Looking at the 2026 horror movies - I am shaking my head. Not one single one would I see in the theater, rent, or even see for free! These are about 70% remakes/new installements of series. Let's take a look at why the horror industry is deflating its balloon rapidly -
Do any of these sound like you simply must go and see them??
Another Insidious: Out of the Further,
Another Alien: Romulus 2
Another Amityville
Another Blair Witch Project Reboot
Another Untitle Chucky Sequel
Another Conjuring First Communion
Another Cujo
Another Exorcist Martyrs
Another The Faculty (remake)
Another Final Desination 7 (can it finally reach it's final destination -- The cutting room floor?)
Another The Howling
Another Lreprechaun Project
Another The Mist
Another The Nightmare on Elm Street Reboot
Another Paranormal Activity 8
Another Resident Evil
Another Scream 8
Another Sleepaway Camp
Another Swamp Thing
Another Texas Chainsaw Massacre
I am so extremely thrilled to be working on an ORIGINAL horror screenplay at this time.
Horror has become anemic, like using the same coffee pod to make coffee for a decade.
For me, there is no more regurgitation of old thrillers, only new thrills and chills.
Other than the regurgitation of horror movies into new versions of the same themes, another aspect missing from horror these days is souls. I'm not talking something religious, but most are so dissociated from feelings, from real people you can root for, from situations that can be overcome. Killing machines. Victims that "deserve" it, and a lot of lead characters you kind of hope will be on the hit list!
We are missing the real threats of life, a family fighting off something, a town coming together, a reluctant hero....
My feelings about horror are that jump scares are just startling someone, that doesn't count as horror. Dismembering and gore is gross, that doesn't count as horror. If the lead characters aren't relatable, the viewer never enters the story, never feels the threat. It's like going to a football game and not liking either team.
As I am deep in the final editing process of my original horror screenplay, I am reminded of all the things that autumn and Halloween bring - darkness, harvests, the silence in the woods, the glow of a full moon, the crackling fires, the flickering candlelight, the safety of a blanket, the partially open closet door at nighttime, the sound of something scratching under the bed, the hoot of an owl sentinel, the crunch of leaves, and that ever present knowledge that the veil between the worlds is thinning....
It's really what the audience doesn't see, but fills in with their own imagination and their own phobias, that engages them in to the pondering question, "could I survive this?" and "where can this go wrong?"
There are some horror movies that get how to combine acting, lighting, scoring, scripting, and ambiance to creep us out with real horror -
"The Haunting" (1963)
"The Exorcist"
"The Omen"
"The Birds"
"The Shining"
"Halloween"
And, anyone who is a fan of the original Halloween understands that subsequent installments (like any other regurgitation) lost the very thing that made the original so classic - they added senseless gore that created Michael Myers into a machine, rather than an almost poetic predator.
Somehow, John Carpenter had us terrified of this impossible-to-kill boogeyman, not because he would dismember victims in a grotesque manner, but because Michael Myers treated it like an art form and that honestly made him scarier than a hatchet man.