All through October, I’ll be posting reviews of the best of the best films in the horror genre released since October 1, 2025, through September 30, 2026. As an added bonus, I’ll be doing a secondary review that may be somewhat related to the main review or slightly missed the countdown by inches. Follow along the countdown every day in October. Feel free to agree, disagree, or better yet, give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies of the year. Happy Halloween!

The Best in Horror 2025-2026 So Far…

#31 – DOLLY (GATOR FACE)
#30 – THINESTRA (SACCHARINE)
#29 – ONSLAUGHT (BEAST OF WAR)
#28 – READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME (PENNY LANE IS DEAD)
#27 – IN OUR BLOOD (V/H/S/HALLOWEEN)
#26 – SEND HELP (HEEL)
#25 – THE CARPENTER’S SON (THE BOOK OF SIJJIN AND ILLIYYIN)
#24 – OTHER (YOU ARE NOT ME)
#23 – WHO’S WATCHING (MATCH)
#22 – HOPE (TOUCH ME)
#21 – THEY WILL KILL YOU (MEAT KILLS)

#21 – THEY WILL KILL YOU (2026)

Released on March 27, 2026!
Streaming on HBO MAX from New Line Cinema
Directed by Kirill Sokolov.
Written by Kirill Sokolov, Alex Litvak.
Check out the trailer here!

Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz) answers an ad for a housekeeper at a posh downtown hotel called the Virgil and finds that the hotel is run by a mysterious cult. But unbeknownst to the cult, run by the stern Ms. Woodhouse (Patricia Arquette), Asia has an ulterior motive to get into the hotel and not even Satan worshipping cultists will get in the way between Asia and her goal.

THEY WILL KILL YOU is if you made a video game out of ROSEMARY’S BABY. It’s a film with simple goals, as each floor of the Virgil represents a circle of hell from Dante’s Inferno. So Asia must make it through each floor in order to fight the big boss at the end of the film, which happens to be, and this will be my only spoiler for this film because I think it is so frukkin cool, a talking pig head on a stick possessed by the embodiment of Satan. So, yeah, subtlety ain’t in this film’s wheelhouse.

THEY WILL KILL YOU just happened to come out right around the same time as READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME, which also featured a bunch of elitists who worship Satan chasing after a strong female lead. But while READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME sort of kept the film grounded until the final act, THEY WILL KILL YOU goes gonzo from the get-go. The fight scenes in THEY WILL KILL YOU are next level. Asia, who spent a decade in prison fighting for her life every day, is no Samara Weaving. Now, I love me some Samara, and she’s great in the READY OR NOT series as well as anything else she appears in, but the out-of-this-world fight choreography accomplished by Zazie Beetz in THEY WILL KILL YOU makes Weaving’s fights in READY OR NOT 1 and 2 feel like pillow fights in comparison.

There’s just a bawdy, devil-may-care attitude to THEY WILL KILL YOU that is infectious from scene one. It’s funny, but the gallows’ style humor we all know and love –the fun doesn’t come from one liners or quips (OK, there might be a couple of those, though). The laughs come from the insane action and even more certifiably nuts gore happening as a result of Asia’s rampage through the hotel. It helps that killing the cultists is harder than one might think due to a deal with the devil. It makes it a blast to see heads exploding and then growing back or arms being lopped off, only to have them reattach. It’s comic booky. It’s ludicrous. But that’s what this movie is all about.

Zazie Beetz proves herself to be a Bonafide action star here. Yes, she’s easy on the eyes, especially prancing around in her unmentionables, but she also keeps the pace kinetic and rapid by basically fighting and fighting and fighting from beginning to end in THEY WILL KILL YOU. She also is really good dramatically. Though I know this movie didn’t burn down the box office, I’m hoping people will see Beetz do it all now that the film is available to a home viewing audience. We need this type of female action star who looks the part of an asskicker and has the moves to back it up.

And it’s great seeing all the other players as the mad cultists. Patricia Arquette was hard to recognize at first, as it’s been quite a while since I’ve seen her, but she’s commanding as Ms. Woodhouse, who runs the show at the Virgil. Heather Graham really lets her savage side loose as one of the crazier cultists who keeps getting blown to bits by Asia, only to regenerate with more vengeance in her eyes. HARRY POTTER’s Malfoy Tom Felton shows up as another wise-assed cultist. This film also piles on the recognizable faces with Paterson Joseph, Angus Sampson, and James Remar as the voice of the Satan Pig head.

