Editorials
I’m Excited for the New ‘Doom’ (and You Can Be Too!)
One day. A useless bundle of hours, that’s all we have standing between us and Doom. Usually, I’d be ankle-deep in demon giblets by now, striking a heroic pose atop a mountain of Mancubi while I stare off into the distance with a dramatic plume of hellfire blazing behind me. But not this time. Bethesda is withholding review copies of this lovely-looking game until the servers go live, so even us fork-tongued critics have to wait until launch day to get our greasy paws on it.
You can bet I’m going to haul ass through the campaign as soon as I have my copy. After that, I’ll probably spend a few tremendously painful hours getting my butt kicked in the multiplayer — after spending far too much time customizing my very own Doom Guy so he represents my views and opinions — then I’ll use SnapMap to make some dicks before getting to work on the review.
My job isn’t always black grapes and rainbows, but someone has to do it.
Our very own Mr. T isn’t convinced this game will live up to the hype that’s been building around it for more than a decade. I’m not either, but there are still some very specifically awesome things about what id Software is doing with the reboot that I am very excited about.
Take the multiplayer, for example. I’m rubbish at it, always have been, but I still have loads of fun even if I occasionally find myself hop-running away from player-controlled Revenants who always seem intent on blowing me to bits. It’s startling how often I’m marked for death first. I could be surrounded by a team wielding fully-charged BFGs, one point short of a victory and they’ll still find a way to tear me from this mortal coil before anyone else.
It happens often enough that I’ve had to accept it as a hidden feature of the game, a cruel inside joke id Software is playing on me for not having enough LAN parties in high school. Whenever the announcer lets me in on the fact that a demon rune is about to reveal itself, I accept my fate. The announcer probably has too. For all I know, he says it with a smirk on his face, or worse, he may be the one who’s pulling the strings.
Anyway, the point is, I’ve been forever cursed and I can still have loads of fun with the Doom multiplayer, so certainly you can too.
Maybe multiplayer isn’t your thing. That’s okay. It isn’t mine either, for the most part. That’s why our Lord and Savior, Gaben — Godking of Valve, Lord of Steam, Slayer of Threequels — invented the single-player campaign (don’t bother Googling any of this, it’s all true).
Doom caused a bit of a stir when it was revealed its story mode wouldn’t support co-op. There might’ve been rioting in the streets, but our kind prefers to stay indoors where there’s food and a strong Wi-fi signal. Knowing we could create our own custom co-op campaigns using the game’s shiny new SnapMap modding tools also helped.
But nature should still consider putting power outlets on trees.
The nifty thing about something like SnapMap is you don’t have to do anything with it to get something from it. The community-created content benefits everyone, including sad saps such as myself who can confidently erect elaborate genitalia-inspired towers with considerable girth and detail, only to choke when it comes to anything one might deem ‘playable’.
Fortunately, there’s a small percentage of the game’s player base that we can consistently rely on to carry the rest of us. These wonderful individuals are what kept me coming back to LittleBigPlanet years after its trade-in value had fallen to that of a budget bin title, just so I could see what those strange and wildly underappreciated engineers had been up to when I was busy neglecting the game.
Doom is more than capable of fostering a strong modding community around its SnapMap utility, thanks to its developer’s unique understanding of the PC Master Race, as well as the series’ already established history of being stupid fun to mod.
For me, it’s mostly about the campaign. I’ve always preferred a solid story mode to most other things in the games I play. By choosing to build the campaign sans co-op support, id Software saved precious time and resources that would’ve had a noticeable impact had they been spent on co-op friendly level design, enemy encounters, etc. That’s not to say its story mode will be good because it’s single-player — that level of witchery has been mastered by a select few game developers, like Valve and Naughty Dog.
The underlying theme with this game has been about taking something that worked twenty years ago and bedazzling it so it appeals to newcomers without startling the easily-startled old folks.
This idea can be seen everywhere, from the arena-based multiplayer where it looks like a blockbuster video game should in 2016 but it feels a lot like a 90s shooter, to the campaign, which has more or less the same thing going on. Everything is either bigger or there’s more of it — or in some cases, both. There’s a story, but the scope of it has changed and it’s brought with it a slew of “modern” enhancements like character customization, gruesome “glory kills”, and silly point-based awards to satisfy our lizard brains.
