REEL | Christopher Nolan and Matt Damon Conquer 'The Odyssey'

"It was a song of all the promises I failed to keep."

Universal Pictures / Syncopy

Oscar-winning, visionary British-American auteur Christopher Nolan adapts The Odyssey, the second of Homer's two ancient Greek epic poems (after The Iliad), into a metaphysical but immersive action blockbuster experience. Starring regular collaborator Matt Damon as the legendary Odysseus, the departed soldier-king of Ithaca, in another hero role as a man desperate to find his way home, the dense mythical fantasy is a monumental yet accessible journey of pure cinematic spectacle, filmed on the grandest of canvases.

CABLE | Javier Bardem and Amy Adams Strike 'Cape Fear' x Fantasia 2026

"I see something eating at you."

Universal Content Productions / Amblin Television

Cape Fear, the revenge miniseries adaptation of the 1957 potboiler novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald and both its classic 1962 and 1991 film adaptations, stretches the Southern gothic psychological thriller material across ten episodes. Created and showrun by screenwriter/producer Nick Antosca and executive produced by the duo of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the eventual and originally attached director of the film remake, this contemporary television interpretation still maintains its strong Hitchcockian overtones.

CABLE | Matthew Rhys Welcomes You to 'Widow's Bay' on Apple TV

"The only way out is through."

Apple Studios

Widow's Bay, comedy screenwriter Katie Dippold's superb new original series, stars the wonderful Welsh actor Matthew Rhys as the exasperated, initially skeptical mayor of the seemingly cursed, titular New England island town desperate for tourism. As a welcoming but weird folk horror-comedy mashup clearly inspired by the many works of Stephen King, its supernaturally mythic small-town elements only heighten its dryly deadpan humour.

GENRE | 'Backrooms' Finds A Psychological Horror Detour

"It's every place that ever was."

A24 / Elevation Pictures

Talented twenty-year-old YouTuber and visual effects artist Kane "Pixels" Parsons turns his nightmarish 22-episode found-footage creepypasta web series into a fully-fledged psychological horror feature. Filmed in Vancouver, Backrooms' basic premise revolves around a mysteriously elaborate but oddly abandoned series of secret interdimensional "backroom" liminal spaces found beneath a suburban discount furniture warehouse showroom located in a generic strip mall somewhere in 1990s middle America.

GENRE | 'Obsession' Makes One Wish Willow x SIFF 2026

"It's weird how you two are dating all of a sudden."

Focus Features / Blumhouse Productions

Profilic 25-year-old That's A Bad Idea YouTuber Curry Barker, hailing from Mobile, Alabama, makes his proper theatrical feature debut as an independent filmmaker with a deceptively simple yet twisted supernatural horror romance, Obsession. Essentially a "be careful what you wish for," monkey's paw-type parable, insecure music shop employee Bear (Michael Johnston) wishes for his co-worker and childhood friend (Inde Navarrette) to fall madly in love with him. You get the idea where this is going. Her unnatural love turns into a violent, well, "obsession," rather quickly. Terror ensues.

GENRE | Anne Hathaway Hails 'Mother Mary' – A Pop Nightmare

"This is your burial."

A24 / VVS Films

Eclectic filmmaker David Lowery writes and directs the gothic pop-horror music psychodrama, Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway as an iconic singer (think Lady Gaga meets Taylor Swift) in search of a new stage costume from her estranged former collaborator (Michaela Coel). It's an all-female, two-hander chamber piece of ghostly confrontation that doubles for the complications of artistic and creative partnerships.

GENRE | 'Ready or Not 2: Here I Come' Doubles Down x SXSW 2026

"It didn't work out."

Searchlight Pictures / Radio Silence

Radio Silence filmmaking duo, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, reunite for their horror-comedy, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. Six years after the first Ready or Not, the "eat the rich" sequel picks up directly following the memorable end of the original, with Samara Weaving's blood-soaked bride Grace, having just defeated her ne'er-do-well in-laws, when a new cabal of rich, soul-sacrificing oligarchs, the Danforths, kidnap her and her estranged younger sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) before forcing them both to play a new deadly game of hide-and-seek for their sick and twisted amusement.

GENRE | Jessie Buckley Reinvigorates the Motherf—king 'The Bride!'

"The dead are angry."

Warner Bros. Pictures

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal directs the wildly audacious, gothic reimagining, The Bride! (note the exclamation point), starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale as the monstrous couple, inspired by the iconic 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. Her messy gangster crime take on Mary Shelley's original 1818 literary tale relocates the action to 1936 Chicago, as Frankenstein's monster (called just "Frank" here) begs for a suitable female companion be created for him by reviving a recent murder victim.

GENRE | Rachel McAdams Saves Dylan O'Brien's Bacon – 'Send Help'

"Don't ever mistake my kindness for weakness."

20th Century Studios

Master of horror-comedy Sam Raimi directs the twisted desert island survival thriller, Send Help, starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien as our mismatched but stranded co-workers. Essentially a Cast Away-type two-hander with shades of Triangle of Sadness that aims to reverse common but sexist gender roles in the workplace, Raimi's gnarly film mines so many wildly fun genre thrills by slyly toying with our expectations.

GENRE | Daisy Ridley Survives 'We Bury the Dead'

"Why do only some of them come back?"

