HMU’s SXSW 2026 Curtain-Raiser: The Genre Films We’re Tracking in Austin
- Horror Movies Uncut
- 2 hours ago
- 11 min read
Horror Movies Uncut is heading back to Austin, and SXSW 2026 is already shaping up like a genre buffet — action, dark comedy, experimental horror, sci-fi, and thrillers that feel built for midnight crowds and loud post-screening debates.
We’ll be on the ground March 12–16, moving fast, taking notes, chasing screenings, and lining up talent wherever the schedule lets us. If you want real-time reactions, surprises, and the occasional “how the hell did this get made?” moment, stay locked to our socials while we’re in Texas. And yes — a SXSW music preview is coming in the next couple days, because even on a short trip we’re still catching bands between the madness.
Now let’s get into the curtain-raiser lineup: the films and titles we’re tracking, reviewing, and (hopefully) interviewing around — the ones we think HMU readers should have circled now.
Hokum
Description: When novelist Ohm Bauman retreats to a remote inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, he’s consumed by tales of a witch haunting the honeymoon suite. Disturbing visions and a shocking disappearance force him to confront dark corners of his past.
Director: Damian McCarthy
Cast: Adam Scott, Peter Coonan, David Wilmot, Florence Ordesh, Will O’Connell, Michael Patric, Siox C, Brendan Conroy, Austin Amelio, Ezra Carlisle
Why it’s on our radar: McCarthy’s Oddity built trust the hard way — with atmosphere, dread, and control. Give him Adam Scott and a haunted inn premise and you’re basically asking for elegant psychological damage.
Obsession
Description: After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic gets exactly what he asked for — and learns the price is darker than he imagined.
Director: Curry Barker
Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter
Why it’s on our radar: The “wish” hook is catnip, and Barker’s name has been floating around like the next one people won’t stop talking about once the festival dust settles.
Buddy
Description: A brave girl and her friends must escape a kids’ television show.
Director: Casper Kelly
Cast: Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key, Michael Shannon, Patton Oswalt
Why it’s on our radar: The premise reads like corrupted nostalgia with teeth — kids-TV energy turned predatory — and that cast is absurd in the best way.
American Dollhouse
Description: A woman inherits her childhood home to escape addiction and debt, but a psychotic neighbor becomes obsessed with her resemblance to his dead mother. Friends start disappearing as the fixation spirals into a blood-soaked Christmas nightmare.
Director: John Valley
Cast: Hailley Lauren, Kelsey Pribilski, Tinus Seaux, Danielle Evon Ploeger, Richard C. Jones
Why it’s on our radar: Obsession horror + holiday horror + disappearance spiral. That’s a nasty cocktail.
And Her Body Was Never Found
Description: Mor Cohen and Polaris Banks made a film with just two people while camping, using a script based on their real arguments. Most couples would snap. They were no exception.
Director: Polaris Banks
Cast: Mor Cohen, Polaris Banks, Grae Drake
Why it’s on our radar: A relationship pressure-cooker with formal constraints — the kind of “how far can this go?” experiment SXSW loves.
Anima
Description: After losing her job at a robotic companion start-up, Beck is hired by a company claiming it can preserve consciousness in the cloud. Her first assignment is driving their most valuable client to his final appointment.
Director: Brian Tetsuro Ivie
Cast: Sydney Chandler, Takehiro Hira, Marin Ireland, Lili Taylor, Maria Dizzia, Tom McCarthy, Emil Wakim, Maximilian Lee Piazza
Why it’s on our radar: Tech grief, digitized death, and “final appointment” dread — sci-fi with a pulse.
Bagworm
Description: Carroll’s worldview is dominated by catastrophe and moral collapse. Then he steps on a rusty nail. As his health and sanity deteriorate, he spirals through modern life searching for love, truth, and meaning — while the clock runs out.
Director: Oliver Bernsen
Cast: Peter Falls, Michelle Ortiz, Robbie Arnett, Corbin Bernsen, Stephen Borrello, Jessy Morner-Ritt, Sydney Winbush, Francesca Galassi
Why it’s on our radar: Existential horror via the body — tetanus as a countdown device is bleakly brilliant.
Beast Race (Corrida dos Bichos)
Description: In a ruined future Rio, masked runners compete in the Beast Race while the elite gamble on their lives. Every runner risks a human collateral condemned to the “Coast of Hell.” A rebel leader is forced to enter the race to save his sister.
