Horror Movies Hitting Theaters in 2018: Zombies, Puppets, and the Return of Michael Myers

2018 Horror Films Include The Strangers: Prey at Night
Bailee Madison stars in ‘The Strangers: Prey at Night’ (Photo by Brian Dogulas / Aviron Pictures 2017)

2018’s offerings in the horror film genre will include new installments in the Cloverfield, The Purge, Day of the Dead, The Conjuring, Predator, and Halloween franchises. The year will also deliver new movies in The Conjuring and Insidious series’ as well as the much-anticipated sequel to The Strangers.

It, Get Down, and It Comes at Night were standouts among the 2017 horror releases, and hopefully there will be a few films of equal quality in the batch of 2018 releases. Here’s a preview of the horror films heading to theaters during 2018, listed in alphabetical order.

2018 Horror Films

Abruptio starring James Marsters, Hana Mae Lee, Jordan Peele, Robert Englund, Chris McDonald, Sid Haig, and Rich Fulcher

The Plot: Les Hackel (Marsters) is a guy down on his luck who wakes to find an explosive device has been implanted in his neck. He must carry out heinous crimes in order to stay alive while trying to identify the mastermind manipulating the now twisted and strange world around him. (The film is performed entirely with lifelike puppets.)

Annihilation star Natalie Portman
Natalie Portman and Tessa Thompson in ‘Annihilation’ (Photo Credit: Peter Mountain © 2017 Paramount Pictures)

Annihilation starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny and Oscar Isaac.

The Plot: A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.

Cloverfield Movie (formerly titled God Particle) starring David Oyelowo, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ziyi Zhang, Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Brühl, and Chris O’Dowd

The Plot: Bumped to 2018 from its October 2017 release date, the next Cloverfield film takes place in the not-so-distant future and involves astronauts on a space station. The team discover something that challenges the very fabric of reality.

Day of the Dead: Bloodline starring Sophie Skelton and Johnathon Schaech

The Plot: In a post-apocalyptic, zombie-filled society, a former med school student is tormented by a dark figure from her past. The only thing is, he’s a half-human, half-zombie hell-bent on destroying her world.

Death House starring Kane Hodder, Cody Longo, Dee Wallace, Bill Moseley, and Sean Whalen

The Plot: The Death House is the Area 51 of Evil…a subterranean government facility that holds humanity’s worst on nine levels. Hell…Dante’s ninth level, holds the Five Evils…the “dark stars” of Death House. These individuals are so heinous they can never walk among society again. They may also be supernatural.

Agents Toria Boon and Jae Novak have their own dark pasts, arriving at Death House to tour its levels and observe its denizens first hand as well as the medical and mental experiments of Drs. Eileen Fletcher and Karen Redmane. Their depraved experiments date back to the Nazi doctors of WW II. Prison cells are virtual reality holo decks that recreate prisoner environments before they were incarcerated. A special hallucinogenic gas keeps inmates under control. The victims are homeless bused into Death House to play literal victims while killing habits are studied. The results are sick, but only a hint of what goes on here.


Hell literally breaks loose inside the facility when an EMP device detonates, killing all power and communication and…releasing every prisoner. Boon, Novak and Fletcher are caught in a race against advancing prisoner hoards led by occultist Neo-Nazi Sieg. The monsters are freed and they’re going down. Boon and Novak’s fight through Death House turns into a house of horrors gauntlet with the only hope of escape is descending into Hell and the help of The Five Evils. Events culminate in a violent face to face standoff with absolute evil…only to find that they have traveled down a rabbit hole and through a looking glass. Black is white and white is black and the definitions of good and evil no longer apply…

Who are the monsters? Who will escape…

Ghosts of War Starring Brenton Thwaites, Theo Rossi, Kyle Gallner, and Skylar Astin

The Plot: Ghosts of War follows five battle-hardened American soldiers assigned to hold a French Chateau near the end of World War II. Formerly occupied by the Nazi high command, this respite quickly descends into madness when they encounter a supernatural enemy far more terrifying than anything seen on the battlefield. Thwaites will play Chris Goodson, a natural leader and brilliant strategist who is plagued by battle fatigue.