But it was the whacked-out ending that really sold THEY WILL KILL YOU for me. The final boss match against the severed head of a giant pig simply must be seen to be believed. It makes for a climax that you’ve never, ever seen before. I tell you, the fight scenes, all of them, all try to do things that you haven’t experienced, which is more than I can say for most repetitious action films.

THEY WILL KILL YOU isn’t the deepest of films, but it does make for a rowdy and in-your-face kind of action film with tons of gore effects and one hell of an ending. If not a sequel, I’d love to see Beetz and filmmaker Kirill Sokolov, who did the unforgettable WHY WON’T YOU JUST DIE! a few years back. He has a unique sense of destructive and bloody action and I can’t wait to see where this filmmaker and Beetz go from here!

Worth Noting – MEAT KILLS (aka VLEESDAG, 2025)

Released on November 11, 2025!
Streaming on Screambox from ND Pictures!
Directed by Martijn Smits.
Written by Paul de Vrijer.
Check out the trailer here!

A group of activists, including Nasha (Emma Josten) who used to work in a pig farm undercover to expose them for abuse, descend upon said pig farm to cause mayhem and convey their message that meat is murder. Once there, they find the pigs have already been cleared out for slaughter and are caught at gunpoint by the pig farmer and his family. Now the group must try to survive before the pig farmer makes meals out of the lot of them.

Now you all know that I’m a sucker for inbred killer family flicks. It goes back to my love of Texas Chainsaw Saw Massacre where a family forms a sort of system for their bizarre unit to survive. That’s where I thought this Dutch horror flick was going to go as the activists, adorned with plastic pig masks, enter the pig farm, armed only with cell phones and spray paint. But instead of the usual TCM tropes, MEAT KILLS surprised me by becoming a battle of wits between two different sides that you find yourself flipping between rooting for them to survive and then wishing for their deserved demises. <brbr>
MEAT KILLS is a film that plays with your own morality. Do I want to see pigs slaughtered? No. But I do love me some bacon on my burgers and that honey glazed ham on Turkey Day is quite scrumptious. So right off the bat, I was conflicted when the film opened on the slaughterhouse. Thankfully, only one pig is slaughtered in the opening moments, and it goes by quickly, though this is the point of many heated conversations in MEAT KILLS, so the subject of abusing animals set for slaughter is ever present.

I don’t want to say that I don’t support activism or the right to protest. I do. But I think am not the only one who is sick of the protest culture of the moment as it gathers the worst and most extreme of us and a bunch of angry anything is dangerous. That’s why it’s hard to root for these activists who lay siege on the farm. What I absolutely hate is someone enforcing their will and beliefs upon other people. That’s exactly what the activists in MEAT KILLS do and it makes it hard to root for them even though they are supposed to be playing the role of the victims here. Not only that, but in this series of murders, the activists are equally at fault, showing their hypocrisy that they find murdering a human ok since it suits their cause. In the grand scheme of things, it is the activists who draw first blood in MEAT KILLS. So, when Poppa Pig Farmer (Bart Oomen) shows up to find his home and farm ransacked, his family tortured, and one of his own murdered, it’s understandable that he’s pissed and wanting some revenge. What unfolds is a war between two warring parties who find themselves trapped in conflict until the last one is standing.

The back-and-forth carnage is intense as every tool of slaughter within reach is used by both activist and farmer alike. People are scalded in boiling water, electrocuted, run over by machinery, and hacked to bits with cleavers, meat hooks, and handheld circular saws. This is a gory one and not for the squeamish. Still, the gore seems justified and gets worse as the battle goes on and tempers flare brighter. There’s a point to this gruesome spectacle, more so than just to stack up a body count.

If you’re a fan of films like TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and the like, this is one for you. But it is deeper than simply bloody and murder. It shows the ugliness within us all. MEAT KILLS is especially timely given the culture we are all living in now. And though few on either political or activist aisle will take this film as a moral lesson, I think it should. Full of moments where it could go either way as to who comes out on top and who should, MEAT KILLS is a gruesome, yet complex little slaughterhouse nightmare.

Once again, feel free to agree, disagree, or how about you play along at home and give me your own picks for your favorite horror movies. It’s October, so let’s talk horror. Come back tomorrow for the next level in the Best in Horror Countdown. Be sure to hit all of the pertinent bells and whistles down below and you’ll never miss a post! Happy Halloween, folks!