Horror Movies That Will Blow Everyone Away In 2020

Horror cinema is booming right now. Whether we're talking about reboots of fan favorites, sequels to decades-old classics, or brand new fare by ambitious young filmmakers, it's a good time to be scared at the movies. 

In 2019 we're getting tons of terror on the big screen, thanks to everything from Midsommar to Annabelle Comes Home, from Us to It Chapter Two, and the scares don't seem to be slowing down at all with 2020 on the horizon. The next decade of cinema scares will kick off in a big way, with everything from long-awaited sequels to daring reboots to new takes on some classic ghost stories.

So, what's in store? Well, we've got writer/producer Jordan Peele's much-buzzed about sequel to Candyman, the first of two sequels to 2018's Halloween, the third film in The Conjuring series, and much more. Plus, 2020 might finally be the year we see The New Mutants. Maybe.

Check out our preview of the biggest horror movie releases of 2020.

A Quiet Place, the story of a family trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world filled with monsters who hunt by sound, was one of the most successful and acclaimed genre films of 2018. It didn't take long for talks of a sequel to emerge after it hit big with audiences.

John Krasinski will return to both write and direct the second installment in the franchise, while his wife Emily Blunt will also return to star. We know it will follow the surviving members of the Abbott family, now led by Blunt's Evelyn, as they continue to try to survive together after learning a trick to defeating the creatures at the end of the first film. Newly armed with a way to fight back, the Abbotts will meet more survivors in the form of new cast members Brian Tyree Henry and Cillian Murphy. Will a third installment follow? We'll have to wait and see. 

A Quiet Place Part II was originally scheduled to sneak into theaters on March 20, 2020, but was hit with a last-minute delay due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus pandemic. It's now expected to arrive sometime before the end of the year.

Though Dark Phoenix closed out the main story of Fox's long-running X-Men film franchise in 2019, it's not actually the final Marvel-based film produced under the Fox banner. That honor belongs to The New Mutants, a horror spin-off based on the Marvel Comics mutant team of the same name. Boone's film will take a decidedly darker approach to the X-Men mythos, focusing on a group of younger mutants including Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams), Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), and more. 

Unfortunately, the story of The New Mutants as a film has been overshadowed by repeated delays in its release date. The film was originally supposed to land in theaters in April of 2018, but was pushed back to February of 2019. Then the release date was pushed again to later in 2019 after reports of impending reshoots. Those continued delays, plus Disney's purchase of Fox assets — including the film rights to the X-Men — put the film's future in jeopardy, and by the spring of 2019 there were reports that the film could be indefinitely shelved.

Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case, as the film now has a new release date of April 3, 2020. Hopefully it sticks. 

When it was first announced in 2019 that Chris Rock would be working on a new take on the Saw franchise, fans didn't really know what to make of it. For a long time we weren't even entirely sure what to call the film, which marks the ninth entry in the long-running booby trap-laden horror series. Everything became much clearer in February 2020 when the first trailer for Spiral: From the Book of Saw finally emerged, giving us a pretty clear picture of what looks like a very intriguing return to the world of Saw. 

While the film is not a direct sequel to the last entry in the franchise, Jigsaw, it is clearly framed as part of the same continuity in which all the other films fit. Rock provided the story for the film and stars as Detective Zeke Banks, who's out on the job with his new partner (Max Minghella) when he gets a call about an officer down. As his investigation deepens, Banks finds that someone is targeting cops as part of an elaborate and dangerous game. The first teaser trailer for the film is full of little knowing winks and nods in the direction of past Saw films, including that infamous hacksaw from the very first film, and while it does look funny, it also looks like Rock is diving right into the horror of it all. Spiral arrives in theaters May 15, 2020. 

Jordan Peele has emerged in recent years as one of the most compelling horror storytellers working today, so when it was announced in 2018 that Peele and his Monkeypaw Productions banner would be taking on a reboot of Candyman, fans got excited. Peele is both a producer and co-writer on the new film, described as a kind of "spiritual sequel" to the 1992 slasher classic, and rising star Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) is in the director's chair. 