Jamie Lee Curtis stars in Halloween Sequel

Halloween Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Judy Greer

The Plot: Jamie Lee Curtis returns to her iconic role as Laurie Strode, who comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.

The House That Jack Built starring Riley Keough, Uma Thurman, and Matt Dillon

The Plot: Lars von Trier’s upcoming drama follows the highly intelligent Jack (Dillon) over a span of 12 years and introduces the murders that define Jack’s development as a serial killer. We experience the story from Jack’s point of view, while he postulates each murder is an artwork in itself. As the inevitable police intervention is drawing nearer, he is taking greater and greater risks in his attempt to create the ultimate artwork.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls starring Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Owen Vaccaro, and Kyle MacLachlan

The Plot: In the tradition of Amblin classics where fantastical events occur in the most unexpected places, Jack Black and Cate Blanchett star in The House with a Clock in Its Walls, from Amblin Entertainment. The magical adventure tells the spine-tingling tale of 10-year-old Lewis (Vaccaro) who goes to live with his uncle in a creaky old house with a mysterious tick-tocking heart. But his new town’s sleepy façade jolts to life with a secret world of warlocks and witches when Lewis accidentally awakens the dead.

Insidious: The Last Key starring Lin Shaye, Leigh Whannell, Angus Sampson, Josh Stewart, Caitlin Gerard, Kirk Acevedo, Javier Botet, Bruce Davison, Spencer Locke, Tessa Ferrer, Ava Kolker, and Marcus Henderson

The Plot: The creative minds behind the hit Insidious trilogy return for Insidious: The Last Key. In the supernatural thriller, which welcomes back franchise standout Lin Shaye as Dr. Elise Rainier, the brilliant parapsychologist faces her most fearsome and personal haunting yet: in her own family home.

The Little Stranger starring Domhnall Gleeson, Ruth Wilson, Will Poulter, and Charlotte Rampling

The Plot: Academy Award nominee Lenny Abrahamson (Room) directs a complex and chilling ghost story. Dr Faraday (Gleeson), the son of a housemaid, has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. During the long hot summer of 1947, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked. The Hall has been home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries and is now in decline. But Mrs Ayres (Rampling) and her two grown children, Caroline (Wilson) and Roddy (Poulter), are haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life. When he takes on his new patient, Faraday has no idea how closely, and how terrifyingly, the family’s story is about to become entwined with his own.

The Meg starring Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Winston Chao, Cliff Curtis, Rainn Wilson, and Ruby Rose

The Plot: A deep-sea submersible—part of an international undersea observation program—has been attacked by a massive creature, previously thought to be extinct, and now lies disabled at the bottom of the deepest trench in the Pacific…with its crew trapped inside. With time running out, expert deep sea rescue diver Jonas Taylor (Statham) is recruited by a visionary Chinese oceanographer (Chao), against the wishes of his daughter Suyin (Bingbing), to save the crew—and the ocean itself—from this unstoppable threat: a pre-historic 75-foot-long shark known as the Megalodon. What no one could have imagined is that, years before, Taylor had encountered this same terrifying creature. Now, teamed with Suyin, he must confront his fears and risk his own life to save everyone trapped below…bringing him face to face once more with the greatest and largest predator of all time.

The New Mutants Logo

The New Mutants starring Alice Braga, Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, and Blu Hunt

The Plot: The story of the New Mutants, a team of mutant heroes comprised of the first graduates from Charles Xavier’s school.

The Nun starring Taissa Farmiga, Demian Bichir, Charlotte Hope, and Bonnie Aarons

The Plot: When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest ( Bichir) with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows (Farmiga) are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in The Conjuring 2, as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.

