Editorials
Dancing With the Devil: The Biting and Macabre Horrors of Alex de la Iglesia
Recently, Sony Pictures International Productions and Amazon Prime Video closed a multi-picture deal for a new horror feature film anthology, The Fear Collection, with distinguished Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia at the helm. That deal touches upon distribution in Spain, with details still yet unannounced for plans to release in the U.S., which seems fitting in that it appears to mirror Iglesia’s level of fame stateside. He’s amassed a devout following for his distinct, twisted sense of humor and unique ability to blend genres, from comedy to downright dark horror. Iglesia’s films tend to be festival darlings that develop cult followings, but on a mainstream level, he’s still a bit of an undiscovered gem. Like the announcement of The Fear Collection, anything with Iglesia’s name attached should receive more attention than it currently does. For that very reason, we’re spotlighting his boundary-pushing work.
Iglesia’s breakout hit, El Dia de la Bestia (The Day of the Beast) made significant waves in his native Spain. Released in 1995, this delightfully demented take on a Christmas movie tells of a Catholic priest convinced the holiday season will bring about the advent of the Antichrist. He teams up with a Black Metal aficionado and an Italian occultist to commit as many sins as possible, to thwart the apocalypse. The priest concludes that if he can gain Satan’s trust through sin, he can learn where the Antichrist will be born, then slay it. It’s every bit as diabolical and hilarious as it sounds, and quickly demonstrated Iglesia as a radical filmmaker. The Day of the Beast earned major critical acclaim. More impressively, it received six Goya Awards – Spain’s equivalent to the Oscars- for Best Director, Best New Actor for Santiago Segura, Best Art Direction, Best Sound, Best Special Effects, and Best Makeup and Hairstyles.
Meaning that the film’s success was impossible to ignore and put him in demand internationally. His immediate follow-up to The Day of the Beast marked his English language debut, Perdita Durango. Also known as Dance with the Devil, Perdita Durango blends crime thriller with occultist horror and is based on Barry Gifford’s 1992 novel 59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango, the third book in the Sailor and Lula series. Meaning it’s loosely connected to David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, whose version of Perdita was played by Isabella Rossellini. For Iglesia’s adaptation, Rosie Perez portrayed the eponymous character, and Javier Bardem as her lover, Romeo. Romeo, who’s a Santeria priest and drug dealer, gets involved with a gangster’s scheme to transport fetuses across the border to the U.S., prompting Perdita and Romeo to embark on a crime spree as they kidnap a young couple, rape them, and plot to sacrifice them. In other words, they belong in the same conversation as Natural Born Killers‘ Mickey and Mallory. It’s violent, uncomfortable, and disturbing, much of it was edited down for various releases across the globe. That it never received a proper theatrical release in the U.S., either, further relegated this feature into obscurity.
Perdita Durango is also an outlier in Iglesia’s body of work, especially in tone. His subsequent return to the genre, 2000’s Common Wealth, proved to be a return to form. When a real estate agent finds a hidden fortune in the apartment of a deceased man, she discovers his neighbors have been biding their time to get their hands on the money. Blending crime, horror, and comedy, Common Wealth gets downright macabre without ever losing its comedic edge. The precise thing Iglesia does so unnervingly well.
With The Baby’s Room, Iglesia opted for more straightforward horror. Part of the Películas para no dormir (Films to Keep You Awake) made-for-television anthology film series, it follows a sportswriter, Juan, that’s just moved in to an old fixer-upper with his wife and newborn baby. Juan starts to hear strange noises and voices over the baby monitor at night, but can’t find the source. A mystery unfolds, and it’s a bit more involved than your average haunting.
2010 saw the release of one of Iglesia’s most highly regarded films, The Last Circus. Biting social satire meets brutal violence in this dark horror-comedy, where a young trapeze artist is torn between her lust for Sergio, the Happy Clown, or her affection for Javier, the Sad Clown. That both clowns are disturbed individuals means an explosive love triangle with catastrophic casualties.
Perhaps his most widely known genre film among fans is 2013’s Las brujas de Zugarramurdi, which translates to The Witches of Zugarramurdi. However, it was released in North America under the catchier title Witching & Bitching. The plot sees a group of armed robbers go on the lam after a robbery turns deadly. They wind up in a secluded village inhabited by cannibalistic witches. Subversive, demented, and insanely zany, Witching & Bitching won eight Goya Awards out of ten nominations. Makes you wish our award ceremonies were as kind to genre fare, too.
Iglesia’s most recent genre effort is The Bar, one nasty, mean little film. When an unseen sniper opens fire in downtown Madrid, a diverse group of people takes refuge in their local bar. The longer they’re trapped there, the more paranoia and suspicion threatens to usurp civility. Throw in a possible viral outbreak, and viciousness ensues. I should also mention, this movie isn’t afraid to get gross. It features a cast of unlikable characters, only balanced by Iglesia’s sense of humor. But this comedy is of the darkest, pitch-black variety.
While Iglesia’s long-established himself as a filmmaker with a penchant for the weird, grotesque, and macabre, it’s not exclusive to directorial efforts. In recent years, he’s turned to producing as well. He produced Juanfer Andrés and Esteban Roel’s 2014 agoraphobic thriller The Shrew’s Nest, currently available on Shudder, and Netflix’s fantasy horror film Errementari.
The recent announcement of The Fear Collection means it’s still a long way away from release, giving plenty of time to catch up on Iglesia’s oeuvre. Even better is that much of it is accessible through streaming platforms. The Bar has been hiding out on Netflix. Perdita Durango (Dance with the Devil) and The Baby’s Room are currently available on Tubi. The Day of the Beast can be streamed through Kanopy. If your local library doesn’t offer access, it’s available through FlixLatino on Prime Video under its Spanish title. The remaining films can be rented on VOD. The filmmaker is a huge deal and in constant demand in Spain, but seems only to have a cult following stateside.
Álex de la Iglesia employs schlock horror and caustic humor to undercut the bitterness of his films. His characters are deeply flawed, and he tends to explore the ugliest aspects of humanity. But Iglesia manages to infuse even the most cynical and macabre of stories with oddball empathy. This is a contemporary filmmaker who pushes boundaries with a strange tonal blend and voice that’s uniquely his own. Now is a great time to get on his peculiar wavelength.
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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