OSCARS 2026: Nominations and Predictions

 

What was supposed to be the opening paragraph for my annual run-down of the Oscar nominations instead turned into its own lengthy rant. So I won't waste any more time. Here are my sure-to-be wildly inaccurate predictions and reflections upon 2026's slate of Academy Award nominated motion pictures. 

 

BEST PICTURE: 

People who treat cinema too like sports betting have debated whether Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" made enough money to justify what Warner Bros. spent on it. Which is a silly question, as the movie clearly resonated with audiences and was one of the year's best reviewed titles. Now, it has received 16 Oscar nominations, more than any other film this year and more than any other film ever before. 

Predictably, this has led to a backlash, folks who previously loved the movie saying a bloody vampire yarn doesn't deserve Best Picture. Or that it only got so many nominations out of white liberal guilt causing the pasty Academy voters to overrate the movie. That this isn't the right kind of black cinema that should be recognized. There might be some truth to the former point and I'm certainly not going to weigh in on the latter. I'll simply say that "Sinners" was also my favorite film of 2025 and I don't think that's because I'm trying too hard to prove how not-racist I am. I think it's because "Sinners" rocks. 

I'm sure people will continue to argue this point up until Oscar night. If "Sinners" doesn't win Best Picture, I expect the talking point to immediately shift back to #OscarsSoWhite territory. Every prognosticator right now says Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" is the film most likely to spoil the vampire flick's success. It's a fine film, still pulpier than your usual Oscar Bait, and very relevant to the troubled times we are living in. When you combine that with the likelihood of Academy voters turning their noses up at a vampire movie or the sense that PTA is overdue for some Oscar gold, the odds of "One Battle After Another" scooping up the top prize increases. 

That two quirky – by the standard of Best Picture nominees – movies such as these are facing off points towards 2026 being a somewhat unusual slate. Is there any "normal" Oscar Bait this year? "F1," probably. "Marty Supreme" and "Hamnet," being character centric dramas about a difficult sports champ and the personal life of the Bard, would normally classify. However, even those movies are grittier in focus or more indie in their aesthetic than we typically expect from For Your Consideration campaigns. It certainly says something about this line-up that a new "Frankenstein" movie is the closest thing to the usual prestige costume drama, sweeping epic about the courage of the human spirit that is on the plate this year. 

For further evidence of this, look at the flicks rounding up the category. "Train Dreams" is a whispery drama, admittedly one based on a beloved novel. "The Secret Agent" is a Brazilian film. "Bugonia" is surely among the most aggressively off-beat movies ever nominated in this category. "Sentimental Value," a well observed drama partially set in the film industry, would likely be the expected winner in a different year and even it is a smaller production made outside the Hollywood system. 

I can't say if this is a sign of changing taste or anything. Every step forward the Academy makes is usually followed by them giving "Green Book" or "CODA" Best Picture. But it does seem to be indicative of something to me, of either a younger crowd making up more of the AMPAS voting body, a indicator of a studio system utterly afraid of creative risks, or simply a reflection of the chaotic times we are all living in. So who will win? 

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
"Sinners"

BEST ACTOR:

"One Battle After Another" and "Sinners" are going head-to-head in most of the top categories this year. Amusingly, Best Actor does not seem to be one where either film is likely to succeed. I think Michael B. Jordan would be my personal pick, if only because he is actually giving two excellent performances. Leo DiCaprio in "OBAA" seems currently to have the buzzier buzz of the performances.

And if Leo hasn't already climbed inside a dead horse, I think he would be a lock. Instead, another award being given out to honor a star's legacy more so than one performance has a lock on Best Actor. I don't mean Ethan Hawke in "Blue Moon," a movie that seems to have gotten little attention outside of Hawke's performance. 

Nah, this moment belongs to Timmy. Yanno, I still don't know if Chalamet is an actor I find enormously compelling. He's pretty good and I've liked him in a couple of things. I have no opinion on the conversation over whether he misled us all by merely cosplaying as a sensitive soft boy, when he's actually a crass, Kylie dating dude-bro. (Other than finding it kind of funny.) However, it seems clear to me that Chalamet has been shaping a narrative around himself as the Next Great Leading Man by keenly picking a smart mix of indie fair and hipper big budget vehicles. Last year's Bob Dylan movie was his big swing for an Oscar and he was on the campaign trail boldly declaring himself the Greatest of All Time. This was a tactic that clearly positioned him as this year's Best Actor winner via pure inertia, whether "Marty Supreme" ended up being any good or not. And Academy voters tend to find narratives like that hard to resist. Sorry, Wagner Moura. Better luck next time.

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Timothee Chalamet for "Marty Supreme."

BEST ACTRESS: 

If you had asked me a few months back what the safest bet for Best Picture would be, I would've gone with "Hamnet." A story of Shakespeare's wife grieving the loss of her child and how it influences her husband's creative process seemed like a good mixture of currently trendy elements and evergreen respectable topics. However, the rivalry between "Sinners" and "One Battle" has pushed "Hamnet" into third place or lower in most of the big categories... Except for Best Actress. Jessie Buckley's emotional tidal wave of a performance has been earmarked as an Oscar winner since the movie first showed up on the festival circuit. 

The only name that seems likely a possible spoiler for Buckley's success is Ross Byrne in "If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You." Among the Film Twitter, this is definitely the coolest of this year's noms and Byrne is the fan favorite to win. However, the Academy didn't seem to like the movie as much. If the tide of buzz and hype doesn't shift in the next month, I think Byrne is destined to be the runner-up. 

Emma Stone getting nominated for "Bugonia" is further proof the voters liked that one more than I expected. It also feels like residual good will from "Poor Thing's" success last year. Renate Reinsve is the newcomer, an unknown plucked out of obscurity for "Sentimental Value" and suddenly among the industry's biggest names. It's a nice story but I don't think she'll win. 

2026 has been surprisingly devoid of "villain" movies, widely disliked or panned motion pictures that inexplicably charmed Academy members. "Wicked: For Good" and "Jay Kelly" were both locked out. "The Smashing Machine" got pushed into a single nomination in Makeup and Hairstyling. Nobody seems that enthusiastic about "F1" but nobody seems to hate it either. That leaves one movie long proclaimed utterly mid somehow sneaking in a major nomination: Kate Hudson for "Sing Sung Blues," the biopic about Neil Diamond impersonators. I've already seen one person bemoaning that Hudson stole the spot that rightfully belonged to "Sorry, Baby's" Eva Victor and I'm sure there are plenty of other choices that would've rounded out this category. But the Academy's unpredictable tendency to sneak some random bullshit in is part of what makes them fun, at least for me anyway. (At least until I have to watch the bad movies.)

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Jessie Buckley for "Hamnet."

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:

One of the things about "Sinners" that so delighted and surprised me was Delroy Lindo's incredibly textured, lived-in, funny performance. It's the type of acting that makes you go "Wow, this guy is great." Despite that, nobody expected Lindo to get an Oscar nomination because he's mostly been left out of award season. Maybe the Academy realized they fucked up when they passed Lindo over for "Da 5 Bloods" a while back. Either way, I'm really happy they selected him. 

Maybe Lindo sneaked in because Best Supporting Actor doesn't have a sure-fire winner this year. The attempt to campaign Paul Mascel in "Hamnet" for this category, despite him clearly being the lead, seemed to have backfired. That didn't only leave room for Lindo but also for "One Battle After Another" to take up two slots. Personally, between Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn, I probably would've nominated the latter. 

Who does that leave to win? Even the people who didn't like Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" that much seemed to praise Jacob Elordi's take on the creature. I liked him too and, obviously, I think it would be awesome if somebody won an Oscar for playing Frankenstein's monster. However, Elordi is still young. He hasn't taken his lumps as a character actor or Hollywood star. Stellan Skarsgård, meanwhile, has been giving memorable turns in smaller productions, worked with a murderer's row of beloved auteurs, sired some famous sons, and lent his particular gravitas to big budget flicks for years now. Somehow, he's never been nominated for an Oscar in all that time. "Sentimental Value" has changed that and I expect that the common idea will be that the 74 year old industry veteran has earned a win too. 

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Stellan Skarsgård for "Sentimental Value."

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: 

The Academy, in fact, really liked "Sentimental Value." Elle Fanning's supporting turn in that one has been widely praised and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her was expected. (Kind of surprising that this is the first nomination for anyone in the Fanning Dynasty.) However, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas' nomination for the same film was a bit of a surprise. The Swedish actress was pretty much entirely unknown over here before this film so it was nice that she got noticed.

