Halloween Horror Watchlist 2026
Updated: 18 hours ago
I can't believe this is the 6th annual Halloween Horror Watchlist. That means I've been doing this for six whole years! (I didn't publish a watchlist in 2024, but we still had one privately). 125 horror (and horror-adjacent with a little sojourn into practical magic fall) movies later it is time for the 2026 Halloween Horror Watchlist!
The Numbers: A Retrospective
2021: 35 (we didn't watch everything on that list)
2022: 27
2023: 14
2024: 19 (skipped this year)
2025: 30
I should probably do a whole separate article about my experiences over the last 5 years.
But, without further ado, I present to you, The Watchlist:
I'm playing with the formatting this year to make it more readable (we've now got a clickable table of contents!). Also, partly because I got sucked into 4k Blu Rays and physical media in general and partly because the monthly prices have risen to an unsustainable level, I'm no longer schlepping for the streamers, so no more links to the platforms.
Even though I care much less about Rotten Tomatoes scores these days, I still find them fascinating (especially the difference between audience and critic score), so I will be including them.
As always, check back each week for a writeup on each movie along with my take.
1) Birth
Don't let the low Rotten Tomatoes score put you off, this is a very, very good movie. It has been on my list for a long time, but I haven't taken the plunge because the pitch, while interesting, is, like the movie, uncomfortable. Ten years after her husband dies, a woman meets a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her dead husband.
Written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, who also did The Zone of Interest, my second favorite movie of 2023. It was this movie that finally sold me on taking the plunge into this masterpiece.
Go in knowing it's going to be uncomfortable, but not without taste. I originally put this on the list as a horror-adjacent baby-step into the watchlist, but I really think it should be viewed as a horror film.
43% on Rotten Tomatoes (44% audience score)
2) Obsession
I've been actively avoiding the two big horror movies of the year, Obession and Backrooms, because I feel like they have a high likelihood of being annoying and/or problematic. I figured I'd just get them out of the way at the beginning. Let's find out if the kids are okay.
If you don't know what this is (ahem, Liz), Obsession is inspired by YouTuber/film-school-dropout Curry Barker's 2023 YouTube shortfilm The Chair. Bro looks like such a douche and he's literally like 5 years old, so my expectations are low. I fear it's going to be immature disturb-slop, but it was hugely successful and I feel like I should at least give it a shot. You're definitely going to want to check back for my take on this one.
Update 10/2:
0/10. Industry plant. The kids are not okay.
93% on Rotten Tomatoes (94% audience score) - See what I mean? It's like universally praised.
3) Backrooms
The cult of A24's poster child, Kane Parson's (also looks like a douche) Backrooms grossed $400M worldwide. For perspective, this is such a high number that A24 is trying to use it to take a bigger cut of the ticket prices from theaters.
Liminal space horror has been getting it's day in the sun lately. I think it's largely due to the breakout success of the video game Control and the subsequent Alan Wake 2. Both largely inspired by Twin Peaks (specifically 2017s The Return). And then Severance really skyrocketed the genre into the popular cultural consciousness. But it began it's life way, way back in the year 2000 with Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves.
Like Obsession, Backrooms also began it's life on YouTube. This time as a series of shorts. I am much more interested in this one, but I still have some trepidation on it's depth.
Update 10/4:
This was better than Obsession, but it still sucked. You can't just do creepy stuff and call it horror. We're living in an era where you can buy review scores and it doesn't cost as much as you'd think. I have a feeling it will all come out in a documentary in a decade or so. It won't be an HBO doc, unfortunately, because HBO was just shot in the head by David Ellison.
87% on Rotten Tomatoes (74% audience score)
4) Exit 8
As I build these lists, patterns will begin to emerge. I will start to cluster films together into micro-themes. Which is sort of what this movie is about. Exit 8 is an adaptation of a video game where you are trapped in a subway and in order to find your way out you have to identify patterns with increasing difficulty. One wrong move and you are back where you started.
