Alberta's mountains, prairie towns and mid-century schools have quietly doubled for some genuinely unsettling cinema. A seasonal round-up of horror movies shot in the province makes a surprisingly good October watchlist — and doubles as a different lens on places travellers might already know.
The biggest name is Prey (2022), the Predator prequel following a young Comanche hunter, Naru, centuries before Arnold Schwarzenegger's jungle showdown. It was filmed around Calgary, on the Stoney Nakoda Nation, and in the Moose Mountain and Elbow River areas — classic foothills country that stands in convincingly for the 1700s.
Older horror fans get a Canadian deep cut too. Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987), the supernatural slasher about a prom queen back from the dead, shot in Edmonton, with real local schools on screen — Westmount Junior High and Highlands Junior High — plus scenes at West Edmonton Mall. Spotting the locations is half the fun if you've ever wandered the mall.
On the newer end, Skinamarink (2022) is the experimental breakout that turned a childhood home into a nightmare: a father vanished, doors and windows missing, and long, dark hallways shot at glacial angles. Its one house is director Kyle Edward Ball's actual Edmonton home, which makes the film's low-budget dread even more impressive.
Rounding out the list: Dark Nature (2022), Calgary filmmaker Berkley Brady's debut about a therapy retreat in the Rocky Mountains that goes violently wrong, filmed in the city and Kananaskis. And there's fresh material on the horizon — Prank Night, a revenge thriller with Katharine Isabelle and Katherine Evans shot in Calgary, already has a sequel, Prank Night 2: Repetition, filmed in and around the city.
For anyone planning a trip through Alberta, this is a fun angle on familiar ground: Calgary's historic buildings, Edmonton's schools and mall, and Kananaskis' rugged peaks have all played horror sets. Watching a couple of these before a Rockies road trip adds a shiver to the usual scenery — just maybe not Skinamarink if you're staying somewhere with long hallways.
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