Elle still has a decent shot at winning but I think a few other names are outshining her at the moment. Wunmi Mosaku has picked up a laundry list of nominations from various critics award shows and ceremonies but not too many wins. This is a bummer, since she's the heart and soul of “Sinners,” in my opinion. There's a part of me that wonders if she'll pull off a surprise win with the Academy.

But probably not. How about another horror movie that managed to move pass the Academy's stigma against the macabre stuff to earn a nomination? My sarcastic prediction that “Weapons” would follow in “Get Out's” footsteps and win a Best Original Screenplay Oscar did not come to pass. However, Creggor's clever tale of witchcraft in a small town did sneak into Best Supporting Actress. This makes sense, as Amy Madigan's turn as Aunt Gladys was one of the few times last year when someone pointed at a character in a movie and shouted, “Oh, this is the one people are going to remember in twenty years.” Essaying such an immediately striking character certainly should be enough to give Madigan the win and there's still a slight chance of that. I still am getting the general impression that, while “Weapons” might be the kind of movie to be nominated for an Oscar, it is not the kind of movie that wins an Oscar.

Alright, so who is the probable winner in this category? Teyana Taylor in “One Battle After Another” has less screen time than any of the other principal characters in the film. However, the impression she makes on the audience is such that her shadow floats over the entire story. That's some real star power, when someone is felt even long after they have exited the story. I suspect this will lead Taylor to a win.

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Tetayna Taylor for “One Battle After Another.”

 

BEST DIRECTOR:

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are notoriously bad at recognizing generational talent in their generation. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, which is maybe why great artist are inevitably passed over for their best movies and instead get an Oscar as essentially a Lifetime Achievement Award. Call this the “Scent of a Woman” Award. Not that I am implying that “One Battle After Another” is Paul Thomas Anderson hoo-ha-ing it up. I liked the movie, plenty. However, it definitely says something that the Academy forgot to give this beloved, critically adored auteur an Oscar for “There Will Be Blood” or “Magnolia.” That enough time has passed for someone to realize that they fucked up. That a Best Director Oscar is considerably overdue for this gentleman. 

So P.T. is a lock for Best Director, right? People much more clued into these sort of things than me seem to think so. However, there's this gnawing sense in me that Ryan Coogler probably should win. I have no doubt that the heated race between these two will continue up until the night of the ceremony. I would love it if Anderson finally got his Best Director statue. However, I cannot overlook the sense that Coogler is the one that really earned it this year. 

What about the rest of the slate? Chloe Zhao won a couple years back and I don't think “Hamnet” speaks to the moment quite as specifically as “Nomadland” did. Everybody I follow on Twitter loves the Safdie brothers' previous movies. I suspect that the Academy is a bit late catching up with that reputation with these two as well. The brothers are no longer directing together but Josh did grabbed a nom for “Marty Supreme.” This leaves Joachim Trier to round out the slate. The warm reception that greeted “The Worst Person in the World” a few years back was clearly a precursor to the Academy embracing “Sentimental Value.” Trier is also, quite clearly, standing in fifth place.

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
Ryan Coogler for “Sinners.'

 

BEST WRITING:

I feel like I'm repeating myself here but 2026 truly is looking to be the battle between “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.” Notably, both films are nominated on opposing sides of the Best Screenplay categories. It seems almost inevitable that the Academy will split the difference, handing “Sinners” Original Screenplay and “Battle” Adapted Screenplay. This showdown is dominating things to the degree that the rest of the Screenplay line-up feels almost uninspired. The voters basically split the two categories between most of the Best Picture nominees. “Marty,” “Hamnet,” “Frankenstein,” “Bugnoia,” “Train Dreams,” and “Sentimental Value” all got their expected nods.

This makes the outliers almost more worthy of discussion. Aside from Ethan Hawke's notice in Best Actor, “Blue Moon” picked up an Original Screenplay notice. One of the more prominent snubs of this season has been “It Was Just an Accident” – among 2025's best reviewed motion picture – being left out of the Best Picture race. It scored a token nomination within the International Film category but, outside of that, Original Screenplay is the only place it managed to reappear. I didn't quite understand that movie, like at all, but I fully expect others to use this exclusion as further evidence of the Academy being out of touch or whatnot. 

OFFICIAL PREDICTION:
“Sinners” and “One Battle After Another.”

BEST MUSIC:

“It Was Just An Accident” is a million miles away, in terms of content and intended viewers, from another much discussed 2025 release. Critics adored the former while a mass audience went absolutely crazy for “KPop Demon Hunters.” However, the two films are united by me not really understanding either of them. I especially did not understand why so many have found the songs in “KPop Demon Hunters” so infectious. They all sounded equally overproduced to me! “Golden” is built on overpowering bass thumps and walls of processed pop sound. This overcomes breathy and soaring vocals that scan to me as more mumbled than distinct and generic lyrics about believing in yourself and realizing your own potential, when you can actually hear or understand what is being sung at all. It's kind of catchy, the same way the flu is, because it's been expertly engineered and designed to hit all the right rises and falls that burrow into your ear. Pop music like this is, to use a Twitter meme, all hype moments and aura and zero substance to my ears. However, “Golden” is a massive crossover hit, the likes of which we haven't seen since at least “We Don't Talk About Bruno.” The Academy fucked up real bad with that one but I don't expect that to be the case here. “Golden” will win Best Original Song because it must. The forces of cultural inertia are simply too powerful to resist. 

That “Golden” is definitely going to win is dispiriting for another reason. Last year, Diane Warren received an honorary Oscar. I had hoped this would bring an end to the running gag of nominating her in the Best Original Song category – for whatever random-ass movie she made a song for that year – but never giving her an actual win. Instead, someone made a whole documentary about Warren. Of course, she wrote a new song for it and, of course, it had to be nominated. “Dear Me,” like so many of Warren's composition, is fine. There's a pretty piano melody in there, under the crushing pop mixing. Kesha's vocals are alright, the lyrics of self-realization and empathy are okay. Not a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Better next year, Diane?

Speaking of random-ass movies! It simply would not be a proper Oscar nomination line-up if some movie not a single soul had heard of before didn't sneak in somewhere. This year's mystery pick was “Viva Verdi!,' a documentary about opera singers that had about forty views on Letterboxd before the nominations were announced. “Sweet Dreams of Joy” is the song. Opera is not typically my genre but this is pretty. Simple but immediately striking piano keys are combined with the kind of singing that impressively dances up and down the musical scale, before the expected inspiring strings join in. Hey, that's nice.

The respected rock poet contributing to the Best Song slate this year is Nick Cave, who performs the title song for “Train Dreams.” Cave's grumbling singing and elaborately twisting words – this is a song about seeing weird shit on the frontier – have almost reached the level of self-parody by now. But I like this kind of bullshit so I can get plenty out of the song. Bryce Dessner's backing music builds on this nicely. 

“I Lied to You” from “Sinners” contributed to probably the coolest moment in what is one of last year's coolest movies. I'm too much of a white boy to have much insight into the nuances of the blues but the guitar picking, soulful singing, and jangly piano keys sound cool as hell to me. That's before “I Lied to You” manages to synthasize about a dozen different styles of soul music from across the last fifty years, turning the song into a concussive history lesson on the evolution of blues' influence. As among 2025's most striking musical moments, it should win Best Original Song but I don't think HUNTRX can be defeated. 

I expect “Sinners'” loss in Best Song will be vindicated by Ludwig Göransson's soundtrack winning Best Original Score. The mixture of traditional blues and folk music with harder rock guitar, bursts of action movie energy, and spiritual choirs is clearly the stand-out among the nominees in this category. Jonny Greenwood's “One Battle After Another” score is a nice blend of sparser sounds, lusher orchestration, and some quirkier intrigue here and there that add a lot of texture. 

Alexandre Desplat's score for “Frankenstein” certainly sounds like what you would expect from a grand, costume drama adaptation of a classic work of horror literature and it's good at it. But I wish it embraced those bolder, more gothic sounds more often. Max Richter's “Hamnet” score is built on waves of emotional strings that swell and swell and suits a film about interior lives and heavy emotions. It's a bit too minimalist to be listen to on its own though. I like Jerskin Fendrix's “Bugonia” score when it builds to grander themes or delves into some electronic weirdness, not so much when it focuses on brooding dissonance or slowly simmering moods of anxiety. 

 

OTHER FILM CATEGORIES:

I do like that the Academy has not stuck International Features entirely to their own category these days. On one hand, it is definitely nice that Academy voters are no longer satisfied to seclude a film to the International Features category simply because it is in another language. Obviously, "Sentimental Value" – the probable winner – and "The Secret Agent" both managed to break out in big ways while "It Was Just An Accident" and "Sirat" at least secured one other nomination. However, the tendency to simply elect the same dozen films in as many categories as possible has ended up limiting International Features a little. If this award is designed to bring attention to other films made outside of the U.S., it has backfired a little if three or four slots are taken up by movies people obviously already know about. "The Voice of Hind Rajab," from Tunisia, is the sole nominee in this category that didn't branch out into any other area. Considering the International Feature line-up is still limited to whatever the other countries around the world submit, this means fewer international movies are going to get the Academy spotlight. 

