The latest edition of the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off this Thursday and brings with it a plethora of buzzy new premieres and screenings.

TIFF 2026 spreads its horror beyond the Midnight Madness programming section this year, with special Primetime spotlights on upcoming horror series Below, Carrie, and Crystal Lake. Ken Russell’s The Devils new restoration features in TIFF’s Classic series, and they’re saluting recent horror hits with Special Event screenings for Obsession and Hope. That doesn’t touch on the brand new premieres.

Read on for 5 can’t-miss horror screenings to catch at TIFF 2026.

Half

Action meets horror in this genre hybrid that sees twin siblings Ethan (Ranjith Sajeev) and Ivy (Aiswarya Raj) seeking revenge after marauders brutalize their bodies and leave them for dead.  What their attackers don’t realize until far too late is that their target happened to be half-vampires who will use the cover of night to enact ultra-violent retribution.

Vampires in the desert is a winning combo, and Half is poised to deliver crowd-pleasing carnage at TIFF from writer-director Samjad and choreographer Very Tri Yulisman (The Raid 2, The Night Comes for Us). So much so that it’s already set to play at Fantastic Fest later this month.

Inherit

The Medium and Shutter filmmaker Banjong Pisanthanakun is back with a new possession horror chiller. Davika Hoorne (A Useful Ghost) stars as a grandma possessed by a demon in what TIFF calls “her most magnetic role yet.“

Hoorne plays Woranart, who returns home 50 years later without a trace of aging. That’s likely because she’s possessed by a centipede spirit seeking a new host: Woranart’s 18-year-old granddaughter, Oui (Baipor Thitiya Jirapornsilp).

River

This midnighter sees genre favorites Jane Levy (Evil Dead) and Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day) plunged into a survival horror scenario. It follows three estranged siblings who reunite in their hometown after the death of their father. They set out to scatter his ashes at his favorite spot on a remote river, but when their boat breaks down, the trip devolves into a waking nightmare.

Max Mattern (“Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy”) and Dane DiLiegro (Prey) also star in the film, which marks the feature debut of writer-director Joshua Giuliano.

The Spiral

A Classic Horror Story filmmaker Paolo Strippoli turns the screws on a desperate mother (Jasmine Trinca) as she confesses a series of Faustian bargains to her estranged daughter (Romana Maggiora Vergano) in what the fest describes as a riveting morality chiller.

Divided across four chapters, Strippoli and Salvatore de Chirico’s script “perversely ratchets each episode with discomforting confrontations of decidedly bourgeois anxieties, revealing a canny critique of the lengths people will go to combat an undesirable destiny, and who they’re willing to have shoulder the burden.”

Trees Are Watching

Ecological horror blends with the psychological in the new horror movie from Iranian Kurdish auteur Bahman Ghobadi (Half Moon, Turtles Can Fly).

Eva Green (Penny Dreadful, Nocebo) stars as “Darya,  a writer obsessed with the spiritual resonance of trees, returns to her hometown of Mardin with her deaf daughter and grows haunted by past memories of Spin and Nihal, twin sisters she knew as a child. Residing in their former family home — which is bordered by mass deforestation save for an ominous pair of trees planted for each sister — Darya’s unease is suddenly exacerbated by nightly visitations of a malignant entity that takes a seemingly benign form: a chair made from local timber.” Sanity wanes. Murat Yildirim also stars.

Stay tuned for Bloody Disgusting’s TIFF 2025 coverage.

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Casper Kelly’s Buddy debuted in theaters the weekend of August 28 with a better than expected $5.3 million haul, which gave the Barney-inspired horror movie the highest opening this year for any movie showing on under 1,800 screens. In its second weekend of release, Buddy just did something very few movies are ever able to do: make more money than their first weekend!

Buddy joins Obsession as the only wide release film to increase second weekend box office gains this year, with the Roadside Attractions and Saban Films release grossing an estimated $7,305,343 over the 4-day weekend with a total of $15,822,917 (in 1,771 U.S. theaters).

Buddy is Roadside Attractions’ highest opening weekend since the pandemic and also its second highest opening in its 23-year history. It’s also Saban’s highest opening in its 12-year history.

The production budget for Buddy was a reported $3 million, so this low budget original indie horror movie already started turning a profit in just a matter of days into its theatrical release.

The film was originally released in 1,277 U.S. theaters for its opening weekend, with the word-of-mouth leading to an expanded release in more theaters for its second weekend.

Can the film grow even bigger in its third week of release? Stay tuned for updates.

Buddy centers on the titular unicorn mascot — a beloved children’s TV host with a squeaky-clean persona that belies his true nature as a dark and violent force of nature.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Inside the colorful world of It’s Buddy!, a group of children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness. But when one child refuses to play along, Buddy is not pleased and cracks begin to appear in this seemingly perfect world.”

Cristin Milioti stars as Grace, a suburban mother inadvertently drawn into Buddy’s nightmare world, with Delaney Quinn as Freddy, a brave girl who begins to fight back against Buddy when he shows his true self. Keegan-Michael Key voices Buddy. The horror movie’s cast also includes Topher Grace, Michael Shannon, and Patton Oswalt.

Meagan Navarro wrote in her review, “Casper Kelly drops viewers straight into the world of a kids’ show with a high-concept horror comedy that dials up the absurdities of kids’ television programming to a lethal degree. Those on board with an experimental structure and Kelly’s darkly playful sense of humor will find this raucous midnighter highly entertaining.”

Buddy is certified fresh at 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.

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