SXSW 2026 Adds 50+ Titles — Here’s Where the Genre Heat Is Hiding
- Horror Movies Uncut
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
South by Southwest is loading the chamber early.
SXSW Film & TV Festival announced 50+ additional projects for its March 12–18, 2026 run in Austin, bringing the overall lineup to 107 features (including 82 world premieres) plus shorts, music videos, TV premieres, and XR programming.
Claudette Godfrey, SXSW’s VP of Film & TV, framed the new wave as a snapshot of what the festival does best: big-name premieres, first-time voices, international cinema, and projects built for loud crowds and live reactions.
For Horror Movies Uncut readers, the real story in this announcement is how much genre DNA is woven into the additions—some of it obvious, some of it disguised as “thriller” or “near-future” or “dystopian,” the kind of stuff that plays like horror once the lights go down and the room gets quiet.
If you want the cleanest “Friday night SXSW” genre pick from this wave, it’s Vicky Jewson’s Pretty Lethal. Five ballerinas stranded in a remote forest take shelter at an unsettling roadside inn, then have to weaponize their discipline to survive. It’s a straight-up survival thriller premise with an elevated hook—and SXSW is giving it the Headliner lane for a reason.
SXSW’s Midnighter additions include Damian McCarthy’s Hokum, and the setup is pure dread: a novelist retreats to a remote inn to scatter his parents’ ashes, gets pulled into rumors of a witch haunting a honeymoon suite, and the situation tilts into visions and disappearance. If you like psychological horror that starts as atmosphere and ends as regret, this is the one to circle.
SXSW also stacked this wave with genre-friendly anxiety about modern life.
Alex Prager’s Dreamquil plays in near-future territory as a woman returns from a virtual retreat and finds her “helper robot” isn’t just helping—it’s encroaching. Meanwhile, Kevin Hamedani’s The Saviors takes the Airbnb-era trust collapse and turns it into suspicion, investigation, and escalating “something is off” energy.
Not all genre at SXSW wears a monster mask.
Fernando Meirelles and collaborators’ Beast Race (Corrida dos Bichos) drops into dystopian Rio, class fracture, and blood sport—high stakes, survival pressure, and the kind of worldbuilding that feels adjacent to horror even when it’s framed as action-thriller.
Then there’s He Bled Neon, which drags grief and corruption into the underbelly of Las Vegas after a death that may not be an overdose at all—no supernatural required, just the slow realization that violence is the native language of the place you escaped.
Ben Wheatley’s Normal is being positioned as a combustible small-town story where exposure of a buried secret lights the fuse—genre fans know what that means: pressure cooker, escalation, and consequences.
And Kill Me brings darkly comedic paranoia into play, the kind of “am I being hunted or am I unraveling?” premise that can swing hard into late-night crowd-pleaser territory when it’s done right.
SXSW is always a festival where horror fans can build their own lane if they know where to look. This second wave makes that job easier: a glossy survival thriller in the Headliner slot, a witch-haunted inn story in Midnighter, and a thick layer of tech dread and dystopian pressure spread across Spotlight and beyond.
As always, Horror Movies Uncut will be live on the ground in Austin for SXSW 2026, tracking the genre titles, midnight premieres, audience reactions, and surprises you won’t hear about until the lights come up and the buzz starts traveling. From packed Midnighter screenings to under-the-radar discoveries that sneak up on everyone, we’ll be bringing you real-time coverage, reviews, interviews, and breakdowns straight from the festival floor.
If it plays after dark, rattles a crowd, or leaves people arguing in the lobby, we’ll be there. Stay locked to HMU throughout South by Southwest for full coverage—and keep the lights on.
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