Take our Generalized Anxiety Disorder Test

Find a therapist to combat fear and anxiety

Horror movies are drawing huge audiences and winning Oscars, a rare event for the genre.

The appetite for horror may grow with collective anxiety, as Stephen King suggested in 1981.

Scary fiction may work as threat simulation: a safe way to rehearse fear and build coping capacity.

“What’s your favorite scary movie?”

That question became famous because of 1996’s hit horror movie Scream. It was posed to Drew Barrymore’s ill-fated character, who hesitated before answering, and the question has only become harder since. Today, in 2026, there is just so much good stuff to choose from. We are living in a new Golden Age of horror. Hundreds of new horror movies come out each year, and while far from all of them are worth your time, the top-shelf stuff alone is incredibly abundant.

Just within the last couple of years, we have seen a crop of well-made and genuinely frightening horror movies draw huge audiences, such as Sinners (2025), Weapons (2025), Backrooms (2026), and Obsession (2026). Obsession, made for a measly million dollars at most, garnered more than $500 million in revenue. Both Sinners and Weapons won Oscars, a pretty rare event for a horror movie, and Sinners did so after a record 16 nominations. And Backrooms as well as Obsession were, surprisingly, directed by industry outsiders who had cut their cinematic teeth creating YouTube content.

Why Horror Is Booming

There are many reasons for the current boom. With streaming, even the weirdest horror movie finds its audience. Horror is cheap to make and needs neither stars nor a familiar franchise, so a hit pays back many times over. It is also one of the few genres that still gets young people into theaters at a time when superhero sequels are faltering. And after centuries of suspicion—frightening entertainment has been........

© Psychology Today