The 7 Best New Horror Movies of October 2026

Published Oct 15, 2026, 5:45 PM EDT

Ben Brewster is a filmmaker, critic, screenwriter, and actor whose work sits at the intersection of film culture, craft analysis, and storytelling.

He is a movie list contributing writer at Collider and a contributing writer for High on Films, where he covers contemporary cinema, independent film, and festival releases with an eye toward narrative structure, performance, and visual language. 

Ben is an active film festival participant, having worked with Newport Film, the Nantucket Film Festival and as a screener for the Austin, Boston & Woodstock film festivals. 

He brings to that work a programming instinct shaped by years of close engagement with independent and documentary cinema. This comes with a deep investment in the kinds of films that rarely find their way into the mainstream conversation without someone willing to advocate for them.

His background spans documentary and narrative filmmaking, film marketing, and production, including work with award-winning directors. This as well as developing his own indie production company, Lilac Creative Studio, through which he develops and produces original work across fiction and nonfiction forms. 

His debut documentary, Diamond in the Rust, is an examination of economic redevelopment and displacement in the Queens area of New York City. The film was recently accepted to the Unisphere Film Festival, the Defense of Democracy Film Festival, and the Urbanite Arts & Film Festival. This would mark his first festival recognition as a director. 

In addition to his writing and programming work, Ben hosts Beneath the Bloom, a film podcast exploring the work behind the scenes in cinema, and the struggles one can face to make a movie become a reality. The show reflects the same sensibility that runs through all of his work. A conviction that film is not merely entertainment but one of the most powerful tools human beings have for understanding each other.

Across mediums, his work is driven by a deep belief in film as a communal, transformative art form.

The Halloween Horror season is in full swing with a strong display of independent originals combined with some commercial tent pole hopefuls. The month opened on October 2nd with Beware Boiuna and The Influencer Project. It was followed this past weekend by the Jessica Chastain maternal nightmare Other Mommy, seeing her step up into the role of the entity that stoked fear from the moment when the trailer for this one dropped a few months ago. Then on the 23rd the highly anticipated Clayface directly from a script penned by horror legend Mike Flanagan, a body horror project coming out of the comic book-filled world of James Gunn's DC Universe.

For any horror super fan, this year should feel like a blessing with new releases hitting theaters or simply on streaming radars every week. The Cycle hits Shudder in the coming days as well, and early comparisons have yielded mentions of legendary cinematic classics like Silence of the Lambs and The Thing from Stephen King (the king of horror) himself generating significant noise. Yet, each film here has a reason it stands out from the predictable guts and gore. Smaller projects like Beware Boiuna trade on director Mike P. Nelson's reputation for using gonzo practical effects. The Influencer Project? A story based on true events produced by the co-creator of Blair Witch, Eduardo Sanchez who returns to his found footage roots.

Even if horror isn't necessarily you're cup of tea, there is no better month to try it out with the fresh slate provided this October. Coming off a Spring highlighted by four horror-filled adventures such as Backrooms and Obsession that tore through the box offices, the genre is receiving flowers in the mainstream at a level previously unprecedented. Horror movies have historically been associated with a junkier, B-movie-like predicament, with the higher-end dramas coming out of Hollywood often being projects lauded by award shows for period-piece transformations and full-blown action battle sequences. Horror doesn't always fit in such pretty pillars of expectation. However, some of the more complex discourses on sociopolitical aspects of our modern culture in film have come from the spooks and terrors of scary movies exploring thematic messaging through physical symbolism and analogy. Horror is the most accessible genre of the cinematic medium. A low-budget horror made with precision can out duel any franchise staple. Just ask Curry Barker or Disney's Star Wars marketing team.

