*and horror-adjacent
Horror had a bonanza year in 2025. Across multiplex releases, festival premieres, and streaming services of all kinds, film’s greatest genre continued to be tonally elastic, politically alert, and formally adventurous. Some of the titles below are already available to stream or rent; others have only made select festival appearances so far and are due to reach wider release or digital platforms in 2026. All of them, though, left a mark.
We should make a note of some absences from the below list: we absolutely adored Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys, but elastic though our definition of horror is, her wonderful, unclassifiable tale of a young sex worker hustling for the money (and livestock) she needs to defuse a mysterious curse exists outside the genre. Likewise Lucile Hadžihalilović’s The Ice Tower was impressive but felt more of a dream-fantasy to us (the line demarking ‘horror’, perhaps, running somewhere between the hazy fable of The Ice Tower and the more threatening, violent, oneiric vision of OBEX.) Curry Barker’s Obsession make a brief but impactful splash on the festival circuit before vanishing in advance of a full rollout next year – based on reputation alone we’d almost certainly have included it if we’d seen it. And there’s one more supernatural tale that we loved that only plays its ghostly hand in the final minutes. It’s wonderful, elegiac, touching… and if we’d included it here, the very fact that it is a horror film would constitute a spoiler.
As for the thirty films we did include: taken together, they show a genre in restless health: body horror exploring emotional terrain, folk and possession stories exploring human dread rooted in cultural specificity, franchise cinema rediscovering craft, and filmmakers experimenting with new ways to smuggle terror into unexpected forms. Whether intimate or expansive, abrasive or mournful, these are films we loved, and films that made 2025 feel like a year when horror once again did some of cinema’s most interesting work.
30. Noise
Directed by K-horror godfather Kim Soo-jin, this South Korean supernatural thriller follows a woman searching for her missing sister as inexplicable sounds take over her apartment block. Its precise sound design turns everyday noise into an oppressive presence, making domestic space feel actively hostile. A 2024 release in its home country, when it made its Anglophone debut at Fantasia this July we called it the most haunting film of the year. (Seen at Fantasia Film Festival, wide release dates TBC)
29. OBEX
Albert Birney’s lo-fi horror-tinged fantasy centres on a lonely man whose obsession with obsolete technology opens a door to something malign. Birney’s films are about lonely people navigating distorted internal landscapes, and this is a kind, sweet funny example that maps a strange corner of the fantastique. The handmade, analog aesthetic gives the film a personality that slicker genre entries rarely achieve. Plus, there’s a cute dog! (Seen at Fantasia Film Festival, in US cinemas January 9, on digital February 6 2026)
28. Bad Haircut
We loved how Kyle Misak’s horror-comedy turned a teen humiliation into a grotesque barbershop comedy-horror that was sharp, funny, and unsettling in equal measure. Bad Haircut traps a teenager in a barber shop where humiliation and power games spiral out of control, with the barber from hell weaponising our hero’s social awkwardness. Frankie Ray is extraordinary as Mick, the barber – he doesn’t just chew scenery, he devours it. One of the most memorable characters of the year, he’s twisted, magnetic, and impossible to ignore. (Seen at Fantastic Fest, wider release dates TBC)
27. The Long Walk
Directed by Francis Lawrence, this adaptation of a Stephen King (writing as ‘Richard Bachman’) story imagines a televised endurance contest where young men trudge through a bleak American landscape and where stopping means death. A better film than the other Bachman adaption about a deadly dystopian TV contest (The Running Man), where that film lands into gung-ho antics The Long Walk leans into exhaustion as mood, making gradual, painful attrition a source of dread. It offers the existential black hole to The Running Man’s punky macho politics – much more to our taste. (On digital)
26. The Holy Boy
Paolo Strippoli’s Italian cult horror observes a rural community whose sunny rituals conceal something rotten underneath. Unease seeps in gradually, carried by atmosphere rather than overt shocks. When we saw it at Venice, we recommended it as a saint-or-cryptid tale that plays like a Catholic Ari Aster, weaving confession, revelation, and the corrosive value of guilt and pain into a slow-burn horror allegory. (Seen at Venice, coming to Shudder in 2026)
25. Influencers
Kurtis David Harder’s social-media thriller serves up a smorgasbord’s of smug, preening travellers whose curated online lives make them targets,m for mayhem – with Cassandra Naud as the magnetic presence hunting them down. It’s nasty, campy fun, clearly enjoying its own cruelty – we called it a glossy, bloody, enjoyably silly sequel that lets Naud carve her way through the worst people on the internet – one smug travel influencer at a time. (Streaming on Shudder)
24. The Vile
Directed by Majid Al Ansari, this psychological horror locks its protagonist into an increasingly suffocating domestic nightmare. The film’s bleak commitment never wavers, giving it a grim, punishing integrity, which is why we reckoned this sinister-second-wife chiller was the standout of 2025’s Fantastic Fest: a slow burn of paranoid tension and supernatural dread; a fierce feminist nightmare told with cultural precision. (Seen at Fantastic Fest and the LFF, wider release dates TBC)
