Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Unveils Full 2026 Lineup With ‘I Love Paris,’ ‘Species’ and More
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Unveils Full 2026 Lineup With ‘I Love Paris,’ ‘Species’ and ‘The Glorious Dead’
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival has unveiled its complete 2026 program, setting an eight-day return to New York with a lineup spanning new international genre films, repertory screenings, shorts, documentaries and specialty programming.
The festival runs Oct. 15-22, with screenings taking place at Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg. Nicky Murphy’s vampire mockumentary I Love Paris will open the festival with its U.S. premiere, while Marion Le Corroller’s Species (Sanguine) has been selected as the Centerpiece Film. Nick Kozakis’ Kick On will close the festival with its New York premiere.
The 2026 edition will also honor filmmaking collective the Adams Family with the Leviathan Award, presented by Arrow Video. Created in 2023, the festival’s tribute award recognizes filmmakers and artists for their contributions to horror. John Adams and Toby Poser’s The Glorious Dead will screen as a New York premiere as part of the recognition.
The selection continues a busy festival run for The Glorious Dead, which is also part of HMU’s Fantastic Fest 2026 coverage. The film follows a small-town sheriff whose seemingly ordinary day takes a turn as people begin disappearing and strange flesh-born creatures emerge.
Opening-night selection I Love Paris follows an aspiring underground singer whose pursuit of music stardom continues after she is turned into a vampire. The Australia-France production arrives in Brooklyn following an award-winning festival run and will be followed by an opening-night party presented by Dark Sky Films.
The festival’s Centerpiece, Species (Sanguine), makes its New York premiere after emerging from France. Le Corroller’s film centers on a young intern working inside a prestigious emergency room who begins experiencing disturbing physical symptoms of her own as a strange disease appears among her patients.
Closing-night selection Kick On comes from Australian director Nick Kozakis. The single-location siege film follows four friends whose night of partying turns into a fight for survival after they encounter a mobster’s unstable son. The festival will conclude with a Halloween party presented by ALTER.
Several other films arriving in Brooklyn will be familiar to genre audiences following their appearances elsewhere on the 2026 festival circuit. Jordan Downey’s The Cycle will make its East Coast premiere, with its mystery beginning after a woman’s estranged father is discovered dead at a grisly crime scene more than three decades after his disappearance.
Josh Tanner’s Australian supernatural horror film Posthumous will also receive an East Coast premiere. The film follows a woman returning to her childhood home who becomes increasingly absorbed by VHS birthday recordings left by her late mother, eventually uncovering a connection between her family and the occult.
HMU recently began its Fantastic Fest 2026 coverage with Posthumous, which stars Sophie Lowe and uses analog technology, grief and family history as the foundation for its supernatural mystery.
Larry Fessenden returns with Trauma, or Monsters All, receiving its New York premiere. The film brings together the blue-collar, Universal Monsters-inspired world Fessenden has developed through films including Habit, Depraved and Blackout, culminating in a confrontation set against a small town with its own buried history.
The festival will host the world premiere of Michael Schwarz’s The Only One, an Australian throwback slasher about a woman whose former partners begin dying one by one. With suspicion falling on her, she joins old friends in an attempt to identify the masked killer known as Prince Charming.
Other premieres include Alison-Eve Hammersley’s Erie, Mark H. Rapaport’s Godhead, Gabrielle Christensen’s Mountain King, Josh Lobo’s Night After Night, Kyra Elise Gardner’s Slay, Rebekah McKendry’s Sundown and Ryan Glover’s Split Rock.
The feature lineup stretches considerably further. John Valley’s American Dollhouse follows a woman returning to her childhood home only to encounter a homicidal neighbor. Corrin Evans’ Corpus centers on a photographer traveling to upstate New York with a longtime friend before their mysterious hosts reveal ulterior motives.
Anthony Oberback’s Little Doors takes a more surreal approach, following a woman surviving in an apocalyptic world who discovers a small door growing on the side of her body. Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica follows a struggling French actress whose trip to Rome for a science-fiction production begins sending her into a spiral.
Russell Goldman’s Sender stars Britt Lower as a newly sober woman who begins receiving mysterious packages she never ordered, triggering an increasingly paranoid investigation. Jamie Lee Curtis is among the film’s producers.
Documentary programming includes Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson, Nick Taylor’s examination of practical effects artist Steve Johnson, and Sarah Appleton’s Full Moon Rising: The Charles Band Story. The latter traces Band’s career from the home-video era through productions including Re-Animator and From Beyond and his work with Full Moon Features.
Brooklyn Horror is also expanding its curated programming sections in 2026. The Dark Suburbia sidebar includes American Dollhouse, Sender and Little Doors, while the festival’s Black Horror programming now carries the permanent name Culture Shock. The Slayed program, presented by MUBI, returns with features and shorts centered on queer experiences.
Fear in Focus turns its attention to Cyber Horror this year, using three films from different periods to trace the evolution of technology-driven genre storytelling. Rachel Talalay’s 1993 Ghost in the Machine screens on 35mm alongside Zachary Donohue’s 2013 screenlife horror film The Den and Jane Schoenbrun’s 2021 We’re All Going to the World’s Fair.
The repertory lineup extends beyond that program. Arthur Marks’ J.D.’s Revenge receives a 50th anniversary 35mm screening as part of Culture Shock, while Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs returns for its 35th anniversary.
Michael Dougherty’s Trick ’r Treat will screen on 35mm in another of the festival’s major repertory events. The screening will be preceded by a 4K restoration of Dougherty’s original animated short Season’s Greetings, which introduced Sam, and followed by a conversation with the filmmaker.
The festival will reach even further into cinema history with Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, accompanied by an original live score performed by The Flushing Remonstrance.
Short-form filmmaking remains a significant part of the program, with dedicated blocks including Nightmare Fuel, Head Trip, Culture Shock, Slayed, Laugh Now, Die Later, Death Grip and two Home Invasion showcases devoted to local filmmakers.
The Culture Shock shorts program includes work from filmmakers Destinee Stewart, Rana Roy, Gabby Beans, Loren Loubser and Gabe Gabriel, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, and Justice Smith. Slayed includes eight queer-focused shorts and is presented by MUBI.
Brooklyn Horror is keeping one feature completely under wraps. The festival’s Secret Screening is identified only as a 2026 film running longer than 100 minutes, with the title, country and filmmaker remaining undisclosed.
Special programming will include Final Exam Horror Trivia, presented by Dark Sky Films and hosted by filmmaker Ted Geoghegan and journalist Michael Gingold. The festival will also welcome Certified Forgotten, the horror podcast hosted by Matt Donato and Matt Monagle that focuses on overlooked genre films.
With international premieres, emerging filmmakers, established genre names, repertory screenings and an extensive shorts program occupying the same eight-day schedule, Brooklyn Horror’s 2026 edition arrives with programming stretching from silent-era cinema through contemporary cyber horror.
The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival runs Oct. 15-22, 2026, at Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York.
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