2025 has been an incredible year forhorroralready, but there are still plenty of highly-anticipated movies releasing in the fall and winter. With the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes finally in the rearview mirror, 2025 has seen a number of highly-anticipated releases all falling in the same calendar year.
So far in 2025, we’ve already seen a few all-time great horror movies, including box office hits and critical darlings likeSinners,28 Years Later,Companion,Bring Her Back, andThe Monkey, to name only a few. Even that would be enough to qualify 2025 as a great year for horror, but with so many brilliant filmmakers working in horror, we aren’t even close to done.
There are a number of incredibly exciting smaller-profile horror movies coming out in 2025, but we’ve pulled out 10 of the most-anticipated. Some are sequels that have a dedicated fanbase already, while others are stand-alone movies from talented filmmakers that have already lit up festival circuits.
The originalThe Strangersstarring Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler is one of the better psychological horror movies to come out in the 2000s, carrying an “inspired by true events” designation and a story dripping in dread. Naturally, that spawned an entire franchise, which got a soft reboot last year withThe Strangers - Chapter 1.
The plan was for that to kick off a new trilogy, and despiteChapter 1getting absolutely lambasted by critics and moviegoers alike, Lionsgate is forging ahead with the second chapter.Any intrigue here is tied to whether they can wring any more scariness out of this concept, and ifChapter 2has enough juice to power the trilogy’s completion.
The Conjuringfranchise, like so many horror franchises before it, started off incredibly strong before devolving into a convoluted and decidedly unscary mess.The Conjuringis a truly excellent supernatural spine-chiller, and its sequel was almost as terrifying as the original. However, from there, the franchise spiraled into an extended universe that was hit-or-miss at best.
The Conjuring: Last Ritesis supposed to be the “finale” to this version of the extendedConjuringuniverse. It’s reportedly testing very well, and if director Michael Chaves brings something original to the franchise,chances are this won’t actually be the last movie in the franchise, which has collectively grossed over $2 billion.
Five Nights at Freddy’swas a massive, unprecedented success for Blumhouse, as it grossed just shy of $300 million on a budget of just $20 million. Most critics panned the movie, but with a built-in audience from the massive video game franchise, reviews didn’t matter in the slightest.
There have been 19Five Nights at Freddy’sgames between the main series and spin-offs released across a variety of platforms since the franchise began in 2014.
The extended lore of the franchise is incredibly deep, so each movie in this franchise will sort of carry hype like what the MCU does.Seeing which video game narratives are adapted, which characters show up, and which twists occur will forever appeal to fans of the game, so whether the movie is “good” or not doesn’t impact the mounting hype.
The ultra-gory horror comedy has a ton of reasons to be excited, not the least of which isthe rave reviews it’s drawn since its original 2023 release.Starring an all-star lineup featuring Peter Dinklage, Jacob Tremblay, Kevin Bacon, and Elijah Wood,The Toxic Avengerwill hit theaters as an Unrated moviegiven the level of gore and violence.
With that cast, the promise of laughs and unmitigated gore, and the offbeat superhero narrative,The Toxic Avengerfeels like a sneaky box office hit waiting to happen, not unlike whatTerrifier 2did in 2022 andTerrifier 3did just last year. While there is a franchise behind it, anyone can enter this one blind and have a bloody good time.
Scott Derrickson and Ethan Hawke have collaborated twice, and produced two of the best horror movies of the last 20 years inSinisterandThe Black Phone. They’ll be back together again forThe Black Phone 2, which will take the franchise down an even more supernatural and terrifying road than its predecessor.This feels like a can’t-miss horror sequel, and should be a big hit for Halloween.
The big surface-level selling point here is thatHIMis produced by Jordan Peele and his Monkeypaw Productions, who don’t miss often. However,the concept of an up-and-coming football player descending into madness at the isolated compound of a veteran QB(Marlon Wayans) in the pursuit of fame, fortune, and excellence? Color us incredibly intrigued.
The Long Walkis one of Stephen King’s earliest works, and it’s sort of surprising it’s taken this long to get a high-profile adaptation. The dystopian thriller features a group of young men walking in a contest that sees the last man standing showered in riches, while anyone who is unable to maintain a speed of three miles per hour is executed after faltering three times.
Any Stephen King adaptation will carry a certain amount of hype, butthe source material is among King’s oldest and most accessible novels, so there is a large audience familiar with the story. Throw in Mark Hamill as the hand of the totalitarian regime in charge of the contest and overseeing the boys' progress and this seems like a formula for a high-quality horror-thriller.
After last year’s smash hitLonglegsand 2025’s bloody follow-upThe Monkey, Osgood Perkins is one of the hottest names in horror. Not much is known about his latest movie, butthe creepyteaser trailer forKeeperand Perkins' typical mysterious marketing scheme have our curiosity piqued. Perkins' track record will ensure the hype stays high up to the movie’s November release.
Guillermo del Toro’s star-studded adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic 1818 novelFrankensteinhas a ton of fanfare surrounding it, and for good reason. The cast, led by Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi (as Frankenstein’s Monster), and Mia Goth, is absolutely loaded, and Guillermo del Toro with a pre-Victorian Era horror story in his hands surely means stunning visuals.
The movie will get its formal premiere at the Venice Film Festival in late August/early September, which should yield some reviews ahead of its November release, which will be exclusively on Netflix. Ironically,one of the biggest complaints afterFrankenstein’s breathtaking trailerdropped is that del Toro’s vision won’t be seen on a big screen where it belongs, which indicates how excited the horror industry is for this project.
Weaponshas had a brilliant marketing campaign that has somehow maintained the mystery at the core of Zach Cregger’s latest terrifying tale, which is reportedly set in the same universe and may loosely connect to his first major film,Barbarian. Another horror movie with a loaded cast,Weaponschronicles the disappearance of a classroom full of children in a small town.
September 9th, 2022
$4.5 million
$45.4 million
92%
70%
Reviews aren’t out yet, butearly reactions have been overwhelmingly positivefor the horror mystery movie. The trailers have provided plenty of reason to get excited, with haunting imagery and just enough of the narrative to hook the audience, without providing any real answers to why a class of kids got out of bed and ran away all at the same time.
Weaponstops this list due to the sheer level of mystery that’s involved. This has all the makings of a repeat of last year’s surprise hit, the aforementionedLonglegs, which had a similarly mysterious marketing campaign that came to fruition with a gripping supernatural horror story.