Animation, on the other hand, is still largely corralled into its own ghetto. Disney and Pixar ate up two slots in Best Animated Feature with "Zootopia 2" and "Elio." While the former is currently the highest grossing animated movie in history, I again expect the pop culture phenomenon of "KPop Demon Hunters" to win. It is nice that two smaller films, "Little Amelie" and "Arco," managed to sneak in. Even if AMPAS members refuse to recognize animation across the board.

I've fallen into a bad habit of not knowing most of the nominees for Best Documentary Feature. That's because streamers like Netflix and Paramount+ have made themselves the home for a lot of buzzy docs. On one hand, that's good because it gives films that probably wouldn't have a wider audience more viewership. On the other hand, you're still not likely to see these docs advertised on the front page of the application. Meaning you won't know they are there unless you already have Heard of them. The only documentaries I see on the top page of my streaming apps are trashy, true crime shit. Excuse me if I tend to filter out streaming exclusives as worthy of less attention. Anyway, the only docs I've heard any buzz about is "The Perfect Neighbor." Does that mean it will win? I don't know.

 

MISCELLANEOUS:

One of my favorite movies from last year was "The Ugly Stepsister," an extremely gruesome and beautifully made Norwegian film that put a body horror spin on the old "Cinderella" story. It was announced a while back that the movie was on the Academy shortlist for Best Costumes and Make-Up and Hairstyling, which surprised me. Shudder exclusives do not typically catch the Academy's eyes. Well, the film was passed over for Costumes. Voters had to make room for "Avatar: Fire and Ash" there, raising questions about whether computer generated costumes count. However, "The Ugly Stepsister" did receive a nod in Best Makeup. It's not as funny as some grisly gore-fest getting that Oscar gold but this one is still pretty gross, so I'm satisfied. Makeup was actually kind of an unpredictable lineup this year. "Frankenstein" – probably gonna win – and "Sinners" were safe assumptions but this is the first I've heard of Japanese Kabuki drama "Kokuho." The Rock's stab at being taken seriously as an actor, "The Smashing Machine," failed to get noticed in any other category but this one. Hopefully Dwayne's mountains of money will comfort him. 

This year also saw the inclusion of the first new category in something like fifty years. It wasn't the much teased Best Stunts category, which still hasn't quite made the cut. Instead, we know have Best Casting to consider. Does this mean hardworking casting directors for otherwise overlooked motion pictures got nominated? Lol no, the Academy just nominated the same five movies here as they did everywhere else. That's starting to become a real problem around these parts. "Frankenstein" is actually the front runner in several technical categories, like Costumes and Production Design. Makes this old monster kid feel proud. (The movie also earned a Cinematography nod, despite how many people I saw online saying the film looked too dark or flat. Who is more full of shit, Film Twitter agitators or Academy members?) "Avatar," of course, is expected to win Visual Effects. However, that category did contain a few surprises. Remember when Paul Greengrass was still a big deal? He made some disaster movie called "The Lost Bus" this year that completely slipped pass my radar but the Visual Effects arm of the Academy must have been impressed by it. Another surprise was "Jurassic World Rebirth" getting a nomination here. This is somehow the first time any entry into the much loathed "Jurassic World" sub-series has gotten an Oscar nomination. I mean, say what you will about those movies but the digital effects in them are always fantastic. I would say "Rebirth's" effects team genuinely does deserve the notice here. But maybe I'm dinosaur bias.

 

 

Realizing that having a host that actually likes movies and enjoys doing bits about them worked out nicely, the Academy has decided to invite Conan O'Brien back to host this year. He was delightful so I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward to a whole month of movie watching now. 

Does the Academy Fear Horror?

When I heard the nominations for the 2026 Academy Awards being announced earlier this year, one main thought occurred to me. Wow, this has been a very good year for horror movies. A bloody vampire film leads the field with sixteen nominations. A new version of “Frankenstein” scored 9 nods, including for Best Picture. The most memorable horror villain of the past year is now a Best Supporting Actress nominee. A really gross Norwegian flick sneaked into the Best Makeup category. Hell, with this perspective in mind, a movie as weird, twisted, and violent as “Bugonia” arguable classifies as well. Everyone says the Academy doesn't like horror and it's a point of continued irritation for a big monster fan like myself. Is this changing?

That prompts another question: Has it ever been true? Historically speaking, has the Academy regularly shown a bias against the genre? Well, what do you define as a horror movie? Is “Gaslight” a horror movie? Would you categorize science fiction films with strong degrees of peril, such as “Jurassic Park” or “Terminator 2,” as intending to horrify the audience and not merely thrill them? When there's significant bodily mutation in a motion picture, such as “RoboCop” or “Men in Black,” you would expect people to be horrified by that. What do you do with films about the making of horror films, such as “Gods and Monsters” or “Ed Wood?” Do those count? What about comedies with gruesome monsters or grisly ghost in them, your “Ghostbusters” and “Beetlejuices?” Does Anton Chigurh being an unstoppable, seemingly mythic killer push the Best Picture winner into the disreputable classification of horror?

Usually according to the critics and press agents that write about the Oscars, none of them count. They are “psychological thrillers.” A film where Anthony Hopkins eats a guy's face transcends the icky label that defines near-pornographic trash like “Friday the 13th,” naturally. A giant shark eating people or a humanoid fish creature with claws and fangs are enough to classify some pictures as horror but not, if you listen to some folks, “Jaws” or “The Shape of Water.” That's been the old line for years and years. I had hoped, such a promising Fangoria-friendly nomination slate, would show that these attitudes have changed. But I've already seen one prominent publication referring to “Sinners” as a “supernatural thriller,” so I guess not.

Nevertheless, despite the tendency of Academy voters to not want to acknowledge even the horror films they like as being such, facts don't lie. Let us look at the brass tacks numbers to determine whether it is true that the Academy doesn't like horror movies. Across the entire history of the Academy Awards, roughly 5240 movies that have been nominated. Pulling from that list, I managed to dig up about 165 or so nominees that fall within the boundaries of the horror genre or are, at least, horror adjacent. The first of which was 1931's “Svengali,” nominated for its cinematography and art direction. All together, 165 out of 5240 adds up to 3.13%. Compared that to the most respectable of genres, the drama, which ranks at 51.09%. 2677 or so movies. The comedy, also said to be rarely recognized by the Academy, makes up 25.21 percent of the entire body of nominations. 

 

Of the genres of motion picture recognized by the Letterboxd algorithm, only two rank lower in representation among the Academy: At the bottom is the TV movie, with 0.26%. Yes, despite made-for-television programming traditionally residing outside the AMPAS' area of consideration, about 14 of them have still received nominations. The next least represented genre by percentage truly surprised me: At 2.67% (a measly 140 titles) is the western. You're telling me the most populist style of filmmaking for the first fifty or so decades of filmmaking has gotten fewer overall Oscar nominations than the disreputable movies with the zombies and hacked-up teenagers in them? One can presumably attribute this to westerns being made a lot less frequently in the modern age than they once more. 

If you do a little more math, the real difference makes itself apparent. Out of the 140 westerns to be nominated for an Oscar, 71 have won an award. Compare that to the horror genre's slate of nominees, even when casting a wide net as I have done, of 164 nominees producing only 46 winners. The most obvious disparity of all is this: Four Westerns have won best picture, assuming you count “No Country for Old Men” as a western. (The others are 1931's “Cimarron,” “Dances with Wolves,” and “Unforgiven.) While the only horror movie to ever achieve that honor is “The Silence of the Lambs.” Which, famously, was seemingly re-categorized as a “thriller” the minute it became one of the year's best reviewed movies. 

 

Yes, the question of why horror flicks get less recognition while the western gets more, despite having similar sample sizes, is one of respectability. The western is Americana, rooted in our country's collective mythology and testament to the ideas the nation was built on. Horror is about uglier emotions, of fear and disgust and dread. Not so glamorous, ya know? Once you start looking at the facts through this lens, the Academy's occasional acknowledgment of genre cinema can't help but seem begrudging. After all, the first time a horror movie won an Oscar was in 1932, when Fredric March won Best Actor for “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...” An award he had to share with Wallace Beery in “The Champ,” an actor of such limited range that it would later become a joke in “Barton Fink.” I know that's surely only a coincidence but... Dang, sticks in your teeth, ya know? 

