Horror is in the middle of a full-blown revolution. Long gone are the days of formulaic slashers, obvious jump scares, and rehashed possession movies, as audiences across all demographics have all but demanded originality and ingenuity when it comes to crafting terror. A new crop of fresh perspectives and new voices in the horror space, which very much includes the emerging studios willing to give them a platform, have set new expectations for what horror can be. As a long-time horror enthusiast, I’ve seen virtually every major horror release of the last 20 years, along with dozens of the most acclaimed foreign and independent releases.
After watching the new golden age of horror evolve in real time, I’ve established a pretty definitive benchmark for when the standards for horror were elevated: Ari Aster’s universally acclaimed 2018 supernatural horror Hereditary. Its ultra-scary narrative and direction, supplemented by Toni Collette’s Oscar-caliber performance, kicked off the trend of elite horror movies releasing with regularity. With May 2026 producing one of the best months for horror ever, I took a look back at the scariest movies to release since Hereditary, and ranked them based on how haunting, depraved, and memorable they are.
Warning: Minor spoilers for 2026’s ‘Obsession’ and ‘Hokum’ ahead
10
‘Talk to Me’ (2022)
Talk to Me represented the feature directorial debuts of Australian filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou, two brothers who began their careers on YouTube. Inspired by classic possession tropes, Talk to Me refreshed the concept with a cursed porcelain hand that allows someone to trigger a brief and temporary possession. Naturally, its teenage hero Mia, seeking to connect with her recently deceased mother, holds on for too long and finds herself plagued by a variety of spirits, both benevolent and malignant.
As Mia, Sophia Wilde delivers an all-time horror performance that’s as haunting as it is heartbreaking. Meanwhile, the Philippou brothers established themselves as masters of jump scares, dread, and near-surgical use of violence. Capped by an all-time bleak ending, Talk to Me is equal parts terrifying and upsetting in its exploration of grief.
9
‘Obsession’ (2026)
Director Curry Barker, who also got his start on YouTube with sketch comedy, burst onto the horror scene with Obsession in May 2026. The box office record-breaking supernatural horror features what many are already calling an all-time performance from Inde Navarrette as Nikki, a young woman who falls victim to her smitten best friend Bear’s wish for her love. It’s soon revealed that Nikki has in fact been replaced by a cursed version of herself, and is trapped in her own body while the twisted version of herself grows more and more depraved in her affection for Bear.
Navarrette’s downright disturbing performance will almost certainly be campaigned for come Oscar season, but what makes Obsession truly terrifying is the dark tragedy of Nikki’s agony while being trapped in her own body. Using just $750K to produce the entire movie, Barker weaponizes shadows, practical effects, tactical use of gore, and Navarrette’s ground-breaking performance to craft something singular and deeply disturbing,
8
‘Barbarian’ (2022)
Zach Cregger became a household name thanks to 2025’s Oscar-winning horror-mystery Weapons, but many horror fans consider his previous movie, Barbarian, to be the scarier of the two. Starring modern scream queen Georgina Campbell, horror staple Justin Long, and Bill Skarsgård (who is excellent even when not transforming into Pennywise or Nosferatu), Barbarian‘s first act builds an incomparable level of dread and tension.
By the time Cregger unleashes his deformed monster known as The Mother, Campbell’s Tess has endured the terror of a stranger with unknown intentions and a white-knuckle exploration of a basement and secret tunnel hiding horrifying evidence of past unthinkable crimes. What starts as a brilliant slow burn never lets up once it hits the gas while pivoting to a revolting creature feature halfway through.
7
‘Infested’ (2023)
For those capable of even stomaching what is, for my money, the most stomach-churning use of spiders in horror history, Sébastien Vaniček’s French horror movie Infested is a classic example of the “once is enough” horror movie experience. Vaniček places a rapidly evolving and reproducing deadly spider in a French banlieue (a low-income suburban housing project), and assaults the audience with well-executed jump scares and practical effects along with pretty decent spider CGI. A poignant commentary on xenophobia is prevalent but at no point diminishes the gut-churning creature feature.