23. The Virgin of the Quarry Lake
Laura Casabé’s coming-of-age horror charts adolescent desire and humiliation curdling into supernatural consequence. Adapted from two short stories by Mariana Enríquez, one of Argentina’s most acclaimed voices in contemporary horror, we said this was a slow-burn folk horror of adolescent rage, quiet, precise, and charged with fury, that took the idea of “one magical summer” to a sinister conclusion. (Seen at Sundance, with wider release dates TBC)
22. Scenery
Alberto Vázquez’s animated existential horror follows a depressed mouse who begins to suspect his world is artificial. Cute surfaces and merciless philosophy collide in unelected ways – as far as we’re concerned, Scenery (aka Decorado) is The Truman Show for unflinching, dark absurdists rather than comfortable humanists. And it commits to a real fuck-you of an ending. (Seen at the LFF, wider release dates TBC)
21. Dawning
Patrik Syversen’s bleak psychological portrait tells a story of sisterhood, secrecy, and trauma shot through with Hanekean cruelty. It’s a slow, dark, and uncompromising hybrid of family drama and horror, of tragedy and transcendence: austere, brutal, and cosmic, with a family gathering quietly unraveling under buried tensions, until a stranger arrives to really mess things up. Sometimes the girlies just want to enact a Bergmanesque psychodrama, but if men aren’t ruining the vibe by arguing about Into The Spider-Verse they are swinging a pickaxe into your face. (Seen at Fantastic Fest; in US cinemas now, digital release details TBC)
20. Dolly
When the jaw-dropping Dolly rocked Fantastic Fest this year, we rejoiced as it delivered lashings of grimy 16mm grindhouse style and visceral gore, in a folk-horror nightmare of grit and grotesquerie. Rod Blackhurst’s creature-feature follows captives hunted by something monstrous in the woods, starring Seann William Scott and Ethan Suplee. It embraces grime and excess with a sense of disreputable glee. (Seen at Fantastic Fest, and coming to Shudder in 2026)
19. Resurrection
Bi Gan’s hallucinatory metaphysical epic, starring Shu Qi and Jackson Yee, drifts across cinematic eras as the film becomes a dream haunted by itself, its irrational logic and visual ambition overwhelming by design. Though it toys with various aspects of the fantastique, we freely admit Resurrection is not a horror throughout, and frankly it’s a bit of a curate’s egg overall. But the best stretches soar – never more so than in the sequence that earns its place on this list, an incredible 40 minute grand climax that follows two lovers to (and through) a vampire nightclub on the last night of the millennium. (Seen at the LFF; in US cinemas now, in UK cinemas February 2026)
18. Mother of Flies
Directed by John Adams and Zelda Adams, this occult folk-horror follows a grieving woman drawn into dangerous ritual. The tactile, handmade atmosphere gives the film emotional weight beyond its scale. We said this witchy cancer drama was mournful, mossy spell of grief and devotion and marked the Adams Family’s triumphant return to form. (Seen at the Fantasia Film Festival, coming to Shudder on January 23, 2026)
17. It Ends
Alex Ullom’s high-concept horror traps a group of friends on an infinite first highway during a road trip that never ends. Tension escalates through character pressure rather than spectacle, in an absurd, haunting nightmare that demands that we imagine Sisyphus happy – least we go insane in the woods. (Available via Letterboxd’s new streaming service until early January 2026; UPDATE – Neon have now picked up It Ends for a 2026 theatrical release!)
16. Roqia
Directed by Yanis Koussim, this Algerian possession drama reframes exorcism as a confrontation with historical and political trauma. Its seriousness of intent gives the horror serious gravity – at Venice, we said this brutal exorcism horror fractures faith and history, in a visceral reckoning with Algeria’s Black Decade. (Seen at Venice and the LFF, wider release date TBC)
15. The Surrender
Julia Max’s chamber horror centres on a mother and daughter attempting an occult ritual to undo loss, led by Colby Minifie (who has a great face for this material.) and Kate Burton. Max renders grief as physical, ugly, and hard to shake; A Dark Song meets The Devil Rides Out in this descent into the spiritual abyss. (On digital, and streaming on Shudder)
14. Final Destination: Bloodlines
Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, the franchise returns to its familiar dance with fate and inevitability. The set-pieces tick with clockwork ingenuity, delivering exactly the sadistic pleasures promised. For longtime fans, this was the entry we’d been waiting for. For newcomers, it’s a surprisingly strong jumping-on point. Either way, Final Destination: Bloodlines earns its place at the top. We declared that the franchise had a new champion – and its scythe is as sharp as ever. (On digital)
13. Dust Bunny
Bryan Fuller’s dark fairy tale follows a girl who hires a hitman to kill the monster under her bed, with Mads Mikkelsen lending gravitas. Whimsy and menace sit side by side with striking confidence. A twisted bedtime fable whose stylish, inventive remix of Gallic comic action tropes earned it the moniker le cinéma du look out. (In US cinemas, UK release TBC)
12. 28 Years Later
Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, this sequel revisits Britain decades after infection, in what feels like the most radical horror movie of the early noughties – made two decades late but twice as unhinged. Boyle makes great use of Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes, and Garland’s willingness to mutate rather than repeat gives the apocalypse fresh teeth. This is a loud, chaotic, defiantly British horror epic that mutates the genre as much as it honours it, blending digital chaos with folk horror unease, soaking its zombie tropes in grief, moss, and post-Brexit malaise as bullet time and bodycams crash up against coastal rot and communal breakdown. (On digital)
11. Buffet Infinity
Simon Glassman’s experimental horror-comedy assembles fragments of local television into a cosmic nightmare. Media overload becomes genuinely unsettling as humour slowly curdles into dread; we named it the boldest horror of the year – a funny, freaky, cosmic nightmare that feels like it’s watching you back. (Seen at Fantasia Film Festival, wider release TBC)
10. Companion
Directed by Drew Hancock, this sci-fi thriller turns a weekend getaway into a struggle over control and performance, starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid. Its smart, tight structure and carefully rationed information keep tension high – a twisting, turning, sci-fi-horror romp boasting a darkly playful tone and sharp gender politics, (On digital, and streaming on Sky/NowTV in the UK)
9. Alpha
Julia Ducournau’s body-horror drama follows transformation amid crisis, with Tahar Rahim and Golshifteh Farahani at the centre. It’s ferocious and emotionally serious, refusing comfort at every turn – we called it an anxious study of broken bodies and family bonds that never loses force – thanks to superb performances and visionary direction. (Seen at the LFF, still in UK cinemas and coming to US cinemas in March 2026)
8. The Ugly Stepsister
Emilie Blichfeldt’s Cinderella reimagining turns beauty into bodily punishment. The physical horror gives its feminist anger real force, and we praised it as a fairy tale for final girls… a Cinderella fable that drips with blood and bile, and where everyone is both heroine and villain all at once. (On digital, and streaming on Shudder)
7. The Plague
Charlie Polinger’s adolescent horror observes social exclusion spreading through a boys’ sports camp. Cruelty is captured as something learned, casual, and devastatingly familiar, spreading as easily as the mysterious “plague” the boys fear. We praised its smart combination of the blank pubertal nihilism and destructive social dynamics of Larry Clark’s Bully, the contagious hysteria of The Fits or Falling, and the institutionalised hazing of Full Metal Jacket. (Limited US release 24 December, expanding 2 January 2026; UK release TBC)
6. The Things You Kill
Alireza Khatami’s morally anxious thriller shows grief tipping into suspicion, violence, and the uncanny. Starring Ekin Koç and Ercan Kesal, The Things You Kill’s tense restraint and moral clarity make the dread linger. Initially this seems like a strong anti-patriarchy moral thriller, in the typical Iranian mould. But halfway through it becomes more than that, elegantly sliding into wtf dream logic, as if an Asghar Farhadi flick suddenly became laced with a strong dash of Lost Highway… and then it delivers a killer ending. (Seen at Sundance and SXSW London, wider release dates TBC)
5. Hallow Road
Directed by Babak Anvari, this pressure-cooker thriller follows a couple attempting to conceal a terrible accident, with Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys. Tension accumulates relentlessly, with no easy release, as Anvari serves up an all-timer annoying husband in this, his best film. Pike, meanwhile, is exceptional. (On digital)
4. Bring Her Back
Danny and Michael Philippou’s grief-horror follows a bereaved mother courting mysterious, dangerous rituals, played by the superb Sally Hawkins in one of the performances of the year. Emotional pain is pushed into physical extremity with disquieting effectiveness. Ironically, we hear Bring Her Back is what the producers of Paddington 4 are saying about Sally Hawkins. (On digital)
3. Weapons
This mystery-horror from Barbarian’s Zach Cregger begins with a class of children vanishing from a small town in the middle of the night. Cregger expands the scope of the fear outward with ambition and control, delivering a fractured portrait of suburban America, never sanding down its oddness, and building a strange unholy tension before exploding with a cathartic burst of ridiculously fun horror action. (In cinemas and on digital)
2. Rose of Nevada
Mark Jenkin’s time-slip drama follows two fishermen whose encounter with an inexplicable miracle reshapes their lives as they come adrift in their village’s history. Starring a never-better George MacKay and Callum Turner, its weathered textures and emotional restraint are quietly devastating, and its portrait of a crumbling community born anew comes straight from the heart. At Venice, we called it an oneiric folk horror of community, memory, and return… the most poetic folk horror of the decade. A wonderful film, to fill you wish the joys of cinema. (Seen at Venice and the LFF, coming to UK cinemas in April 2026)
1. Sinners
Ryan Coogler’s Mississippi-set vampire epic follows twin brothers confronting both supernatural and human violence, with Michael B. Jordan in dual roles. Blues legends, muscular filmmaking, and cultural specificity fuse into a horror film that feels fully alive, with a shifting aspect ratio that makes the most of its IMAX dimensions. We called it a blood-soaked Southern Gothic fable where juke-joint blues and Black mythology do barnstorming battle with vampiric threats… in blood, fire, and song. Sinners is not only the horror of the year, but also the film of the year. Academy, are you listening? (In cinemas and on digital)
Whitlock&Pope 