I placed this right after Backrooms because it is another piece of infinite liminal space fiction. I am very excited about this one because why did they adapt such an obscure video game? I'm sure none of you have even heard of Exit 8. And then to have such a strong critical reception is absolutely unheard of.
Update 10/4: 10/10. This is now in my top five favorite films of all time, which is, itself, a liminal space.
After watching Backrooms, I said, "the format is right there. Just have some people spend 90 minutes trying to escape the backrooms and have that serve as a backdrop for getting to know these characters and watching them grow in really interesting ways." That's what this movie was. Pure 95 minutes of perfection.
And it was so much more than that too. Filmed in the 1917 "one-shot" style, the director decided to do as much as he could with practical effects. This means he had a dude walk through the infinite subway section, walk off the set and ride a bicycle back to the beginning, then walk back through the continuous shot over and over and over again. Literal magic.
91% on Rotten Tomatoes (86% Audience Score)
5) The End of Oak Street
The latest from David Robert Mitchell, the writer/director that brought us 2014's phenomenal It Follows (featured on the 2023 watchlist) and 2018's Under the Silver Lake (probably the most underrated film of all time), The End of Oak Street is about a neighborhood that moves in the middle of the night. It's got Anne Hathaway, Ewen McGregor, somehow dinosaurs and whatever meticulously crafted nonsense Mitchell has concocted. This is my most anticipated movie of the year and I somehow missed it in theaters. I am extremely excited about this one.
But really though, go watch It Follows and Under the Silver Lake right now.
Update 10/5: Much to my surprise, this was literally just a straight dinosaur movie. 9/10.
86% on Rotten Tomatoes (76% audience score)
6) Jurassic Park
I know it's a surprise to see such a basic bitch of a movie, but remember how I got really into 4k Blu Rays this year? Well, I picked up the Spielberg Spotlight box set and I haven't watched this one yet and it pairs really well with The End of Oak Street and Jurassic Park is one of the best movies ever made, so... "life will find a way."
Update 10/6: God, this is such a good movie. Seeing it in 4k HDR was pretty cool, though not as breathtaking as Jaws. I didn't realize how much it has influenced my own screenwriting.
I also didn't realize how this movie is actually about the dangers of automation and AI. The downfall of the park is they had a single point of failure for everything and that was Newman from Seinfeld. They also treated him poorly and didn't pay him enough. Of course he was going to go rogue and sabotage the park and engage in corporate espionage. It's not like the cause of resurrecting dinosaurs for capitalism was a noble one. It's like Elon Musk watched this and used it as a guidebook instead of a cautionary tale. But yeah, maybe it's not such a good idea to put weapons in the hands of an autonomous artificial super intelligence and then fire everyone that knows how to code. It's probably not a good idea to put any one thing in charge of anything. I'll leave you with a quote from the late great Ian Malcolm:
I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!
10/10.
91% on Rotten Tomatoes (91% audience score)
7) Godzilla
Continuing the "dinosaur" theme, next up is Godzilla! Surprisingly, I haven't actually seen the original. Perhaps even more suprising, the 1998 Hollywood version penned by the guy that wrote Independence Day and starring Matthew Broderick was one of my favorite movies growing up. (it was 1. Star Wars (all of them) 2. Godzilla 3. Airborne 4. 28 Days Later 5. UHF. not in that order). I even played the opening credits at the beginning of a debate speech arguing against the use of in nuclear force in WWII in my high school social studies class. I still, to this day, don't know why everyone loathes it. I think folks should revisit it. It's much, much better than the painfully boring Brian Cranston remake.
But this isn't that movie. That movie isn't even on the list, though now I'm considering just hamfisting it in here like the "plot" of Obsession.
The original Godzilla is a legendary feat of practical special effects, costume and set design set on the thinly veiled backdrop of nuclear testing released in a 1954 post WWII Japan under the heavy foot of US dominance. It helped solidify a budding national post-modern Japanese cultural identity and was a gargantuan international phenomenon spawning 38 films over 72 years. That's a Godzilla movie every 1.89 years!
