Fantastic Fest 2026 Lineup: Resident Evil, Carrie & More

The Fantastic Fest 2026 lineup is here, and Austin is getting eight days packed with horror, genre premieres, restorations, and a few projects we are already following very closely.

Fantastic Fest returns to Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar from September 17 through September 24 for its 21st edition. This year’s program includes 73 feature films and episodics, with 35 world premieres, 21 international and North American premieres, and 14 U.S. premieres.

For us, three names immediately jump out: Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil, Mike Flanagan’s Carrie, and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.

Resident Evil Takes Over Opening Night

Fantastic Fest will give Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil a gala screening on opening night, just one day before the movie arrives in theaters on September 18.

Austin Abrams in the new Resident Evil trailer

The new film stars Austin Abrams as Bryan, a medical courier who gets caught in a rapidly collapsing nightmare during one horrifying night. Rather than retelling the story of Leon, Claire, or another established character, Cregger has created an original story unfolding in the world of Resident Evil 2.

That approach has been one of the things making this adaptation interesting from the beginning. Cregger has talked about translating the feeling of the games to the screen while putting an ordinary person in the middle of a nightmare he is completely unprepared to survive.

Opening night will also include the world premiere of Mike P. Nelson’s Beware Boiúna, a creature feature starring Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, and Logan Marshall-Green about a medical mission encountering a colossal predator deep in the Amazon.

Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Gets Its U.S. Premiere

Prime Video’s new Carrie series will make its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest with a screening of its first two episodes.

Summer H. Howell as Carrie White in Mike Flanagan's Carrie series for Prime Video

Mike Flanagan directs the episodes, which introduce a new version of Stephen King’s story built around Carrie navigating high school after the death of her father. The series brings the bullying into the social media era while Carrie’s telekinetic abilities begin developing alongside everything else happening in her life.

That combination alone makes this one of the most interesting premieres on the schedule. King’s story has been adapted several times, but moving Carrie’s high school nightmare into the social media age gives the cruelty surrounding her a very different weapon. Flanagan taking another trip into Stephen King territory certainly does not hurt either.

Hellraiser: Revival Will Unleash a New Trailer

Fantastic Fest is not stopping with movies and television. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is one of the festival’s partners, and Fantastic Fest will host the exclusive world premiere of the Scarlet Church Trailer.

The new footage will offer a closer look at the Scarlet Church and how its followers, along with disciples of the Cenobites, recruit new members into their cult.

Saber Interactive’s first-person survival horror game arrives October 8 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Fantastic Fest seems like exactly the right place to reveal more of it.

More Horror Hiding in the Fantastic Fest 2026 Lineup

Those may be the three biggest titles for us, but there is plenty more horror scattered throughout the lineup.

Bleecker Street’s Victorian Psycho, starring Maika Monroe as an eccentric governess inside a remote gothic manor, will have its North American premiere. We have already been following that one since the trailer arrived, and Fantastic Fest gives it another major stop before release.

Shudder also has a strong presence. The Cycle, starring Deborah Ann Woll as a woman forced to confront her father’s dark past after his body is discovered decades after he disappeared, will have its world premiere. Bloody Tennis receives its North American premiere, while the brutal slasher River gets its U.S. premiere.

Closing night belongs to The Swallow from directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer. The survival horror film follows a group of young people terrorized by a sentient, quicksand-like sludge after entering a restricted area in the woods.

There are also restorations of horror history throughout the festival, including a new 4K restoration of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Blood Feast and a new 35mm print of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for its 40th anniversary.

What We Think

There is a lot in this lineup, but I am not going to pretend everything hit me equally. Hellraiser, Carrie, and Resident Evil immediately made this announcement personal.

I am a huge Hellraiser fan. I have a Lament Configuration tattoo, and I already went all in on Hellraiser: Revival by preordering the Leviathan Collector’s Edition. I was already extremely excited for the game, so finding out Fantastic Fest is premiering an entirely new trailer focused on the Scarlet Church instantly became one of my most anticipated pieces of the festival.

Then there is Carrie. Stephen King has been part of my horror life for as long as I can remember. I have an entire arm dedicated to Stephen King tattoos, so a Mike Flanagan adaptation getting its U.S. premiere practically feels designed to get my attention. Bringing Carrie’s high school nightmare into the social media era could either make the story feel painfully current or lose some of what made the original so effective. I really want to see which direction Flanagan takes it.

And then there is Resident Evil. I love the games, and I have been trying to convince Amy to play Resident Evil 2 so she can actually experience Raccoon City for herself before we see Cregger’s movie. Since his story lives around the events of that game while following a completely different character, it gives me an even better excuse to keep working on her.

Fantastic Fest has always been built around discovering what is coming next in genre filmmaking, but this year there are already several things on the schedule we were waiting for before the lineup was even announced. September just got considerably more interesting.

More at Fantastic Fest

The Fantastic Fest lineup goes far beyond the titles we highlighted above. A few more horror films that caught our attention include:

Play House — A world premiere about a man renovating a dilapidated home who discovers VHS tapes of an unaired children’s show with a dark history. It also won Fantastic Pitches in 2025.
Death of a Yellow Bird — A supernatural ghost story about a dying father returning to his childhood home and discovering something haunting the isolated cabin.
The Heretiks — A world premiere about a woman joining forces with a renegade witch after a coven marks her younger sister for sacrifice.
Posthumous — A woman returns home and discovers an occult ritual hidden within VHS birthday recordings left by her deceased mother.
Red Snow — A vampire posing as Santa Claus invades the home of a teenager who happens to want to become a vampire herself. That premise alone earns a spot on the watchlist.
Janur Ireng: Sewu Dino The Prequel — Kimo Stamboel’s demonic prequel follows siblings who stumble into a centuries-old satanic ritual.
Upiro — An Enlightenment-era monastery is plagued by a mysterious blood disease connected to a supernatural being.
Compliance — A North American premiere described as a doom-laden found-footage conspiracy thriller centered on a corporate client-relations representative.
Platypus — A Canadian genre film about a woman whose recurring dreams of a masked killer begin closing in on her.