JuicyTalk
The horror genre is perennially fascinating, with each new entry pushing and pulling on the lengths that filmmakers are willing to go to terrify audiences. Ideally, creative voices will be skimmed from the surface of an immense sea, jutting out in terms of originality, while legacy horror franchises and sequels persist, and there is always a new terror to look forward to within horror’s niche, dark corners.
Horror is routinely hit-or-miss, and each year bears strange, unpredictable fruit, such as whether a movie will turn out to be as disturbing as its marketing promises it will be. Among honorable mentions such as Saccharine, which had its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in January, there are at least 10 horror movies that are scheduled to be released this year that could elevate the genre astronomically.
Send Help
20th Century Studios — released on January 30, 2026
Sam Raimi’s campy, absurd flavor of horror is more or less subdued in Send Help, but there is arguably no director better at marrying comedy and horror while sustaining a cohesive tone. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien both run a gamut of emotions and propel this survival horror movie further with stunning performances, whether the story demands humor or fear, and the genre could not have asked for a better movie to start out the year.
undertone
A24 — released on March 13, 2026
A24 is synonymous with dependably exquisite horror movies like Green Room and Hereditary, and undertone does not disappoint. Uniquely, undertone relies on the auditory experience and reinforces it with eerie camera work, heightening anticipation for each intermittent podcast recording session in the same dining room and amplifying the audience’s imaginations.
Ian Tuason, the director of undertone, has now been tapped to direct the next Paranormal Activity movie—even peanut butter and raspberry jam is not as good a pairing, with undertone basically being a diet Paranormal Activity (or, more accurately, the elevated form).
“And remember, don’t be afraid of the dark; be afraid of the silence.”
They Will Kill You
Warner Bros. Pictures — scheduled to be released on March 27, 2026
Another departure from traditional horror, to be sure, They Will Kill You is riding the high of Ready or Not, The Raid, and Bullet Train. This horror cocktail with a splash of action has been incredibly popular lately, and it will be neat to see if They Will Kill You is a testament as to why.
Hokum
Neon — scheduled to be released on May 1, 2026
From Caveat and Oddity writer and director Damian McCarthy, Hokum could easily be the most nerve-wracking experience of any 2026 horror movie based on atmosphere and imagery alone. In a contemporary landscape where “horror” movies are often funnier than they are terrifying, Hokum’s melodic, folkloric trailers suggest that it could be the most distilled, harrowing, and ironically no-nonsense horror movie being released in 2026.
Obsession
Focus Features — scheduled to be released on May 15, 2026
Obsession’s Curry Barker, like Talk to Me and Bring Her Back’s Danny and Michael Philippou, humbly hails from YouTube. The movie’s trailers present it as a hyperbole of a boy’s hormonal desire to be with a girl that he yearns for, wherein her overwhelming emotions ironically become overbearing and undesirable to him, and the inherent corniness involved in young love is sure to be a predominant theme throughout.
Passenger
Paramount Pictures — scheduled to be released on May 22, 2026
Maybe not as literally as this year’s Exit 8 is an adaptation of the titular walking simulator/anomaly game, but Passenger possesses the heart of an indie horror game. There is scarily little actual marketing for Passenger (you might have been lucky enough to catch it in the trailer previews before Primate or Scream 7), especially with it only being a couple of months away from its scheduled release date, but that could be its secret sauce—trailers are great at spoiling too much about a movie, let alone dumping a whole, unsolicited treatment into the laps of theater-goers, which is particularly harmful for horror.
Backrooms
A24 — scheduled to be released on May 29, 2026
In just a minute-long teaser, Backrooms’ eerie, extradimensional charm is living up to the 4chan creepypasta thread that it is inspired by. It is tough to imagine this movie perfectly encapsulating all that is revered or lauded about the eponymous liminal space, and yet this trailer is planting all the right seeds for something special to blossom.
Evil Dead Burn
Warner Bros. Pictures — scheduled to be released on July 24, 2026
Evil Dead’s anthology formula has been excellent since Fede Álvarez’s Evil Dead (2013) and Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise (2023) proved that it was thoroughly sustainable and engaging, so long as each movie follows a new batch of characters, a new volume of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, and a new claustrophobic set piece for it to take place in. Sparingly few official details are known about Evil Dead Burn besides some of its cast members, and it has enormous shoes to fill regarding how high its predecessors have set the franchise’s bar.
Evil Dead Burn will be followed shortly by Evil Dead Wrath, demonstrating how much faith has been poured into the Evil Dead’s theatrical franchise lately.
Resident Evil
Sony Pictures — scheduled to be released on September 18, 2026
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil movie will probably not be the faithful adaptation of the beloved video game franchise that fans have been desperate for, as has been made evident in every tiny official detail shared about its production. Still, the praise that Barbarian and Weapons have earned will ensure that any future work of Zach Cregger’s in the realm of horror is highly anticipated, similar to how Get Out, Us, and Nope have pedestaled Jordan Peele as a generational horror director with a marked, comedy-leaning style, and it is not as if there is a high ceiling for this Resident Evil movie to have to shatter in order to be considered one of the best live-action adaptations of the source material, anyway.
All previous Resident Evil movies and TV shows, aside from the fully CGI movies, are as follows:
- Paul W.S. Anderson’s original franchise — Resident Evil (2002), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Resident Evil: Extinction (2007), Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2017)
- Johannes Roberts’ reboot — Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
- Netflix’s TV show, canceled after its first season — Resident Evil (2022)
Werwulf
Focus Features — scheduled to be released on December 25, 2026
Following Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse and Nosferatu, it is unknown how deeply Werwulf will actually delve into horror. There is an argument to be made that Robert Eggers’ horror movies—The Witch, The Lighthouse, and Nosferatu—are far more unsettlingly atmospheric and cinematically gorgeous as period pieces than they are scary, for instance, and Werwulf may be more of the same; either way, Robert Eggers’ work is as much a boon for horror filmmaking as it is immersive.