7 'Christmas at the Kringles' (2026)

Briarcliff Entertainment

Christmas at the Kringles debuts October 30th, one of the latest entries on this list. The project comes from the direction of Kevin Lewis spinning a Christmas horror comedy into something fairly sinister. The story follows the Severson family after their recent move to a quiet suburban neighborhood, and upon arrival discover quickly that their new neighbors, the Kringles, celebrate Christmas every day. It can be inferred from here where this might lead, starting out as goofy and gimmicky, only to become much darker. The cast consists of Ron Livingston, Rob Riggle, Rachel Bilson along with a few others, which make for quite the group of personalities for such a ridiculous ride. It makes the mind wonder how far Lewis will be willing to push the comedic beats.

Lewis previously directed Willy's Wonderland, a project that similarly embraced that stupidity-laced premise and the creepy edge to mascot-horror. Mascot Horror is a fairly recent trend in horror where creatives take innocent childhood-themed characters and maximize their unsettling elements to make them something more malicious. Common references include movies like Five Nights at Freddy's, Buddy, or even Other Mommy — films where childhood-like pillars associated with comfort become completely corrupted. This movie like many of these, is gonna make or break itself on its ability to otnally shift smoothly from comedy into horror and back again. Releasing a Christmas horror film on Halloween weekend feels like a bold programming strategy. However, it could become the kind of cult streaming discovery that finds a larger audience in December and outdoes previous holiday blending pursuits like the Adam Scott-led Krampus.

6 'The Influencer Project' (2026)

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Found footage has been pronounced dead enough times that another movie based around the format doesn't sound particularly exciting on its own. Yet, with The Influencer Project, there's a discourse surrounding the movie that directly relates to this perspective that makes the camera impossible to separate from the character's life. The movie hit theaters on October 2nd, and focuses on influencer Chiara King, playing a fictionalized version of herself, as a documentary film crew follows her on a trip to Copenhagen. An obsessive stalker begins closing in, and the footage intended to document her public life becomes evidence of a particularly uncomfortable situation.

Mike Nybroe is making his feature film debut with this one, alongside The Blair Witch Project co-creator Eduardo Sanchez as a producer. By putting someone whose career already relies upon being watched it gives the structural elements of The Influencer Project a fresh perspective to this kind of horror film. Whether Sanchez can capture the magic of the Blair Witch formula in a different cultural context might be why this one works or falls flat. This angle could breathe new life in place of another attempt to recreate what the Blair Witch franchise did thirty years ago, relative to how much social media has made constant documentation an ordinary part of life since then.

5 'Crawlers' (2026)

Roadside Attractions

Sometimes a horror movie can sell itself in one creepy sentence. Angel Gomez Hernandez's creature feature drops venemous spiders into a quarntined apartment complex. It spins its sweat filled terror through the claustrophobia of having nowhere to go, as the creatures continue to multiply and spread floor by floor. Crawlers stars Matilda Lutz, Gregg Sulkin and William Miller and has been promising itself as a project destined to provide some outrageous splatter and groundbreaking practical effects.

The apartment gives Hernandez a cleverly contained space to play in, though its the addition of Lutz to this film that has many believing the film to have some true bite beyond its premise and contained setting. Revenge required an enormous amount from her physically and Crawlers is obviously working in a much pulpier register. But, the talented actor + strong simple premise combination worked in waves for Zach Cregger's Resident Evil and it feels like this tandem is betting on Crawlers to capture a similar lightning in a bottle when it hits theaters this Friday.

4 'Beware Boiuna' (2026)

Image via Lionsgate

Like The Influencer Project, Beware Boiuna came in October's early days from horror centered visionary Mike P. Nelson. Nelson was behind the camera for Silent Night, Deadly Night in 2025 and returns with a tale of Amazonian folklore anchored by the presence of a giant, menacing killer serpent. Like many horror cult favorites, Nelson feeds on practical effects to create his terror, including some deiberately repulsive prosthetic work. It signals a level of directional confidence from a creative who lives solely in the horror spector.

Kiana Madeira of Fear Street stars, an actor already making a name for herself as someone to watch in the future of horror film. The genius in simplicity is key here again. A successful horror formula doesn't necessarily require much, but it does need the elements it trades on to hit as clearly and vibrantly as possible. The snakes have to be realistically frightening, the kills need to feel unexpected and fuel the fear and the leads should bring a physicality and intensity that mirrors their ophidian enemy. A giant practical snake movie in October though has to be one of the easier recommendations on this list.

