★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Goody Goody delivers pregnancy horror aplenty!
One of our favorite directors, André Øvredal, is back again with more genre goodness. We've got the trailer and poster right here!
Filmmakers take note: Australia's Dark Nights Film Fest wants your fear fare as they call for entries!
Another year, another Overlook Film Festival, one of the premier genre festivals in the country. Unfortunately, this year, the main players of The Scariest Things were unable to attend the festival in person. Eric was able to get some of the films to stream, but, as is the norm, remote screeners were limited and did not include the showcase films. Fortunately for us, one of our loyal Patreon Contributors, Robin Marcotte, was in attendance again, and she helped fill in the gaps we missed. This year, there were a number of good films, and according to Robin, one GREAT film. This year, we watched fourteen films and thirty shorts. Give our recap a listen to hear our thoughts on the 2026 Overlook presentation.
There's a poster. There are rumors. Now there's an honest-to-god trailer. Late in 2025, when I read that THE Eli Roth was pulling together the craziest film he'd ever made, and that it would outdo Hostel, Green Inferno, and Cabin Fever, I knew that it was going to cram-packed with gore, glorious gore!
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Buffet Infinity is a film as strange as its name. This lo-fi cosmic-horror oddity spins its story through local advertisements that slowly escalate from commercial competition to societal domination. It is a clever concept that takes a while to comprehend, but it manages to combine initially incongruent media into a cohesive story of dread and destruction.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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American Dollhouse is what you get when a slow-burning liminal horror film decides to step on the gas and slams you into psycho murder madness. Sarah is a woman who hasn't been given many breaks in her life. When she inherits her dilapidated childhood home, she thinks she has struck the lottery. Unfortunately, the house retains awful memories, and worse yet, has a psychotic neighbor who has a strange obsession with her. Tensions rise as the neighbor's behavior escalates into violence, pushing Sarah deeper into a nightmare that threatens everything around her.
The Scariest Things has some short film recommendations for Panic Fest 2026!
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Embattled bride Grace is back, in Ready or Not 2: Here I come, and she's going to have to do it all over again. This time, her estranged sister will be by her side as a cadre of rival megalomaniacal families vie to murder her and claim the ultimate Satanic prize. This sequel is a bloody joy ride, and it extends the premise well, but a chunk of the magic of the first movie is missing.
Backrooms is a relatively recent creepypasta and "found footage" incantation originating from 4chan. If you’re of a certain age you may be simultaneously wondering what the hell is creepy pasta? What’s a Backroom? And should I spend more time on 4chan?
Good news! You don’t have to answer any of these questions because a brand new trailer for Backrooms just dropped.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Iron Lung is an impressive directorial debut from longtime Youtuber Markiplier, a love letter to psychological indie horror, and a huge win for the fake blood industry.
Who is the greatest Final Girl of them all? You decide! Pick from final girls from across the decades to figure out who will survive THIS challenge. They thought it was hard getting away from their stalkers, but they never considered how hard it would be to win your vote!
★★★ out of ★★★★★
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If Guy Maddin and Roger Corman collaborated on a British comedy sketch about ghostly folk tales, filmmaking, and the creative process, it might look something like The Peril at Pincer Point — but then again, it absolutely might not . . .
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Turning 15 years old is hard enough, but when a monstrous event affects your best friend and a quinceañera goes horribly wrong, things get gory and violent, indeed, as Quince (Fifteen) shows in great detail.
Sweet, sweet revenge. A subgenre best served cold, with a side of yanked intestines. It is a foundational tool for horror, both from the protagonist and antagonist perspectives. Anger, jealousy, and embarrassment create grudges that stick, and payback, she is a comin'. Listen in to our recommendations for your revenge fantasy satisfaction.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Ugly Cry joins the ranks of body horror movies written and directed by women that shine a light on the unfair beauty standards that women are held to. Emily Robinson wrote, directed, and stars in this dark comedy drama where facial expressions can doom you to getting a key acting job or not. "It's not body horror, but it is a film about the horror of having a body" (Robinson) This movie premiered at SXSW.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25 out of ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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If the new A24 film Undertone is considered to be “liminal horror” then count me as a true blue liminal horror fan. Operating in between the spaces, notes, and shadows, this is a film that evokes surreal and unsettling perspectives from — the nothingness.
★★★★ out of ★★★★★
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Virtuosos get violent in Pretty Lethal as a troupe of American ballerinas find themselves in a dangerous situation facing Hungarian mobsters. This fun feature delivers genre thrills at an allegro pace.
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If staring at video game for an hour and fifteen minutes is your idea of a swell time, then this might be the found footage film you’ve been waiting for all these years. The chaos isn’t too terribly chaotic. It’s far more controlled than any film in the VHS series, but not as staid as the now bland nature of the Blair Witch Project.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Bagworm is intensely uncomfortable. Carroll is a loser living in a burned-out bungalow in decaying squalor. His love life reflects his living situation: rotting and getting worse. When this hammer salesman, ironically, steps on a rusty nail in his front yard, it adds a third leg to this stool of personal destruction. Tetanus overcomes him due to personal neglect, leading to madness and hallucinations. It is a story well told, and though it sprinkles in some humor, it is wrought with cringeworthy moments. Bagworm had its North American debut at SXSW.
★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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A young woman abandoned in the forest falls in with a pair of bank robbers in Canadian thriller A SAFE DISTANCE.
We've got 2025 in the rear view window, and Hollywood has determined to not just relegate horror movies into the fall/Halloween schedule. Springtime apparently is a good time to have a big fear injection. So, we had to get the word out on movies you can anticipate coming to a theater near you!
The Scariest Things has four more SXSW 2026 feature film recommendations for you!
Here are five SXSW 2026 feature films we're greatly anticipating
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What do you get when you combine two BAFTA Award winners, two Oscar nominees, and a TV director — who's also won a BAFTA — making his sophomore feature film? A fungus-filled, splatterrific, goopy, gory horror-comedy, that's what. Cold Storage (2026) is B-movie creature feature bliss, and it knows exactly what it is.
Here's a trio of short horror shorts premiering at SXSW 2026.
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Ever wanted to watch a bunch of movies all at once? Whistle (2025) has you covered. Crack open your Final Destination franchise, It Follows (2014), and Smile 2 (2024) and pour them all into the blender. What comes out is a well-oiled, thoroughly entertaining horror smoothie that somehow forgets to add its most interesting ingredient.
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Ever wanted to watch a bunch of movies all at once? Whistle (2025) has you covered. Crack open your Final Destination franchise, It Follows (2014), and Smile 2 (2024) and pour them all into the blender. What comes out is a well-oiled, thoroughly entertaining horror smoothie that somehow forgets to add its most interesting ingredient.
Brazil's Fantaspoa film festival is ready to boggle your mind with its 2026 lineup!
★★★★1/2 out of ★★★★★
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Send Help is pure wicked entertainment. It borrows tropes from many genres. The ugly duckling turning into a swan. The horrible boss. Disaster survival. Obsession. All of these familiar elements are blended into something more than the sum of their parts. It's funny, brutal, and puts both of its main characters through real ethical paces. Your rooting interests may shift over the course of the movie, but it ends with a cynical twist that turns into the perfect sunset. (Fist pump!)
In a show of filmmaker confidence, the production team behind last year's award-winning independent teen thriller It Needs Eyes is going on a theatrical release tour. Check out this post to see if it's showing near you!