2026's best horror movies so far include Obsession, Exit 8, and more

The year’s unlikeliest date movie is also one of its gnarliest. In Obsession, writer-director Curry Barker remixes rom-com beats into body-horror mayhem when Bear (Michael Johnston), a shy clerk at a neighborhood music shop, buys a cursed trinket called the One Wish Willow to make his crush, Nikki (Inde Navarrette), fall in love with him. The spell works — and then curdles — as Nikki’s affection twists into violent possessiveness that turns every sweet moment into a threat.

Made for just $750,000, Barker’s film leans on practical effects and razor-sharp tonal pivots rather than CG spectacle, parlaying a YouTube- born sensibility into something raw, funny, and vicious. It ’s one half of 2026 ’s creator-led horror surge — the other would go on to rewrite the box office record book.

Moody imports

Damian McCarthy’s Hokum strands Adam Scott at The Bilberry Woods Hotel, a creaking inn tucked into rural West Cork, Ireland. Scott plays Ohm Bauman, a famed horror novelist who arrives to scatter his parents’ ashes and instead finds himself stalked by the kind of silence that makes floorboards feel alive. McCarthy, who built his rep on Caveat and Oddity, dials the jump scares way down and the tension way up; the film breathes in long, unnerving beats that never quite let you settle.

• Adam Scott — Ohm Bauman, a grieving horror writer
• Peter Coonan — supporting role
• David Wilmot — supporting role
• Florence Ordesh — supporting role

From Ireland to an endless corridor: Genki Kawamura’s Exit 8 adapts a viral Japanese game into a pressure-cooker head trip. Kazunari Ninomiya is an unnamed commuter stuck in a looping subway passage governed by one cruel rule — if you spot an anomaly, turn back; if everything looks normal, move forward. The film weaponizes repetition and tiny visual glitches until paranoia is the only stable ground.

• Kazunari Ninomiya — the unnamed traveler
• Nana Komatsu — key supporting role
• Yamato Kochi — key supporting role

Faith, love, and monsters

Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus refracts a fraught love story through supernatural dread in rural Australia. Joe Bird and Stacy Clausen play teens whose relationship draws the attention of a shape-shifting demon inside a zealously religious community. Mia Wasikowska is devastating as Bird’s mother, pulled between protection and doctrine as the film stares down conversion therapy, internalized shame, and the cost of stepping outside the lines — without skimping on the scares.

The internet’s scariest maze

Teen filmmaker Kane Parsons turns his YouTube phenomenon into a full-blown A24 event with Backrooms — a hypnotic fall into a mustard-yellow labyrinth that seems to stretch forever. Chiwetel Ejiofor anchors the story as Clark, a struggling furniture-store owner who finds a hidden portal and slips out of reality; Renate Reinsve is the therapist who follows him when he disappears. Parsons scales up his analog-horror aesthetic with tactile production design and a streak of melancholy, never losing the eerie spirit that made the shorts explode online.

• Chiwetel Ejiofor — Clark, a down-on-his-luck shop owner
• Renate Reinsve — Clark’s therapist
• Mark Duplass — supporting role
• Finn Bennett — supporting role
• Lukita Maxwell — supporting role

Backrooms has earned nearly $390 million worldwide and begins streaming exclusively on HBO Max in September 2026.