2026 has already been a wild year for horror, from low-budget box office hits (“Backrooms,” “Obsession”) to sequels the world could have lived without (“Scream 7,” “The Strangers – Chapter 3”). In a year loaded with scary movies, many of them were good-to-great, a welcome surprise that kept multiplexes busy. Below are the year’s standouts, including some honorable mentions also worth watching.
There were also several exciting genre movies released this year — such as Adam Wingard’s “Onslaught,” Na Hong-jin’s “Hope” and David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street” — that flirted with being horror, but ultimately seemed to fit better in categories like action, sci-fi and adventure. Note: Only films that were fully released in 2026 so far were up for inclusion, so no festival favorites or titles that haven’t hit theaters yet — like Zachary Wigon’s “Victorian Psycho” or Robert Eggers’ “Werwulf”— could make the cut. Send Help (20th Century Studios) — Sam Raimi’s return to horror was this stylish little survival thriller, with great performances from Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien as two at-odds office workers who are trying to get off a deserted island after a gnarly plane crash.
While the overarching plot is a little predictable, there are some great twists and turns along the way. Buffet Infinity (Yellow Veil Pictures) — This wild feature made up entirely of fake commercials is a trip to watch, and will delight any fans “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” or other lost media madness. Although the clips feel disconnected at first, it’s soon clear that a local sinkhole might be behind a restaurant war, a religious cult and plenty more unpredictable twists and turns.
It’s not for everybody, but those who can get on the same wavelength as “Buffet Infinity” will be richly rewarded. Saccharine (Independent Film Company and Shudder) — Natalie Erika James’ timely film considers the dark side of fad diets, as a med student (Midori Francis) realizes that ingesting the ashes of the dead is the best miracle drug around. While it’s not the white-knuckle ride many fans might want, it’s an effectively gross body horror story that has plenty to say.
Kane Parsons’ dizzyingly accomplished film is a masterwork in tone and tension, dropping Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve into an endless maze of liminal spaces that are claustrophobic, confusing and overwhelming. It’s hard to describe why “Backrooms” works to the unconverted or unconvinced, but the incredible production design and camerawork of Jeremy Cox make up for any limitations of the sketch of a script. It’s exciting to see what Parsons will do with a next chapter — and maybe even what he could do beyond the limitations of his own space.
Genki Kawamura’s video game adaptation concerns a man (Kazunari Ninomiya) who cannot escape walking a long section of a subway hallway, stuck in an endless repetition. Yet he’s soon able to discern tiny clues about how to move forward and pass through some dark reverberations of his life and decisions to get to the other side. While the hook grows a little thin, it’s by necessity, as the audience begins to feel as stuck and hopeless as its main character, and each new detail pointing to escape is a breath of fresh air.
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