Though we’re not even halfway through the year, 2026 has already been a pretty exciting time for horror. From continuations of long-running franchises to completely new projects and indie hits, there’s a lot to talk about. However, not every horror film that’s come out this year has been worth its while. From cheap scares to record-setters, here’s a breakdown of the current box office top five.
While 2026 has yielded plenty of quality horror movies, I’ll be looking at the highest-grossing ones rather than the highest-rated. As we know, films that make a lot of money aren’t inherently good or enjoyable, but they can certainly be fun to talk about. Luckily, the current top five contain a delicious mix of scares, cringes, awe-inspiring creativity, and utter lack thereof.
Spoilers ahead.
Scream 7
Box office ranking: #1 ($209.4 million)
My ranking: #5
It’s no surprise that the Scream franchise still pulls in a large audience. After all, it’s the biggest modern slasher series, carrying on the legacy of 80s classics like Halloween and Friday the 13th.
Now, I haven’t seen all of the previous Scream films, so I was a little worried I’d be behind on the lore. But slashers rarely have consistent lore, and this one seemed like it was referencing the events of the original Scream more than anything else, so grasping the plot was no problem.
Let’s start with the strengths of Scream 7. The relationship between series protagonist Sidney (Neve Campbell) and her daughter Tatum (Isabel May) is decently interesting. The idea of a longtime final girl having a strained relationship with her family because of her own trauma is a solid premise. A premise that was also explored in the 2018 Halloween reboot, in fact. But there are only so many things you can do when you’re seven movies into a slasher series.
Nobody’s screaming this time
My main complaint with this movie is that it feels small. It doesn’t have a lot going on. Even the introduction of AI as a tool of the new Ghostface killer is not as interesting as it could be. AI technology has many frightening aspects to it in real life, that’s for sure. So incorporating it into the plot of a horror movie is another solid concept. But it’s a concept Scream 7 just doesn’t deliver on.
A character brings up the idea of deepfakes pretty early on. Then, surprise, surprise, the video messages Sidney was receiving were, in fact, deepfakes. That’s the extent to which AI is relevant to this movie.
Scream 7’s forgettable plot and failure to deliver on any of its interesting setups definitely have to do with the franchise’s slow collapse after Scream VI. The loss of actresses Melissa Barrera (who was fired for speaking out against the Palestinian genocide) and Jenna Ortega (who quit when a few other Scream alumni did) was detrimental to the direction of the series. Christopher Landon, the director of Happy Death Day (2017), was briefly brought on to direct Scream 7, but later also quit because of Barrera’s departure.
Scream 7 definitely feels like it was cobbled together at the last minute. It’s clear that the movie the Scream team wanted to make just couldn’t happen anymore. Scream 7 is a consolation prize. And it didn’t get any screams out of me.
Return to Silent Hill
Box office ranking: #5 ($47.7 million)
My ranking: #4
I went into this movie thinking I wasn’t the right person to review it, since I know very little about the Silent Hill video game franchise. My only experience with it was last summer, when I watched a few online play-throughs of the Silent Hill 2 remake.
Imagine my surprise and joy when I discovered Return to Silent Hill was a direct adaptation of Silent Hill 2 (and a missed opportunity to call it Return 2 Silent Hill).
So, I had high hopes for it. As the movie trailer proudly proclaims, Silent Hill 2 is the #1 psychological horror video game of all time. The game has a great story, and it’s already pretty cinematic, so adapting it to the screen should be fairly straightforward.
It should be straightforward. But somehow, director Christophe Gans absolutely butchers it.
Lost in adaptation
Here’s what you need to know about the original Silent Hill 2 (again, spoiler warning!): James Sunderland gets a letter from his dead wife, Mary, telling him to come to the town of Silent Hill. He goes and finds the town overrun by horrific monsters. He also meets other real people in Silent Hill, who were brought there by their own personal traumas. James eventually discovers that he was the one who killed Mary. She was suffering from a terminal illness, and although he wanted her pain to end, his reasons for killing her were largely selfish, as he couldn’t stand seeing her suffer.
This story is about grief.
Return to Silent Hill tries to be about grief, but the plot gets too tangled for it to work. In the movie adaptation, every other person in the town is an extension of Mary. Characters like Angela and Laura, who had their own storylines in the original game, are now just versions of Mary that James imagines. And now, Mary explicitly asks James to kill her, completely stripping James of his morally grey qualities. Mary is also in a cult for some reason.
Also, they keep throwing monsters at you in this movie. Yes, the video game has tons of monsters, but now it’s overkill. If a new scary creature appears every five seconds, I’m not going to get scared anymore. While the game adores suspense, the movie goes the cheap thrills route.
Send Help
Box office ranking: #2 ($94 million)
My ranking: #3
Now we’re getting into the movies that I truly enjoyed. Send Help, directed by Sam Raimi, is a completely original film. Absolutely refreshing after Scream 7 and Return to Silent Hill.
Send Help follows a woman named Linda (Rachel McAdams) who gets stuck on a deserted island with her boss, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien), who has always belittled and ignored her. However, Linda is a huge fan of Survivor, so she thrives in this new situation, whereas Bradley becomes dependent on her against his will.
An all-too-real dynamic
Throughout this movie, I kept finding myself annoyed by Bradley’s insistence on proving his superiority over Linda, even during life-threatening situations. Then, I remembered that this isn’t actually much of an exaggeration of how a lot of men tend to act. With the resurgence of the manosphere in internet culture, Send Help‘s portrayal of misogyny is perfectly timely.
