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)
#16 – BUFFET INFINITY (KETCHUP ON WAFFLES)
#15 – DUST BUNNY (THE YETI)
#14 – BUDDY (MONKEY’S MAGIC MERRY GO ROUND)
#13 – INFLUENCERS (PRIMAL DARKNESS)
#12 – KEEPER (THE HOUSE WAS NOT HUNGRY THEN)
#11 – UNDERTONE (MAN FINDS TAPE)
#10 – EXIT 8 (GHOST TRAIN)
#9 – HONEY BUNCH (BONE LAKE)
#8 – RESIDENT EVIL (WE BURY THE DEAD)
#7 – HOKUM (MOTHER OF FLIES)
#6 – EVIL DEAD BURN (BLOOD BARN)
#5 – GOOD BOY (KENNELED)
#4 – FRANKENSTEIN (NIRVANA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE)
#3 – BACKROOMS (ALPHA)

#3 – BACKROOMS (2026)

Released on May 29, 2026!
Streaming on HBO MAX from A24!
Directed by Kane Parsons.
Written by Kane Parsons, Will Soodik.
Check out the
trailer here!

A troubled furniture store salesman named Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has been kicked out of his home and now lives in his own furniture store. He confides in his therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve) that he has found a portal in the basement of his store that leads to an immense labyrinth of blandly colored rooms. When Clark disappears, Mary goes to the store and discovers these peculiar backrooms for herself.

Spinning out of the hit YouTube series THE BACKROOMS comes Kane Parsons’ BACKROOMS, an amalgamation of found footage, analog horror, and liminal spaces. For those of you who are not familiar with these concepts, let me explain it from my understanding. Found footage is basically handheld camera footage that, when done right, places the viewer one step closer into the film experience. The frenetic camera movement plus the forced perspective adds a layer of unease that makes the experience immersive.

Analog horror is a bit more complicated. It involves the antiquated VHS format and is less concerned about following a narrative and more about conveying a feeling of dread through archival footage that has been edited together by some kind of omniscient producer. One might call Analog Horror something more akin to Arthouse found footage where the rules of authenticity don’t really apply.

Liminal space is all about setting and atmosphere. It’s almost like a dreamscape where things look to be all in the right places, but something is off the deeper you look at it. Odd angles, peculiar details, strange passageways, and sharp corners decorate a floor plan or scene that doesn’t seem like it makes any kind of sense. As described in BACKROOMS, the space looks as if it was a design to something described to someone who has no reference to that something. Everything feels alien and gives off a sense of unease. Put these three formats together, slap a score made from unnatural sounds and rhythms and you got one hell of a potential for some uncanny feels.

And that’s what BACKROOMS is filled with. Sure, there are a few extremely well-timed and potent jump scares. There is some gnarly gore. And some heavy themes going on, but the bulk of what makes this film stand out from the herd is how it simply and effectively communicates the uncanny. As soon as you enter the Backrooms, things feel wrong. The silence is deafening. The fluorescent yellow lighting gives an almost rotten tint to everything. The walls are plain yet ridged with some kind of strange pattern that is never zoomed in on, so you really can’t understand what it is. The architecture makes no sense whatsoever. Stairs lead to nowhere. Rooms have portions cut out of the floor. Some of the furniture has sunk onto the floor. Some doors open. Some doors don’t. And everywhere, there are corners that lead to miles and miles more of the same. This place is fucking nuts. I mean, the worst job ever would be to baby-proof the backrooms. This is one unsafe environment. Once the viewer is immersed in this backrooms world, it is understandable why that sinking feeling you’ll never get out persists. This is where the bulk of BACKROOMS takes place, so how this setting affects you is going to factor in to your opinion of the film. If you don’t mind that feeling of being unsettled and even enjoy it, then you’re going to love this movie. But if letting a film envelop you and not give you all the answers is a turn off, you’re not the audience this film is looking for.