6
‘Smile’ (2022)
Depending on who you ask, the sequel to Parker Finn’s deeply haunting Smile is considered by some to be a superior overall movie, but when it comes to sheer scariness, the original is elite. Driven by a tremendous performance from Sosie Bacon and complemented by scream king Kyle Gallner, Smile combines some of the creepiest imagery in recent memory with wicked gore and excellent jump scares for a brutally effective holistic horror experience. It’s a distressing examination of trauma throughout, but the coup de grâce is the jaw-dropping reveal of the entity that drives the Smile curse in the fiery finale.
5
‘Oddity’ (2024)
Irish filmmaker Damien McCarthy‘s feature debut Caveat had a nice cult following for those who appreciated the low-budget yet undeniably creepy single-location haunted house story, but he truly announced his presence with the supernatural horror Oddity. While it released to limited fanfare, Oddity grew in notoriety when it was declared one of the scariest movies of the 2020s based on the science of tracking heart rate and stress levels. McCarthy is a true master of the jump scare, and the slow burn of Oddity is punctuated with heart-stopping scares with surgical precision.
4
‘Hokum’ (2026)
If Oddity introduced Damian McCarthy to the main horror stage, 2026’s Hokum was how he announced he was here to stay. Starring Adam Scott as a deeply troubled and cynical author, Hokum is an elite example of folk horror done right. Set mostly in a remote Irish hotel, McCarthy manages to create a smothering atmosphere of terror that assaults the audience with perfectly-timed scares that stick with you long after. The main villain might be a terrifying Irish witch, but the deeply disturbing children’s TV show host Jack the Jackass (pictured above) is the image that shows up in nightmares long after the credits roll.
3
‘The Dark and the Wicked’ (2020)
Director Bryan Bertino is most well-known as the man behind 2008’s horror classic The Strangers, which is an all-timer despite the string of ghastly sequels that have followed. However, his 2020 supernatural horror movie The Dark and the Wicked is superior in just about every way when it comes to scares. The criminally-underseen movie features a pair of siblings who are tortured by a demonic entity upon returning to their family farm to care for their dying father. The entity blurs the lines between nightmares and reality, invading the minds of its victims to make them see haunting images that aren’t actually there.
The movie asphyxiates the audience with its haunting atmosphere and a heavy fog of dread hanging over the entire movie, making each extremely well-executed shock hit that much harder. It’s unspeakably bleak, and never relents in that regard as it careens toward a tragic and memorable ending. If there was any justice in the world, The Dark and the Wicked would be widely recognized as one of the best overall horror movies of the decade, as those who have seen it can attest.
2
‘Host’ (2020)
Plenty of movies have attempted a tech-heavy “screenlife” approach to scares, with the terror originating from phones or computer screens. Nothing has ever come close to accomplishing what Rob Savage’s ultra-lean supernatural horror does in just 56 minutes of runtime. Host follows a group of friends attempting a seance with a medium while in lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, although it isn’t taken seriously by everyone on the call. One of the attendees manufactures a tale about a deceased classmate while the door to the spirit world is open, resulting in a demonic entity taking on the persona of the made-up character.
What follows is a nerve-wracking, edge-of-your-seat escalation of paranormal events that goes from chairs moving on their own to an invisible entity snapping necks as horrified friends watch. Savage manages to pack in a potent mix of background spooks, memorable imagery, and unbelievable jump scares to create one of the most singularly, unflinchingly terrifying horror experiences of the last few years. It’s the definitive example of the impact that can be made in a short time frame, as Host wraps the entire narrative in under an hour.
1
‘When Evil Lurks’ (2023)
A co-production between Argentina and the United States from director Demián Rugna, When Evil Lurks is a vicious, visceral, unsettling supernatural horror film loaded with elements that stick in the brain. It provides a fresh perspective to possession horror, treating the demonic entity at its center as an infection that can jump from person to person, ultimately yielding a chain reaction of nauseating gore and violence. It dabbles in body horror as well, particularly surrounding the infected “Rotten”, the initial host of the demon that serves as a vessel for the birth of evil in its purest form.
When Evil Lurks pulls zero punches in its progression, ratcheting up the intense infection scenes as the demon spreads across the rural town in Argentina. It’s legitimately hard to watch some of the scenes in which children fall victim to the relentless violence, and is sure to induce nightmares for parents and non-parents alike. While it’s not loaded with many of the jump scares that drive other entries on this list, When Evil Lurks is the most likely to traumatize its viewers.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
