Horror Movie Roundup 2026

Hello again! In the 31 days of October, I watched 31 horror movies. So, following on from last year's roundup, here are some thoughts and impressions.

1. Forbidden Fruits (2026, dir. Meredith Alloway)

I like Jennifer's Body. I like Ginger Snaps. I like The Craft. I liked this, too. Largely carried by its performances more than sharp script or incisive satire, there's enough camp to justify at least one watch. I will say, though, a final act turn toward Final Destination-esque violence did bump this up a star for me.

2. Re-Animator (1985, dir. Stuart Gordon)

An instant new favorite. I was won over by the smash cut to a Talking Heads poster, but floored when an actual talking head showed up! There's some tropey sexual victimization here that lands a little off the mark for me, but it's genuinely unsettling enough to feel intentionally horrific rather than merely exploitative. Jeffrey Combs gives an all-timer of a performance, and he's got great chemistry (no pun intended) with Bruce Abbott, who's also got great chemistry with Barbara Crampton.

3. Dawn of the Dead (1978, dir. George A. Romero)

Another instant fave. One of those movies like Aliens that you watch for the first time only to realize how thoroughly they've been ripped off by decades of derivative works—maybe by video games most of all. This film understands that hangout movies work best when you actually want to hang out with their characters, in their setting. The overall leisurely pace helps make the escalation of tension feel even more exciting. Also, it sneaks in a really trenchant critique of bourgeois class anxiety and the American boostraps mythology.

4. Coraline (2009, dir. Henry Selick)

Neil Gaiman sucks. This movie rules. It knows that kids kinda like being scared and it finds inventive ways to do so gently, while still managing to rattle adults, too. Really got me thinking about how well stop motion grotesquerie would suit an adaptation of Gravity's Rainbow.

5. The Return of the Living Dead (1985, dir. Dan O'Bannon)

This one's a ton of fun. Maybe the best "popcorn flick" I watched all season. Highlights include the practical effects, obviously, but also the characterful ensemble. Certainly not as rich of a text as Dawn, but then again, that movie didn't have this banger:

6. Infinity Pool (2023, dir. Brandon Cronenberg)

Hard to say much about this one without spoiling the solid buildup to its premise, but I did really like the funhouse foreign country approach the storytelling took. Honestly, I wish there was more time spent looking around the weird wonderland of "Li Tolqa." Mia Goth is as fun to watch as ever.

7. Oddity (2024, dir. Damian McCarthy)

A tightly paced folk horror that felt like a short story without feeling like a short film. There's some really effective atmosphere here, but many of its biggest scares come early and feel a little divorced from the core of the story.

8. Braindead (1992, dir. Peter Jackson)

Instant favorite number three. Honest to god, you can see moves that Jackson would hone and later put to use in The Lord of the Rings. Maybe the goopiest movie I've ever seen. An absolute delight.

9. The Vourdalak (2023, dir. Adrien Beau)

Lots of movies ape the aesthetics of a bygone era in filmmaking. Or at least they try to. This one knocks it out of the park. Beyond the incredible puppetry, beyond the Super 16mm film stock, this gem of a picture nails the rhythms of the old masters of arthouse. At the same time, it's a quiet, contemporary, and very sincere meditation on masculinity and queerness. Pairs wonderfully with the full-motion video puzzle game Immortality, which I've also been playing, and similarly draws from 60s/70s Euro style.

10. Videodrome (1983, dir. David Cronenberg)

On account of shared themes of technological conspiracy, psychosexual hallucinations, and psychological conditioning to extreme violence, I watched this one for the October bonus episode of Pynchon Pals, available here. My co-hosts didn't like it very much, but I did! Although I agree with their appraisal of the movie losing itself in the back half, there's still plenty here that would bring me back to it again.

11. The Devils (1971, dir. Ken Russell)

Rewatch at the Music Box in 35mm. Followed, a week later, by a second rewatch on digital. All thanks to a miraculous theatrical re-release and an even more miraculous director's cut. This was already one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Seeing it on film on the big screen made it one of my favorite movies of all time, period. I think I'll be writing more about this and how its themes are taken up in a recent video game I played called INDIKA, which you can watch me play here:

12. One Cut of the Dead (2017, dir. Shinichiro Ueda)

I've been meaning to watch this one for forever! All I knew was that I shouldn't know anything about the movie before going in. Oh, and that there would be zombies. Suffice it to say I expected meta and I got it. But what I didn't expect was the big time Feelings this movie left me with. And I won't say what they were, but if you've seen the movie you can probably guess.

