10 Must-Watch Films From Fantastic Fest 2026
Start spooky season right with Fantastic Fest world premieres to look forward to!
For 21 years, Fantastic Fest has always highlighted the best in upcoming fantasy, sci-fi, and horror films; previous festivals featured premieres of There Will Be Blood, John Wick, and Zombieland. As the festival’s 2026 edition wraps up in Austin, Texas, we’re doing a look back at 10 films that premiered this past week to look forward to.
1. Adult Supervision (2026)
Release Date: TBA
Already chosen as Sweden’s Best International Feature Film entry for the 99th Academy Awards, Adult Supervision follows three parents (Gustaf Skarsgård, Fares Fares, Linus Wahlgren) who chaperone a school trip to the remote Klippvik archipelago. The trip soon goes awry, however, when the parents realize they have little control of the teenage students. As the bullying gets worse, painful adolescent memories resurface and tensions arise between the fathers. Adult Supervision is a dark comedy that provides a harrowing look at modern teenage “mean girl” culture and its effects on everyone, regardless of age.
2. Beware Boiúna (2026)
Release Date: October 2, 2026
A routine humanitarian medical mission to the Amazon rainforest goes sideways when they awaken the Boiúna, a colossal, mystical serpent. Along the way, the team reluctantly allies with a group of colonizers led by Brennan Malloy (Logan Marshall-Green) and together the group must leave the forest before the Boiúna retakes control of her domain and kills them all. For fans of 1997’s Anaconda, Beware Boiúna might just be the spiritual successor to sate appetites for snake-centric creature features. Additionally, for those interested in commentary on colonization and humanity’s interference with nature, Beware Boiúna is sure to slither its way into their watchlist.
3. Kung Fu Deadly
Release Date: TBA
Chinese-Irish actor and “emotional damage” meme Steven He stars in Kung Fu Deadly, where bumbling Dublin exterminators Danny and Frank (He and Michael Tient, respectively) cross paths with Taoist guardian Lien (Gemma Chua-Tran). After discovering the fate of Danny’s lineage is intertwined with hers, Lien enlists the duo to help hunt a group of criminals trying to unleash a jiangshi, a Chinese hopping vampire, onto the city. Filled with tons of martial arts fight scenes courtesy of action director Lee Huang, Kung Fu Deadly is a fun comedy that both pays homage to predecessors of the genre and provides a refreshing new take on kung fu movies.
4. What Happened to Doris?
Release Date: October 1, 2026
In 1974, single mother Doris Bither reported being violently sexually assaulted by spirits in her Culver City home. The case caught the attention of the UCLA parapsychology department, which extensively documented Bither’s experiences. The ensuing paranormal investigation caught the world’s attention when it was adapted into the 1982 film The Entity, but in the new film What Happened to Doris?, director Nick Simon turns the attention to Bither’s family. Starring Heather Graham in the titular role, What Happened to Doris? focuses on the victims instead of the spirits, empathetically navigating the devastating cost of not being believed.
5. Ürei
Release Date: TBA
Extended from Kazakh director Yerkezhan Baizhan‘s 2024 short film Ürei (which also premiered at 2024’s Fantastic Fest), Ürei stars an elderly grandmother (Tynyshgul Sultanberdieva) left alone with her granddaughter (Akerke Kozaiyr) in a rural Kazakh town. Routines break down as supernatural horror infiltrates their dynamic, exacerbating fears along generational divides and sending both grandmother and granddaughter into a world neither is familiar with. Ürei has something for everyone, with themes of grief, loneliness, and fears of growing old. Plus, the psychological horror will be sure to play with viewers’ minds and stick with them long after.
6. Pathetic Fallacy
Release Date: TBA
Adam Egypt Mortimer directs Pathetic Fallacy, a new original horror musical. Asher (Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi) and Iris (Jessica Rothe) are in love, but Iris soon succumbs to cancer. Asher, overcome with grief, enters an alternate universe where a spider (Natasha Lyonne) offers him the chance to resurrect Iris — but at a cost. A psychedelic feature shot on 35mm film with original songs by Mescudi and Rothe, Pathetic Fallacy breathes new life into the horror musical genre with an emotionally charged look at love and the lengths people will go to for it.
7. The Heretiks
Release Date: September 19, 2026
If Home Alone was set during Halloween, it might look something like The Heretiks. On Halloween night, 13-year-old Mabel (Ava Mae Seidensticker) discovers she’s been targeted by a coven of witches intent on sacrificing her to bring about the end of the world. Her disaffected older sister Ada (Josie Juliette Wert) teams up with rogue coven member Cai (Kimberly Epstein) to save her sister. As the sisters repair their bond saving each other, this coming-of-age/home-invasion film blends its horror elements with heart and will tug at any viewer’s heartstrings.
8. The Swallow
Release Date: September 24, 2026
From directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer, The Swallow closes out Fantastic Fest’s line of programming for 2026. When five teenagers (Grace Van Dien, Jack Wright, Tayler Buck, Kalama Epstein, and Kayla Di Venere) go offline and “touch grass” for a weekend in the forest, they stumble upon a section chained off for good reason — it’s home to a strange, quicksand-like sludge that starts to swallow (get it?) members of the group. As the group’s numbers whittle down and the forest shows no sign of going dormant again, the scares are harrowing enough that it might convince just about every viewer to stay inside forever and never leave their house again.
9. Death of a Yellow Bird
Release Date: TBA
When an unnamed man (Ari Millen) halts his cancer treatment to return to his family’s old cabin, he discovers a ghostly voice speaking to him through VHS tapes he films for his son. Initial reviews for Death of a Yellow Bird praise the sound design, setting a hauntingly ethereal tone for the film. While the “isolated in a cabin” and ghost subgenres are tried and true to horror, director Cody Calahan fuses the two in a devastating examination of grief, family, and death. Death of a Yellow Bird spans past, present, and future, asking viewers how long a loss is grieved after it happens.
10. Upiro
Release Date: TBA
From Spanish director Óscar Martín and inspired by the first documented case of vampirism in the Iberian Peninsula, Upiro follows a young woman Ana (Pauline Brisy) who is sent to a remote monastery to atone for her sins. While there, she discovers that several sisters begin suffering a mysterious, bloodborne illness. After a priest discovers they have been turned into upyrs, the Slavic predecessor to the vampire, the monastery races against time to treat it before it affects everyone in their isolated community. Upiro blends folk and religious horror, creating an unsettling world where nothing is safe and the countdown to the next victim keeps ticking.
