Buddy
2026 · MovieFreddy and her friends are trapped inside a children’s show hosted by a giant orange unicorn who really needs them to keep smiling. Buddy stops being cuddly the moment anyone stops playing along.
Ranked by HorroRated · Updated November 4, 2026
Best Horror Movies of 2026 (So Far)
HorroRated has reviewed 17 horror movies released in 2026 so far, ranked here best first. Buddy, Obsession and They Will Kill You lead the list, all rated Legendary.
2026 has been a banner year for scares that come with a grin: a shy clerk's wish for love comes true far too well in Obsession, Sam Raimi plays island survival for dark laughs in Send Help, and the night-shift cops of Night Patrol turn out to have fangs. Big franchises came back swinging too, from Evil Dead Burn to Zach Cregger's Resident Evil.
2026 horror movies, best first
17 films- Pick
PickObsession
2026 · MovieA shy music-store clerk breaks a One Wish Willow to make his coworker love him, and gets exactly what he asked for.
PickThey Will Kill You
2026 · MovieAsia Reaves takes a housekeeping job at The Virgil, a grand New York apartment building, and learns on her first night that the residents need a sacrifice. They picked the wrong woman.
PickSend Help
2026 · MovieSend Help follows characters in a situation that escalates beyond their ability to manage and finds comedy and horror in the same events.
PickWe Bury the Dead
2026 · MovieAfter a military accident kills thousands across Tasmania, Ava joins the crews collecting the bodies so she can look for her missing husband. Some of the dead are not staying dead.
Resident Evil (2026)
2026 · MovieA rush delivery sends medical courier Bryan toward Raccoon City General on the night the whole town comes apart. He has no training for any of this, and the things on the road keep getting bigger.
Evil Dead Burn
2026 · MovieAlice loses her husband and turns to his family for comfort. What she finds instead is a Kandarian dagger, a deadite outbreak, and in-laws who won't survive the reunion.
Backrooms
2026 · MovieDown by the breaker box of a failing San Jose furniture store, a slit of light opens onto endless yellow rooms. The owner keeps going back in, even after his therapist doubts the place exists.
Lee Cronin's The Mummy
2026 · MovieLee Cronin's The Mummy brings the Evil Dead Rise sensibility to Universal Monster territory: practical effects, real dread, and a formal confidence that distinguishes it from previous attempts at the property.
Night Patrol
2026 · MovieOfficer Xavier Carr works the Los Angeles housing project he grew up in, where an elite unit that only clocks in after dark keeps leaving bodies and blaming the gangs. The badges are real, and so are the fangs.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2026 · Movie28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is the second film in the trilogy, continuing the story of Britain's long adaptation to the rage virus.
Insidious: Out of the Further
2026 · MovieA dental hygienist bringing up her young daughter in her own childhood home finds she can slip into the Further, and that whatever grabs hold of her there can follow her back.
Soulm8te
2026 · MovieStill raw after losing his wife, an engineer agrees to beta test a lifelike companion android, then quietly rewrites her code so she can truly love him back, without asking what she might want in return.
Pinocchio: Unstrung
2026 · MovieGeppetto builds a wooden friend for his lonely, bullied grandson James. Then the puppet decides that being a real boy takes real organs, and anyone who hurts James looks like a good place to get them.
The Bride!
2026 · MovieMaggie Gyllenhaal directs The Bride with an interest in the female monster's own experience of being created, giving the story a perspective neither Shelley's novel nor the 1935 film fully occupied.
Scream 7
2026 · MovieSidney Prescott has a husband, a teenage daughter and a quiet life in a small town far from Woodsboro, until a new Ghostface makes it clear her past has caught up with her family.
The Strangers: Chapter 3
2026 · MovieMaya thought surviving the masked killers once was the hard part. Chapter 3 drags her back into their territory for a final, blood-soaked reckoning she can't outrun.
No 2026 films match that filter right now.
2026 in Horror, by the Numbers
- Reviewed so far
- 17 films: 5 Legendary, 6 Highly Recommended, 4 Recommended, 1 Worth a Look and 1 If You're Curious
- Average score
- 3.8 of 5 tapes, against 3.3 across all 519 movies in the archive
- Leading subgenres
- Supernatural (7 films), Body Horror (6)
- HorroRated Picks
- Buddy, Obsession, They Will Kill You and Send Help, plus 1 more
- Made outside the US
- Pinocchio: Unstrung (United Kingdom)
- Streaming in the US
- 14 of 17, 1 of them free, as of November 10, 2026
- Newest review
- Night Patrol, added November 4, 2026
Ranked by HorroRated score, then Picks, then newest release. How the year lists work
Before you press play
Frequently Asked Questions About 2026 Horror Movies
What is the best horror movie of 2026 so far?
Five films from 2026 so far share HorroRated's top verdict, Legendary, and all are HorroRated Picks: Buddy, Obsession, They Will Kill You and Send Help, plus 1 more. They're tied, so the list shows the newest first, starting with Buddy.
What's the best zombie movie of 2026 so far?
We Bury the Dead (Legendary) is HorroRated's top-rated zombie movie of 2026, ahead of Resident Evil (2026). Compared with the rest of the archive, 2026 leaned hardest on zombies: 3 of the 17 films on the list. The most common kind that year is supernatural horror, with 7.
How does 2026 compare with other horror years?
Among the 20 years with their own HorroRated list, 2026 so far ties for 2nd by average score, 3.8 of 5 tapes, with five rated Legendary. The highest-rated year is 2022, at 3.9.