Kane Parsons' 'Backrooms' Tops the Best Horror Films of 2026

Kane Parsons' "Backrooms" leads the ranked list of the best horror films of 2026 so far. The A24 release, which dropped Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve into an endless maze of liminal spaces, took the top spot in a year that kept multiplexes busy with low-budget box office hits and unwelcome sequels alike.

The ranking, which covers only films fully released in 2026, rewards a striking range: studio franchise revivals, microbudget debuts and a romantic comedy rooted in slasher obsession. Festival favorites and unreleased titles, including Zachary Wigon's "Victorian Psycho" and Robert Eggers' "Werwulf," were ineligible.

Three honorable mentions precede the main list. Sam Raimi returned to horror with "Send Help" (20th Century Studios), a survival thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien as office workers stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash. "Buffet Infinity" (Yellow Veil Pictures) built an entire feature from fake commercials linked by a local sinkhole. Natalie Erika James' "Saccharine" (Independent Film Company and Shudder) cast Midori Francis as a med student who discovers that ingesting the ashes of the dead is the best miracle drug around.

What does the top ten look like?

The ranked selections, in descending order from tenth place, are:

• "Appofeniacs" (Magenta Edge Films) — first-time feature director Chris Marrs Piliero stretches a microbudget into a visually inventive thriller about deepfakes, with shocking twists and practical effects.
• "Her Private Hell" (Neon) — Nicolas Winding Refn's giallo-influenced head trip stars Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton and Havana Rose Liu; despite mixed-to-negative reviews, it is destined for cult classic status.
• "Resident Evil" (Sony Pictures Releasing) — Zach Cregger's video game adaptation, with Austin Abrams as an audience surrogate in a zombie-fueled chase.
• "Touch Me" (Yellow Veil Pictures) — Addison Heimann's alien creature feature starring Olivia Taylor Dudley, Jordan Gavaris and Lou Taylor Pucci.
• "Hokum" (Neon) — Damian McCarthy's haunted Irish hotel mystery, with Adam Scott locked in and solving a murder.
• "Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma" (Mubi) — Jane Schoenbrun's rom-com, pairing Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, with indelible scenes from a KFC dinner to a massacre soundtracked to Counting Crows.
• "Obsession" (Focus Features) — the nasty little thriller that mixed an old-school monkey's paw scenario with a contemporary look at life in the friendzone, powered by an all-timer performance from Inde Navarrette.

Higher up, Zazie Beetz "kicks an enormous amount of ass" as brutal fighter Asia Reves in "They Will Kill You" (Warner Bros. Pictures), a horror-action-comedy about infiltrating a hotel run by a satanic cult. Neon's "Leviticus" turns a tender love story about two boys in Australia into a nightmare when religious conversion therapy transforms the person they love most.

Nia DaCosta's "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" (Sony Pictures Releasing) dodges nearly every expectation of a zombie film, with Ralph Fiennes as Dr. Ian Kelson and Jack O'Connell as the roving antagonist Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, in a sharp Alex Garland script that "begs for another installment."

Why does the top five stand out?

"Faces of Death" (Independent Film Company), from Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber, spun the seminal shock oddity into a tight serial killer movie, with Dacre Montgomery as a maniac obsessed with the original film and Barbie Ferreira as the content moderator on his trail. Genki Kawamura's "Exit 8" (Neon) stars Kazunari Ninomiya as a man trapped in an endlessly repeating subway hallway, an adaptation whose thin hook is, by necessity, the point.

Taratoa Stappard's "Mārama" (Dark Sky Films and Watermelon Pictures) sends Ariāna Osborne's Victorian-era woman to England, where she becomes governess to a mysterious man with an affinity for her Māori heritage. The gothic tale's atmosphere grows lusher as things darken.

At number two, Parsons' "Backrooms" earns the description of a "masterwork in tone and tension," with Jeremy Cox's production design and camerawork compensating for what the source calls the sketch of a script. It is hard to describe why the film works to the unconverted. The result already has audiences asking what Parsons will do with a next chapter.

The year's genre borders also blurred. Adam Wingard's "Onslaught," Na Hong-jin's "Hope" and David Robert Mitchell's "The End of Oak Street" all flirted with horror but ultimately fit action, sci-fi and adventure categories better.

With half the year still to come, and titles like "Victorian Psycho" and "Werwulf" yet to reach theaters, the 2026 horror ranking remains wide open.