It introduces these tweaks while staying refreshingly close to its roots. Doom won’t force a regenerating health system on you, nor will it make you carry a “realistic” number of weapons or burden you with the hassle that comes with having to reload them. It’ll even have key cards, and if we’re lucky, they’ll be colored to match the door they unlock.
So will the new Doom be any good? Only our tomorrow selves know the answer to that. Until then, let’s do a bunch of push-ups so we can all be stupid ripped when it gets here. You game?
We’re now officially in the back half of 2026 now that July is here, but what a year it’s been for horror so far. The sequels and reboots are still holding strong at the box office with films like Scream 7 and Scary Movie, but it’s also been a year where new voices are shattering records in unexpected ways.
Markiplier eschewed conventional production and distribution channels with his feature adaptation of Iron Lung, for example. We’re also still in the midst of Backrooms and Obsession-mania, with the former back in theaters with bonus footage and the latter extending its box office reign. Liminal horror has exploded, and low-budget indie horror is seeing just as much, and sometimes even more, success as big studio-backed fare.
All of which to say that 2026 has been a hell of a year so far for the genre, and it’s only getting warmed up. Still on the way are Evil Dead Burn, Insidious: Out of the Further, Resident Evil, Clayface, Whalefall, and Werwulf, just to name a few.
Also catch up with the Best Horror Books and Best Horror Games of the year so far.
Here are the ten best horror movies of the year (so far).
10) Chime
Horror master Kiyoshi Kurosawa is back with one of his most haunting yet, though one that’d likely be higher on this list if it were more accessible. The 45-minute feature was initially produced and distributed as an NFT before receiving a theatrical run earlier this year, with no plans to distribute digitally or on home media. It spins a somewhat cryptic tale, introducing a culinary teacher, Takuji Matsuoka (Mutsuo Yoshioka, Never After Dark), whose classroom becomes disrupted by a strange sound that leads to violence. It’s a quiet but haunting unraveling, one that leaves no aspect of Matsuoka’s life untouched, in true Kiyoshi Kurosawa style. That it defies any easy explanation also ensures Chime embeds itself under your skin.
9) Send Help
Sam Raimi’s splatstick return to form is a delightfully deranged two-hander that doubles as infectious catharsis for anyone who’s ever had a bad boss. Rachel McAdams (Doctor Strange) and Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner) face off when their characters are shipwrecked on an island, prompting a bid for survival in more ways than one. While O’Brien often matches her, It’s McAdams who shines as she deftly handles everything that Raimi, working from a script by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift (Freddy vs. Jason), throws at her. Send Help is full of vibrant personality, packed with all of Raimi’s signatures, making for one of the most entertaining films of the year.
8) Mārama
New Zealand filmmaker Taratoa Stappard’s gothic tale begins in familiar fashion, with Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne) arriving in Yorkshire upon invitation to learn more about her parents, only to find the remote manor haunted. Just when Stappard’s period horror story feels doomed to succumb to familiar gothic trappings and jump scares, though, its true horror emerges. The more Mary uncovers about her heritage and her Māori culture, the clearer it becomes that this grim home is built on violence and exploitation. Stappard’s vision comes into its own when it leaves behind its gothic influences and embraces its Māori identity; few scenes are as powerful as when Osborne’s Mary performs a haka in response to her vile oppressors, heralding in a righteous bloodbath.
7) Touch Me
Writer/Director Addison Heimann draws from retro Japanese horror, exploitation cinema, and perhaps even hentai for his campy, psychosexual sophomore feature. A toxic friendship plagued by trauma, codependency, and addiction gets tested to the extreme when Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), a hip-hop-loving, tracksuit-sporting alien, gets between them. Olivia Taylor Dudley and Jordan Gavaris have an easy rapport and play off each other well as directionless, depressed Millennial besties prone to ignoring their problems until they become insurmountable. But it’s Pucci’s inspired, childlike take on the chicken nugget-loving extraterrestrial with tentacled secrets of his own that steals the show. Heimann has a lot on his mind with his sophomore feature and neatly condenses it all into a quirky, eccentric psychosexual camp odyssey that leans heavily into humor.
