As the days begin to get shorter and the nights darker, you never know what creepy crawly things may be hiding in the shadows. In this case, though, we do know: horror movies. Tons of new ones are hitting theaters between now and the end of December, so if you live for jump-scares and psychological chills, you're in lots of luck. Here are 12 of the most exciting ones.
Skip to this week [1]!
Before I Wake
- Starring: Kate Bosworth [6], Thomas Jane, and Jacob Tremblay
- The scoop: Tremblay, who took award season by storm after starring in The Room, plays a young boy whose dreams become reality when he sleeps. It's wonderful — until he starts having nightmares that almost kill his adoptive parents (Bosworth and Jane).
- Release date: Sept. 9
- Watch the trailer [7].
The Disappointments Room
- Starring: Kate Beckinsale [8] and Lucas Till
- The scoop: Dana (Beckinsale) and her family movie to the country for a new start, only to find that their dream home is super, super haunted. Hopefully The Disappointments Room will add something new to the haunted old house genre; if not, it still looks full of fun jump scares.
- Release date: Sept. 9
- Watch the trailer [9].
Blair Witch
- Starring: James Allen McCune and Corbin Reid
- The scoop: Originally billed as The Woods, filmmakers have since revealed that, yes, this is in fact a sequel to 1999's The Blair Witch Project. This time around, James (McCune) heads into the forest to find out once and for all what happened to his sister, the documentarian from the first movie. (You might remember her as the one who is definitely not lost.)
- Release date: Sept. 16
- Watch the trailer [10].
Friend Request
- Starring: Alycia Debnam-Carey and Connor Paolo
- The scoop: Ready for a lesson in the dangers of social media? When a student (Fear the Walking Dead [11]'s Debnam-Carey) unfriends a loner on Facebook, she's haunted by the girl's angry ghost.
- Release date: Oct. 7
- Watch the trailer [12].
Under the Shadow
- Starring: Narges Rashidi and Avin Manshadi
- The scoop: Set in post-revolution Iran in the '80s, Under the Shadow features a mother fighting unspeakable (and frankly, indescribable) evil in her home. The horror movie showed at the Sundance Film Festival, and it was easily the scariest film there.
- Release date: Oct. 7
- Watch the trailer [13].
31
- Starring: Malcolm McDowell and Richard Brake
- The scoop: Bloodthirsty horror fans definitely need to see this gruesome gorefest, complete with clowns even scarier than Twisty.
- Release date: Oct. 21 (limited)
- Watch the trailer [14].
Incarnate
- Starring: Aaron Eckhart [15] and Carice van Houten
- The scoop: In a new take on exorcism movies, Eckhart plays a man who gets into the heads of the possessed to kill the demon from within.
- Release date: Dec. 2
- Watch the trailer [16].
Keep Watching
- Starring: Bella Thorne, Chandler Riggs, and Ioan Gruffudd
- The scoop: If The Strangers and Hush [17] rank among your favorite horror movies, you'll be into this new home invasion flick.
- Release date: Dec. 2
The Eyes of My Mother
- Starring: Kika Magalhaes
- The scoop: This haunting drama was a breakout at Sundance, but unless you saw it there or at another film festival, you'll have to wait for a trailer. The story revolves around a young Portuguese-American woman who is still coping with her violent past.
- Release date: Dec. 2 (limited)
- Watch the trailer [18]
Ouija: Origin of Evil
- Starring: Elizabeth Reaser and Doug Jones
- The scoop: If the 2014 film scared the marbles out of you, then you should plan on catching the prequel, which takes place in Los Angeles in 1967.
- Release date: Oct. 21
- Watch the trailer [19].
Shut In
- Starring: Naomi Watts [20] and Jacob Tremblay
- The scoop: Never forget that Oscar nominee Watts is a legit scream queen. The original star of The Ring is costarring with pint-size powerhouse Tremblay for Shut In, a psychological thriller about a woman and her son.
- Release date: Nov. 11