Something unpleasant is stirring beneath the sidewalks of New York, and Atomic Monster and Paramount's new genre label want to take you down there. LaKeith Stanfield and Ben Mendelsohn are set to headline Molepeople, a horror feature that's being mounted by James Wan's Atomic Monster banner alongside Paramount Primal, the studio's freshly minted home for chillers. Rob Savage, the filmmaker who turned a Zoom call into a nightmare with Host and later took on Stephen King's The Boogeyman, is directing.
The logline alone is enough to make you check the locks on your basement door: one man's nightmarish descent into the abandoned tunnels beneath the streets of New York City, where a twisted society lurks. If that sounds like the kind of premise that practically begs for flickering flashlight beams and wet concrete walls, that's because it is. This is subterranean horror in the grand tradition of stories that treat the ground under our feet as a lid we probably shouldn't lift.
Stanfield and Mendelsohn Anchor a Creepy Underground Tale
Stanfield has spent the last several years proving he can do pretty much anything. He earned an Oscar nomination for Judas and the Black Messiah, drew laughs and headaches as the human anchor of Sorry to Bother You, and became a fan-favorite fixture of the Knives Out whodunit Glass Onion. Horror fans also know him from The Haunting of Hill House and the recent Salem's Lot adaptation. Dropping him into a claustrophobic tunnel society feels like a casting no-brainer, and also a little mean to the audience in the best way.
Mendelsohn, meanwhile, is one of those actors who can make a boardroom meeting feel like a threat, so imagine what he'll do in the dark. The Australian character actor has bounced between blockbusters like Rogue One and Captain Marvel, prestige television like Bloodline, and a long list of indies where he radiates quiet menace. He's playing a character named Jimmy, the kind of plain, unassuming name that horror movies love to attach to people you should absolutely not trust.
The Cast List Comes With a Curveball
Here's where things get interesting for anyone who's been following the trades. Anthony Ramos is listed as Jack, the film's lead, while Mendelsohn is credited as Jimmy. Stanfield's role hasn't been pinned down in the same way. That leaves plenty of room for speculation about who's descending into the tunnels and who might already be living down there, waiting. Ensemble horror often works best when you're not entirely sure who the protagonist is until the lights go out.
Ramos, for his part, has been on a serious run. He broke out in Hamilton, led the big-screen take on In the Heights, and has been stacking up franchise gigs including Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Twisters. Putting him at the center of a New York-set descent story gives the movie a grounded, likable face before everything goes sideways.
Rob Savage Keeps Building His Horror Resume
Savage has quietly assembled one of the more interesting horror filmographies of the past few years. Host was a pandemic-era miracle, a found-footage scare machine made remotely that genuinely worked. He followed it with Dashcam, a chaotic and divisive ride, then stepped into studio territory with The Boogeyman. A movie about a hidden civilization under Manhattan plays directly to his strengths: tight spaces, escalating dread, and the sense that the danger is always just off-screen.
Pairing him with Atomic Monster makes sense too. Wan's shop has become a reliable engine for mainstream horror, and Paramount Primal gives the studio a dedicated label for exactly this kind of dark, high-concept material. The collaboration signals that the film is being built as a theatrical proposition rather than a quiet streaming drop.
What We Still Don't Know
Plenty, honestly. There's no release date yet, no runtime, and no official rating. The project is still early enough that the timing could shift, and the studio hasn't mapped out a marketing beat beyond the casting reveal. TMDb currently shows a 0/10 rating, which is just how unreleased titles look before anyone has actually watched them, not a verdict from critics.
What we do have is a killer premise, a director with a proven instinct for the creeps, and three actors capable of carrying a movie on their shoulders. Underground societies, abandoned subway lines, and whatever "twisted" means in this particular script: it's all fertile ground. New York's tunnels have fueled urban legends for generations, and Hollywood has barely scratched the surface.
If Molepeople delivers even half of what that logline promises, we might all be thinking twice about the next time we take the stairs instead of the elevator. Keep your eyes on this one.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
