Screamfest LA Horror Film Festival

“Most film festivals want to show you art. Screamfest wants…”

The scariest thing you'll see this year might be a film so new that the person who directed it is sitting three rows behind you, watching your shoulders to see if the jump lands. That's the specific thrill of the oldest, largest horror festival in the country: for ten October nights on Hollywood Boulevard, the next wave of the genre screens for the first time, in the same theaters where the classics met their first audiences.

Screamfest has a real track record — it premiered Insidious, Rob Zombie's Halloween, and The Haunting in Connecticut years before they hit wide release — which means the thirty-plus features and shorts here aren't afterthoughts, they're what horror is about to become. The room is exactly what you'd want: Hollywood Boulevard at night, everyone around you loving the genre completely and unironically, the director walking up for the Q&A while the credits still roll.

TCL Chinese 6 Theatres, Hollywood — October 7–16, 2026. Festival badges cover all ten days, or buy single tickets and pick your nights. The October air and the marquees on the Boulevard handle the rest.