I suppose this is an inevitable sign of how we nerdy nerds into fantastical stories are ultimately insecure about our love for this kind of storytelling. Who gives a shit if horror movies don't win Oscars? Why would a Monster-Mania convention goer spare a minute's thought on the pretentious business of industry award show hypocrisy? But we want our bullshit to be taken as seriously as everyone else's bullshit! It's a contradiction I have no good answer for. Everyone knows the Oscars don't actually matter. Horror will still be a beloved and obsessed over style of storytelling fifty years from now, when “CODA” and “Green Book” have become otherwise forgotten. 

I don't think the high chance of “Sinners” winning Best Picture this year represents any actual shift in the Academy's tastes, not any more than “Get Out” winning Best Original Screenplay nine years ago or “The Substance” cracking the top categories last year. The truth is that American taste-makers and the industry they surround themselves with have this difficult to dismiss fixation on realism. Anything that veers away from that commitment to reality and into the dream-like or otherworldly is more likely to be dismissed. Even within the medium of film, an inherently dream-like and otherworldly experience. Nevertheless, I'll continue to be irked by it and complain about it at length, because this is what I've chosen to do with my life. 

Film Preview 2026

 

Going back and re-reading my opening paragraphs for my list of most anticipated new releases of the in-coming year, a ritual I've been doing for fifteen years now, something has occurred to me: The beginning of a new year makes me sad. I've gotten into the habit of starting these blog posts, which are basically me starting my year, by admitting that the previous year was an unending gauntlet of hellish atrocity and that there's little reason to expect the next year to be different. This is, I suppose, true on a technical level and reflective of the enormity of human experience. It also, I guess, shows that I'm a pessimistic grump.
 

The truth is, I think, this time of year always makes me grouchy because I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do for the next twelve months. January opening and a year starting anew reveals to me a horrible truth: That I have to make my own fun, that things aren't going to merely happen, that I must organize my desires into some sort of logical system in order to properly engage with and enjoy them. That I can't merely lay in bed in with my wife all day, which is probably the only thing I actually want to do anymore. Are other people like this or only human beings with brain chemistry as fucked-up as mine? 

The next paragraph in these Film Previews usually goes with me saying movies are one of the good things to look forward to, to get me over the hideous hump of presumably living for another 365 days. (Something that is never truly a certainty, we mustn't forget.) Despite the fact that I'm late into my thirties now and that effervescent joy for New Stuff Coming Out has faded a lot, I somehow still manage to assemble a list of stuff I'm curious to see in the next year. Curiosity, in fact, seems to have replaced excitement more as my primary motivating emotion these days, which I suppose is evidence of getting old. Anyway, all of this is to say that here's my Top Ten Most Anticipated Films of 2026 and then a whole bunch more movies supposedly coming out in 2026 that I felt the need to write about:

 

My Top Ten Most Anticipated Films of 2026:

 

 

1. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Jane Schoenbrun's previous two features, “We Are All Going to the World's Fair” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” were beguiling and engrossing films about spending too much time on the internet and spending too much time watching television. (Among, ya know, other things.) Both struck me as two of the more observant and sympathetic films about the personal anxieties of our time. From the sounds of it, their next movie is going to be a capper of sorts on this quasi-trilogy by being about spending too much time thinking about movies. “I  Saw the TV Glow” proved that Schoenbrun isn't only good at doing a pastiche of the genre's past but able to put their own mark on it at the same time. "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" – hell of a title too – will see the filmmaker trying their hand at the eighties slasher movie. Now, the slasher subgenre is no stranger to meta reflection. You could say it has way too much of that these days, actually. However, I'm confident that Schoenbrun will bring something new to it. The plot synopsis, about a queer director trying to remake her favorite slasher movie and lure the original's reclusive star out of retirement, already suggest a concept deeper than “Hell of a Summer” or what have you. Also, it sounds like Gillian Anderson is playing that former final girl, proving once again that Schoenbrun is especially good at plucking familiar faces from our collective pop culture past and putting them in a new context. MUBI is producing this one, once again showing the streaming company's desire to make themselves into a proper indie powerhouse, assuming they don't go out of business before actually releasing this. 

 

2. The Odyssey

I've had my ups-and-downs with Christopher Nolan over the years. Like all film bros of my age, “Memento” blew teenage me's mind. “The Prestige” and “Inception” certainly continued to prove that Nolan is very good at the kind of meticulously constructed thrillers with twisting screenplays. The legacy of his “Batman” trilogy is harder to confirm as a net positive. (By which I mean I have been nothing but justified in my position as a day-one “Dark Knight” hater.) And “Tenet,” uh, definitely didn't work for me. “Oppenheimer” rocked though. Nolan's follow-up to that Best Picture winner is exactly the kind of mega-budgeted, highly ambitious epic filmmakers are supposed to make after taking home a bunch of Oscars. 

Now, the idea of the guy who thoroughly grounded and de-mystified Batman taking on Greek mythology is not immediately appealing. The last twenty years has had its share of Greco Roman epics that approach the material in a quote-unquote “realistic” – or at least grim and gritty – fashion. And most of them were boring as fuck. The teaser trailer for “The Odyssey” doesn't exactly do much to dispel the notion it'll be along similar lines. Like, is this going to be a de-constructed and post-modern take on the myths? Were the Cyclops is a normal sized guy with one eye and Scylla is merely a rocky coastline or some shit? However, a quote from Nolan that marks Ray Harryhausen's “Jason and the Argonauts” and “Clash of the Titans” as primary inspirations for this give me hopes it'll be a proper fantasy epic with monsters and gods in it. If nothing else, the A-list cast certainly matches the lofty aspirations apparent in this director taking on this material. Charlize Theron as Circe is some good casting. What wacky vocal inflection will Robert Pattison put on as the story's primary antagonist? I am intrigued, if nothing else. 

 

 

3. Werwulf

Most of this list is going to be horror movies. I hope that's okay. Robert Eggers has attracted some haters, largely from people who seem to find the vibes of his work unattractive for whatever reason. I am not among them. Eggers' “Nosferatu” confirmed for me that this guy's take on gothic horror – full of extremely specific historical details, brooding atmosphere, academic subtext, subtle but thunderous undercurrents of dark comedy, and unafraid to be monster movies – is very much my kind of thing. After his takes on the witch and the vampire, he's continuing to run through the classic Halloween monster archetypes by doing a werewolf movie. Or, rather, a “Werwulf” movie. In a move that will surely do nothing to dissuade those who find him insufferable, “Werwulf” will supposedly be spoken in Middle English accurate to its 13th century setting. This presumably means the film will be a deep exploration of folkloric werewolf traditions, which is probably what the lycanthrope movie needs after so many attempts to modernize it. Will Willem Dafoe rant and scream about something? God, I hope so. 

 

4. Send Help

Sam Raimi has only directed three movies in the last fifteen years and that, to me, is a crime. Raimi's big return to the screen being a sequel to a less memorable Marvel Cinematic Universe entry inevitably left some cold. To me, “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” showed that Sam could still transport some of that “Evil Dead” energy into a big studio product. “Send Help,” meanwhile, sees the director making a much more modestly budgeted horror-comedy. The premise of “Send Help,” of a put-upon office worker getting stranded on a dessert island with her sexist pig boss, is nothing mindbogglingly original. Like a cheap thriller version of “Triangle of Sadness?” (A movie I liked, by the way, and whose director has another arch satire of the rich and idle coming this year.) The trailer is also not incredibly impressive either. But am I going to turn my nose up at a new Sam Raimi horror movie and act like I'm not incredibly hyped for this? Of course not. You'll have to excuse me for assuming this will actually be awesome. I'll find out soon enough, as “Send Help” lands in theaters at the end of this month.

 

5. Trauma or Monsters All

While probably better known for being a reliable character actor and prolific producer, to me, Larry Fessenden will always be one of the pioneers of independent horror filmmaking in the modern age. I am especially a big fan of his moody, character-driven, environmentally focused re-inventions of the classic monsters. “Habit” was his vampire movie, “Depraved” was his Frankenstein story, and 2024's “Blackout” saw him approaching the werewolf premise. In the lead-up to that last one's release, Larry let it slip that he wanted to do an old school style “monster rally,” in the Universal tradition of “House of Frankenstein” and “House of Dracula.” I thought he was only being half-serious about that. Surely, a crossover event between three obscure movies, based on even older movies from eighty years ago, would have limited commercial appeal? “Blackout” ending with a cameo from his Frankensteinian character was simply a partially sarcastic nod towards the idea, I presumed.

