’s Kat and Keir O’Donnell’s awkward exterminator Devon get less showy roles but keep the group dynamics sharp, while Norbert Leo Butz adds some bite to the mix as their neighbor Trip who’s a “you don’t need to know what I get into over here, keep your eyes on your own lawn” type of guy.
And the coyotes? They’re massive, feral, and make absolute carnage out of anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. Minihan stages them well, whether practical, digital, (AI?) or hybrid, they sell the menace, and the gore lands.
As a package, Coyotes is funny, bloody, and just scrappy enough to work. It won’t surprise you, the family’s redemptive arc is straight from the genre playbook, but it delivers a few memorable set pieces and performances that elevate the material.
Coyotes premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025 and opens in limited U.S. release October 3, 2025.
Justin Long cements his crown as horror’s accident-prone leading man in Coyotes, where blood, fangs, and family drama collide.
Mo Moshaty is an acclaimed horror writer, lecturer, and producer whose work combines visceral storytelling with the psychological insight of her Cognitive Behavioral Therapy background. She has lectured internationally, including as a keynote speaker at Nightmares from Monkeypaw: A Jordan Peele Symposium (Prairie View A&M), No Return: A Yellowjackets Symposium (Horror Studies BAFSS Sig), The Whole Damn Swarm: Celebrating 30 Years of Candyman (University of California), and with the Centre for the History of the Gothic (University of Sheffield). Mo has also presented at the BFI, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and Final Girls Berlin Film Festival’s Brain Binge on women’s trauma in horror cinema, Cine-Excess on The Creepy Kid Horror Subgenre and Mother/Daughter Trauma in Horror, and Romancing the Gothic on Cosmic Horror’s Havoc on The Body Electric Her short film, 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror, won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Short Film. As a core producer with Nyx Horror Collective, Mo co-created the 13 Minutes of Horror Film Fest and partnered with Shudder in 2021 and 2022, while also establishing a Stowe Story Labs fellowship supporting women creatives over 40+ in horror. A member of the Black Women in Horror Class of 2023 and featured in 160 Black Women in Horror, Mo’s short fiction appears in A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigid’s Gate Press) and 206 Word Stories (Bag O’ Bones Press). Her debut novella, Love the Sinner, was released July 5, 2024, with Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment released in October 2025. The first of her five-volume non-fiction series, The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife, will be released in 2027 from Tenebrous Press. As the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine and founder of Mourning Manor Media, Mo champions marginalized voices in horror. Under her leadership, NightTide plans to launch a film festival in 2028, furthering her mission to reshape the genre through inclusivity and representation.
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