Vertical / Game Theory Films

English actress Daisy Ridley stars in Australian writer/director Zak Hilditch's haunting yet unconventional zombie horror drama, We Bury the Dead. Set in Tasmania in the aftermath of a catastrophic nuclear experiment gone wrong, her Ava joins a "body retrieval unit," desperate to find her husband. She gets derailed when some of the corpses her team is tasked to bury awaken and become the living undead.

GENRE | Noémie Merlant Meets 'The Balconettes' – French Heat

"Only together we can really be ourselves."

The Forge / Nord-Ouest Films

French actress turned filmmaker Noémie Merlant (donning her best Marilyn Monroe garb) tackles rape-revenge horror-comedy in her second feature, The Balconettes (aka Les Femmes au balcon), about three women stuck in a Marseille apartment during a 46° C heatwave when an encounter with their sexy male neighbour sets off a series of unfortunate incidents.

CABLE | 'Alien: Earth' Arrives in the Future Past on FX

"It’s like a zoo, but the animals got out."

FX Productions / Scott Free Productions

FX and Fargo show creator Noah Hawley reteam for their engrossing new science-fiction horror prequel television series, Alien: Earth. Set two years before the classic 1979 Ridley Scott (also an executive producer) directed original Alien film, the dense show takes its colonial deep space mythology to new depths, but this time on our home planet (a first for the franchise), as you might have guessed from its subtitle.

GENRE | Josh Brolin and Julia Garner Control 'Weapons'

"Today, none of her kids were there."

New Line Cinema

Sketch comedian turned Barbarian writer/director Zach Cregger sticks to the twisty horror genre by levelling up his sophomore solo feature, Weapons. Told in a series of seven interconnected chapters from different character viewpoints—imagine Prisoners meets Hereditary—the unnerving mystery of what happened to seventeen students from the same third-grade class, who all left their homes and disappeared at exactly 2:17am without a trace, slowly unfolds.

GENRE | Dave Franco and Alison Brie Move 'Together' x Fantasia 2025

"Well, it sounds to me like you complete each other."

Fantasia International Film Festival

Frequent marital collaborators, Dave Franco and Alison Brie (also producers), team up with Australian writer/director Michael Shanks to craft a supremely effective supernatural body horror thriller. Together builds a bizarre but intriguing metaphor for romantic codependency through its strong genre film elements.

GENRE | From the South Till 'Sinners' – Michael B. Jordan Feels the Blues

"Y'all ready to sweat till y'all stink?"

Warner Bros. Pictures / Proximity Media

Frequent Scorsese/De Niro-style collaborators, writer/director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B. Jordan, reteam in their ultra-sexy period vampire saga, Sinners. Set over the course of a single day and night in 1932 Clarksdale, Mississippi in the thick of the Jim Crow-era Deep South, the supernatural gothic horror fantasia harkens back to the influences of the period's Black culture of jazzy blues music (later appropriated by white musicians) in the aftermath of the First World War.

GENRE | Pedro Pascal Slashes Four 'Freaky Tales' in 1980s Oakland

"Oakland in '87 was hella wild."

Lionsgate / Cineplex Pictures

Freaky Tales, a neon-soaked throwback action-comedy from indie writing and directing team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, stars Pedro Pascal as the centrepiece of the third of four interlocking stories set before, during, and immediately after game four of the second round of the NBA playoffs between the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers in Oakland in 1987. It's a stylishly violent tribute to the East Bay's diverse neighbourhood charm and sense of community, but reminiscent of something like The Warriors.

GENRE | Theo James Kills 'The Monkey' Off His Back

"The monkey that likes killing our family… It's back."

Neon / Elevation Pictures

From Longlegs writer/director Osgood Perkins (son of famed Psycho actor Anthony Perkins) and producer James Wan comes another Stephen King adaptation based on the 1980 horror yarn of the same name from the short story collection, Skeleton Crew. Revolving around the titular cursed drumming toy animal, The Monkey is a complete turn from Perkins' previous film as he wastes the central premise's jokey conceit for a broadly comical, gory '90s-inspired genre adaptation in the tradition of the Final Destination franchise.

GENRE | Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy Protect 'The Gorge'

"You bury enough secrets, the graveyard runs out of room."

Apple Original Films / Skydance

The Gorge stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy as hired guns tasked with protecting the undisclosed titular narrow land passage from unnatural creatures beneath while being stationed alone at opposing ends of the mysterious outpost. Genre filmmaker Scott Derrickson directs the remote action horror romance with just barely enough stylish verve to maintain our limited streaming-dominated attention spans, but not much else.

GENRE | Sophie Thatcher Finds Romantic 'Companion'–ship

"The days of you controlling me are over."

New Line Cinema

Veteran television writer Drew Hancock makes an impressive feature horror screenwriting and directing debut in his inventive romantic horror-comedy. Companion carefully employs the tech-savvy culture of our digital age as a contemporary breakup metaphor for unhealthy romantic relationships.

GENRE | Rachel Zegler Relives the Year 2000 – 'Y2K' Glitches Out

"Ride the information super-die-way, bitch!"

A24 / VVS Films

What if the year 2000 computer glitch actually happened? That's the premise of former Saturday Night Live cast member Kyle Mooney's directorial debut. His turn-of-the-millennium disaster slasher comedy, appropriately titled Y2K, strikes a strong late-'90s nostalgic chord for middle-aged millennials who grew up with desktop computers, dial-up internet, burned CDs, and the popularity of nu-metal rap rock music.