Nope, turns out, he was one hundred percent serious. Yes, “Trauma” – the one thing every horror movie is about these days – is the least interesting title Fessenden could've picked for this. It does fit the two-syllable, one word naming convention of this now-unified set of movies. “Monsters All,” the superior alternate title, will see the director reprising his vampire role from “Habit” despite having noticeably aged thirty years. This already marks what will surely be a idiosyncratic take on familiar characters from a talent known for doing just that. That's what I like about Fessenden's monster movies: They aren't simply remixing of what has come before but beloved concepts being filtered through a very distinctive, personal sensibility because these characters mean something to the storyteller. While the director has claimed this will likely be his last riff on the old monsters, maybe it'll become an unexpected hit and he'll throw Pegg and Frost or Garfunkel and Oates into the next one. 

 

 

6. Victorian Psycho

Zachary Wigon's “Sanctuary” was one of my favorite films of 2023, a bold new entry onto the short list of movies that actually engage with what kink means, the interacting layers of fantasy, control, power, and consent. Wigon's follow-up nearly starred the same actress but Margaret Qualley is a very in-demand name these days. Luckily, Maika Monroe was willing to step into the starring role of “Victorian Psycho.” Based on the Virginia Feito novel of the same name, it follows the classical gothic set-up of a new governess arriving on the stately grounds of a noble family, uncovering the hypocrisy and class struggles behind such a glamorous looking home... Except, as the title promises, this new nanny is a raging psychopath with daydreams of murder. Did I mention it all climaxes on Christmas? Sounds bitchin'! It feels like Monroe has rarely gotten a chance to shine as a leading lady but this sounds like exactly the kind of meaty – literally! – role that will really showed off her skills. 

 

 

7. October

Jeremy Saulnier's “Blue Ruin” and “Green Room” remains one of the most startlingly effective one-two punches of the last twenty years, a pair of brutally violent thrillers that mine a grisly sense of inevitability out of the chaos they unleash. Saulnier slipped a little with the overly deliberate “Slow the Dark” but got a lot of his mojo back with “Rebel Ridge.” While he refuses to direct a third movie with a color in the title, Saulnier's next movie has an enticing set-up. This is a fugitive on-the-run story set, as the title hints, on Halloween night. Does that mean the movie will lean more into horror? I'm not sure it matters because the mere presence of some late autumnal, spooky ambiance is enough to make a delighted shiver run up my spine. (IMDb does describe the film as about “a terrifying chain of events” and an “action-packed horror thriller,” so here's hoping.”) Saulnier's first movie was “Murder Party,” also a Halloween set flick, so we know his appreciation for the holiday is sincere. His “Blue Ruin” leading man Macon Blair is nowhere to be seen – his director a follow-up to his “Toxic Avenger” entitled, yes, “The Shitheads” – but Imogen Poots from “Green Room” is back. And I like to say the name "Imogen Poots." 
 

 

 

8. The Land of Nod

Kyle Edward Ball's “Skinamarink” was, to say the least, one of the more divisive horror hits of the last few years. For those of us who dug it, the film was a striking and unsettling dive into the particular mood of being a child in the grips of an unending nightmare. For those who didn't jive with it, “Skinamarink” was 90 minutes of blurry footage of a TV in a dark room or the corner of a bedroom. I loved the film but a question was left hanging in the air: Was this the arrival of a fresh new talent in the genre or is this director a one-trick pony with no further ideas up his sleeve? Ball's follow-up, “The Land of Nod,” will presumably give us our answer. The plot synopsis is mysterious, only telling us that the film is about a far-north Canadian neighborhood cut off from the world by a snowstorm. The title is a Biblical reference that also invokes sleeping, which means surely means something. That certainly suggest more of the eerie isolation of Ball's debut. The cast list also includes a character entitled “Closet Figure,” suggesting the same sort of childhood fears his last film tapped into. Still, “Skinamarink” impressed me enough that I'm very intrigued about what a second feature length movie from the guy who made that will look like.  

 

9. Untitled Jesse Eisenberg Musical-Comedy

Whether the musical is a commercially viable genre or not remains hotly debated among critics, fans, and industry insiders. Every time a singing-and-dancing hit comes along, there's seemingly another high profile attempt to revive the concept that doesn't connect with audiences. Despite that schism, musicals remain beloved by filmmakers themselves. This year sees David Lowery's long-delayed “Mother Mary” finally reaching audiences while Trey Parker fuses his typically inflammatory satire with Kendrick Lamar's rap beats in “Whitney Springs.” Both of those interest me but I'm most intrigued by a yet untitled film from Jesse Eisenberg. In addition to carving out a solid niche for himself as a quirky leading man, “A Real Pain” proved that Eisenberg has some real directorial chops too. An actor-turned-filmmaker going for such a big swing with his follow-up to a critical break-through definitely catches my attention. The film is set within the world of small town theater and features a loaded cast headlined by Paul Giamatti, Julianne Moore, and Bernadette Peters. Very intrigued by this one. 

 

10. Ancient History

There are different categories of being a fan of someone. Everybody who is into movies has actors that they like, performers they are fans of, because of their talent or unique choices in projects or what have you. On the other hand, there are stars you are a fan of simply because you find them enchanting. That's me and Sophia Lillis, an actress I will watch in anything because she's, I dunno, like, really pretty, you guys. Have you seen her in interviews, man? She's like an actual fairy princess has graced us measly humans with her delightful presence. It has certainly been a minute since I've had a genuine crush like this on a movie star. It's okay, my wife knows about this and approves. That makes it not creepy, I promise.

Sophia actually had a very good 2025 but mostly within the realm of television, with choice supporting roles in a prestige mini-series and Tim Robinson's super weird conspiracy comedy. On the movie front was, uh, a Dave Bautista action movie. Hopefully her 2026 year-in-cinema will be brighter. She's got an apparent lead role in Annie Baker's new movie, “Ancient History.” There's no details on the plot yet. Baker is best known for her slice-of-life stage plays. Her previous feature, “Janet Planet,” was one of those indie flicks that seemed to push most of its actually interesting themes and ideas into the realm of suggestion, playing out mostly as a movie were not a whole lot of stuff actually happens. But this one has Sophia in it, so it has to be good, right? I hope so because I'm definitely going to watch it. Either way, maybe my girl having a lead role in an A24 flick will finally get her some real critical recognition. 


Other Anticipated Movies:

 

The Adventures of Cliff Booth

Having been a very high profile director for many years, David Fincher has been attached to a number of projects over the years that ultimately never came to fruition. Some of these unrealized films seem like a good match for Fincher's style, like an adaptation of a graphic novel about the Cleveland Torso Murders or a David Ayers script about WWII submarine operators. Others sound kind of insane on their face. Such as the “Seven” and “Fight Club” director making a big budget Captain Nemo movie for Disney or a sequel to “World War Z.” The idea of Fincher taking the reins of a prequel/sequel to Tarantino's “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” made for Netflix sounds like one of those crazier “what if?” projects. Somehow, it's actually happening though. This is, of course, because Fincher is good buddies with Brad Pitt. Still, the idea of Tarantino writing a sequel to that movie, of all his films, and handing it off to another nineties wunderkind with a distinctive style all his own is an interesting concept to think about. Despite the validity of this entire project being kind of suspect. 

 

Alpha Gang

Two years ago, David and Nathan Zellner managed to cast some high-profile actors – Riley Keough and the aforementioned Jesse Eisenberg – in a movie where they were completely obscured by elaborate Bigfoot make-ups and spent nearly the entire runtime scratching, sniffing, farting, fucking, puking, pissing, and shitting. In other words, “Sasquatch Sunset” was a glorious prank that couldn't quite sustain itself as an actual movie. The Zellners' next project sounds along similar lines. “Alpha Gang” sees very famous and beloved performers like Cate Blanchett, Chris Pine, and Lea Seydoux cast as aliens who arrive on Earth with the intention of destroying mankind but instead fall victim to human emotions. Will these stars be unrecognizable under elaborate alien make-ups? Will they participate in any lower functions on-screen, as they discover the flaws of their human bodies? A part of me is kind of hoping they will, simply because it'll be funny to say that motion picture exist, even if it's not great.

Evil Dead Burn

What is the most anticipated horror sequel of 2026? It's probably ”The Strangers: Chapter 3” “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” the second part of Danny Boyle's surprisingly excellent latest entry in his non-zombie epic. If you have bad taste, it might be “Scream 7,” an unnecessary follow-up unforgettably tangled in the really shitty behind-the-scenes details of its origin. (And if your taste is bad in a different way, maybe it's “Scary Movie 6.”) The directorial team who made the last two “Scream” flicks instead jumped over to sequelize their first solo hit. At least “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” didn't fire its lead actress for not being okay with genocide and also had the balls to do the obvious subtitle. If I'm being honest, I'm probably most excited for “Evil Dead Burn.” “Evil Dead Rise” showed that new ideas can be properly executed within this series while still featuring the crazy camera work and insane gore fans want. The director of “Burn” previously made very good French spider flick “Infested,” giving me hope for this one. If I'm being sarcastic, my answer is “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence.” Yes, they made a new “Killer Tomatoes” movie! And 96 year old John Astin is back for it! My god, please tell me F.T. will be there too. 

