16 Upcoming Horror Movies We’re Dying to See in the Second Half of 2019

This follow-up to Lucky McKee’s savage 2011 film The Woman is written and directed by Pollyanna McIntosh, who also reprises her role as the titular Woman. By the looks of the trailer, this one isn’t pulling any punches. A feral young girl known as Darlin' is taken into the care of the Catholic church, where her soul will be saved and she'll serve as a shining example of the church's miracle work. But Darlin' is not alone. Darlin' is streaming now on VOD. 

What’s scarier than being trapped in a Category 5 hurricane? Maybe being trapped there along with a bunch of voracious alligators. Alexandre Aja, director of High Tension, Mirrors, Piranha 3D, and others, packs some of that High Tension grit into this survival horror about a young woman named Haley (Kaya Scodelario) who gets trapped in a flood and must fight for her life against monstrous reptiles.

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While the premise sounds more than a bit like “Mohawk in Tasmania,” positive buzz and the fact that The Nightingale is the long-awaited sophomore effort from Babadook director Jennifer Kent has us excited to see her take on the revenge film formula.

Guillermo del Toro penned the screenplay and André Øvredal (Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe) is handling directing duties. Yet the most exciting detail about this upcoming adaptation of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is that the filmmakers seem to have successfully translated those nightmare-inducing Stephen Gammell illustrations onto film.

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A megalomaniac CEO (played by Demi Moore) leads her long-suffering staff on a doomed team-building caving retreat in New Mexico. The logline makes it sound more comedic than horrifying. Yet given that this film is from the director of Creep and Creep 2, chances are good that things will get strange. 

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Here’s a weird one for you: Do you remember The Banana Splits? It was a kids’ show made by Hanna-Barbera and Sid and Marty Krofft about a rock band of anthropomorphic animals. The show ran on Saturday mornings from 1968 until 1970. Well, there’s a movie version coming out! What’s it doing on this list? It’s gonna be an R-rated horror flick about a birthday party live taping that goes horribly wrong, Five Nights at Freddy’s-style. Color us intrigued! Bloody Disgusting reports that The Banana Splits Movie will hit digital on August 13. 

We have to admit, we’re suckers for stories set in big, old country manors, and it’s always fun to watch a bunch of well-dressed people in a very pretty place come apart at the seams. Add in the fact that Ready or Not is from the horror directing team behind Southbound and Devil’s Due, and we can probably also expect some serious thrills and chills. A young bride (Samara Weaving) joins her new husband and his wealthy, eccentric relatives at a lavish estate for a time-honored family tradition that turns into a lethal game of life or death.

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Spiders are just creepy. Make it a haunted house story where the house is haunted by “an entity taking the form of a giant spider,” as per the IMDb synopsis and, well, there you go. Plus, the trailer looks like we’re in for some practical creature effects.

Originally intended as a collaboration between writer Grady Hendrix and Ted Geoghegan, who recently worked together on Mohawk, and now in the hands of director Chelsea Stardust, this is a story of a pizza delivery girl just trying to get through her shift when her last delivery of the night turns out to be Satanic cult in need of a sacrifice victim. With Rebecca Romijn portraying the cult's leader, this one sounds like an intriguing mix between House of the Devil and the Netflix original The Babysitter. 

The second installment of Andy Muschietti’s take on Stephen King’s classic tale of childhood terror promises to be more ambitious than the first—and just as creepy! Evil returns to Derry and the members of the Losers' Club are all grown up in this hotly anticipated horror sequel to last year's IT. The adult cast is exciting (Jessica Chastain, Bill Hader, James McAvoy, Isaiah Mustafa), and the trailer’s bold choice of focusing on one particular scene gives us plenty to mull over while still leaving a lot to our imaginations.

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Fans of Zombieland have been waiting a decade for this follow-up, and with the original cast and director back in place, there ought to be plenty in this second outing to keep them happy. Just as long as the crew remembers to follow the rules for survival…

It was only a matter of time before Doctor Sleep, Stephen King's sequel to The Shining, was made into a movie. With Ewan McGregor as the adult Danny Torrance and plenty of visual nods to the classic Stanley Kubrick film, the movie version certainly has our attention. It helps that director Mike Flanagan (Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, among others) has not only demonstrated his chops as a horror auteur, he’s also shown that he can deliver on difficult-to-adapt King works with his 2017 adaptation of Gerald’s Game.

Legendary British horror house Hammer Films is producing this sophomore feature from the directing duo behind Goodnight Mommy. It looks like we’re in for some classic snowed-in, claustrophobic creepiness just in time for winter. Snowbound in a cabin by a fierce blizzard, two children and their future stepmother are forced to fight for their lives against an unseen evil force.

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Remakes are always iffy, especially when they’re of a genuine classic like 1974’s Black Christmas. We already had one reboot of this film back in 2006, which has its fans and its detractors. That said, we’re curious to see what Blumhouse Productions plus director Sophia Takal and her cast (including Cary Elwes and Imogen Poots) do with the original narrative of a group of students being terrorized by a stranger over Christmas break.

Speaking of remakes, this one is out of nowhere. The 1990 original Jacob's Ladder follows a troubled Vietnam War vet (played by Tim Robbins) as he struggles to separate reality from his own dreams and delusions. It was a sleeper hit with a mind-bending plot and special effects that traumatized many of us. We’re ready to give the new version, which seems to add a different family dynamic to the mix, a shot to see if it can conjure similar scares.

The Witch may have polarized audiences, but many of us consider it one of the best horror films of the last few years. That's why we’re eager to see the director’s follow-up, an ambitious two-man production starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson and shot in black and white. The plot is being kept pretty tightly under wraps, but what we know sounds spooky.

These are just a few of the titles slated to come out later this year. Let us know which one you’re most looking forward to, and if there are any we missed that you’re particularly excited about!

Feature still from "IT: Chapter 2" via KatzSmith Productions