7 Upcoming Horror Movies, Ranked by Anticipation

Horror has to sell dread. One image. One concept. One tone. One trailer beat that makes you feel the movie has an actual nightmare inside it instead of just release-date confidence. That is why the upcoming horror rankings are so fun and so dangerous. 2026 has a weirdly strong spread for that kind of anticipation.

There is a DC body-horror gamble in Clayface, a new Evil Dead, another trip into The Further, Ice Cream Man, and Resident Evil. So this ranking is not about the most important franchise or biggest IP but about which ones, right now, most strongly feel like they know what flavor of fear they want to be.

7

‘Passenger’ (2026)

Image via Paramount Pictures

Passenger is last only because the anticipation feels promising rather than feverish. André Øvredal is a real asset here, and the setup is nasty in a clean, efficient way: a young couple witnesses a horrific crash, then realizes they did not leave the scene alone. Paramount has it set for May 22, 2026, and the released synopsis leans hard into a demonic stalker premise, which is absolutely workable horror fuel.

What keeps it here is not lack of interest but that the movie still feels one trailer beat away from becoming either a brutal little road-horror winner or a solid programmer people half-forget by November. Øvredal’s best work, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, has a way of making the ordinary feel spiritually wrong, and that is why I am in. But among this group, Passenger is the one I want to see without quite feeling possessed by yet. It sounds good. The top six sound a little more dangerous.

6

‘Scary Movie’ (2026)

Image via Miramax

Scary Movie is a relatively weird entry because it is not horror in the straight sense, it is horror appetite rerouted through parody, but I am still very curious. Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans returning matters. That is the whole hook. The first two Scary Movie films worked because they did not just spoof titles. They understood how horror eras behave, how slashers stage panic, how teen-horror melodrama performs seriousness, how the audience’s familiarity with the beats can become its own joke engine. The 2026 film, due June 5, brings back Anna Faris and Regina Hall too, which gives it a real nostalgic pulse rather than generic reboot smell.

What stops it going higher is simple: parody has a lower anticipation ceiling for me than actual dread unless the marketing proves it has vicious comic aim. Still, the cast return is strong, and the broader target list, modern horror touchstones plus legacy slasher material, gives it a decent chance of feeling alive instead of embalmed. If this thing is mean and fast and stupid in the right ways, it could be one of the year’s most fun crowd movies. I just do not feel the same “I need this now” pull that I do with the top five.

5

‘Ice Cream Man’ (2026)

Image via Iconic Events Releasing

Ice Cream Man sounds completely deranged, which is a compliment. Eli Roth has said it is one of his most extreme projects, and the basic hook is already poisonous enough to do real damage: an idyllic suburban town starts collapsing into madness when kids eat from a sinister ice cream truck and turn homicidal. It opens August 7, 2026, and the first wave of coverage has leaned into killer-kid chaos, grotesque practical nastiness, and a kind of summer-suburbia corruption that feels very playable if the tone lands.

The premise is instantly legible and instantly upsetting as well. Ice cream trucks are supposed to mean reward, noise, neighborhood childhood ritual. Turning that into a slaughter mechanism is exactly the kind of broad, primal corruption horror thrives on. The only reason it is not higher is that Eli Roth is always a volatility bet. He can go all the way into cartoon excess and lose the deeper sickness. But this setup is so strong that even an over-the-top version of it could still absolutely rip.

4

‘Clayface’ (2026)

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

This is the one that fascinates me more every time I think about it. A DC movie doing full-on body horror with Matt Hagen, releasing October 23, 2026, is such a gloriously impolite swing. The public framing around the film has emphasized that it is not a camp joke but a stripped-down horror project, and the teaser rollout has leaned directly into melting-face imagery and transformation grotesquerie. That is exactly the correct instinct. If you are making Clayface, it should feel diseased, humiliating, physical, and tragically vain all at once.

The reason Clayface ranks this high for me is that it already feels like it knows its lane. It is not trying to pass as a generic superhero spinoff with horror seasoning. It appears to be leaning into the actual horror of mutability, performance, and bodily collapse. And there is something inherently rich about a movie built around an actor whose body becomes infinitely plastic in the worst possible way. That is monster material, vanity material, and tragedy material at once. If it really goes for the sadness under the slime, this could be one of the weirdest studio horror plays of the year.

3

‘Evil Dead Burn’ (2026)

Image via Warner Bros.

Evil Dead Burn had to land high. A new Evil Dead movie already starts with house credit if you care about horror. But what pushes Evil Dead Burn into top-three anticipation is that the project sounds like it understands the franchise’s best lesson: take one pressure-cooker family or social space, infect it with Deadite escalation, and do not stop once the body horror starts getting unreasonable. The current setup, a family reunion turning into hell after a mother’s son dies, feels intimate enough to hurt and broad enough to get hideous. It opens July 10, 2026.

And honestly, the title helps. Burn sounds harsher than Rise, less urban-operatic, more punishing, more elemental. I do not need every Evil Dead entry to reinvent the franchise. I need it to find a fresh pressure zone and then commit to the filth. The trailer coverage suggests exactly that: family reunion from hell, severe gore, Deadites doing what Deadites do best, turning people into unrecognizable betrayals of themselves. That is enough to get me highly excited. This franchise, when it is healthy, understands that horror can be disgusting and gleeful and emotionally mean all at once.

2

‘Insidious: Out of the Further’ (2026)

Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

Insidious: Out of the Further is the highest franchise-sequel ranking here because the Insidious movies know something a lot of long-running horror series forget: the dream-space is the hook, but the hook only keeps working if it still feels like a spiritual trespass. Out of the Further is due August 21, 2026, and the trailer coverage has already leaned into a fresh family setup, Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye), and the continued use of that awful astral geography where the films either sing or die. When Insidious works, it gives you a very specific kind of horror, not just jump scares, but the sense that your home, your body, and your child are only thin walls away from another plane’s appetite.

I can already feel the movie’s basic terror mechanism firing again. The dental-exam imagery from the early trailer coverage is exactly the kind of mundane-to-abysmal transition this franchise thrives on. More than that, the series has earned real goodwill by building a recognizably nasty metaphysical zone. The Further is one of modern studio horror’s better recurring spaces because it feels both theatrical and genuinely wrong. If this film gives us one or two great new entries in that nightmare architecture, it could absolutely be one of the year’s best crowd scares.

1

‘Resident Evil’ (2026)

Image via Columbia Pictures

Resident Evil had to be number one. Not because franchise loyalty alone deserves it, but because Zach Cregger taking Resident Evil is exactly the kind of horror-director/IP collision that can generate real electricity. Sony has it dated for September 18, 2026, and the public framing so far has emphasized a story running alongside the Raccoon City outbreak rather than simply retelling the most famous game plots beat-for-beat. That is smart. It gives the reboot room to feel faithful in atmosphere while still finding its own desperate corridor to run down.

What makes this the most exciting upcoming horror film for me is that Cregger already proved he understands how to turn familiar spaces into humiliation chambers of dread. And Resident Evil, at its best, is exactly that, architecture, infection, panic, failed systems, monstrous interruption, people realizing too late that they entered the wrong building on the wrong night in the wrong century of corporate sin. If the movie really honors the games by leaning into trapped-space terror, outbreak escalation, and creature encounters that feel gross before they feel cool, this could be the first live-action Resident Evil movie in a long time that actually feels haunted by the series’ survival-horror DNA instead of just borrowing the names. That possibility alone puts it at number one.

Resident Evil

Release Date

September 18, 2026

Producers

Asad Qizilbash, Carter Swan, Miri Yoon, Robert Kulzer, Roy Lee