6) Backrooms
Director Kane Parsons translates the vast liminal labyrinth of his web series to the big screen in his feature debut, one that instills existential dread with its atmospheric horror and narrative. The ‘ 90s-set horror movie introduces a protagonist with a serious chip on his shoulder over life’s many disappointments, who then discovers his furniture store harbors a hidden door that leads to an endless labyrinth. It’s not just the incredible production design that instills a disorienting sense of doom and terror, but the lead characters’ palpable and profound sense of loneliness and isolation. Parsons exudes impressive confidence and control as he methodically entrusts his quiet worldbuilding and talented leads to carry the dramatic weight. While Backrooms does deflate by the film’s cryptic, cliffhanger-y end, it’s arguably the most effective and scariest yet at capturing the uncanny valley of generative AI.
5) Leviticus
Writer/Director Adrian Chiarella uses an It Follows-like supernatural entity that relentlessly stalks its prey as a launchpad to immerse audiences in the horror of constantly living in fear for simply existing. A conversion therapy ritual among a deeply conservative community plunges a pair of erstwhile lovers into a nightmarish bid for survival when it summons a force that takes the shape of those whom the afflicted desires most. Chiarella refines the horror mechanics and metaphor with much sharper precision, ensuring that the scares and emotional gravity of the young couple’s terrifying predicament reach their intended impact. It’s the central layered performances by Joe Bird (Talk to Me) and Stacy Clausen (Thrash) that clinch emotional investment in their heartbreaking plight, ensuring that the social horror cuts deep.
4) Redux Redux
The McManus Brothers, writer/director duo Matthew and Kevin McManus (The Block Island Sound), dials up the intensity of a classic revenge story by setting it within a multiverse, where Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus) seeks to snuff out every single iteration of her daughter’s murderer, Neville (Jeremy Holm). The more she stalks and slays every world’s Neville, the more she risks losing her humanity entirely. Through a narrative foil in Mia (Stella Marcus), Redux Redux smartly bypasses repetition as it explores the moral complexities and vulnerabilities of Irene’s extremely violent quest. Holm becomes utterly terrifying in the climax, ensuring that no matter whether Irene loses herself to vengeance for good or not, it’s justified if it means ridding the world of this sick maniac.
3) 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
Director Nia DaCosta takes the reins in the second entry in writer Alex Garland and original director Danny Boyle’s trilogy, picking up from the previous conclusion that saw Spike (Alfie Williams) fleeing from the infected straight into the welcoming arms of Sir Jimmy Crystal (Sinners’ Jack O’Connell). From here, DaCosta presents a stark contrast between humanity’s best and worst. The former sees the tender studies of Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) make poignant strides toward humankind’s future, while the latter unleashes more pain and bloodshed courtesy of the Jimmies. The dual paths of light and dark collide in one epic conclusion, an inspired confrontation between good and evil on a stunning set piece of heavy metal insanity. Yet it’s DaCosta’s handling of both extremes that impresses most, teeing up one epic conclusion to this trilogy.
2) Obsession
Sketch comedian turned horror filmmaker Curry Barker (Milk & Serial) wrings blood-curdling terror from a classic Monkey’s Paw wish fulfillment scenario in a way that no one could have ever anticipated. To say that it’s taken the box office by storm would be a massive understatement; Obsession is the top horror movie of the year in terms of gross. It’s not hard to see why, either. While Monkey’s Paw scenarios often yield predictable outcomes, and this outcome is practically telegraphed from the start, Barker manages to surprise with the journey itself. And it’s one insane journey paved with blood-soaked violence and no shortage of nightmare fuel. What truly sets it apart, though, is leads Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette as the central pair undone by one vicious wish. Expect to see a lot more from breakout Navarette.
1) Hokum
A surly, traumatized writer must break free from his self-imposed shackles of guilt when confronted by a wicked witch haunting a quaint Irish inn in the latest by writer/director Damian McCarthy (Oddity). Adam Scott’s Ohm makes for an atypical but rewarding protagonist, and his complicated emotional journey gives way to a deeply moving story of a man so thoroughly broken by personal trauma that he constantly dwells in darkness. In true McCarthy style, expect the creepy as hell witch to dole out some supernatural retribution for crimes committed, but never in the way you’d expect. The filmmaker has a way of making whimsy pure nightmare fuel; Hokum distorts a kids’ show into eerie, uncanny valley-induced terror in its torment of Ohm. Channeling Stephen King, this creeper plays like a traditional campfire tale in mood and style, infusing genuine scares with a sense of magic and heart.
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