The best part of the Godzilla movies is you think they are going to be silly little so-bad-it's-good man-in-a-suit romps, but they end up hitting hard. We've got the 4k Criterion release and I just couldn't believe they put Godzilla in 4k in the Criterion Closet, so I bought it without hesitation. It includes both the original Japanese cut along with the Americanized version. We will be watching the original, but I will likely watch the other cut by myself sometime this week.
Despite not having seen any of the Japanese Godzilla movies, they do hold a special place in my heart as my early forays into film-making were heavily inspired by their use of low-budget effects and clever camera techniques. One day you'll be able to see these in bonus features when I get my own Criterion Box Set release in the 2050s or 60s.
This kicks off part 2 of the watchlist which is built around all of the 4k blu rays I bought during Barnes & Noble's semi-annual 50% off sale. Bonus points if you can guess how many. Spoiler alert: it was a tremendous amount.
Update 10/8:
The thing about Godzilla is he is so many things all at once. He's a metaphor for a tsunami, the atomic bomb, the fire bombing of Tokyo, climate change, the powerlessness of ordinary people, the futility and consequences of violence, etc. He's a mixed metaphor inside a mixed metaphor inside a mixed metaphor. Which, in itself, is a writing flaw. But when you are trying to make a metaphor for the horrors of war and the consequences of weapons of mass destruction, the confusion of the conflation of so many different things into a single seemingly mindless force of destruction becomes an accurate representation of the ineffable. And then this allows Godzilla to mean so many different things to so many different people. But what I think is universal, is Godzilla is awesome. 10/10.
The craziest thing for me is how intricately they constructed the scale model of Tokyo so that when it was destroyed, it crumbled correctly. Like they simulated real building materials. These weren't just foam facades. These were full on structures with interiors all meant to be destroyed on camera. And then they shot literal fireworks from model planes at the guy-in-a-suit. I'm fairly certain the suit caught on fire at one point. I'm not sure this would be legal today, but it sure was cool.
I wonder what it would be like to make something that becomes such a massive global cultural phenomenon. Like there's no way they knew what they were making when they were making it. You can tell because they made it personal. If they knew it was going to be as big as it was then I don't think they would have made it with such care. There's heart and soul at the center. And that's what it's all about, really.
94% on Rotten Tomatoes (89% Audience Score)
8) Sorcerer
I like to go in blind as much as possible. I don't know what this movie is about. I don't even think it's strictly horror. All I know is Tangerine Dream did the in-freaking-credible all-synth soundtrack and the 4k restoration (which I picked up in the aforementioned sale) is mind-blowing.
Update 10/10: Okay, so, there's a LOT to unpack here. First, director and co-writer William Friedkin also did The French Connection and, more importantly, The Exorcist, which I found to be filled to the brim with unexpected depth and poignant social commentary.
This was a wild, wild ride. One part adventure one part crime thriller with all of the bones of a heist flick, yet I think Sorcerer fits into the horror space (not just horror-adjacent), especially with the weird stuff at the end. But, at it's core, I think it's something of a neo-western owing much of it's inspiration to 1948's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
The tension in this film is almost too much to handle. And it's delivered by some of the slowest action sequences imaginable. The famous truck-driving-over-a-rope-bridge sequence depicted in the poster above is mind-blowingly tense. I'm not sure I've had a movie raise my heart rate that much for so long with so little.
And, like The Exorcist, Sorcerer is filled to the brim with unexpected depth and poignant social commentary. It influenced almost everything on the big and small screen that came after it from Paul Thomas Anderson to Tarantino to LOST to Mission Impossible to Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Sorcerer was utterly fantastic. I'd teach this in film school. 10/10.
