Melissa Barrera is returning to the horror genre with a new film from writer-director Adam Alleca (The Last House on the Left, Delirium).

The Scream star will lead Inhabit, a psychological horror film about a woman who moves into a rundown apartment complex following a traumatic event. After a series of bizarre occurrences, from creepy neighbours to menacing stalkers, she becomes convinced she’s being targeted by a supernatural force. Alleca has cited Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and Get Out as “audacious character-driven thrillers” that have inspired him on the project.

Barrera was famously fired from her lead role in Scream 7, which was set to conclude the story of the Carpenter sisters (Barrera and Jenna Ortega), after posting on social media in support of Palestine. Executives from Spyglass Media Group, the production company behind the last three films in the franchise, deemed the posts “anti-semitic”. Following Barrera’s dismissal, Ortega and original director Christopher Landon departed the project.

Two genre films that Barrera had shot before being fired from Scream, vampire thriller Abigail and rom-com Your Monster, were released in 2024. She has since starred in sci-fi series The Copenhagen Test, which premiered last December.

Barrera criticised cast members who returned for the sequel: “They have to live with that,” she told Variety in an interview published yesterday. “The only way they were able to make that movie after what happened was to nostalgia-bait as much as possible.

Sales for Inhabit are launching in Cannes with Logical Pictures.