Director: Ernesto Solis, Rodrigo Pesavento, Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Matheus Abreu, Rodrigo Santoro, Isis Valverde, Bruno Gagliasso, Thainá Duarte, Seu Jorge, Silvero Pereira, João Guilherme, Grazi Massafera, Anitta
Why it’s on our radar: Big concept, big cast, ruthless stakes — dystopian spectacle with teeth.
Dead Eyes
Description: Sean and his fiancée enter a remote forest looking for his missing father — only to uncover resurrection experiments and cannibalistic clones of Sean’s dead sister battling to be “the real one.”
Director: Richard E. Williams
Cast: Ana Thu-Nguyen, Mischa Heywood, Rijen Laine, Charles Cottier, Alea O’Shea, Stephen Phillips, Freya Callaghan
Why it’s on our radar: First-person horror plus cloning horror is already stressful — add cannibal kids and it’s a problem.
Downbeat
Description: A broke drummer crashes on his sister’s couch and starts bucket-drumming in Boston. Small wins pull him back to music, but a secret relationship threatens to burn everything down.
Director: Danny Madden
Cast: Daniel Rashid, Addie Weyrich, Arkira Chantaratananond, Terence Nance, Will Madden, Francesca Blanchard, Dakota Loesch, Dustin Hahn, Skyler Bible
Why it’s on our radar: Not “horror” on paper, but SXSW is where raw character descent stories hit hardest.
Drag
Description: Two sisters rob a rural home. One throws out her back and becomes immobilized upstairs. The night becomes a nightmare as they scramble to escape before the homeowner returns.
Director: Raviv Ullman, Greg Yagolnitzer
Cast: Lizzy Caplan, Lucy DeVito, John Stamos, Christine Ko
Why it’s on our radar: High-concept containment thriller with physical vulnerability baked into the terror.
DreamQuil
Description: In a near future of polluted air and virtual living, a career mother tries a digital wellness retreat — then returns to find her family living with “Carol 2,” a robot replacement.
Director: Alex Prager
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, John C. Reilly, Juliette Lewis, Sofia Boutella, Kathryn Newton, Lamorne Morris
Why it’s on our radar: Identity horror, domestic dread, and tech uncanny valley — with a cast that can actually sell the absurd.
Family Movie
Description: A family makes low-budget horror movies on their farm. When a real dead body shows up on set, their simmering dysfunction turns into chaos.
Director: Kevin Bacon
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Sosie Bacon, Travis Bacon, Liza Koshy, John Carroll Lynch, Jackie Earle Haley, Andrea Savage, Austin Amelio, Scoot McNairy
Why it’s on our radar: The “movie-within-a-movie” angle plus a real corpse? That’s a SXSW crowd-pleaser waiting to happen.
Fifteen
Description: Set in Mexico City, Fifteen reimagines the quinceañera as a chaotic mix of comedy and creature horror, exploring class divides and the fear of growing up through kitsch, blood, and social bite.
Director: (not provided)
Cast: (not provided)
Why it’s on our radar: The concept alone sounds like the kind of genre swing you don’t forget.
Forbidden Fruits
Description: In a mall store, Apple leads a secret witch cult with coworkers Cherry and Fig. New hire Pumpkin questions the sisterhood — and the darkness turns violent.
Director: Jack Zagha, Yossy Zagha
Cast: Greta Marti, Macarena Oz, Aminta Ireta, Martha Claudia Moreno, Enrique Arreola, Mercedes Hernández, Malena Sandy, Cloe Juresa Furgan, Andre Fajardo, Silvia Villazur
Why it’s on our radar: Retail horror + cult dynamics + fruit-coded witchcraft is exactly the kind of weird SXSW can launch.
Grind
Description: A horror anthology about modern work life: MLM hustle culture, delivery-driver repetition, content moderation nightmares, and coffee shop unionization.
Director: Brea Grant, Ed Dougherty, Chelsea Stardust
Cast: Rob Huebel, Barbara Crampton, Vinny Thomas, Jessika Van, Christopher Rodriguez-Marquette, James Urbaniak, Courtney Pauroso, James Paxton, Ify Nwadiwe, Aubrey Shea
Why it’s on our radar: Workplace dread is real. Also: Barbara Crampton.
He Bled Neon
Description: Ethan returns to Las Vegas after learning his brother’s death may not be an overdose. The search for truth drags him back into the violent past he escaped.
Director: Drew Kirsch
Cast: Joe Cole, Rita Ora, Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Paul Wesley, Josh Holloway
Why it’s on our radar: Vegas noir, grief, and violence — with serious star wattage.
Imposters
Description: After a couple’s baby is taken, the mother finds a way to bring him back — but the husband suspects what returned isn’t their son.