3 'The Cycle' (2026)

The Cycle hits Shudder, the indie horror centered streaming service from IFC, on October 23rd starring Debroah Ann Woll (Daredevil). The project comes directly from the mind of Jordan Downey, who is capitalizing on the buzz and success of The Head Hunter, an extremely low budget creature feature that appeared much more expensive than it actually was. In The Cycle Downey is working in larger mystery. Woll plays a woman whose father disappeared decades earlier, only for his body to turn up at a horrific crime scene and reopen everything she thought she knew about his death. The first act is built patiently as a crime procedural with foundationl exposition, before it slowly submerges itself into something much more visceral and dangerous.

Downey has already shown that he can create atmosphere without spending half the movie explaining it, and Woll has spent years being better than the amount of material she is usually given. A grisly family mystery gives her something concrete to play in before the body horror completely takes over. If Downey is able to make audiences care about said mystery and the world he builds comes across as truly lived in and authentic, then this horror project should cut deep and be a pleasant surprise for mainstream audiences.

2 'Other Mommy' (2026)

Universal Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection

Rob Savage adapts Josh Malerman's Incidents Around the House, putting Jessica Chastain in a dual role of loving mother and the supernatural entity that has taken on her appearance inside the family home. Savage's previous work, Host turned a laptop screen into a trap, and The Boogeyman got an abusrd amuont of mileage out of dark bedrooms and half open doors.The central premise here, a child forming a relationship with something that appears like her mom, but is fundamentally off, works on the kind of frequency that makes possession and doppelganger horror such a durable subgenre.

It is this director-star actor duo though that is why this one lands so high on the list. Savage has had a knack for making a simple horror idea feel unbearably claustrophobic. Other Mommy hit theaters last weekend, relying not upon elaborate, creepy mythology but rather the special intagibles of an incredibly talented performer like Chastain. This is the kind of casting challenge that can either produce something to marvel at or reveals the shortcomings of what an actor can carry on their own. A dual role like this requires the tiny differences in characters to register before the movie is able to explain them. If she can make one version of the character feel wrong just by standing differently in a room and is given enough space to make the roles distinct from each other then this one should be deeply unpleasant in all the ways you'd expect.

1 'Clayface' (2026)

Image via DC

Clayface lands at number one primarily due to the inventive nature in which the DC Universe finds itself leaping into the body horror. It is a strategy not usually followed from a franchise of superheros, yet it feels eeriely fitting for such a darkly grotesque character. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising Hollywood actor whose career and identity collapse after he is horribly disfigured. This is the boldest genre proposition that DC has put together since its foray into The Penguin saga found its footing as a Gotham-centered crime drama. It is a Mike Flanagan penned script, backed by the direction of James Watkins (The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil) who has shown time and time again just how comofrtable he is sitting in the uncomfortable, something many larger studios would force a creative to cut away from.

The story follows Hagen's rise from street kid to Hollywood star before the accident and then after when he visits a treatment store to restore his original face and likeness. The whole situation snowballs into something mcuh darker, turning a fairly familiar comic book origin into a tale about a man losing ownership of his own face and the destabilizing sense of reality he faces after the operation goes awry. Matt has built a career in an industry where his face is part of the product, and destroying that attacks his livelihood before the transformation even begins to transform his body. Eddie Marsan, Max Minghella, and Aaron Paul round out the supporting cast. Watkins has said the studio wanted this project to be horror first, superhero product second, and handing the third film in the DCU to a body horror project instead of another action showcase is a risk that October should reward handsomely. Flanagan's influence in the story construction is legible in the psychological horror emphasis and the track record Watkins has made for himself means Clayface is arrving with two high end genre filmmakers' DNA running through it.

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  Tom Rhys Harries

  Matt Hagen / Clayface

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  Naomi Ackie

  Dr. Caitlin Bates

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  Max Minghella