 

 

The Ascent

What I call the “confined space thriller” continues to be a frequent enough appearance in theaters and on streaming services. I bet people keep making movies with the set-up of “some people get trapped in a small place” because they are, by their very nature, fairly cheap to make. Probably the most notable of this year's claustrophobic shockers is “The Ascent,” in which some white people get trapped in the basket of a hot air balloon above some sharks. That's largely because it's Adam Green's first feature film in almost a decade, since 2017's “Victor Crowley.” Green has made a couple of movies I've liked, including a confined space thriller set on a ski lift, so maybe this one will be less silly than it sounds. 

However, the doofier the set-up for one of these is the more the campy bullshit center of my brain is activated. Which is why I'm amused by “Zipline,” in which white people get stuck on a zipline also above some sharks, and “Flush.” The latter is probably the apotheosis of this mini-genre, as it confines the protagonist – or their head anyway – to a toilet bowl for most of the film. How much more confined can you get than that? At least until someone allows me to make my cinematic masterpiece, “Doggie Door of Doom” 

 

Avengers: Doomsday and Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Nobody is debating anymore over whether the Superhero Bubble has burst or not. Now the debate is over how burst exactly it is. Disney is still making Marvel movies but "Thunderbolts*" and "Fantastic Four: First Steps," even with relatively positive reactions from audiences and fans, are not making the kind of money they would have pre-pandemic. The desperation on the studio's behalf is starting to get noticeable. "Avengers: Doomsday" is seeing the company backtracking on retiring Chris Evans as Captain America, despite the satisfying conclusion he received. Iron Man is still dead but Robert Downey Jr. is back, as Doctor Doom now. Which does not seem like a great match of actor and character, not to mention that it annoyingly downplays his role as Reed Richards' arc rival and instead makes him more of an Avengers enemy. Or, depressingly, a multi-versal variant of Tony Stark. While people seem increasingly less enthused about multiverse shenanigans, the company is still betting big on it. "Doomsday" is bringing back the X-Men from the 2000s, Fox produced films. This marks what feels like the fourth or fifth grand finale we've gotten for that cast and their universe. All of these movies feel like the Marvel Cinematic Universe waving familiar keys before an increasingly bored audience of babies. See, James Marsden as Cyclops is wearing the Jim Lee costume! Please give us two billion dollars. 

The "Spider-Man" brand is still ostensibly a profitable, popular one. "Brand New Day" is bringing in "Shang-Chi's" Destin Daniel Cretton to direct. I like that guy and hopefully he can re-ground a franchise that has gotten a little too wrapped up in crossover event synergy. I say that as if Bruce Banner and the Punisher and Daredevil and probably a brand new Jean Grey aren't going to be in this movie. Once again, I am begging to see a movie where Peter Parker is simply Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man and not at the center of cosmic upheaval. At least this sequel will finally answer my pleas of "Please, just let Spidey punch the Scorpion already."

 

Supergirl and Clayface

Warner Brothers' reaction to on-going superhero fatigue was to – in very typical DC Comics fashion – reboot their entire universe. And I liked last year's "Superman," enjoying James Gunn's wackier and more hopeful take. The movie made money but didn't break records, which seems to line up with the studio's more cautious approach to expanding its new cinematic universe. This year, they've only got two movies on the docket, very different in approach. The first is "Supergirl," a spin-off to their previous effort. Milly Alcock's dysfunctional take on the heroine seems like an interesting interpretation. "I, Tonya's" Craig Gillespie seems like a decent match to the material. That first trailer really did feel like reheated "Guardians of the Galaxy" though, doing little to address concerns that James Gunn's style is as single-minded as Zack Snyder's. 

Perhaps a "Clayface" movie, described as an R-rated body horror flick, will be more diverse in tone. That movie probably started as the last remnant of a post-"Joker" plan to build more movies around Batman villains but I think doing "The Substance" with Bruce Wayne's gloopiest adversary isn't without potential. The director previously made the lame remakes of "The Woman in Black" and "See No Evil" so I'm still keeping my expectations measured. I do think trying a couple different things and seeing how they go is a better approach than spamming audiences with one mega-budget blockbuster after another. 

The Bride! and Lee Cronin's The Mummy
 

Blumhouse's remakes of Universal's classic gallery of monsters hasn't produced both a commercial and critical success since 2020's “The Invisible Man” but they are still trying. Lee Cronin is doing a riff on “The Mummy” next. The recently released teaser trailer dismisses with images of shambling, bandaged corpses in favor of lots of mysterious, ominous imagery. It feels like a lot of other folk horror movies that have come and gone in recent years. This is, if nothing else, a different take on the cinematic monster than we've previously seen. The director has described it as “Seven” meets “Poltergeist” while rumors recently circulated that the film is so disconnected from past “Mummy” movies that Blumhouse was considering re-titling it. What we know of the premise entails a vanished daughter who mysteriously re-emerges out of the dessert, bringing with her an ancient evil that ruins her otherwise overjoyed family's good mood. Which also, I must note, sounds like a way to explore familial shame and generational trauma and a whole bunch of “elevated” ideas that the genre has not been missing in the last decade. The premise of an ancient, mummified Egyptian corpse is elastic enough to tell any sort of story. However, I find myself wondering if Blumhouse's latest attempts to modernize the Universal monster canon can genuinely update the material for modern sensibilities while maintaining a meaningful connection to what made these stories resonate in the first place. Cronin's “Evil Dead Rise” blew my socks off, so perhaps all of this is more promising than it seems. 

The other major studio release in this vein is Maggie Gyllenhaal's emphatically punctuated “The Bride!” That one seems to slot Christian Bale as the Frankenstein monster and Jessie Buckley as his mate into a Bonnie and Clyde type crime spree. It looks bold, if nothing else. “The Bride!” should not be confused with “Brides,” which seems to slot the brides of Dracula into swinging, 1960s Rome. That one is being directed by Chloe Okuno, who previously made the interesting “Watcher” and one of my favorite “V/H/S” segments. If your taste in women-directed gothic horror skews more towards Hammer than Universal, Anna Biller's “The Face of Horror” and Grace Glowicki's “Dead Lover” seem to be modern day tributes to that gorier, more vividly colored era of monster mayhem.

 

A Blind Bargain

Crispin Glover's dad, nearly as beloved and eccentric a character actor as his son, died last year. That was sad. It also seems to have prompted the actor to finish the weirdo, black-and-white art film they made together, after years of on-and-off production. “No! You're Wrong, or: Spooky Action at a  Distance” is not coming to any multiplexes, as Glover is taking it on tour with his other freaky home-made curios. Otherwise, Crispin seems to be working through his grief. He has a historical drama about Iowa's "beer mafia," a comedy seemingly set in the softcore smut industry, and a starring turn as a creepypasta villain lined up. 

The most intriguing of Glover's upcoming work to me, and possibly nobody else, is "A Blind Bargain." If you know your silent movie history, you'll recognize that title as belonging to a notoriously lost 1922 Lon Chaney film. It has been described as one of the Man of a Thousand Faces' few "true" horror movies, saw him playing both a mad scientist and his ape man creation, and was heavily censored when new. Remaking a movie that nobody has seen in a century is certainly a better idea than remaking some well known classic, in my opinion. Director Paul Bunnell previously made clever ghost short "The Visitant" all the way back in 1981 and has been involved in a few classic horror pastiches over the years, suggesting he loves this kind of stuff. The setting for the story has been shifted up to the seventies, meaning Crispin grew a big goofy mustache in the doctor role, and I like that. 

Disclosure Day

An air of mystery has surrounded Steven Spielberg's next movie. All we've known about it for a while was who starred in it, that the script was by David Koepp, and that it was about UFOs. Even what was assumed to be the title for a while, “The Dish,” was actually people mistaking the name of a website reporting on the film for the as-yet-unrevealed title. Well, now we know that the movie is called “Disclosure Day” and that Josh O'Conner is playing a “whistleblower” of some sort, suggesting this is Spielberg approaching the alien topic from a more conspiratorial angle. Beyond that, we still don't know much, the marketing thus far leaning into the intrigue around this one. “Disclosure Day” has a plum July release date, so we can assume this is the director in blockbuster mode and not personal drama mode.