84% on Rotten Tomatoes (83% audience score)
9) Repo Man
Another horror-adjacent blind buy with an excellent soundtrack (or so I've been told). This one stars EMILIO! Esteves. Alls I knows about this one is it's a cult classic and most of the folks that love it suck, but like in a Gen-X sort of way. In other words, my brother loves this movie. So, I'm a little apprehensive, but, I felt the same way about Trainspotting and that was an absolute hit for me. But I already knew I loved Danny Boyle because of his absolute genius directing work in 28 Days (and Years) Later. I've never even heard of Alex Cox.
93% on Rotten Tomatoes (78% audience score)
10) Videodrome
You're probably starting to see the theme of this section of the list: 80s-ish "horror". I've been aware of this for quite some time and have been cutting it from previous lists because I wasn't sure I could handle Cronenberg's famous body horror, but his version of The Fly impressed me so much that I've been a fan ever since. Also, some of my favorites of the last five years have been in the body horror genre: The Substance, Cabinet of Curiosities ep 4 - The Outside. We also have to aknowledge the fact it stars serial child predator and NAMBLA member James Woods who is currently married to a woman 42 years younger than him). Luckily, he didn't write or direct it, so, hopefully it doesn't have any of that in it's plot.
Anyway, this looks super 80s, super scary, and super fun!
83% on Rotten Tomatoes (80% audience score)
11) Altered States
Finally, we get to see where the sensory deprivation psychic powers sci-fi trope came from. Well, other than actual experiments kooky scientists did in the 70s. This will be my first Ken Russell film unless you count the fever-dream experiences I had unknowingly flipping the channel to The Who's Rock Opera Tommy when I was much, much too young to understand what was going on.
I'm expecting this to be divisive, deeply uncomfortable, but ultimately mind expanding.
85% on Rotten Tomatoes (71% audience score)
12) Don't Look Now
I'm pretty sure we're going to need a palette cleanser after that last one and what better than the 1973 psycho-thriller starring Donald Sutherland? I have literally no idea what this is about but it's directed by the guy that did 1990's The Witches and adapted from a novel written by Daphne Du Maurier, the woman who wrote the short story that inspired Hitchcock's The Birds, so I'm expecting it to be superb.
93% on Rotten Tomatoes (76% audience score)
13) The Others
Today we are beginning the supernatural / ghost story section of the list. Another Nicole Kidman flick and it won't be the last. Is she the real prestige horror scream queen? Move over Florence Pugh.
This one of Liz's favorite movies. I haven't seen it. It's been spoiled for me, I won't spoil it for you.
85% on Rotten Tomatoes (77% audience score)
14) Ringu
It's time things got scary. Really scary. I remember when the Americanized version of this came out and all my friends lost their fucking minds over it and how everyone said the Japanese version was superior, but none of my friends actually watched that one and then before I knew it everyone was obsessed with Saw.
Ringu set off a period of Japanese Horror dominance in the late 90s and early aughts that we will be watching through this week. It's literally the perfect pitch for a horror film. One that calls back to Videodrome.
I've hesitated to put this on the list since the beginning because of some sexual assault and sexual violence content warnings, but I read the book last October and found it to be way, way better than it had any right to be. I'm still cautious about this one because of Liz's specific sensitivities, but the book was confronting something important, it wasn't just in there for shock value. Hopefully the movie does the same. And I've found that over time the review scores tend to weed out the problematic ones.
98% on Rotten Tomatoes (81% audience score)
15) Dark Water
I don't know much about this one. Only that it was director Hideo Nakata's follow-up to Ringu and Ring 2. It's supposed to be really frickin' scary!
84% on Rotten Tomatoes (66% audience score)
16) Ju-on: The Grudge
The other movie nobody would shut up about in the early aughts was The Grudge, this is the Japanese original otherwise known as Other Mommy but Make it Good.
I've stayed away from Japanese horror for decades because they tend to bring images to your nightmares that you would never think up for yourself. I mean, just look at that spooky poster!
83% on Rotten Tomatoes (63% audience score)
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