Even when Bradley opens up and shares his past with Linda, he never stops believing that he’s inherently better and smarter than a woman he doesn’t personally find attractive.
Send Help is one of those horror films that makes you say, “I don’t really think this is a horror film” until it becomes utterly insane in the last forty-five minutes. I do personally believe the horror aspect could have been upped a little more here, but this is the first movie on this list to get a genuine scream out of me, so I can’t be too harsh.
There are a few other fun twists and turns throughout Send Help, which I won’t spoil here. Going into this one blind is the best call.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Box office ranking: #3 ($58.5 million)
My ranking: #2
I’ll say it. I haven’t seen 28 Days Later. Nor have I seen 28 Weeks Later. I haven’t even seen 28 Years Later (2025), the direct precursor to this movie. But I absolutely adored 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
With a name like that, I truly had no idea what to expect, and this movie was far weirder than I could have ever imagined. Would it have been as weird if I’d bothered to watch any of the others in the series? Maybe not, but everything in The Bone Temple was so conceptually unique that I actually really enjoyed not knowing anything about the franchise beforehand.
The 28 Days/Weeks/Years franchise is about zombies. Sort of. This film takes a more interpersonal approach, following the parallel storylines of two post-apocalyptic characters and their beliefs about the world.
We have Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), who forms a bond with an Infected (zombie) named Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry). Throughout the film, Kelson seeks to honor the people who have died from the zombie virus and restore some form of humanity to Samson.
Then, we have Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal (Jack O’Connell), the film’s sort-of villain. Jimmy is a cult leader who takes in children, forces them to change their own names to Jimmy, and then makes them kill innocent people for “Old Nick” (a.k.a. Satan).
When Jimmy and Kelson eventually meet, we get a hilarious clash of perspectives within an otherwise brutally gory film.
Live, laugh, love, bone temple
Admittedly, I should recommend watching 28 Years Later (2025) before you watch this one, since you’ll probably get a lot more context on these characters than I did. Still, The Bone Temple is an unforgettable film, and it’s enjoyable on its own.
All I expected from this was a zombie movie, and knowing that it was the fourth installment in a series, I more or less expected something basic and cash-grabby.
The Bone Temple is an amazingly unique story. And Ralph Fiennes might be one of my favorite actors of all time now.
All that being said, you do need to have a strong stomach to watch this one.
Iron Lung
Box office ranking: #4 ($52 million)
My ranking: #1
I went into my watch of Iron Lung with a little bias towards it already. A true indie endeavor, this movie is the passion project of Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier on YouTube. Iron Lung is based on an indie horror game of the same name, created by David Szymanski in 2022.
Even though I’d never really seen much of Markiplier’s content before, when I heard about how hard he’d worked to create this movie, I had to admire it. In a world where Scream 7 can still dominate the box office despite not being any good, it’s a miracle that Iron Lung is even on this list.
I’d also previously heard that it broke the record for the most fake blood ever used in a horror movie. Over 80,000 US gallons! Come on, that’s just sick.
So I was careful not to put Iron Lung at the top of this list solely for those reasons. Yes, the film’s production has some fun facts. That shouldn’t be all that matters, though. But after watching it, it really is just that good.
Slow and steady wins the race (through the blood ocean)
Common criticisms of Iron Lung usually involve its pacing. The first half of the film is incredibly slow and dark. Literally. It’s a bit hard to see what’s going on sometimes.
The entire movie takes place in a submarine, inside of which a convict named Simon (played by Markiplier) has been trapped. Simon is forced to conduct research on an ocean of blood in order to earn his freedom. In this world, entire planets and stars have disappeared in an apocalyptic event known as “The Quiet Rapture.” The blood ocean is the only thing that might hold answers about humanity’s future.
Iron Lung is just over two hours long, so the first hour might feel like a bit of a drag for those used to quick action in horror movies. However, I would argue that the film’s initial slowness only improves the eventual twists, turns, and bloody events of the final stretch.
I won’t say that Iron Lung isn’t confusing. I was definitely left with a few questions after the finale. But this story deals with the “eldritch horror” genre pioneered by H.P. Lovecraft. The whole point is that the universe holds things that are far more complex and terrifying than the human mind can comprehend. Questions are par for the course.
If you’re expecting a big studio production, Iron Lung might feel a bit lacking. But if you know anything about its indie origins, the quality of this movie will simply blow you away. I have high hopes for it becoming a modern classic.
What’s coming next
The year is far from over, and there are still plenty of exciting horror concepts coming our way.
We’ve got Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, coming out on April 17th, promising to be “unlike any mummy movie you ever laid eyeballs on before.“
For fans of legacy franchises, we have Evil Dead Burn (July 24th), Insidious 6 (August 21st), and Scary Movie 6 (June 12th) if you’re leaning more towards horror-comedy.
I’m also particularly looking forward to seeing how A24 handles an internet-famous horror concept in Backrooms (May 29th).
And how about a horror film starring Adam Scott (of Parks and Recreation and Severance)? Well, look no further than Hokum, a folkloric haunted house story set in West Cork, Ireland, coming out on May 1st.
All in all, it’s a fantastic time to be a horror fan. With so many reboots and new concepts on the horizon, I’m sure the box office top five will change drastically by the end of the year. But we’re definitely off to a great start so far.
