The Summer 2026 Horror Watchlist: Every Movie Worth Your Time From Now Through August

Sam Raimi already came back to horror. Evil Dead Burn is in July. Jane Schoenbrun has a new film in August. Tales from the Crypt just became streamable for the first time in its history. The Crypt Keeper is on Shudder right now, and I need you to understand what I am saying to you.

The horror is stacked this summer, both in theaters and on streaming, and the range is genuinely unusual. Prestige fairy tale horror from a Berlin Silver Bear winner. A Sam Raimi slasher that hit 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. A Jane Schoenbrun camp-slasher with a title that commits. I have organized this from what you can watch tonight all the way through August so you can plan accordingly.

STREAMING NOW

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Sam Raimi’s first horror movie in more than sixteen years is on Hulu, and it is every bit the return you wanted. Rachel McAdams plays a mid-level office drone who washes up on a desert island with her smug nepo-baby boss (Dylan O’Brien) after their corporate plane goes down. The premise gets grimly funny. The practical effects get extravagant. The camera work gets unhinged in all the ways Raimi fans have been waiting for since Drag Me to Hell.

Ninety-three percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Number one on Hulu when it dropped. The film made $94 million worldwide against a $40 million budget. None of that is an accident. Start here.

Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen

The most unsettling thing Netflix has released this year is a limited series, which means it has the room to be patient about the dread in a way a two-hour film cannot be. Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco are an engaged couple descending on the Cunningham family estate in upstate New York for their wedding week. Long-buried secrets surface. The family lore turns out to be load-bearing. Executive produced by the Duffer Brothers, created by Haley Z. Boston.

We Bury the Dead

Daisy Ridley is doing something careful here. An experimental weapon detonation off the coast of Tasmania has left most of the surviving population either brain-dead or ambulatory in bad ways, and her character is searching for her missing husband in the middle of all of it. The zombie premise is almost incidental. The film is about the specific experience of a person whose body has not registered that someone is gone yet.

She does not play grief as an emotion she is demonstrating. She plays it as weather she is moving through. On Hulu. I included it in the May streaming guide and I am including it again because it deserves two mentions.

Tales from the Crypt: The Complete Series (1989-1996)

For decades this was the most legendary streaming holdout in horror. Licensing disputes kept the original HBO series off every platform, and every year someone would ask when it was coming and the answer was always unclear. Shudder fixed that in May. All seven original seasons, fully uncensored, dropping week by week every Friday through June 12.

We did not deserve this series when it aired. Start from season one and remind yourself of that. Free on Shudder with subscription.

Forbidden Fruits

Meredith Alloway’s film is a witch coven running a clothing boutique in a Dallas shopping mall. Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Lola Tung, Emma Chamberlain, and Gabrielle Union. Critics called it fast fashion horror and I think they stopped at the surface without going deeper.

The actual horror is not the supernatural premise. It is what happens when someone tries to get close to people whose closeness was built as a system that was never designed to have room for her. Victoria Pedretti plays warmth that is also a warning the entire time and does not once let you see the seam. Coming to Shudder on 2026-06-26.

COMING TO THEATERS

Leviticus

Adrian Chiarella’s queer horror romance opens June 19 through Neon. Two teenage boys in a small town are stalked by a violent entity that takes the shape of whoever they desire, and in this case that is each other. That premise has been circulating in horror circles since early festival responses came in, and by all accounts it delivers.

I have been looking forward to this one specifically. Theaters June 19.

Evil Dead Burn

Sebastien Vanicek makes his follow-up to his SXSW breakout with the next standalone Evil Dead entry. Souheila Yacoub and Hunter Doohan lead the cast. Produced by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, same team that has shepherded this franchise from the beginning.

What is notable about the Evil Dead lineage is how each film gets to be its own thing while remaining recognizably part of the same tradition. Vanicek’s last film showed he could generate sustained dread without over-explaining it. July 10.

Ice Cream Man

Eli Roth is back and he is making exactly the movie the title promises. Ari Millen plays an ice cream man whose frozen treats turn suburban children into killers. Roth co-wrote it with Noah Belson, stars in it himself, and brought Snoop Dogg in for the music with Nas executive producing through Mass Appeal.

Some directors you trust to be excessive in all the right ways and never try to be something they are not. Roth is one of them. August 7.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to I Saw the TV Glow stars Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder. The premise is a queer filmmaker hired to direct a new installment of a long-running slasher franchise who becomes fixated on tracking down the reclusive actress who played the original final girl. It premiered at Cannes as the opening film of Un Certain Regard and won the Queer Palm. MUBI is releasing it in August.

The title alone should tell you whether this is your movie. If it made you laugh: yes. If it made you uncomfortable: also probably yes. August 7.

Insidious: Out of the Further

Lin Shaye is back. That is the pitch for anyone who has been following this franchise. Jacob Chase directs the sixth entry, with Amelia Eve, Brandon Perea, and Maisie Richardson-Sellers alongside Shaye. She has been the spine of this series from the first film and that has not changed.

August 21.

COMING TO STREAMING

The Ice Tower (2025)

Lucile Hadzihalilovic‘s dark fairy tale won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival. Marion Cotillard plays a film actress shooting an adaptation of The Snow Queen. A fifteen-year-old orphan becomes dangerously obsessed with her. Hadzihalilovic has been making films that refuse to behave the way you expect since Innocence in 2004, and The Ice Tower continues that.

Eighty percent on Rotten Tomatoes. If you are not familiar with her work, this is a good place to start. Shudder June 5.

Find Your Friends

Izabel Pakzad’s feature debut arrives June 12 on Shudder with Bella Thorne, Chloe Cherry, Helena Howard, Sophia Ali, and Zion Moreno. Five friends escape Los Angeles for a Joshua Tree girls’ trip and find a desert town that does not want them there. The external hostility and the internal resentments start surfacing at the same time.

The thing about a film that splits the threat between the world outside and the people you came with is that you cannot run from both at once. Do not look this one up before watching it. Shudder June 12.

The Voices of Our Mother

Mark O’Brien wrote, directed, and stars in this one. A 95-year-old mother dies under circumstances that are not quite explainable. Her four estranged adult children return to the family home. Whatever was inside her is looking for somewhere new to go. O’Brien made The Righteous in 2021 and it landed on Rotten Tomatoes’ best horror list for that year.

He knows exactly what to do with small spaces, family rot, and a grief that turns into something else. Shudder June 19.

The theaters have not been this loaded in years and Shudder is clearly trying to win something. As summer problems go, I will take it.

Start with Send Help tonight.