And so it is that we come to the end of what financial analysts like to call ‘Q1’, or what I call “the first quarter of the year.” With the spring genre festival season about to start in earnest (hello Overlook!), let’s round up the twelve best horror films to have premiered so far this year.
I kept an eye on global festivals, cinema releases and streaming debuts, but it turned out that all twelve of our picks premiered at one of three festivals – Sundance in January, the Berlinale in February, and March’s SXSW. Congratulations to the Midnight and Cult programmers at those fests, because these were all strong choices…
These are ordered by premiere date – I’ve also noted when the film might becoming your way, where that information is available. And without further ado…
Sundance
I Saw The TV Glow (Premiered 18 Jan)
Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up feature to their micro-budgeted We’re All Going To The World’s Fair, explores how media affects young people’s emerging identities, with an emotional powder keg of a movie built from the memories and dreams of late 90s tv – Buffy, Eerie Indiana, Twin Peaks, and The Adventures of Pete and Pete. I Saw the TV Glow examines how media shapes, and sometimes distorts, our self-perception and of the difficulty of ridding ourselves of false consciousness. This visually striking, emotionally resonant film prompts reflection on our media consumption, memories, relationships, and selfhood – and for many viewers it’s bound to leave a mark.
Scheduled for theatrical release on 3 May (US)
I Saw The TV Glow – Berlinale Review | Whitlock&Pope
It’s What’s Inside (Premiered 19 Jan)
A pre-wedding party descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend shows up with a mysterious suitcase and proposes a game, in a mind-bending knockout sci-fi comedy that demands you go in cold. It’s smart, funny, insightful and rather savage. If you wished Primer or Coherence were crossed with the run-around-the-house antics of Clue to produce a dark relationship comedy, then this is the movie for you.
Coming to Netflix at a date to be announced.
It’s What’s Inside – Spoiler-free SXSW Review | Whitlock&Pope
In A Violent Nature (Premiered 22 Jan)
Chris Nash’s ‘ambient slasher’ upends the rules of the genre to deliver an 80s horror homage that’s as reflective as it is bloody. As we follow a Voorhees-style killer backwoods zombie trudging through the woods in slow pursuit of some teen campers, the distanced, observational style has an almost Brechtian effect that renders its various slasher tropes very funny. A slow-burn triumph that’s meditative, playful, wildly gory, and a little bit magical. And it has the kill of the year.
Scheduled for theatrical release on 31 May (US) and then streaming on Shudder later this year.
In A Violent Nature – Sundance Review | Whitlock&Pope
Berlinale
Cuckoo (Premiered 16 Feb)
Cuckoo is the giallo-tinged, health-spa-set, hallucinatory monster movie you didn’t know you needed. It’s queer, it’s deranged, it romps along like an early-80s Argento flick… and it gives Dan Stevens his best role since The Guest. Hunter Schafer is a killer final girl, Stevens is a magnificent weirdo, and from the cuckoo’s first call to the last unsettling frame, this film slaps.
Scheduled for theatrical release on 17 May (UK) and 9 August (US).
Cuckoo – Berlinale Review | Whitlock&Pope
Exhuma (Premiered 16 Feb)
For my money this is the best Korean horror since 2016, the year that brought us The Wailing and Last Train to Busan. In fact it’s a must see for The Wailing fans as it plays in such similar territory: a geomancer, a shaman and a Christian spiritualist race to solve the riddle of a dying baby and its links to a mysterious unmarked family grave high in a Korean mountain forest. Increasingly bonkers, this delivers mystery, chills, and action – and really sticks the landing.
On release in the US and UK now.
Exhuma – Berlinale Review | Whitlock&Pope
Chime (Premiered 19 Feb)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is back on his Cure tip and playing games with horror tropes and audiovisual signifiers. Chime shows a steadfast refusal to collapse into a coherent rationality. Destabilise that shit, girl, go off! This 45-minute marvel is a testament to Kurosawa’s mastery in handling the ambiguous, the unsettling, and the nightmarish.
Coming this year to blockchain distribution platform Roadstead.
Chime – Berlinale Review | Whitlock&Pope
SXSW
Oddity (Premiered 8 March)
In this supremely scary supernatural chiller from Caveat’s Damian Mc Carthy, a widowed psychiatric doctor is joined by his wife’s sister, a blind medium, in a bid to investigate his wife’s death. So far Oddity is the most terrifying film of the year. Dripping with tension, laced with sly humour, and unafraid to go for the jump-scare jugular. Nothing wrong with that when it’s done this well! Plus there’s a bonus cameo from Caveat’s rabbit puppet to boot. What more could a horror fan ask for? This is probably THE most terrifying film we’ve seen so far this year.
Theatrical plans currently unknown, but eventually streaming on Shudder.
Oddity – SXSW Review | Whitlock&Pope
Azrael (Premiered 9 March)
Samara Weaving excels in a silent role, as survival horror is stripped down to its desperate, violent basics, and then garnished with a bonkers religious twist in E.L. Katz’s post-Rapture bloodbath Azrael. It combines an experimental edge (there’s almost zero dialogue) with a full-bloodied embrace of gonzo grindhouse thrills.
Release plans to be announced
Azrael – SXSW Review | Whitlock&Pope
Dead Mail (Premiered 9 March)
This lo-fi early-80s mystery thriller is a strange cocktail of amateur sleuthing, unexpected violence, and atonal synth music. Unconventional, engrossing and empathetic, Dead Mail presents a very interesting and non-obvious marriage of aesthetics, mise-en-scène and story. It feels different from everything else I’ve seen recently, in a prickly kind of way.
Release plans to be announced
Dead Mail – SXSW Review | Whitlock&Pope
Arcadian (Premiered 11 March)
They mostly come out at night… mostly… in Arcadian, a superior Nick Cage B-movie that combines aspects of It Comes At Night, A Quiet Place, I Am Legend and Critters 2 to deliver a post-apocalyptic farmhouse action-horror, with great creature design. Some good chaotic action, a gung-ho shotgun-blasting climax, strongly drawn family dynamics, and one particularly creepy standout scene all combine to make this an easy recommendation.
Scheduled for theatrical release on 12 May (US/UK), followed by streaming on Shudder.
Arcadian – SXSW Premiere Review | Whitlock&Pope
Things Will Be Different (Premiered 11 March)
A tight sci-fi-horror script, shot with rigour and supported by two great performances, establishes Michael Felker as a writer-director to watch. When two siblings decide to commit a heist and then use a mysterious house to transport them to an alternate timeline to wait out the manhunt, things turns a little bit The Endless, The House On The Borderlands, House Of Leaves & Timecrimes. The result is smart, dark, and from the heart.
Release plans to be announced, but this will also screen at Overlook.
Things Will Be Different – SXSW Review | Whitlock&Pope
Immaculate (Premiered 12 March)
Horror nun fun with a ludicrous plot twist and plenty of jump scares . This makes the most of genuine star Sydney Sweeney, but it’s really the last two minutes that rocket this movie up the must-watch list – and it has probably the ballsiest ending of any mainstream horror this year. My audience was laughing… from how much they were screaming.
On release in the US and UK now.
Immaculate – SXSW Review | Whitlock&Pope
Will the April premieres at Overlook, or any of the other spring genre festival releases, match these? Hold tight…
Whitlock&Pope 