Our Most Anticipated Horror Movies at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival
From queer coming-of-age horror to a ghostly late capitalism satire, we’ve selected eight genre films (and one TV show) set to premiere at the Berlinale
by Alex Secilmis 11 February 2026
Courtesy of Berlinale
With the 76th edition of the Berlinale beginning tomorrow, we’re previewing the international film festival’s biggest horror movies.
From a long-awaited vampire dramedy starring Isabelle Huppert to Gore Verbinksi’s timely sci-fi thriller, these are the films we don’t want to miss.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Die Blutgräfin (The Blood Countess)
From the writer of The Piano Teacher and starring Isabelle Huppert, The Blood Countess sees Lesbian avant-garde auteur Ulrike Ottinger sets her sights on the vampire myth. In this morbid horror comedy, Ottinger transports real-life 16th-century serial killer Elizabeth Báthory to modern-day Vienna.
Courtesy of Berlinale
No Salgas (Don’t Come Out)
In this queer coming-of-age horror film, a college Med student struggles with her sexual identity in a conservative Dominican Republic. Still reeling from the gruesome dissolution of her last relationship, a weekend trip away threatens to unearth her buried desires—along with an even greater threat.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
More of a sci-fi comedy thriller, the latest from The Ring and Pirates of the Caribbean director nevertheless tackles a very timely horror: artificial intelligence. Having already earned rave reviews from its premiere at Fantastic Fest due for a US release February 13th, the film follows a man from the future (an ever-manic Sam Rockwell) who bursts into a Los Angeles diner and recruits the patrons to battle a rogue AI.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Lord of the Flies
In the first television adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel, Jack Thorne (Adolescence) reimagines the grim desert island survival tale in which a group of young British boys slowly descend into savagery.
Courtesy of Berlinale
AnyMart
A convenience store’s assistant manager must trade cleaning up aisles for facing off with ghosts in this late capitalism Japanese horror satire.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Filipiñana
The White Lotus meets Michael Haneke in this slow-burn psychological thriller set at a country club in the Philippines where a young employee begins to discover an ugly side to her workplace.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Yön Lapsi (Nightborn)
Saga (Seidi Haarla) and her British husband Jon (Rupert Grint) move to a remote house in the Finnish woodlands while planning to start a family. But when their child is born, Saga suspects that something is terribly wrong.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Monster Pabrik Rambut (Sleep No More)
Haunted by the apparent suicide of their mother, three siblings investigate her death and an evil figure that possesses the bodies of exploited factory workers in this Indonesian chiller.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Ghost in the Cell
An outrageous horror comedy that bills itself as decidedly not “elevated horror”, Indonesian genre film specialist Joko Anwar finds grim, gruesome fun in a high security prison.
Courtesy of Berlinale
Saccharine
We caught this film at Sundance, but first-time viewers are in for a gnarly thrill-ride in this body horror from Relic director Natalie Erika James. The film follows Hana (Midori Francis of Grey’s Anatomy), a young med student who, after taking a weight-loss pill made of human ashes, finds herself haunted by ghost of the person she digested.