The 25 Movies We Can’t Wait To See At SXSW

South by Southwest is not the only annual genre fest out there by any means, but its equal focus on film, music, and tech makes it nearly unmissable for many a genre fan. The Austin-set fest has almost too much to offer, however you slice it: Building one’s schedule feels like a perpetual exercise in killing your darlings. Even on the film side, audiences are spoiled for choice, with tech-forward documentaries, speculative sci-fi, and gnarly horror all ripe for the viewing.

It may be overwhelming, but SXSW’s catalogue also offers so much to look forward to. With the festival just around the corner, Inverse has gathered its must-see big screen picks under one banner. Whether you’re an AI doomist or a gore hound searching for a new final girl to root for, these are the top films to look out for at SXSW 2026.

The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist

Will artificial superintelligence be the end of humanity? Depending on whom you ask, AI has the potential to destroy as much as it does to create, which makes something as simple as building a life feel like a fool’s errand. That’s especially true for filmmaker Daniel Roher, whose excitement over starting a family is undermined by the gut-twisting growth of AI. With co-director Charlie Tyrell and producers like Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Daniel Kwan, Roher dives deep into both sides of the AI debacle, exploring its devastating dangers alongside its potential to heal the world.

Anima

Alien: Earth introduced a new sci-fi heroine to the world in Sydney Chandler, and the actor is set to continue that streak in Anima. The upcoming film seems a lot more lo-fi than FX’s Alien spinoff, following an antisocial engineer named Beck (Chandler) and a reclusive button manufacturer named Paul (Shōgun alum Takehiro Hira) on a quest to upload Paul’s memories at a cutting-edge facility. Part transhumanist drama, part road trip comedy, Anima sounds like the soulful sci-fi we need at a time like this.

Drag

Drag is a family affair both in front of and behind the camera. Produced by Danny DeVito alongside his daughter Lucy DeVito, the film follows a robbery-gone-wrong for two sisters trying their hand at a life of crime. DeVito and Lizzy Caplan star as the amateur burglars, but their heist on a rural mansion is totally derailed when one of them throws their back out. High jinks and body horror will undoubtedly ensue, but with the DeVitos behind the scenes, there should be plenty of laughs to go around, too.

DreamQuil

Photographer Alex Prager has spent years crafting candy-coated dreamscapes and homages to Old Hollywood. Her meticulously-staged photos and short films — like Despair, starring Bryce Dallas Howard — pack evocative narratives into bite-size pieces, but her feature debut will give her a much larger canvas to paint on. DreamQuil sees Prager diving into science fiction, following a dissatisfied housewife, Carol (Elizabeth Banks), in the not-so-distant future. Carol gets the chance to escape from her claustrophobic life with “DreamQuil,” an AI-run wellness retreat. When she returns home, she finds that she’s been replaced by a robotic clone — and “Carol-Too” won’t leave without a fight, setting up the kind of pastiche that couldn’t be timelier.

Family Movie

Horror is an underrated space for meta commentary. Even if that topic has been dominated by franchises like Scream and Scary Movie, there’s still plenty of room for more horror stories that blur the lines between fiction and reality — and Family Movie is poised to make that brief personal. Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick co-direct and star in a tale that’s kind of about their own family alongside their children, Sosie Bacon and Travis Bacon. In Family Movie, they’re the Smiths, a tight-knit clan who unite once a year to make a homemade horror movie. While Jack and Ellen are fighting to keep this tradition alive, it’s long lost its luster for their kids — and when a real deal body turns up on set, garden-variety dysfunction spirals into hilarious chaos.

Forbidden Fruits

Jennifer’s Body fans have spent the past few years hoping for a Diablo Cody renaissance, and this year’s Forbidden Fruits might just scratch that itch. Cody produces this occult horror directed by Meredith Alloway and starring a handful of Hollywood it girls. It feels like the spiritual lovechild between Mean Girls and The Craft, following the members of a witchy cult who attempt to welcome a new member to their ranks. As Pumpkin (Lola Tung) sows division among Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp), toil and trouble inevitably ensue, setting the stage for what’s sure to be an endlessly quotable dark comedy.