13. You Can See Everything (2026, dir. Nathan Fielder, Lance Oppenheim)

Yes, I'm counting this one as a horror movie. No, it wasn't a retrospective decision looking at a list of 30 movies, either. (If that were the case, I would've just counted The Devils twice.) I'm a big fan of Nathan Fielder's work in The Rehearsal, and this doc feels like an expansion on many of those themes, albeit shot through the prism of Lance Oppenheim's far more intimate perspective. I think this is the most Wittgensteinian movie ever made. Maybe I'll write on that, too.

14. The Night Stalker (1972, dir. John Llewellyn Moxey)

I'm a sucker for "cult classic" television series cancelled after one season. (Although I could never click with Firefly, admittedly.) In preparation for someday watching Kolchak: The Night Stalker (ABC, 1974-1975), I thought I'd give the TV movie original a shot. I'm glad I did! It's moody, it's grimy, and it's got a great performance by Darren McGavin who I'll admit I mostly recognize as the dad from A Christmas Story, a movie I don't particularly care for.

15. The Substance (2024, dir. Coralie Fargeat)

Here begins the horror movie marathon I undertook with several friends. This was a rewatch, but I think I like it even better than I did the first time, which was already quite a lot. Where I initially thought the pacing of the film dragged a little bit, my appreciation of all the buildup toward one of my favorite finales in recent memory has grown. Undoubtedly a modern classic.

16. Evil Dead Burn (2026, dir. Sébastien Vaniček)

I liked Evil Dead Rise quite a bit, and I liked this one, too. It lags behind its predecessor, though, in the quality I mentioned above in my impressions of Dawn of the Dead, namely, my interest in spending time with its characters. (Note: not necessarily how much I like those characters.) I dig how the M.O. of this reboot series seems to be "what if your worst fears about your closest relationships came true." But that works best when you care about the main characters and their relationships. Good gore here, but the script needed more time to breathe.

17. Hope (2026, dir Na Hong-jin)

I'm not sure this is a great movie, but I had a f—ing great time watching it. Just bonkers. It's been a long time since a film had me so completely blindsided by the turns it was taking and thrilled by the confidence with which it took them. Also shout-out to horse stunts. Studios: hire more equestrians!

18. Iron Lung (2026, dir. Mark Fischbach)

Listen. From the moment I realized that, instead of taking inspiration from a video game's interface and then asking the question, "Hey, how should we translate this from the language of one medium into the language of another?" this movie had decided to simply re-create almost the exact same control layout as the game it was based on, I knew it wasn't gonna be for me. This is not an adaptation. This is an expensive Let's Play. There is a pretty neat dream sequence that succeeds mostly because the lead doesn't have to act during it.

19. Backrooms (2026, dir. Kane Parsons)

I've written about this one before, and I don't think my opinion has changed. Kind of like Iron Lung, this movie feels like a 10-minute YouTube video stretched way, way out. This one's just much better. Still, even though Backrooms technically has actors, I wish they had anything at all to work with.

20. Smile 2 (2024, dir. Parker Finn)

Couldn't help shaking the feeling that Hollywood learned the wrong lessons from Get Out. Namely, that in order to be popular and critically successful, a horror movie has to Say Something About Culture. Here, the Something that's Said has to do with the pressure under which young, successful pop stars suffer. Sure, fine enough premise. But if you told me that this script began just about that, on spec, until a studio agreed to produce it, but only as a sequel to an unrelated movie, I'd believe you. Some fun roller coaster-y jump scares.

21. The Deep Dark (2023, dir. Mathieu Turi)

Last film from the marathon. This one was really cool as far as setting and atmosphere go! Very unique historical premise, and I think it actually delivers on having something to say about cultural assimilation and the disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities in de-colonizing France. Contains the second best French monster puppet in any film I watched this year!

22. In the Mouth of Madness (1994, dir. John Carpenter)

If watching Dawn of the Dead made me realize how much games like Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising owe to Romero, this movie made me do the same for Alan Wake and Carpenter. I thought this movie was incredible, from Sam Neill's mercurial performance to an ethereal art direction that runs the gamut from Lynchian nightmare to bucolic Stephen King claustrophobia. I will be watching again and again.