Overlord starring Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, Bokeem Woodbine, Iain De Caestecker

The Plot: On the eve of D-Day, a group of American paratroopers are dropped behind enemy lines to carry out a mission crucial to the invasion’s success. But as they approach their target, they begin to realize there is more going on in this Nazi-occupied village than a simple military operation.

Polaroid starring Kathryn Prescott, Mitch Pileggi, Grace Zabriskie, Keenan Tracey, and Madelaine Petsch

The Plot: High school loner Bird Fitcher has no idea what dark secrets are tied to the mysterious Polaroid vintage camera she stumbles upon, but it doesn’t take long to discover that those who have their picture taken meet a tragic end.

The Predator starring Yvonne Strahovski, Olivia Munn, Jacob Tremblay, Thomas Jane, Sterling K. Brown, and Boyd Holbrook

The Plot: 20th Century Fox has not released the official synopsis for the 2018 Predator film.

The Purge: The Island starring Y’Lan Noel, Lex Scott Davis, Joivan Wade, and Luna Lauren Velez

The Plot: On Independence Day, 2018, experience the next terrifying chapter in our country’s 12 hours of annual lawlessness. The film will be a prequel to the other The Purge movies, setting up how the annual Purge first developed.

A Quiet Place star Emily Blunt
Emily Blunt stars in Paramount Pictures’ ‘A Quiet Place.’

A Quiet Place starring John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Noah Jupe, and Millicent Simmonds

The Plot: If they can’t hear you, they can’t hunt you.

Slaughterhouse Rulez starring Michael Sheen, Simon Pegg, Asa Butterfield, Finn Cole, and Nick Frost

The Plot: Welcome to Slaughterhouse, elite boarding school, where those boys and girls groomed for power and greatness — are about to meet their match.

Our hero, Don Wallace, is a wide-eyed new boy from a modest background, forced to navigate a baffling new world of arcane rules and rituals, presided over by sadistic sixth formers. Matters of status are aggressively enforced and conversation with school goddess Clemsie, strictly forbidden. But this ancient and ordered world is about to be shaken to its foundations – literally. A controversial frack site on prize school woodland causes seismic tremors, a mysterious sinkhole and an unspeakable horror to be unleashed. Soon a new pecking order will be established as pupils, teachers and the school matron become locked in a bloody battle for survival.

Slender Man starring Joey King, Julia Goldani-Telles, Jaz Sinclair, and Annalise Basso

The Plot: In a small town in Massachusetts, four high school girls perform a ritual in an attempt to debunk the lore of Slender Man. When one of the girls goes mysteriously missing, they begin to suspect that she is, in fact, HIS latest victim.

Slice starring Joe Keery, Paul Scheer, and Chance the Rapper

The Plot: Who murdered the pizza delivery man? Could it be ghosts? Or, maybe it was werewolves…

The Strangers: Prey at Night starring Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison, and Lewis Pullman

The Plot: A family’s road trip takes a dangerous turn when they arrive at a secluded mobile home park to stay with some relatives and find it mysteriously deserted. Under the cover of darkness, three masked psychopaths pay them a visit to test the family’s every limit as they struggle to survive.

Suspiria Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Mia Goth, and Jessica Harper

The Plot: A darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the troupe’s artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist. Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.

Unsane starring Juno Temple, Claire Foy, Amy Irving, Jay Pharaoh, Aimee Mullins, and Joshua Leonard

The Plot: A young woman is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear — but is it real or is it a product of her delusion?

Winchester starring Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Sarah Snook, Angus Sampson, and Finn Scicluna-O’Prey

The Plot: On an isolated stretch of land 50 miles outside of San Francisco sits the most haunted house in the world. Built by Sarah Winchester, (Mirren) heiress to the Winchester fortune, it is a house that knows no end. Constructed in an incessant twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week mania for decades, it stands seven stories tall and contains hundreds of rooms. To the outsider it looks like a monstrous monument to a disturbed woman’s madness. But Sarah is not building for herself, for her niece (Snook) or for the brilliant Doctor Eric Price (Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. She is building a prison, an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts, and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters…