Horror Movies That Will Blow Everyone Away In 2019

Horror fans have a lot to look forward to over the next couple of years. We're already looking at a full slate of creepy fright flicks for 2018—and we can look even further into the future, as studios are starting to fill slots for the year after. Intriguing remakes, sequels to smash hits, awesome original projects from beloved filmmakers—let's look forward in prolonged anticipation to these horror films that will blow us all away in 2019.

Pretty much every horror fan alive has some degree of reverence for Stanley Kubrick's 1980 Stephen King adaptation The Shining, even if King himself was, shall we say, not particularly impressed. King's novel was a highly personal project for him, which is perhaps one reason he chose to revisit the character of Danny Torrance in 2013 with Doctor Sleep, which followed the character as a troubled adult and is one of the few direct sequels the Master of Horror has ever seen fit to write. With the King Cinematic Renaissance in full swing, it seemed only a matter of time before the book would get the big-screen treatment — and late this year, it's finally happening.

At the helm is Mike Flanagan, who directed the well-received King adaptation Gerald's Game and all ten episodes of The Haunting of Hill House for Netflix, and is also responsible for the tense, underrated horror flick Hush. Ewan McGregor is set to star as Torrance, with a supporting cast that includes Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible: Fallout), Bruce Greenwood (Gerald's Game), and young actor Jacob Tremblay (The Predator, Good Boys). King had great things to say about Flanagan's work on Gerald's Game; hopefully, the director will turn in an adaptation a bit more to the Master's liking than the famously eccentric (if undeniably brilliant) Kubrick was able to.

The Lodge made quite a splash when it debuted at Sundance earlier this year, earning comparisons to another chiller that scared the hell out of festival audiences before becoming a mainstream hit, Hereditary. In it, a soon-to-be stepmother (Riley Keough) holes up in a remote cabin in the dead of winter with her fiancee's two children. They're there for a little bonding time, but things quickly turn weird when a series of disturbing events intrude on the proceedings.

The flick comes from writers/directors Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, the duo behind the mind-bending 2014 film Goodnight Mommy. It has earned high praise from critics who caught it at festival screenings, with RogerEbert.com's Brian Tallerico calling it "a truly unsettling movie, the kind of horror film that rattles you on an almost subconscious level." The Lodge co-stars Lia McHugh (who will take part in the upcoming Marvel effort The Eternals) and Jaeden Martell (the young Bill Denbrough in It) as the two youngsters; also among the cast are Alicia Silverstone (The Killing of a Sacred Deer), Richard Armitage (Alice Through the Looking Glass), and Katelyn Wells (Anne). You can check out what promises to be the slow-burn mindscrew of the year when The Lodge debuts on November 15.

You can practically draw a straight line from Bob Clark's 1974 proto-slasher Black Christmas to the films that made up the slasher movie boom of the late '70s and early '80s. The film established or cemented many of the genre's tropes in telling its tale of a group of college women hunted in their sorority house by a mysterious killer on a snowy Christmas Eve. For the upcoming remake (which we're getting courtesy of Blumhouse), up-and-coming director Sophia Takal (Always Shine) looks to be using the material to turn the genre on its head.

In the movie, the masked slasher will discover that today's hapless female victims aren't quite as hapless as they seem. Its official synopsis: "Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. One by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation's young women aren't willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish." The flick will star Imogen Poots (Green Room), Aleyse Shannon (Charmed), Brittany O'Grady (The Messengers), Lily Donoghue (Halt and Catch Fire), Caleb Eberhardt (Happy!), and Cary Elwes (Stranger Things). It's set to hit screens on Friday, December 13, an ideal date to celebrate the holidays and pay homage to one of the greatest slasher franchises of all time.

Netflix is developing an interesting relationship with Paramount, increasingly looking to the studio to help bolster its catalog of original genre fare. In 2018, the streamer famously acquired The Cloverfield Paradox (releasing it with an innovative Super Bowl-related marketing campaign) as well as international rights to the Natalie Portman-led Annihilation; the trend then continued with Eli, the third feature effort from director Ciaran Foy (Sinister 2). While there was some speculation that the studio was offloading its potential flops to Netflix (Paradox garnered awful reviews, and Annihilation underperformed at the U.S. box office), Eli threw cold water on that notion. The picture has tested very well with audiences, and with its creepy premise, it could very well constitute another small screen horror smash along the lines of 2018's Bird Box, which also bypassed theaters on its way to becoming a cultural phenomenon.

The film stars Charlie Shotwell (Captain Fantastic) in the title role, as a young boy plagued by an auto-immune disorder which necessitates that he be totally cut off from the outside world. When a mysterious doctor (Lili Taylor, The Nun) offers an experimental treatment, things take a sinister turn as the boy begins to experience unexplainable occurrences which threaten his sanity and safety. The movie also stars Kelly Reilly (True Detective) and Stranger Things' second-season breakout star Sadie Sink. All signs point to Eli continuing Netflix's spooky hit-making streak.

Stephen King has always been a hot Hollywood property, but he's particularly hot these days. With the success of It, the King-inspired Hulu series Castle Rock, and the heavily King-influenced Netflix series Stranger Things, executives have been scrambling to dig up King works ripe for adaptation or rebooting. Among them is an updated version of Firestarter, the 1980 novel which was adapted into a 1984 feature film starring a young Drew Barrymore. 

