October always brings shadows, and this year cinema has employed them with surgical precision. From reinterpretations of classics to contemporary nightmares, the genre has proven that it continues to evolve, challenging both the audience and its own boundaries.
To close the horror season with pounding hearts and the lights still on, we wanted to revisit the 2025 films that turn fear into art — stories that don’t just scare us but expose us to what we dread the most.
The Ugly Stepsister
Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt, The Ugly Stepsister delves into the darkest corners of Cinderella to turn the fairy tale into a nightmare of flesh, scalpels, and mirrors. Premiering in Sundance’s Midnight section and later at the Berlinale, the film blends body horror with a biting satire of beauty standards.
Starring Lea Myren as Elvira, the “ugly” stepsister undergoing a grotesque transformation to meet her mother’s cruel idea of perfection, the film unfolds with a sickly gothic aesthetic.
A co-production between Norway, Sweden, Poland, and Denmark, it confirms the rise of a sophisticated, unsettling new wave of European horror. Blichfeldt doesn’t scare with monsters, but with the mirror — that reflection that we all face sooner or later.
Weapons
With Weapons, writer-director Zach Cregger — the mind behind Barbarian — cements his status as one of the boldest voices in modern horror.
The film opens with a chilling mystery: the simultaneous disappearance of seventeen teenagers in a small American town. What begins as a police investigation quickly spirals into a sprawling nightmare, where fear seeps through silence, ritual, and collective paranoia.
Cregger fuses oppressive realism with a fractured narrative, crafting a story that is visually immaculate and emotionally devastating. More than a simple horror exercise, Weapons becomes a haunting dissection of trauma and the structural violence embedded in society.
28 Years Later
Nearly three decades after the viral chaos that redefined modern horror, Danny Boyle returns to the universe that made him a legend, once again joined by screenwriter Alex Garland.
28 Years Later marks the rebirth of a franchise that changed the zombie apocalypse forever, replacing the undead with bodies still alive but consumed by rage.
True to Boyle’s kinetic visual energy and political pulse, the film merges action, horror, and social critique in a story that doesn’t seek to repeat the past, but to confront it. In this world, the real infection remains human.
The Black Phone 2
Under the direction of Scott Derrickson, The Black Phone 2 brings back one of contemporary horror’s most unsettling stories.
The sequel revisits Finney Blake — once again played by Mason Thames — who, years after surviving the sadistic “Grabber,” must face new presences that refuse to stay buried.
Expanding the world of the original film, Derrickson blends supernatural terror with a nuanced study of childhood trauma and memory, proving that the most haunting ghosts are often the ones we carry inside.
Frankenstein
With Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro finally brings to life a dream long in gestation: to reinterpret the most human myth in horror.
Released first in theaters and later on Netflix, the film stars Oscar Isaac as the tormented Dr. Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his creature, guided by Del Toro’s unmistakable artistic hand.
The Mexican director transcends gothic horror to craft a visually majestic tragedy where the act of creation becomes a mirror of human loneliness and guilt. Del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s classic is profoundly emotional; his Frankenstein doesn’t terrify with screams, but with the echo of an eternal question: what truly makes us monsters?
The Long Walk
Directed by Francis Lawrence and based on Stephen King’s seminal dystopian novel, The Long Walk transforms physical endurance into moral horror. Set in an authoritarian future, it follows a group of teenagers forced to walk endlessly under fatal rules — stop, and you die.
Known for his work on The Hunger Games, Lawrence once again explores themes of control, institutional violence, and media manipulation, this time through a bleaker, more restrained visual language.
The film balances psychological tension with existential dread, steering away from spectacle to expose the brutality of sacrifice and the slow erosion of innocence.
The Conjuring: Last Rites
Director Michael Chaves brings the curtain down on one of the most influential horror franchises of the 21st century. The Conjuring: Last Rites reunites Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as Ed and Lorraine Warren for what appears to be their final cinematic case.
Inspired by the real-life haunting of the Smurl family in 1980s Pennsylvania, the film fuses the familiar tones of possession and exorcism with a somber, elegiac atmosphere. The Warrens face a demonic presence and the toll of a lifetime defined by faith and fear.
Last Rites doesn’t aim to reinvent horror — it seeks to bid it farewell, with the gravity and grace of a final exorcism.