 

 

A Colt is My Passport

Gareth Evans shot his last movie, “Havoc,” in 2021 and it took Netflix four years to finally get it in front of eyeballs. That must have given the action director enough time to prepare for his next shoot-em-up. That would be “A Colt is My Passport,” a remake of a 1967 Japanese neo-noir. The premise, of a hitman betrayed and pursued by his gangland connections, sounds like any number of middling action movies made in recent memory. However, the original shows a notable influence from the French New Wave, with a heavily stylized visual approach. Will Gareth's remake draw on any of that? Or will it indulge more in the director's frenetically choreographed and hard-hitting violence? I guess we'll see.

Dog of God

Last year, a low budget animated movie from Latvia, made in Blender with no celebrity voices in it – few voices at all, for that matter – won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This year, the country not best known for its film industry, much less its animation, was hoping to repeat that surprise win. Latvia submitted another animated movie, “Dog of God,” as its official International Feature selection to the Academy. Despite having an animal in its title, this one does not appear to be the crowdpleaser that “Flow” was. Instead, it's a rotoscoped folk horror film inspired by the story of Thess of Kaltenbrun, a man in 17th century Livonia put on trial for being a werewolf. An accusation he didn't deny but instead countered by claiming he was a good werewolf that fought the devil on the behalf of God's will. The Academy may not dig that kind of thing but it's right up my alley and I think “Dog of God” – a title that my brain keeps mixing up with “The Dog Stars,” Ridley Scott's next science fiction epic – looks pretty cool. Hoping to check it out soon.

 

Ebenezer

Ti West managed to escape the horror pigeon hole a bit with the success of his “X” trilogy. Indeed, his next film does seem to be a move into more respectable territory. As in it's roughly the 200th adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” a story that's been mined for film and television so often that it's very difficult to imagine a new spin on it. Given West's experience with the spooky stuff, one imagines this retelling might be moodier or creepier than most, which would hypothetically be something different. The cast has a lot of respectable names in it – Ian McKellen, Rupert Grint, Daisy Ridley, Andrea Riseborough – and you can't help but be curious to see which roles they'll be playing. Unfortunately, the name at the center of the cast, starring as Scrooge, is Johnny Depp. The fallout of Depp's personal life has been so odious that West choosing to put him in his movie makes me skeptical not only of this project but of the director in general. If it was a really interesting or innovative sounding story, maybe that would change my mind a little. Instead, it's the fuckin' “Christmas Carol” again. You're selling out for that, Ti?

Hokum and Nightborn

The folk horror revival is, inexplicably, still going strong in the indie horror scene. I'll admit, I'm more than a little tired of the tropes and conventions of this subgenre right now. That doesn't mean there aren't some interesting filmmakers doing work within in it though. “Oddity” showed that Damian Mc Carthy has a good grasp on tone, sound design, and when to deploy some freaky visuals. “Hokum” is his next one, a very Irish sounding ghost story starring Adam Scott. Mark Jenkin's “Enys Men” was more on the vaguer side but well done. His follow-up, “Rose of Nevada,” looks to exploit that concept of time travel for existential horror, always an underrated premise. Natalie Erika James slipped a bit with “Apartment 7A” and her next one, “Saccharine,” sounds like its going to make the mistake of foregrounding the subtext again. (This time, with the theme of disordered eating.) But basing a movie around the obscure ritual of ash eating is an interesting one. 

And that's why I've sat through a dozen mediocre folk horror flicks, because exploiting arcane mythology for macabre stories remains a cool idea when it actually works. So I'm going to take a gamble on “Wicker,” a darkly comedic re-imagining of the Gingerbread Man legend, in which Olivia Coleman as a stinky fish-monger makes herself a husband out of a wicker basket. Alexander Skarsgard is in the cast and one assumes that the famously hunky, somewhat vacant-faced actor is playing the title straw man. Probably the most intriguing title of this type coming this year is “Nightborn.” Hanna Bergholm's “Hatching” made great use of some very weird, practical creature effects. Her next movie is based on the age-old story of the changeling, which will hopefully present some opportunities for similarly odd puppetry. If nothing else, movies about weird, pagan folklore mean a lot more when they are coming from countries that actually have a lot of genuine, weird pagan history, such as Bergholm's Finland. 

Her Private Hell

Time comes for all “cool” directors. Social media has exacerbated the inevitable decline from the hip list for everyone, as sometimes anonymous posters can build an entire follower off the back of saying something universally adored sucks actually. I mean, look at the guy who made “Amelie,” once a film fan favorite, who is now so irrelevant that his next upcoming movie seems anticipated by exactly nobody. All of which is to say that, yes, I know that it is apparently cringe to still be interested in Nicholas Winding Refn in 2026. I can certainly understand why his edge-lord, wannabe rock star attitude could turn people off after a while. Was that Amazon series he did aggressively bad or something? Either way, Refn is back with a new one this year, that sounds like he's fully returning to “Only God Forgives” and “The Neon Demon” territory. Which happens to be my two favorites of Refn's career, so I am curious about this one.

 

Hen and Howl

Since I was a young man, I've been fascinated with how animals see the world, how they interpret things around them, how their vision of life differs from our own. I've always wanted to tell a story strictly from an animal's perspective, always stumbling with the idea cause I haven't been able to convey how a non-human mind would express observations about the world in a way that wasn't blatantly human. That's a hard nut to crack, ya know? Perhaps it is a mission statement better suited to a visual medium like cinema, where perspective and camerawork can convey ideas without using man-made words. Two different films this year are setting to assume the perspectives of two very different animals. I wasn't a fan of Gyorgy Palfi's “Taxidermia” but his next movie, “Hen,” promises to tell a story from a humble chicken's point-of-view. To quote the ever-wise Werner Herzog – who has a facts-based, weird twins drama coming this year – “Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity.” Canines, owing to their proximity to us, are animals much easier to relate to. “Howl” will tell the story of an abandoned dog bonding with a wolf cub during a rough winter. If you think that sounds heartwarming, know this one is being made by E. Elias Merhige, the guy behind arthouse horror freak-outs like “Begotten” and “Shadow of the Vampire,” so this won't be “Snow Buddies” territory. Though I'm hoping Merhige's film is going to kill fewer puppies...

 

Hexed and Hoppers

Disney released the highest grossing animated movie of all time last year, with “Zootopia 2.” I'm sure this means the studio execs believe the company's animation sector is doing just fine. I didn't think “Zootopia 2” was bad but the studio's increasing reliance on sequels is disheartening. (Look no further than the “live action” remake of “Moana,” by far the most unnecessary of this highly mercenary wave of films.) Ignoring “Toy Story 5,” the zombie-like reanimation of a story that has clearly concluded at least two times now, Disney/Pixar is thankfully trying out two non-sequels in 2026. But will they be good? “Hoppers” is also a movie about how animals perceive the world, though this one will presumably be a lot wackier than the above mentioned titles. The brain-swapping, robot beaver premise is odd enough to get my attention, if nothing else. “Hexed,” meanwhile, is about Mommy Issues hang-outs being resolved via revealed magical powers and a trip to a fantastical alternate reality. That sounds like “Encanto” and “Coco” and “Onward” and probably a few other movies, doing nothing to dissuade the notion that the House of Mouse is a bit out of fresh ideas lately. 

Ice Cream Man and The Whisper Man

How do you like your men? Quiet and mysterious or sweet, creamy, and cold? How about homicidal? James Ashcroft has been doing his part to put New Zealand back on the map for horror fans. “Coming Home in the Dark” was a real grim, intense one while “The Rule of Jenny Penn” featured the kind of flashy performances that catch critics' attention. You can tell that one nudged Ashcroft in Hollywood's direction because he's got Robert DeNiro in his next movie. Unfortunately, “The Whisper Man” has a fairly generic premise of a true crime author son digging into his detective dad's back-files to discover that a notorious serial killer had an accomplice. Sounds like kind of a John Wayne Gacy/Project Delta situation but I feel like I can already guess the end of the second act twist. Hopefully Ashcroft will make it good. 

As for the “Ice Cream Man,” that's the latest from Eli Roth. Who is either a subversive, vulgar auteur or a Zionist hack, depending on who you ask. His new film is apparently not a remake of the Clint Howard starring trash-slasher cult classic, despite a superficially similar premise. You'd think a horror buff like Eli would know better than to re-use a notable title like that. Anyway, most of the press around this one so far focuses on how fucked-up and gnarly it's going to be and on how Ari Millen in the lead role is going to be our next horror icon. (Also Snoop Dog is working on the soundtrack, for whatever that is worth.) Sounds to me like Roth saw the “Terrifier” movies and has decided to out-do Art the Clown at his own grisly, infanticidal game. This will probably be awful but “Thanksgiving” was kind of fun so perhaps Roth still has some spark left in him. 

