It’s not that horror ever really went away, but the past fifteen years have proven that the genre is going nowhere. Though you’re always going to have movies like Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey that make some people think a little less of the genre, the truly great horror films not only continue to get made but are still able to leave major cultural footprints. In 2025 alone, horror fans got the vampire-period piece Sinners, the elusive and mysterious Weapons, the decades-in-the-making Frankenstein, plus a return to the Final Destination franchise.

To make it even better, horror clearly isn’t stopping, and though the next year is primed to give us more “public domain horror” like The Dark Domain: Mickey vs Winnie, there are a lot of titles that remain on the horizon that are clear potential bangers. Next year not only brings multiple sequels like Scream 7, DC’s Clayface, and even a new Evil Dead Movie, but the titles we’ve found are almost guaranteed to break through from just horror fans and enter the mainstream, maybe even becoming pure cinema classics.

7) 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

After an immense amount of hype surrounding the potential for a 28 Days Later sequel with director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland returning to the franchise, the pair stuck the landing with this summer’s 28 Years Later. The best part is that this wasn’t a one-and-done affair, with a second film, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, already in the can when the first movie debuted. Directed by Nia DeCosta, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is set to arrive on January 16, 2026, and buzz from early screenings already has it pegged as being the first great movie of 2026.

Not only does The Bone Temple seem primed to tell a very different kind of story from the first film, but it will seemingly expand on the lore of the entire franchise in ways that no fan is predicting. Currently, 28 Years Later has an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, and if The Bone Temple really is a sequel that has lapped its predecessor, it could very well be landing in Best of the Year territory. It’s only fitting after 28 Days Later gave the zombie genre a major infusion of creativity over two decades ago that the new films would do the same for the horror genre.

6) 2026’s Resident Evil Reboot

This project could be the definition of an Unstoppable Force meeting an Immovable Object, as the history of Resident Evil movies is a fraught one that is filled with duldrums and deception. The new movie has a secret weapon, though, and it’s in writer/director Zach Cregger. Fresh off the success of 2025’s award-winning Weapons, which itself followed the hit film Barbarian, Cregger has confirmed that he’s a voice to watch in the horror space and one who always has tricks up his sleeve to keep audiences surprised.

To give this one at least a sliver of potential over previous attempts at adapting Resident Evil, Cregger’s film is simply a story set within the world of the games and not one that adapts a specific storyline or character’s journey. By taking this approach, giving film audiences the feel of what it’s like to play the games without stepping on them, Cregger may flip expectations on its head and give horror fans something that will stand the test of time (unlike any other Resident Evil movie).

5) Robert Eggers’ Werwulf

Robert Eggers is already four for four as a filmmaker, delivering an instant classic with his 2016 debut, The Witch. He continued his streak with The Lighthouse, The Northman, and last year’s vampire epic, Nosferatu. Having made a name for himself as the premier voice of period-setting horror films in the modern era, Eggers’ next project is set to keep exploring that space with another tale, Werwulf; despite the spelling, you can guess what that one is about.

Eggers is reuniting with some of his key collaborators once again for the creature feature, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, and Ralph Ineson. Though werewolf movies by and large usually fail to make a splash critically or commercially (there are maybe fewer than 10 in the history of Hollywood that are actually worth watching), the history of Eggers as a filmmaker means this is one to keep your eye on. Werwulf will howl at the moon on Christmas in 2026.

4) They Follow

Two years ago, a shocking announcement was made to the horror world with the reveal that IT Follows writer/director David Robert Mitchell and star Maika Monroe were reuniting for a sequel to their horror hit, with NEON distributing the upcoming They Follow. Few updates have happened about the project since then (Mitchell remains busy with Bad Robot-produced Flowervale Street from Warner Bros.), but the potential for this movie remains very high.

All we know about the film is the title and the tagline that came equipped with it, “It’s everywhere.” As fans may recall, the initial IT Follows was about a curse that was passed around by sleeping with another person, creating a killer entity that would slowly pursue its victim until either it caught them or the curse was passed along. The title and tagline seem to imply that the curse has multiplied now, perhaps signaling an escalation equivalent to Alien leaping to Aliens. No release date is confirmed, but we still can’t wait.

3) Godzilla Minus Zero

Godzilla Minus One not only became a box office hit, but nabbed the king of the monsters his first ever Academy Award, making the film a seismic event not only for genre cinema but the kaiju franchise as a whole. Now that it’s been confirmed we’re getting a follow-up, titled Godzilla Minus Zero, all eyes are on this sequel for how it will continue to evolve the series. The bar is already high for the film, but after sources revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Minus Zero “is being positioned not just as a sequel but as a statement piece,” fans should brace for another generational piece of Godzilla media.

2) The New Jordan Peele Movie

Peele came out of the gate swinging with 2017’s Get Out, which not only earned him a Best Original Screenplay Oscar but a Best Picture nod. The filmmaker became an immediate voice to keep an eye on, and even though his two other films, 2019’s Us and 2022’s Nope, didn’t reach the same levels of cultural impact, they were still blockbuster hits that confirmed he was one of our best working directors. Details remain scant about the next Peele movie, but we know that it remains in the works in some capacity. The only worrying factor is that the new Pelee movie has already had two different release dates and has now been pulled from the Universal release calendar entirely. We don’t want to wait, Jordan, but we will for you.

1) Mike Flanagan’s Exorcist

Like Resident Evil above, this one seems like an uphill battle. Despite the place that the original The Exorcist holds in the hearts and minds of film and horror fans over the past fifty years, nearly every attempt to develop a sequel or follow-up has been a disaster in the making. Following the complete rejection of The Exorcist: Believer in 2023, Blumhouse and Morgan Creek still had two more movies to develop, and they enlisted none other than Mike Flanagan for the first.

Flanagan has proven himself time and time again as one of the best horror filmmakers and storytellers of the past 15 years, giving us shows like The Haunting of Hill House, Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass. He has also made a name for himself by being only the third filmmaker to direct three different Stephen King feature film adaptations, and all of them had baggage in some form. Not only did Flanagan make the unfilmable Gerald’s Game into a compelling horror film, but he also successfully brought Doctor Sleep to life by combining not only King’s sequel book with the aeshtetic of Stanley Kubrick’s 1981 The Shining. Just this year, Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, a King adaptation told in reverse, was released to critical acclaim. Suffice to say, if there’s an idea that sounds like a dead-end pursuit, Mike Falangan will find a way through it.