King's novel, the story of a pyrokinetic young girl on the run from nefarious government agents with her auto-hypnotic father, is a lean and mean thriller — which makes it potentially a great fit for director Fatih Akin (In the Fade), who has signed on to the project. He'll direct from a script by Scott Teems (That Evening Sun), with horror impresario Jason Blum producing under his Blumhouse banner. No cast details or release date are yet available, but so far, this one appears to be in good hands — and it's a good thing, since King himself was less than thrilled with the previous adaptation.

Warner Bros. and subsidiary New Line are doubling down on the horror over the next couple of years, and it appears they're using a lot of the same talent to develop multiple projects. Mike Van Waes, who's working on the screenplay for The Crooked Man, has another horror movie on his plate that sounds interesting indeed—it's set in the world of L. Frank Baum's Oz.

Van Waes came to the attention of Warner Bros. when the studio came across his Black List script titled Hammerspace, which they purchased and also have in development. They obviously think they have a hot young talent on their hands, as "Horror Film Set In Oz"—as fantastic an elevator pitch as that is—sounds like something that could either go spectacularly right or ridiculously wrong. Judging by the studio's recent winning streak, the former seems more likely, so it's probably not too early to get excited about what could be the most bonkers horror film of 2019. 

The 1958 low-budget horror classic The Blob (starring a very young Steve McQueen) has already gotten the remake treatment once, in 1988. That version was pretty inessential, and some horror fans may wonder whether another attempt at updating the material after another 30 years is really necessary. If you're one of those, then you should know that Samuel L. Jackson is starring in the forthcoming re-remake, which would make it very necessary indeed.

Speaking to the Toronto Sun on the press tour for Kong: Skull Island, Jackson strongly suggested he'd be participating in the film: "I've been running from or chasing King Kong, Godzilla, the Wolfman, whatever, since I was a kid... so I'm doing Kong for the same reason I'll probably be doing The Blob. I just got a call the other day, [and the producers] finally got their money from China to do Blob." 

His casting was later confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, and (unconfirmed) rumors have popped up online suggesting Halle Berry is joining the cast as well. Veteran action director Simon West (Con Air, The Expendables 2) has long been attached to the project, but his involvement is also unconfirmed. We'll have to wait to see how The Blob takes shape, but one thing seems certain: Mr. Jackson will have a few choice words for the monster.

David Koepp is a veteran Hollywood screenwriter, having penned such classics as Jurassic Park, Carlito's Way, the original Mission: Impossible, and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. As a director, his output has been less widely seen; his most successful effort was 1999's Stir of Echoes, an underrated psychological thriller based on a story by the great Richard Matheson. In 2019, Koepp will reunite with that film's star, Kevin Bacon, for You Should Have Left, an adaptation of a 2017 novel by German author Daniel Kehlmann.

The Shining-flavored story of the novel focuses on a screenwriter who takes off with his wife and six-year old son for a retreat in the Alps, hoping to write the sequel to his breakout hit. But things quickly go awry as supernatural events start to manifest themselves, suggesting that this particular retreat may not exactly obey all the laws of reality. The film adaptation may nix the main character's screenwriter occupation (and thus, the writers' block which is the first chink in his psychological armor) to focus on the mistrust and suspicion between Bacon's character and his much younger wife (Amanda Seyfried) — but either way, plenty of mind-bending creepiness is sure to be on tap. Koepp adapted the novel for the screen himself (as he did with Stir of Echoes), and since this is yet another Blumhouse production with some serious star power in front of the camera, we could be looking at a massive sleeper hit.

After the Oscar-winning success of Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, the director/producer entered into a deal with Fox Searchlight to develop genre films for the studio. That arrangement will bear its first fruit in 2019 in the form of Antlers, the story of a small-town teacher (Keri Russell) and her police officer brother (Jesse Plemons) who become involved with a young boy who has a terrifying (and as-yet unrevealed) secret. Scribe Nick Antosca (Hannibal, Channel Zero) will adapt his own original short story The Quiet Boy in collaboration with newcomer Henry Chaisson, with Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace) in the director's chair; del Toro will produce.

The film features a wealth of formidable talent behind the camera, with production designer Tim Grimes (The Wrestler) and cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister (The Terror) on board. Speaking with Collider, Cooper wasn't shy about the influences he's bringing to the project: "I'm in the process of really developing that with Guillermo and it's been a lot of fun, and very different for me," the director said. "I was so influenced early on by the work of John Carpenter, like Halloween, or certainly The Exorcist, which is a favorite of mine, or even Tarkovsky's Stalker. So I'm able to bring all of that into one film, which is exciting." 

2016's Don't Breathe, the sophomore feature from director Fede Alvarez, was a claustrophobic nightmare of the first order. It told the story of a trio of hoodlums who endeavor to loot the house of a blind war veteran (Stephen Lang) for the cash he's supposedly hoarding, only to find the old guy to be a great deal more capable — not to mention sadistic — than anyone would've guessed. Veteran character actor Lang was absolutely terrifying in his role, and even though the film's conclusion didn't exactly seem to be setting up a sequel, surprise — Don't Breathe 2 is on the way.

The movie has been in the works for some time. In late 2016, Alvarez's good buddy and producing partner Sam Raimi called its concept "the greatest idea for a sequel [he's] ever heard," while Alvarez teased an "anarchic" approach to the second installment. In early 2018, Lang confirmed that the sequel was officially a go, and that he was set to reprise his role. Plot, casting, and production details are being kept tightly under wraps, but it's a safe bet that we'll see Don't Breathe 2 in time for Halloween.