23. The Beyond (1981, dir. Lucio Fulci)

Most nonsensical movie of the year award! There's some extremely unsettling gore in this movie, and you can practically smell the mold spores floating through its Southern Gothic atmosphere. That said, I couldn't tell you a damn thing about what happens in this movie or why. There's an evil book? This hotel has a portal to Hell? There are some ghosts? Or, or they're zombies. Maybe—oh wait the movie's over. Good ending, I'll say.

24. Demons (1985, dir. Lamberto Bava)

A recommendation from the same friend who recommended The Beyond. This is a very, very simple movie. People are trapped in a movie theater. Uh oh, demons are possessing the people trapped in the movie theater. Definitely shares some DNA with Return of the Living Dead, and also contains a killer soundtrack of licensed music. The punks in this one would get along great with the punks in that one.

25. The Alphabet (short, 1969, dir. David Lynch)

At this point, on October 30, I realized I'd either have to watch movies instead of sleep to hit a total of 31, or I'd have to switch tactics. I chose the latter. This early work is illuminating for showcasing the transitional moment from Lynch the painter to Lynch the filmmaker—or, perhaps, I should say it's a moment of synthesis. There's a touch too much cribbing from Francis Bacon in this, which distracts a bit, but the combination of animation and live action footage overall works well.

26. Geometry (short, 1987, dir. Guillermo del Toro)

I watched the director's cut available on the Criterion Channel (more recent, shorter, newly dubbed in Italian by del Toro himself), and had a great time doing it. Given that it's del Toro's self-described tribute to Argento, Bava, and the other giallo greats, it made for a nice pairing with The Beyond and Demons. It's a very funny love letter from a young director who clearly has great things ahead of him.

27. The Beaning (short, 2017, dir. Sean McCoy)

Speaking of Thomas Pynchon, this one's a mockumentary about the conspiratorial Satanic origins of baseball. It's entertaining, if not always as creepy as it wants to be. I couldn't help thinking that the idea behind this one was more interesting than the execution, but at under 10 minutes, it's still worth a watch.

28. The Big Shave (short, 1967, dir. Martin Scorsese)

Speaking of early work by great directors! Guy starts shaving, slices himself up instead. That's it! Simple as all get out, but young Scorsese really works through the edit, and ensures that even the most obvious special effects carry a weight. Or should I say this movie has great cuts? Oh, and an alternate title reveals that this is about Vietnam. I'm still deciding whether that metaphor works, or is the cheapest kind of film school Social Commentary.

29. Saw (short, 2003, dir. James Wan)

I didn't even know Saw was originally a short film, but honestly it makes sense. Turns out, everything's already here in almost its final form. Well, except that the puppet has a little hat in this one, so not everything made it over to the feature length production. Solid short, not dissimilar to a lot of contemporary YouTube horror. Is that a theme I unconsciously put together this year?

30. Sinners (2025, dir. Ryan Coogler)

One last double feature to round out the year! My favorite parts of this movie are probably everyone else's, too, and they're when Coogler swings for the fences cinematically and tonally. Man, those dance sequences are great. Unfortunately, there are some really long stretches of this movie that boil down to characters exchanging lines of dialogue, sometimes in a doorway, sometimes in a car, that feel fairly uninspired. Also I could've done without some of the dialogue that seemed included to make sure I Got It.

31. Pulse (2001, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

After 30 movies that occasionally unsettled or startled me, I was ready for something to properly scare me. Pulse delivered. Maybe it wouldn't for everyone—it certainly didn't for my wife—but I'm a guy who still wakes up sometimes from a nightmare involving a creepy ghost, and this movie is full of very, very creepy ghosts. It's also a prescient parable about how being constantly plugged into the suffering of anonymous strangers might not be very good for us. I was not expecting some turns in the last act, but I think the bend toward the surreal (and the computer-generated) oddly makes for an even more heartfelt conclusion.

And that's a wrap on 31 in 31! And why not—my final top five new watches:

1. Dawn of the Dead
2. Braindead
3. Pulse
4. You Can See Everything
5. In the Mouth of Madness

Best overall? Y'know, there are still some remaining showtimes for The Devils nearby....

POF