Director: Caleb Phillips
Cast: Jessica Rothe, Charlie Barnett, Yul Vazquez
Why it’s on our radar: “Returned child” horror is primal when it’s done right.
Kill Me
Description: Jimmy wakes up with his wrists slit in a bathtub of blood — but he swears he didn’t do it. With the 911 operator who took his call, he launches an amateur murder investigation where the prime suspect might be himself.
Director: Peter Warren
Cast: Charlie Day, Allison Williams, Giancarlo Esposito, Aya Cash, Jessica Harper, David Krumholtz, Tony Cavalero
Why it’s on our radar: Darkly funny, high-concept, and stacked.
Leviticus
Description: Two teenage boys in a conservative Christian community are subjected to a conversion ritual that unleashes a violent entity — one that takes the form of what they desire most: each other.
Director: Adrian Chiarella
Cast: Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Mia Wasikowska, Jeremy Blewitt, Ewen Leslie, Davida McKenzie
Why it’s on our radar: Social horror and spiritual horror colliding, with a premise that sounds genuinely dangerous.
Mallory’s Ghost
Description: Mallory joins her playwright boyfriend on a coastal retreat and becomes convinced she’s haunted by the ghost of his glamorous ex, as jealousy blurs reality and pulls her toward something essential.
Director: Nan Feix
Cast: Jerald Head, Nhung Dao Head, Tuan Bui, Henry Wong, Linh Phan, Lang A Nguyen, Maxence Victor, Kim Hoang, Naoto Ono, An Nguyen Xuan
Why it’s on our radar: Psychological hauntings are always scarier when they’re rooted in insecurity.
Mam
Description: A self-taught Texas chef chases a Vietnamese-restaurant dream in NYC, forming an unlikely alliance with a Vietnamese waitress as they hustle toward something bigger.
Director: Nan Feix
Cast: Jerald Head, Nhung Dao Head, Tuan Bui, Henry Wong, Linh Phan, Lang A Nguyen, Maxence Victor, Kim Hoang, Naoto Ono, An Nguyen Xuan
Why it’s on our radar: Not horror, but it’s on the HMU radar for the same reason SXSW matters: stories with soul still hit.
Monitor
Description: A content moderator haunted by her sister’s suicide blocks a cryptic video — and an entity begins hunting her team through every screen in their lives.
Director: Matt Black, Ryan Polly
Cast: Brittany O’Grady, Taz Skylar, Viveik Karla, Ines Høysæter Asserson, Gunner Willis, Sara Alexander, Camila Bejarano Wahlgren
Why it’s on our radar: Screenlife horror meets grief and digital surveillance dread.
Never After Dark
Description: A medium summoned to an isolated house faces a grotesque apparition — and discovers her greatest threat may not be the supernatural, but the living.
Director: Dave Boyle
Cast: Moeka Hoshi, Kento Kaku, Kurumi Inagaki, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Bokuzo Masana, Tae Kimura
Why it’s on our radar: Controlled supernatural terror with an edge of human cruelty.
Normal (U.S. Premiere on 35mm)
Description: A substitute sheriff responds to a bank robbery and stumbles into something far more explosive in a sleepy small town.
Director: Ben Wheatley
Cast: Bob Odenkirk, Henry Winkler, Lena Headey
Why it’s on our radar: Wheatley + Odenkirk in a “neo-Western kinetic” lane? We’re seated.
Over Your Dead Body
Description: A dysfunctional couple retreats to a remote cabin to reconnect — but both secretly plan to kill the other.
Director: Jorma Taccone
Cast: Samara Weaving, Jason Segel, Timothy Olyphant, Juliette Lewis, Paul Guilfoyle, Keith Jardine
Why it’s on our radar: Relationship warfare as survival thriller is always fun when the cast can play it.
The Fox
Description: Nick , the affable heir to a wealthy rural landowner, learns his fiancée Kori is cheating and becomes desperate to “fix” the relationship. One night, he captures a rogue Fox who offers him a bargain: spare her life and she’ll help him save his love — if he pushes Kori into a magical hole that can transform her into the perfect partner. The new Kori who emerges seems ideal at first… until unsettling quirks make Nick question what he’s really created.
Director: Dario Russo
Cast: Jai Courtney , Emily Browning, Damon Herriman , Claudia Doumit , Sam Neill , Miranda Otto, Olivia Colman
Why it’s on our radar: Folklore-infused relationship horror with Olivia Colman as a deal-making fox and a “perfect partner” premise that screams moral disaster. Dark satire, domestic dread, and prestige casting — that’s a dangerous mix.