 

Jack of Spades

The Coen brothers have been broken up for about seven years now. In that time, Ethan Coen has co-created the first two parts of a “lesbian B-movie trilogy” with his other partner, wife Tricia Cooke. The taste-makers of Film Twitter have now decided these movies, “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Honey Don't!,” are bad but I thought they weren't without their charms. Joel Coen, meanwhile, has made a very stylized “Macbeth” adaptation. This has prompted some to declare which brother is the talented one and which is the one that was simply dragged along. I prefer to say that Ethan is the goofy one and Joel is the serious one, perhaps. Joel is continuing that reputation with his next one, “Jack of Spades.” It is a Scotland-lensed, 1800s set story described as "a gothic mystery.” Obviously, I love the shadowy, spooky side of things. This was very evident on Joel's “MacBeth,” so I'm excited to see the director embrace that aesthetic further with a project that hopefully brings out more of the horrific undertones occasionally visible in the brothers' other work.

 

The Mandalorian and Grogu

What is the most anticipated “franchise” movie of 2026? I guess it's “Avengers: Doomsday,” though skepticism abounds over whether Disney can recapture that cultural moment. If you're a freak, your answer might be Takashi Miike's “Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo.” There is a part of me that is delighted that Abel Ferrara's ultra-gritty noir has unexpectedly grown into a series linked by the idea of different auteurs telling stand alone stories about different lieutenant which are bad in different cities. And speaking of Tokyo! If you're the type of nerd I am, your answer might be “Godzilla Minus Zero.” The November 6th U.S. release date was announced during the week I was writing this post. Supposedly the movie is already in post-production, meaning it's certainly possible that date will hold. I'm still kind of expecting Toho to bump it to next year but, if “Minus Zero” does come out before 2026 ends, slot it into the second position on my top ten list.

If you're a slightly different breed of nerd than me, your answer might be “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” There's no need for me, somewhat who doesn't care that much about “Star Wars” anyway, to reiterate how Disney's desire to exploit this super-valuable I.P. for its worth has done more harm than good. I did enjoy the first two seasons of “The Mandalorian” a reasonable amount. A show focused less on grand Jedi mysticism, the holy Skywalker family line, or epic warring factions that simply hangs out in the weirder corners of that universe, running with the spaghetti western and samurai film influences on the original series, was a good idea. That was a while ago, of course, and the series definitely seems to have run its course by now. Ya know, they've already slapped Baby Yoda's face on every piece of merchandise imaginable. Either way, I will concede that this is a better strategy for continuing the franchise than following up on the disastrous “Rise of Skywalker” or doing an origin story about Watto or whatever. 

 

Masters of the Universe

If we are talking about the intersecting paths of nostalgia and studios desperately exploiting familiar intellectual properties in hopes of making an on-going franchise, the last thirty years of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” are a good case study. Mattel has been trying to resurrect a once blockbuster toy and cartoon empire with varying degrees of success, with a dwindling crowd of die-hard fan boys being the only consistent audience in all that time. I believe that a big issue with reviving “He-Man” is that the aesthetics of the series is essentially eighties in a way that comes across as dorky to anyone born in any other decade. Nevertheless, after many false starts over many years, a new big budget “Masters of the Universe” movie has been completed. Travis Knight, who previously made a pretty decent movie out of another eighties toy property, is in the director's chair. With the exception of Jared Leto – who continues to have a career in Hollywood despite his limited on-screen charisma, lack of box office power, obnoxious on-set antics, and a laundry list of accusations – playing the funniest eighties cartoon villain, the cast seems fairly on-point. The peeks we've gotten at the costumes and sets suggest a devoted fidelity to the source material. Whether that will extend to the tone or if the movie will be more knowingly campy or sardonic remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether this goofy bullshit will connect with audiences, fans, or anyone else. Either way, I think Knight's “Masters of the Universe” will probably be a bigger deal than another long-gestating attempt to translate an eighties cartoon made to sell toys to the big screen. 

 

Normal

Ben Wheatley got in on the folk horror revival early with “Kill List.” He managed to ride the indie success of that one for a good while but it does feel like Wheatley's subsequent work has rarely captured the level of eeriness and intensity as that one. (With Wheatley even taken obvious for-hire jobs like “The Meg 2.”) Perhaps the two releases he has lined-up in 2026 will remind us why Wheatley was interesting in the first place. “Bulk” is some sort of super low budget, weirdo sci-fi thing that has gotten some positive notices on the festival circuit. “Normal,” meanwhile, is a neo-noir riff with Bob Odenkirk leading a solid cast. I've enjoyed Odenkirk's previous goes at utilizing his range in off-beat starring roles so I'm interested to see how this one plays out. 

 

Primate
 

The cliché is that January and February are the months when studios dump the movies they have little hope or respect for. I don't know if this is strictly true anymore. Seems to me that August and September have a worst track record these days. Nevertheless, the “January movie” has attracted a perverse sort of allure over the years. As if the phrase is shorthand for competently made schlock that benefits from low expectations and minimum oversight. I'm not sure if any of his movies have actually come out in this month before but Johannes Roberts strikes me as one of the more reliable directors working in this landscape. He seems to know when to give the audience what they want and with a reasonable degree of timing and style. His latest is boosted by having a hell of a premise. “Primate” is basically a horror movie re-imagining of the infamous story of Travis the Chimpanzee. That's the pet/surrogate child/ticking time bomb that belonged to a very sad woman and gruesomely disfigured her friend after snapping one morning, necessitating the police to gun him down. You can argue about the tact of taking a true story like that and turning it into a gory horror flick, not the least of which because animals like Travis are as much victims of ignorant human behavior as they are victimizer. That's not the question an exploitation director would ask though and, when processed under those conditions, “Primate” looks like fine trash to me. I mean, it's got a little person in a monkey suit playing a rampaging chimp! Sign me up. Do you think the script was called “Going Ape Shit” at any point in its development?

Street Fighter

Some have speculated that, with superhero movies starting to fall out of fashion, video game adaptations will emerge as the next populist genre de jour. It's certainly a theory that's gaining a lot of steam. 2026 sees a number of high profile sequels based on the interactive entertainment medium, such as “Super Mario Galaxy” and “Mortal Kombat 2.” (Also a third “Silent Hill” movie that I hesitate to call “high profile.”) The once bemoaned state of the game-to-movies format is now attracting A-list talent. Zach Creggor is probably going to get an Oscar nomination for his “Weapons” script and he's following that up with a new “Resident Evil” movie. Of 2026's gaming adaptations, the one that has my attention the most is “Street Fighter.” Because I actually am a fan of Capcom's long-running fighting game series. The accusation that this third attempt at a live action version of the games is cast like a “Saturday Night Live” sketch is not unfounded. The teaser trailer attracted a lot of criticism too, from people saying the costumes looked too silly. All of this will mean nothing if the movie ends up sucking. And it might, especially considering director Kitao Sakurai is more known for abrasive humor than high-kicking martial arts. However, I'd argue that there's some validity to the approach of faithfully translating cartoonish source material into live action and accepting the silliness at hand, leaning into that rather than fleeing from it. I guess we'll see if that actually works when the movie comes out in October.

 

Titan

As someone more interested in cryptozoology as a modern extension of ancient myth-making, and less so because I believe Mokele Mbembes is just waiting for the right Young Earth Creationist to reveal itself to, I fully support making more horror movies inspired by these creatures of legend and rumor. Jim Cummings and William Sadler are taking on “The Yeti” this year. Stories of the “Kraken” are forming the basis of the second original kaiju movie to come out of Scandinavia in recent years. A more obscure cryptid is also getting the cinematic treatment this year. The Boiúna is an enormous, shapeshifting black snake from the indigenous folklore of the Amazon rain forest. Overly eager cryptozoologists have speculated that the stories might be evidence of a relic population of titanoboas in the jungle, which is likely where the upcoming “Titan” gets its title from. The film is directed Mike P. Nelson, a filmmaker I rarely hear anyone praise who nevertheless keeps getting shots at rebooting well known horror series. (In so much that “Wrong Turn” and “Silent Night, Deadly Night” are well-known and a beer commercial disguised as a new Jason movie is a reboot.) “Titan” might end up being an uninspired rehash of “Anaconda” but, still, its folkloric connection and the occasional flair Nelson has shown makes me interested. 


Other films of note

At the Sea, Blockhead, The Boy in the Iron Box, By Design, City Wide Fever, Family Movie, Flowervale Street, Ghost Boy, I Love Boosters, The Marshmallow Experiment, Obsession, Onslaught, Other Mommy, The Plague, Remains, R.U.R., Ties, Visitation, Whalefall, Wild Horse Nine, Wildwood, and The Young People