The Best Horror Movies of 2026 (So Far)

“Thrash”

We are living in a golden age of killer shark movies. After 2024’s “Under Paris” about sharks that invade the Olympics and last year’s oddly underrated “Dangerous Animals,” starring Jai Courtney as a psychopath who feeds his victims to sharks, we get a new thriller about gilled terror. In “Thrash,” a historic hurricane brings more than flooded basements; it brings a shiver (yes, that’s the actual name for a group of sharks) to a small southern town.

Tommy Wirkola’s fitfully entertaining film, originally meant as a theatrical release from Sony, he adopts the loose structure of a 1970’s disaster movie, following disparate characters (an agoraphobic young girl, a woman on the verge of giving birth, some kids trying to outsmart their abusive foster parents) and combines it with the chills of a creature feature, embroidered with some socially conscious commentary about climate change and invasive species (courtesy of producer Adam McKay). New to Netflix and already a hit, we’re dreaming about “Thrash 2.”

“Send Help”

Genre legend Sam Raimi returned for an original thriller, and even though it never quite tips into horror, there’s enough horrific stuff on display to have it make the list. But just barely. Dylan O’Brien plays a casually cruel boss and Rachel McAdams his meek underling, but after their private plane crashes on the way to a corporate engagement, the plane goes down and leaves them both stranded on a deserted island. McAdams is a bit of a survivalist (she’s prepared to be a contestant on “Survivor”) and adapts to the conditions on the island quicker than her boss, who turns out to be utterly helpless. There are more twists and turns from there – some expected, some from left field, each delightful and scary and wickedly funny. “Send Help” is a welcome return for Raimi – to an original story, to the kind of movie that made him such a beloved figure, and to an R-rating. Just the best.

“Faces of Death”

“Faces of Death,” a hilarious, horrific meta commentary on our current obsession with watching horrible videos on our phones (that also wittily interpolates the 1978 original), had a tough time getting to the big screen. But it was all worth it. Because it’s not only one of the best horror movies of the year but it’s also one of the best movies of 2026, period.

Barbie Ferreira plays a content moderator who starts noticing videos that are remaking elements from the original “Faces of Death” movie, only this time they are real murders. She attempts to flag them but is told to leave them alone, which sends her on a dangerous quest to uncover the killer (Dacre Montgomery from “Stranger Things”) and set things right. Writer/director Daniel Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei clearly have much to say about the way that we cruelly consume content, but they are also perfectly happy to stage ace set pieces and have a ton of fun. What a movie.

“Forbidden Fruits”

Meredith Alloway’s feature directorial debut, which features a coven operating out of a Free People star in a sterile suburban mall, is bitchy and witchy and all sorts of fun. For a while, “Forbidden Fruits,” which was produced by Diablo Cody (whose “Jennifer’s Body” is an obvious forebearer), churns along as a “Mean Girls”-adjacent story of the cool girls (led by Lili Rinehart) and less-than-cool girls (exemplified by Lola Tung), jockeying for power in a modern landscape that is all too ready to pit them against each other. But then it starts to twist – first into a murder mystery and then into something much more bizarre and sinister. By the time it reaches its blood-soaked climax, the beginning of the movie doesn’t just seem miles away but like a distant memory.

The journey of “Forbidden Fruits” is just one of its pleasures, since there are many – the prickly performances, sharp direction, excellent needle drops and plentiful gore, all help to add up to a movie that deserves to be a part of the cult canon, no matter what anybody says.

“Cold Storage”

With “Cold Storage,” David Koepp, the most successful screenwriter in Hollywood history, adapted himself. More specifically, he adapted his whip-smart novel of the same name. “Cold Storage,” which borrows equally from “Clerks” and “Return of the Living Dead,” pits a pair of slackers (Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell) against a killer biological agent that has been buried underneath the all-night storage place where they work. This fungus, which might remind you of “The Last of Us,” turns you into a creepy ghoul that might explode at any given moment. Yes, that lends itself a lot of gooey fun.

Liam Neeson plays the military professional who has dealt with the fungus before and his presence in the movie feels like a pointed joke – the man who has starred in 100 action movies has little bearing on the actual plot, leaving it up to the twentysomethings to figure it out. “Cold Storage” had a minimal theatrical release but will be out on 4K disc soon. And it deserves to be in your collection. It feels like something you would take home from the video store on a Friday night, based on the title and the cover alone. An underrated gem that deserves to be rediscovered – or discovered in the first place.

“28 Years Later: The Bone Temple”

The follow-up to Danny Boyle’s absolutely astonishing legacy sequel (released last summer), “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” continued the story while also swapping directors (to “Candyman” remake director Nia DaCosta), composers (to Hildur Guðnadóttir) and cinematographers (hello Sean Bobbitt!) The sensation was familiar and new. And the screenplay for the second entry in a supposed trilogy, by the great Alex Garland, was surprising and shocking in unexpected ways.

We travel along two tracks as an audience, which is also very satisfying. On one path, we follow young Spike (Alfie Williams) as he falls in with a group of murderous weirdos led by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), while another parallel narrative tracks Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) and his attempt to tame (or maybe it’s befriend?) one of the local zombies he has named Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). How these two threads collide is astonishing, with Fiennes giving an all-timer of a performance, and DaCosta nimbly dancing between the two storylines, along with multiple tones. Should there be a third film (and this one really ends on a cliffhanger, so we’re praying there will be), Boyle will return to direct. It could end up being one of the great cinematic trilogies about finding hope in the most desperate times. Something we can all relate to.

“Dracula”

After being released in France last summer, “Dracula” finally came to the United States. And it really is a hoot. French filmmaker Luc Besson, who helmed “The Fifth Element” and “Lucy,” emphasizes the romance elements of the Dracula story, with Dracula (Caleb Landry Jones) searching for the reincarnated form of his beloved (Zoë Bleu) through the centuries.

Besson borrows liberally from previous adaptations of the Bram Stoker story, from John Badham to Francis Ford Coppola to Tod Browning, while also injecting some flourishes all his own, like a gaggle of adorable gargoyles that tend to Dracula in his giant, empty castle. There’s nothing in “Dracula” that you haven’t seen before (and if you’re turned off by the recent allegations of sexual misconduct against Besson, fair enough) but it is a sweeping, sumptuous, relentlessly entertaining riff on the story, with a lush Danny Elfman score and some fine, filigreed performances (including Christoph Waltz as the Van Helsing stand-in). In other words, it doesn’t suck.