The Peril at Pincer Point
Description: A sound designer is sent to a remote island to capture a “perfect” horror sound — and stumbles into eerie fables about souls claimed by a ghostly sea captain.
Director: Jake Kuhn, Noah Stratton-Twine
Cast: Jack Redmayne, Alyth Ross, Os Leanse, Mike Mackenzie, Dashiell Upton, Jason Hogan, Mat Wright, Noah Stratton-Twine, Isobel Laidler, Oliver Woolf
Why it’s on our radar: Sound-driven horror is a cheat code when it’s done right.
Pretty Lethal
Description: Five ballerinas stranded in a remote forest weaponize their training — grace, discipline, even pointe shoes — to survive a deadly situation at a roadside inn.
Director: Vicky Jewson
Cast: Iris Apatow, Lana Condor, Millicent Simmonds, Avantika, Maddie Ziegler, Uma Thurman
Why it’s on our radar: “Ballet-fu” survival thriller energy. Also: Thurman.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Description: Grace survives the Le Domas massacre only to discover the nightmare isn’t over — now hunted by rival families as she fights for a throne-like “High Seat.”
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Cast: Samara Weaving, Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Shawn Hatosy, Néstor Carbonell, David Cronenberg, Elijah Wood
Why it’s on our radar: Sequel stakes + Weaving + that cast? It’s going to be loud.
Rock Springs
Description: A grieving Chinese and Vietnamese American family moves to an isolated home; their daughter begins interacting with a dark presence tied to historical tragedy, forcing the family to confront shared trauma.
Director: Vera Miao
Cast: Kelly Marie Tran, Benedict Wong, Jimmy O. Yang, Fiona Fu, Aria Kim
Why it’s on our radar: Supernatural horror fused with historical memory tends to hit harder than people expect.
A Safe Distance
Description: After rejecting a surprise proposal and being abandoned in the woods, Alex is rescued by an off-the-grid couple — until she learns they’re fugitives and survival becomes a moral maze.
Director: Gloria Mercer
Cast: Bethany Brown, Tandia Mercedes, Cody Kearsley, Chris McNally
Why it’s on our radar: Survival thriller with seduction, fear, and complicity.
The Saviors
Description: A divorcing couple rents their guest house to a quiet brother and sister. Strange occurrences mount as the President’s visit nears, and suspicion collides with rekindled intimacy.
Director: Kevin Hamedani
Cast: Adam Scott, Danielle Deadwyler, Theo Rossi, Kate Berlant, Nazanin Boniadi, Daveed Diggs, Ron Perlman, Colleen Camp, Greg Kinnear
Why it’s on our radar: Timely paranoia thriller with a loaded ensemble.
Sender
Description: Newly sober and newly fired, Julia starts receiving packages she didn’t order — each one tied to her past. Paranoia deepens as she tries to unmask the anonymous sender.
Director: Russell Goldman
Cast: Britt Lower, Rhea Seehorn, Jamie Lee Curtis, Anna Baryshnikov, David Dastmalchian, Utkarsh Ambudkar
Why it’s on our radar: Modern dread: the algorithm knows you, and somebody else does too.
They Will Kill You
Description: A young woman must survive the night inside a demonic cult’s death-trap lair before becoming their next offering — a horror-action-comedy built for big, nasty set pieces.
Director: Kirill Sokolov
Cast: Zazie Beetz, Myha’la, Paterson Joseph, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, Patricia Arquette
Why it’s on our radar: “Brazen” and “blood-soaked” is the right language.
Ugly Cry
Description: Delaney becomes obsessed with “fixing” her cry after producers call it ugly — triggering a spiral where her younger self haunts her and self-transformation turns grotesque.
Director: Emily Robinson
Cast: Emily Robinson, Ryan Simpkins, Aaron Dominguez, Robin Tunney
Why it’s on our radar: Body image + performance anxiety + haunting = a modern nightmare.
Wishful Thinking
Description: A volatile couple attends a couples seminar run by twin healers — and the state of their relationship begins affecting the world itself, putting nations at risk.
Director: Graham Parkes
Cast: Lewis Pullman, Maya Hawke, Randall Park, Jake Shane, Kate Berlant, Amita Rao, Eric Rahill
Why it’s on our radar: Relationship apocalypse as literal apocalypse. That’s the kind of swing SXSW is for.
We’ll be pushing coverage as fast as we can March 12–16 — reviews, reactions, and whatever interviews we can lock in while Austin is doing what Austin does. Keep your eyes on HMU, and watch our socials for daily updates while we’re on the ground.
Next up: our SXSW music preview (dropping in the next couple days), because we’re not going all the way to Texas and ignoring the other half of the chaos.