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)
#20 – IT ENDS (ANACORETA)
#19 – TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA (PLAY DEAD)
#18 – IRON LUNG (THE DEEP DARK)
#17 – LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY (SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT)
#17 – LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY (2026)
Released on April 17, 2026!
Streaming on HBO MAX from New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster, and Blumhouse Productions!
Directed/Written by Lee Cronin.
Check out the
trailer here!
Eight years after Katie was abducted, her parents Charlie and Larissa (played by Jack Reynor and Laia Costa) are stunned to learn that a plane carrying a sarcophagus crashes in the jungle and inside, swaddled in ceremonial wrappings, is their missing daughter. But Katie (Natalie Grace) is not the same carefree little girl she was when she was abducted. Catatonic and yet in decent physical condition, the doctors tell Charlie and Larissa that the best thing they can do for Katie is place her into familiar surroundings. So, they take the wheelchair-bound Katie home to recover. But something is wrong with Katie. Something very, very wrong. And it involves an ancient demon and a ritual that needs to be completed every lifetime.
For some reason, Lee Cronin’s THE MUMMY didn’t connect with audiences when it hit theaters earlier this year. I think on a surface level, this is because the film isn’t really your typical mummy movie. There is no shambling corpse wrapped in gauze, extending one arm and relentlessly pursuing the protagonist. But that’s not really what Brendan Frasier ‘s was all about either and that was highly popular. But since that was a high adventure horror for the masses, I guess it gets a pass for some reason. <br
No, Lee Cronin made a hardcore possession movie, more akin to THE EXORCIST and HEREDITARY. And those films, as good as they are, do not have mass appeal. It’s a subject for another video, but both THE EXORCIST and HEREDITARY are extremely slow burns. And I can’t count the times I’ve heard people complain about how boring those films are. The lack of attention span infecting audiences today is depressing.
Anyway, Lee Cronin didn’t make a slow burner, but I think the fact that he made a possession movie with the title of a monster from another subgenre is another reason why this film rubbed so many people the wrong way. It’s like calling your movie THE WEREWOLF and having zombies walking around. I get it. False advertising and all. It also didn’t help things that rumor had it that James Wan walked out of a premiere of the film, which didn’t help early buzz.
And it’s a shame because Cronin delivered a harrowing and often quite disturbing tale about recovering from extreme trauma and attempting to find a path back to some sense of normalcy. What touched me deeply in this film is that the Katie her parents knew was utterly destroyed and in her place is a completely different person. A stranger with Katie’s face. Her innocence lost is lost forever. And how does a parent cope with that? Beyond the bugs, the body horror, and the floating children, that’s what this film is all about and Cronin can tap into that raw, uncomfortable feeling extremely well in this movie. THE MUMMY surprised me at how well it handled this delicate subject matter. Now, I seriously doubt someone with Katie’s condition would be released and sent home. I think some kind of care facility would have been more appropriate as she is completely tore up from the floor up. Still, if she didn’t come home, there wouldn’t be a movie and they try to explain her return home away with the fact that Larissa is a nurse, so she can care for her, I guess. But honestly, at least there is a character, Charlie, who voices that they might not be prepared to deal with this.
The body horror is thick and intense. The toenail scene. The grandma scene. The scorpion scene. All of them potent displays of body wrongness. The film goes out of its way to nauseate and never lets up. It also doesn’t give two shits about its characters. No one is safe. Not the kids. Not the elderly. No one. And while the toenail scene is probably the most iconic, the wake scene after a family member dies is both horrifying and of the blackest humor. It is a cacophony of violence and the supernatural reminiscent of the in-your-face terror of DEAD ALIVE.
While the ending is satisfying, I do feel as if it sort of cheats at its own established rules. The end also wraps things up a little too nicely for my tastes, playing it somewhat safe at the end of an otherwise ferocious story.
That said, the cast do their jobs well. Laia Costa is annoying as she turns a blind eye to all the terrors going on and is just happy to get her daughter back. It’s an infuriating part to play, but Costa commits to it. Jack Reynor is likable in a laid-back Seth Rogan sort of way. And he, out of all the other members of the cast, speaks the truth or what everyone is thinking but is afraid of saying it. Natalie Grace as Katie is terrifying, though much of that is due to makeup, CGI, and extreme closeups.
From what I had heard about THE MUMMY, I was preparing for something awful. But it worked for me. It plays much more like a sequel to Cronin’s EVIL DEAD RISE than a mummy movie. This is a brutal movie and not for the casual horror fan. It’s emotionally rough and visually nauseating for big chunks of the film. And I ultimately think because Cronin delivered such a potently disgusting and terrifying movie that many expecting a mummy movie like one has seen before were knocked on their asses by this truly different take on mummified monstrosities. I think you’re going to be shocked at the harrowing horror that awaits you in Lee Cronin’s THE MUMMY.
Worth Noting – SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (2025)
Released on December 12, 2025!
Streaming on Tubi from Cineverse!
Directed/Written by Mike P. Nelson.
Check out the trailer here!
After witnessing a man in a Santa Claus suit murder his parents, Billy (HALLOWEEN ENDS’ Rohan Campbell) grows up to be a serial killer who hears the voice of Santa Claus in his head (voiced by Mark Acheson). The voice instructs Billy to kill naughty people every day all through December leading up to Christmas. Billy has been doing this for years, but this year is different as he meets Pamela (Ruby Modine), the daughter of a gift shop owner who tends to explode with rage. The two off-kilter kids hit it off, convincing Billy that he should quit his killing ways. But there is an over-amount of naughty people out there and Santa’s voice keeps prompting Billy to keep this killing spree going.
