Which new horror movie will be the film of the summer?

Alfie Williams, Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes in Danny Boyle's '28 Years Later' (2025)

The zombie sequel '28 Years Later' might become the horror hit of summer 2025

(Image credit: FlixPix / Columbia Pictures / Alamy)

published 3 June 2025

Summer action movies get the most attention, but the dog days are also when studios love to release big-name horror films. During the summer of 2024, Oz Perkins' goofy "Longlegs" dominated the genre's releases, and one of these five highly anticipated features is likely to do the same this year.

'Best Wishes To All'

When an "unnamed young nursing student" visits her grandparents in the Japanese countryside, she finds her grandparents acting strangely in ways that "cannot simply be brushed off as aged eccentricities" and also encounters townspeople who are "unperturbed by a series of increasingly violent, disturbing events," said Filmhounds. Director Yûta Shimotsu's "totally bizarre" first feature "really is one to check out," said Fangoria. (June 13, Shudder)

Director Danny Boyle's 2002 "28 Days Later" reimagined the undead as swift, kinetic predators, and he returns with a long-awaited third installment. The latest is about a group of survivors on a "heavily defended island community in Northumberland," said Business Insider. The first trailer was set to a haunting 1915 recording of Rudyard Kipling's poem "Boots," which ends with the actor Taylor Holmes "screaming at the top of his voice, a prisoner of his own madness," guaranteeing "just about the most exciting film of 2025," said The Guardian. (June 20, in theaters)

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The era-defining 1997 slasher flick about a group of teenagers who cover up a hit-and-run and then get stalked by a hook-wielding killer gets itself a reboot. In it, "five friends who kill someone in a hit-and-run" later realize that "someone knows about their secret one year later," said Cosmopolitan. Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze, Jr. reprise their roles from the original in a trailer that suggests "kids, famously, never learn," said The AV Club. (July 18, in theaters)

Real-life spouses Alison Brie and Dave Franco star in a story about a couple on the rocks who must "confront their issues head-on when a hike in the woods goes awry, leaving them trapped in a mysterious cave," said Bloody Disgusting. Unfortunately, "their bodies betray them in inventive and gnarly ways" in a story whose "lean efficiency" succeeds in letting the "horror ramp up at a steady, rapid clip." (July 30, in theaters)

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David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.