THE BACKROOMS YouTube series was chock full of these feelings of uncanny unease. But what BACKROOMS adds to the experience is character and story. See, in most of THE BACKROOMS videos, you don’t know the person behind the camera. It works for short films going simply for a quick reaction, but for a full-length movie you need someone to invest in. This is where Kane Parsons really surprised me. Anyone can string a bunch of weird effects and jump scares together. But Parsons helps create a pair of leads that are complex and flawed in fascinating ways. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Clark is a man lost in his own world. He’s at the ultimate low with very few options to get out of the mess he is in. He tried to make sense of it with his therapist, but that only leaves him more frustrated. All he wants to do is get away from it all and the Backrooms provide just that for him. On the other hand, you have Renate Reinsve as his therapist Mary, who is also very alone as seen through some snippets of her personal life. Even though she seems buttoned down and all-together all together, Mary is scarred by mental illness she experienced as a child with her very sick mother, a paranoid shut-in, warning her of the dangers outside their cluttered safe haven. And the Backrooms represent something completely different to her. It’s really genius that this story is put together in such a sophisticated way that the threat represents something different to the two leads. So, besides the creepy ass setting and way it is filmed, BACKROOMS has characters worth investing in too.

One observation I wanted to make is a particular scene towards the end of BACKROOMS. It’s a dinner scene and it is so bonkers that it really shredded the mind of the characters and disturbed me to hell and back. The level of intensity during BACKROOMS’ dinner scene is the closest thing to the absolute chaos Hooper and Co. achieved with TCM. The final reel of BACKROOMS feels like a beat for beat recreation of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. It’s that insane and I’d bet my hard-earned cash money that Parsons would nail it.

BACKROOMS isn’t a wham-bang a minute, but if you let it sink in, you’re going to come out on edge and truly disturbed. While it goes into the lore of the Backrooms, surprisingly very little is explained, so like the YouTube series, there are no easy answers to this one. Still, there are so many places this franchise could go. This is a truly impressive debut from Kane Parsons. I can’t wait to see BACKROOMS again and see what he has coming up next.

Worth Noting – ALPHA (2025)

Released on March 27, 2026!
Available On Demand from FilmNation Entertainment and NEON!
Directed/Written by Julia Ducournau.
Check out the trailer here!

After 13-year old Alpha (Mélissa Boros) gets a tattoo at a party, her mother Maman (Golshifteh Farahani) who is a nurse, fears that she may have contracted a deadly disease spreading across the French populace that is transferred through dirty needles and sexual contact. When Maman’s junkie brother Amin (Tahar Rahim) shows up on her doorstep, she reluctantly takes him in as she has always done in the past. Amin is suffering from this infectious disease, and the pressure mounts to insane heights for Maman as she deals with the infirmed she takes care of at work and the possibility that her daughter has now contracted the disease. But being the rebellious young girl that she is, Alpha refuses to sit and wait for a diagnosis, causing her to take risks she normally wouldn’t with her safety and that of her loved ones.

Having written and directed two of the most powerful horror films I’ve ever seen with RAW and TITANE, I make it a priority to see a Julia Ducournau film when it comes out. Ducournau is an expert in combining epic storytelling with tactile body horror and high-stakes drama. Watching one of her films, one can never predict where it is going and how things are going to end. While I must admit, sometimes, the themes she plays with feel a bit too heady for me to fully fathom, I always enjoy the sights, sounds, characters, and twists she offers in her films.

With ALPHA, I feel Ducournau is trying something a little less horror and a little more on the drama side. The story is still unpredictable and the imagery, especially during the surreal ending, offers something you just don’t see in mainstream cinema. But the plot feels almost too big for Ducournau to fully grasp. With the film set in the eighties and centered around an infectious disease spreading quickly through the population, it’s obvious Ducournau is making a story about AIDS, but instead of AIDS, people are contracting a disease where their bodies slowly turn to stone. It’s a powerful image seeing all of these people being turned into living statues as their bodies literally dry up and harden, making movement and any kind of chance at normalcy an impossibility. There are some scenes where Maman walks through the ward, checking on the rows of beds of people suffering from this disease that are some of the most powerful segments of the film as this is simply a highly effective way to communicate the impact this disease has on the human body.