The film will follow Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), an artist who's moved into the neighborhood near the old Cabrini Green housing projects Candyman once stalked. Anthony becomes fascinated by the urban legend of the Candyman, and sets out to craft a new art project that will spread awareness of the legend as a piece of local folklore. Little does he know that Candyman is very real, and the legendary killer is finding his way back into the world through Anthony. The first trailer for the film, released in late February of 2020, plays heavily on the idea that Candyman is still a powerful legend just waiting for the right storyteller to coax him back out, and it's very effective in using the actual imagery of the title character sparingly. Candyman hits theaters June 12, 2020.

The Purge is a horror franchise that relies on a relatively simple but immediately compelling hook: it takes place in an alternate United States where all crime is legal for one night each year. It might not seem like something that could hook us for multiple films, but since its debut in 2013 The Purge has become one of the most successful horror franchise of the last decade, spawning four feature films and a TV series and building its mythology as it goes. In 2020, we're set to get a fifth, possibly final, installment in the film series, which will be written by franchise creator James DeMonaco. We don't yet know many details about the next installment, but since the last film was a prequel, it seems likely the new film will return to the aftermath of The Purge: Election Year, which ended with an election that could spell the end of Purge Night. What we may be gearing up for is actually the final Purge. We'll find out soon enough. The Purge 5 is set to hit theaters July 10, 2020. 

Writer Cullen Bunn is one of the most exciting comics creators working right now, particularly in the realm of horror comics thanks to acclaimed series like Harrow County. This year, one of his comics will make the leap to the screen, with hopefully terrifying results. The Empty Man, written by Bunn with art by Vanesa R. Del Rey, follows an ex-cop with a tragic past who's on the hunt for a missing girl. As his search deepens, he realizes something far worse than a missing persons case is afoot, and discovers a terrifying group of people who are trying to raise a monster. The film adaptation is set to star James Badge Dale, Samantha Logan, Stephen Root, Joel Courtney, and more. Sadly, we haven't yet seen any trailers for the film, but if it can capture the creepy spirit put forth by Bunn and Del Rey's comic (which got a sequel in 2018), it's bound to be a horror film worth checking out. The Empty Man is slated to hit theaters August 7, 2020. 

In 2013, a relatively small scale horror film about a pair of real-life paranormal investigators who helped a family battle the evil in their haunted new home blew up at the box office. That film was The Conjuring, and the paranormal investigators in question — Ed and Lorraine Warren (played in the films by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) — had plenty of other stories that could serve as material for future films. In just six years following the original, The Conjuring spawned one direct sequel and five spin-off films, three of which center of the haunted doll known as Annabelle. The Conjuring Universe has become a horror juggernaut for the 2010s, and in 2020 the third film in the main series will finally arrive on the big screen.

Not much is known yet about the plot of The Conjuring 3, which will feature the return of Wilson and Farmiga as The Warrens and will be directed by Michael Chaves, who helmed the spinoff The Curse of La Llorona. We do know that it will veer away from the haunted house format offered in the first two films, and according to franchise producer James Wan will include a story that features "the first time in America's history where the defendant used possessions as a reason, as an excuse."

We'll hopefully know more soon, because The Conjuring 3 will be terrifying audiences on September 11, 2020.

In 2018, director David Gordon Green brought star Jamie Lee Curtis back to the Halloween franchise with a new film that ignored all previous sequels, setting the stage for a showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers that, in this universe, had been four decades in the making. That film, simply titled Halloween, was one of the year's biggest horror hits, and though it could have closed the book on the franchise, talk of a sequel began to surface. 

In July of 2019, we found out that we'd be getting not just one, but two sequels in the span of two years. The first of those, Halloween Kills, will arrive in 2020. Green will return to direct and co-write the film with Danny McBride, while Curtis will also return as Laurie Strode with Judy Greer and Andi Matichak returning as Laurie's daughter and granddaughter, respectively. Given how the past film set up a legacy of strong women in the Strode family, it'll be very intriguing to see how the next film expands on this new version of the mythology. 

Halloween Kills arrives October 16, 2020. It will be followed by the final film in the trilogy, Halloween Ends, on October 15, 2021.