Overall, I am not a fan of remakes. I can probably count on one hand the remakes that actually work; MY BLOODY VALENTINE, BLACK X-MAS (the first remake, not the last one), INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, THE BLOB, I didn’t hate BLAIR WITCH. Maybe a few others. I’m probably forgetting a lot of them. But usually, the films are remade by people who have no idea what worked in the original and really have no investment in it either other than to sleep in a bed filled with the initial cash the remake gets before it gets out that the movie sucks. But every now and then, someone seems to get it.
Mike P. Nelson was the man behind the FRIDAY THE 13TH: SWEET REVENGE short film from Angry Orchard Hard Cider, a film that was capable and even downright ok in parts, but let’s face it, still paled in comparison to any of the F13 entries, even THE FINAL FRIDAY and I hate that movie. But with this new SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT film, Nelson seems to understand the material and expands upon it in fun and exciting ways.
Some of the more interesting details of SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT were touched upon in my recap of the film. We can hear the voices in Billy’s head, prompting him to kill and letting him know who is naughty or nice. Yes, this is swiping a page from DEXTER and the VENOM movie series, but still, it is used to both uncanny and sometimes darkly funny effect. Instead of really changing the story of the original SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT film, it simply looks at it from a closer perspective of the killer. This film pries open Billy’s mind and, in this version, Billy believes Santa’s essence absorbed into him that fateful night his parents died and since then, he has been haunted by Santa’s voice. Now, one can look at this literally and make it so that there is something cosmic going on. But really, whether this is some kind of supernatural transferal of essences from one person to another or if it is all just a way Billy’s broken mind reasons with this childhood trauma doesn’t matter. Other than what Billy believes, there is no suggestion that there is anything otherworldly going on, so for me, it makes it more interesting to think that Santa’s voice is just Billy’s fractured mind. But since we get to hear these conversations between Billy and Santa, it makes for some interesting moments of awkwardness and lunacy.
Other differences include some grindhousey and stylized chapter breaks which signifies every new naughty target that crosses Billy’s path that makes things fun. And of course, there’s the inclusion of Pamela, who Billy feels a kindship with. Again, having a serial killer fall in love is not new, what with Bonnie and Clyde, Mickey and Mallory, and of course, Chucky and Tiffany. But this detail, paired with the DEXTER stuff, are fun additions to what was a pretty run of the mill slasher film. And let’s face it. Aside from the controversy around the original SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT, it was a lackluster film with a handful of fun moments. The original is not anything new, but it did play around with a fun concept and had some memorable scenes that have since been deemed classic. But it ain’t a great film.
As slashers go, though, this new SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT is a fun romp that fleshes out all the slow bits of the original with some interesting concepts. On top of that, the pace moves quick. The blood flows freely. And they do some things with the Santa killer motif that I hadn’t seen before. And then there was…that scene. The one everyone is talking about where Santa happens upon a secret Nazi rally. The scene is super fun. It’s always fun seeing one man JOHN WICK his way through an army of bad guys and the carnage is gratuitous and gory goodness. It stands out as the key scene of the film and almost outshines the climax of the movie, which deals where Billy takes on another Santa-killer type. Honestly, if the big final reveal would have been that the Santa-killer was a part of a Nazi cult, I think it would have made the film evener, but that didn’t happen.
The problem is this. I hate Nazis as much as the next guy. But because that word has been tossed about like a frisbee over the last ten to twenty years, it’s kind of lost its zing and seeing Santa kill a bunch of Nazis is fun, but it also feels like really easy writing as it shines a big applause sign for the trained seals in the cheap seats in audience. The scene was fun, but I hope this doesn’t become a trend in horror where the monster of the week wipes out a bunch of Nazis in a scene. It works here because we are inside Billy’s head and forced to live in his shoes for the duration of the film, but I don’t think I’d like to see the same kind of scene happen in a Friday the 13th or Leatherface film. Can you see Leatherface chasing some gal, and then happening upon a Nazi rally? I mean, cannibalism, abducting people, murder, that’s fine and all. But Nazis…that’s where Leatherface draws the line.
I think that Nazi scene has a meta-meaning behind it that those lauding it and maybe even the filmmakers might not fully understand. You see, Billy’s main issue is that he is ultimately judgmental. His core belief is that he has a strict code of naughty and nice and cannot see beyond black and white. His main conflict is trying to see outside of that limited view of people when he meets Pamela, a flawed, but ultimately nice person who sometimes does naughty things. Having Billy take on Nazis could be a metaphor for the way this country has become so polarized. With murder being bad, but Billy is justified in doing so if the right people are the ones being slaughtered. It feels ripped from the headlines given recent political assassinations. Depthy stuff, indeed, that I think would lead to interesting discussions, if this were an era where debate is possible. But probably too deep for a review of a slasher remake.
Back to the film. Rohan Campbell is scores more tolerable than he was the last time I saw him in the CHRISTINE remake entitled HALLOWEEN KILLS. Here he is personable and restrained, but lacking the arrogance that permeated his time in Haddonfield. The inner monolog and the moments where Billy accidentally talks to his voices out loud in public is cliched and could fall as flat humor, but somehow Campbell sells it. Ruby Modine is also quite charming as Pamela. Once again, this character who suffers from Intermittent Explosive Disorder or the tendency to bouts of rage and acting out, could be a hard sell, but Modine makes it work and still feels likable the whole time. This is no easy task.
Filmmaker Nelson peppers in some fun lines of dialog that not only nods to the previous SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT FILMS, but others such as BLACK CHRISTMAS. It’s stuff like this that shows Nelson is one of the good guys. He’s made a wonderfully entertaining film that should please mainstream and gorehounds alike. All the while honoring the past and adding to it. No easy feat, but Nelson did it. While I don’t think Nelson should take on the next FRIDAY THE 13TH film, as I feel his short felt uninspired, he does seem to have what it takes to make potent horror when he puts his mind to it.
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!