At the same time, we are dealing with the subplot where Maman’s brother Amin is dying from the disease, but he also seems to be a junkie suffering from AIDS as well. So Ducournau is playing with a metaphor about AIDS and uses the actual illness of AIDS in her story as well and I think that’s one AIDS too many here. The plot feels cramped with too much going on with the addition of the brother and it clutters the plot up so as to neglect the more interesting plot of the titular character Alpha dealing with the possibility that she herself has come down with the illness. Though this is a lengthy movie, it still feels way too jam packed with tragedy, as if there is one character too many weighing on Maman’s conscience. I know the dedication to her brother is integral to Maman’s character, but I still feel the whole movie would have been a lot more cohesive had the character been focused on less.

The parts where Alpha is attempting to deal with the fact that she might have this disease are some of the best of the movie. Because the tattoo on her arm bleeds occasionally, as some tattoos often do, and because of the worry of contacting this disease weighs so much on the cultural mind, Alpha is ridiculed, bullied, and outcasted from everyone at school. Alpha is tough as nails and as a response to this treatment, she lashes out at her classmates in ways that’ll make you cringe and wince, especially since you know it’s a world with a highly contagious disease around. Again, Ducournau uses the AIDS metaphor amazingly well here. Seeing Maman try to deal with the possibility that her daughter has this disease is scary enough. In many ways it reminds me of how tactile the scares were in Bryan Singer’s first X-MEN movie, making Rogue so dangerous to touch. There’s also a heavy homage to CARRIE with the fear of blood and the crossing from child to adult. It’s that paranoia that Singer and Ducournau plays with that makes for some extremely good body horror.

But aside from some scenes of people crumbling to the touch and turning completely to stone, this is mainly a drama about the complex relationship between Maman and Amin and Maman and Alpha. I feel it was a mistake to split investment into three parts as there is also a friendship between Alpha and Amin that is explored and that makes the whole film feel crowded as all get out. This is a drama with slight horror elements—probably the least amount of horror one will find in the last three movies by Ducournau. Still, the ideas are interesting and held my investment until the end.

The acting is tippy-top drawer. Mélissa Boros delivers a powerful and devastating performance as Alpha, exhibiting emotions and drama that well exceed her years. I heard that Ducournau cast an older woman to play this younger role in order to deal with all of the complex feelings Alpha goes through and Boros plays the part wonderfully, playing that ambiguous age of 13 when you’re not yet a woman, but beginning to shed those child-like ways. Golshifteh Farahani carries a lot of heavy drama as the beleaguered mother of Alpha. You can feel the emotional and physical exhaustion in her performance as her character is trying to heal and protect everyone but failing at every turn. It’s heartbreaking to see how her story plays out. And even though I feel that his role of Amin is the part of the film that should have been clipped or edited heavily, Tahar Rahim is fantastically skeevy, yet surprisingly warm at times. It was interesting to watch this character that could hug you or strike at you like a cobra. All three characters deliver fantastic dramatic performances that will break your heart.

On top of making this drama-heavy between the three leads, Ducournau makes things even more complicated by playing around with the timeline as well. The film often flips between the past and present, with only the age of Alpha and Maman’s haircut distinguishing which era we are in. By the end, time becomes meaningless and things get ultra-surreal, and that’s where this film lost me completely, to be honest. I get that the film shifts from being Alpha’s story to Maman’s and how it may be some kind of comment on the amount of sacrifice Maman has made from her brother, daughter, and all of her patients, but in doing so, it ruins the flow of the story and makes it more complex that it should be.

In the end, ALPHA is a miss for me. It is a powerful drama that left me thinking about it for days afterwards. There are some very solid parts and again, the body horror is thick and potent at times, but Ducournau just didn’t stick the landing here. Still, with Ducournau being such an important voice in horror these days as she is basically the female version of David Cronenberg at this point, ALPHA is an important movie to see despite its flaws and definitely worth mentioning to folks like me who love Ducournau’s RAW and TITANE.

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!