2026 has already been a pretty good year for horror so far. From the chaotic landscape of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple to Obsession becoming one of the most profitable horror releases in decades, and Backrooms dragging us into its endless liminal maze, the genre has been on a decent tear, delivering scares that are both artistically ambitious and commercially massive. But as we edge toward the back half of the year, the real fireworks are only just beginning, because between September and December, an interesting lineup of horror movies is about to hit theaters.
1. Resident Evil
Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil kicks things off on September 18, and it’s easily one of the most anticipated horror releases of the year. The Barbarian and Weapons director finally gets his hands on the beloved Capcom franchise, promising to drag it back into full survival horror territory instead of the sci-fi action spectacle fans have grown used to.
The film follows Bryan, played by Austin Abrams, a medical courier delivering to Raccoon City General Hospital during a blizzard when an outbreak turns his night into a desperate fight for survival.
Alongside Abrams, the cast includes Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, and Paul Walter Hauser, and Cregger has confirmed this is an entirely original story that doesn’t touch legacy characters like Leon or Jill, serving instead as his own love letter to the games.
Between the atmospheric dread, the creature design, and Cregger’s blend of horror and dark humor, this one has the makings of a genuine reinvention when it hits theaters courtesy of Sony Pictures.
2. Victorian Psycho
Victorian Psycho drops a week later on September 25, and it’s shaping up to be one of the most stylish and unhinged entries on this list.
Based on Virginia Feito’s twisted novel of the same name, the story is set in 1858 and follows Winifred Notty, an eccentric governess played with delicious menace by Maika Monroe, who arrives at the gothic Ensor House to tutor the children of a wealthy family while secretly harboring psychopathic urges she can barely contain.
As staff members begin disappearing one by one, the family slowly starts to suspect something is deeply wrong with their new hire, but by then it may already be too late.
The supporting cast features Thomasin McKenzie, Jason Isaacs, and Ruth Wilson, all adding to the period drama’s slow-burning tension.
If the early buzz holds up, this could be the gothic horror-thriller everyone is talking about by Halloween, with Monroe already being singled out for one of the most deranged performances of the year.
3. Never After Dark
Also on the way is the Japanese import Never After Dark, a quiet but chilling ghost story directed by Dave Boyle that has already racked up festival buzz, winning the SXSW Midnighter Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the Overlook Film Festival ahead of its wide release.
The story follows Airi, a traveling medium played by SAG Award winner Moeka Hoshi, who guides restless spirits out of the world of the living, accompanied by the ghost of her own dead sister.
When Airi is summoned to an isolated countryside house to cleanse it of a spirit, she comes face to face with a grotesque apparition whose powers defy everything she has encountered before.
Digging into the house’s past uncovers a dark secret, and she realizes her greatest threat isn’t supernatural at all but disturbingly human, a slow burn already praised at its festival stops as a fresh, striking take on the haunted house formula. Never After Dark is also scheduled for a limited U.S. theatrical release on September 25.
4. Beware Boiúna
Then things go full creature feature with Beware Boiúna, bringing monster horror back to the big screen in a big way.
Directed by Mike P. Nelson of Wrong Turn fame, the movie is focused on a team of doctors on a medical mission deep in the Amazon rainforest along the Curuçá River, whose presence awakens Boiúna, a colossal ancient serpent of legend determined to reclaim her territory from every intruder who dares set foot in it.
The cast is led by Logan Marshall-Green, Kiana Madeira, and Jessica Rothe, all thrown into a relentless fight for survival once the jungle turns hostile.
Between the claustrophobic tension, the mix of practical creature work and big visual effects, and the kind of survival dread that made films like Anaconda and The Descent so effective, this one leans hard into nature-gone-wrong horror, and it looks primed to be one of the messiest, most entertaining popcorn scares of the fall season. The movie will slither its way into theaters on October 2.
5. Other Mommy
A week later comes Other Mommy, arriving with a premise creepy enough to make anyone check their closet twice.
Rob Savage, who previously unsettled audiences with The Boogeyman, takes the director’s chair alongside James Wan’s atomic monster producing, to bring a story centered on eight-year-old Bela, who lives in a home strained by her parents’ marital problems and forms an unsettling bond with a sinister entity that emerges from her closet wearing her own mother’s face.
Jessica Chastain pulls double duty here, playing both the real mother Ursula and the grotesque doppelgänger Bela names Other Mommy, and as the entity’s boundaries break down, the family is left trying to figure out who is actually real.
The trailer alone has been unsettling enough to go viral, with twisted body horror and physical effects work that turns a bedtime fear into something far more disturbing. It could end up being one of Blumhouse’s creepiest offerings yet when it opens in theaters on October 9.
6. Crawlers
Right after Other Mommy comes Crawlers, a creature feature that trades monsters and doppelgängers for something far more skin-crawling: spiders.
Spanish filmmaker Ángel Gómez Hernández steers this one, telling the story of Serena, the overworked manager of the Paradiso Palms apartment complex, whose day gets exponentially worse when a mysterious death turns out to be the first sign of a fast-spreading spider infestation.
What starts off looking like a viral outbreak quickly reveals itself as something far more terrifying, and with the building placed under quarantine, residents are trapped with no way out and forced to fight for survival as the threat multiplies by the second, leaving Serena to lean on her knowledge of the building to keep everyone alive while confronting her own worst fear. Crawlers will scuttle into theaters on October 16.
7. Clayface
Halloween season gets its biggest horror swing with Clayface, DC Studios’ first-ever foray into full-blown body horror. It’s directed by James Watkins, best known for the disturbing Speak No Evil and Eden Lake, working from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini.
The film reimagines Matt Hagen as a rising Hollywood actor whose career is tragically cut short when a crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured.
Desperate and abandoned, Matt seeks out an experimental treatment that restores his looks but unravels his grip on reality, sending him spiraling into a grotesque, all-consuming path of revenge.
Tom Rhys Harries stars as Hagen, alongside Naomi Ackie, Max Minghella, David Dencik, and Eddie Marsan.
If the tone of the trailers is anything to go by, this leans hard into practical body horror rather than typical superhero spectacle, playing more like a cautionary tale about fame and identity than a conventional villain origin story. The body horror phenomenon is set to ooze into theaters on October 23.
8. Werwulf
Closing out the year in the biggest way possible is Robert Eggers’ Werwulf, a Christmas Day release hitting theaters December 25 and arguably the most prestigious horror film of the year.
It comes from the auteur behind Nosferatu, The Witch, and The Northman, and is set in thirteenth century England, centering on a man known only as Man, whose family lives in a remote village terrorized by a mysterious beast, only for us to learn through flashbacks that he was lured into lycanthropy years earlier by an ominous elder.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson leads the cast in the title role, reuniting with Eggers alongside Lily-Rose Depp and Willem Dafoe after their work together on Nosferatu.
Given Eggers’ signature painterly cinematography, dense period dialogue, and his own claim that this is the darkest script of his career, it’s shaping up to be less about jump scares and more a slow, folk horror descent into paranoia and primal violence.
