Editorials
Five Horror Movie Spin-Offs We Desperately Want!
The horror genre has no shortage of franchises, but for whatever reason, there aren’t a heck of a lot of spin-offs. You can point to exceptions, of course, but they’re mostly in franchises that have learned to rely on branching out in order to keep their concepts fresh. The Conjuring and Godzilla have both followed popular characters and monsters into their own outings, but why stop there?
Lots of popular horror movies and franchises have introduced audiences to larger worlds of horrifying creatures, filled with interesting and exciting characters, but most of them never give those heroes, antiheroes and villains their own chance to shine. But we think if it works for Hobbs and Shaw, it can work for horror characters too.
So let’s take a look at just some of the many promising horror characters who could headline their own movie, free from the limitations of the series that introduced them!
BUDDI BEAR
The remake of Child’s Play introduced a whole new world of homicidal high-end products, so there’s no reason to limit the franchise to just Chucky the killer doll. The climax of the film also revealed a terrifying teddy bear, “Buddi Bear,” which finally makes Teddy Ruxpin’s influence on this franchise explicit.
Although on the surface he may seem similar to Chucky, Buddi (or whatever he’ll be called) could take on a new, animalistic persona, more akin to a talking animal than a talking doll. The new Child’s Play made Chucky turn evil as a result of, essentially, negligent parenting. What about an animatronic that goes evil because of negligent pet care? What happens when we treat an artificial intelligence as badly as some (terrible) people treat their dogs?
There’s only one thing I know for sure: it’ll be bloody, Buddi.
BUG HUNT
There’s a throwaway line in James Cameron’s Aliens that reveals a hell of a lot about the series, but which none of the films have ever followed up on. When the Colonial Marines are getting briefed on their mission, PFC. Hudson (Bill Paxton) asks his superior officer, “Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?”
“Another” is the key word. If it’s a derogatory term for aliens (probably inspired by Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, a similarly-themed sci-fi novel which had already been popular for decades), then that means before the events of Aliens these Colonial Marines had fought monstrous alien life forms before. And that means there’s more of them out there.
Many Aliens fans have been clamoring for another Colonial Marine-centric film in the franchise, but why limit the franchise to just xenomorphs? There are limitless possibilities for creepy crawly extraterrestrials. Either explore the early adventures of Apone’s unit or build on what we’ve already seen, and develop a new spin-off franchise around the adventures of a space-faring military unit who specialize in hunting monsters!
Either way, bring on the Bug Hunt!
CREIGHTON DUKE
How mad would you have to be to hunt monsters like Jason Voorhees for a living? We found out in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, which introduced the fan favorite character of Creighton Duke, played by the awesome Steven Williams (The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage). Having lost his girlfriend in one of Jason’s homicidal rampages, Duke dedicated his life to bounty hunting until finally he was deadly enough to take on Jason himself.
But what if Jason isn’t the only monster Duke has taken down? What if he trained on other undead slashers or, after it seemed like Jason was finally sent to hell (and after he miraculously survives the film) he went after other horror creatures just like him?
The possibilities are endless: Duke vs. Dracula, Duke vs. The Mummy, Duke vs. Leprechaun, Duke vs. Wrong Turn, and they’d all be incredibly cool, because Duke is only slightly less disturbed than the monsters he fights. He’s only the hero by comparison. He could be the ultimate anti-hero of the horror genre if you play it right.
STAB
How do you make another Scream movie without Wes Craven or the original cast? You don’t. You make Stab instead.
Scream has always been a fabulously meta-franchise, self-aware yet grounded in the real world. And one of the conceits is that the actual horrific killings that take place in the Scream movies have, within that fictional world, been turned into a series of slasher movies called Stab. And like many long-running horror franchises, the Stab films only got weirder and weirder as time went on, so that there aren’t any rules anymore. Heck, according to Scream 4, one of them even has time travel!
You can’t remake Scream without breaking the rules of the franchise, which says that those events really happened. But you can reboot the Stab franchise and release that instead, following the events of the original films before making sharp, satirical turns that defy the rules of the Scream franchise but make new and pointed commentaries on the way Hollywood recycles old horror properties, for better and worse.
So go ahead and take a stab at Stab, Hollywood. It’ll be a scream!
TIFFANY VALENTINE
We started with Child’s Play so we might as well end there. The original killer doll franchise is still going strong, but although the series has taken Chucky just about everywhere, the franchise never went anywhere without him. And that’s a pity, because Tiffany Valentine could totally carry her own franchise.
Child’s Play has always been a series about dolls, but certain dolls are treated differently than others. A movie just about Tiffany, as voiced by Jennifer Tilly, could focus on her terrifying relationship with a young girl, and how she’s using her insidious influence to warp the child’s mind.
Imagine her as a demonic Barbie and you’ve got the right idea. Tiffany – being vain, yet also maternal – would probably love the attention she would get from that situation. Lots of attention, lots of gifts, and lots and lots of inventive murders to pin on her owner, driving her further into madness.
So we say, what about Bloodlust at Tiffany’s? We think that you might admire the film, and as we foretell, we think we’ll all kind of like it.
And we say, well, that’s the five spin-offs we’ve got!
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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