The Fox

Modern-day fantasy is tough to find and even harder to execute, which makes the conceit behind The Fox feel so exciting. Dangerous Animals star Jai Courtney is Nick, whose idyllic rural life is upended by the news that his fiancée, Kori (Emily Browning), is cheating on him. All Nick wants to do is fix their relationship — and with help from a talking Fox (voiced by Olivia Colman), he gets more than what he bargained for. The quest to turn his straying partner into an ideal future wife involves a bit of magic, a dark twist, and enough quirky humor to make this folk tale feel fresh.

Hokum

Adam Scott is a novelist forced to face the dark corners of his past in the latest from director Damian McCarthy. When Ohm Bauman (Scott) retreats to a remote cabin to scatter his parents’ ashes, rumors of a witch haunting the honeymoon suite become all too real. It’s a concept that would be relatively easy to write off (haunting as a metaphor for grief, groundbreaking) — but Hokum is coming from the filmmaker behind Oddity, one of the scariest films from 2024, so there’s surely much more to this haunted house thriller than meets the eye.

I Love Boosters

It’s been eight years since director Boots Riley debuted with the seminal Sorry to Bother You, and though he hasn’t been idle since (all love to Prime Video’s I’m a Virgo), his next big-screen project has been highly anticipated. Finally, Riley returns to the big screen with I Love Boosters, a surreal, candy-coated crime caper starring several of the industry’s most promising Black actors. Nope star Keke Palmer, It: Welcome to Derry’s Taylour Paige, and Star Wars alum Naomi Ackie join forces to form the Velvet Gang, a crew of professional shoplifters targeting the Bay Area’s most prolific retailers. It’s like community service — that is, until they run afoul of Christine Smith (Demi Moore), an eccentric designer whose “art” has long commodified the Black experience.

Imposters

What if your missing child returned, but probably wasn’t your child? It’s the question that’s haunted countless speculative stories, but gets a lo-fi reboot in the twisty Imposters. Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day) and Charlie Barnett (The Acolyte) star as Marie and Paul, two parents whose infant son disappears in the chaos of a housewarming party. Though Marie learns of a way to get their child back, Paul quickly begins to suspect that she’s returned home with someone — or something — very different.

Kill Me

Somebody tried to kill Jimmy (Charlie Day). The problem is, they also made it look like a pretty convincing suicide attempt. When Jimmy wakes up in a bathtub with his wrists slit, seconds away from giving up the ghost, he’s 99% sure he didn’t do it. But finding out who did — with a suspect list a mile long and very little assistance — won’t be easy. So begins an unconventional whodunnit that’s sure to split the difference between irreverent laughs and (hopefully) a poignant take on mental health.

Leviticus

Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus created a quiet storm of buzz at this year’s Sundance festival — and though its official release is still a few months away, it will get another premiere at SXSW. What’s more, it’s total SXSW material: It takes the kind of primal fear inherent to the queer experience and recontextualizes it in the world of supernatural terror. The Australia-set film follows two teen boys whose mutual attraction is twisted by forces outside of their control, and they suddenly find themselves hunted by a dark entity crafted in their own respective images.

Monitor

The internet, it’s been said, is a scary place — but until recently, few films focused on the people who sacrifice their sanity to make it less so. Matt Black and Ryan Polly’s Monitor makes that its prerogative, with Brittany O’Grady starring as Maggie, a content moderator haunted by a tragedy in her own past. When she blocks a disturbing, anonymous video, those textual horrors take on a more metaphysical bent as Maggie and her team become the prey of a demonic entity. It appears on every screen, feeding off their fear until it gains enough power to escape into the real world. It may be a familiar concept, but placing it in a relatively untapped realm should give this horror the push it needs to truly terrify.

My Brother’s Killer

My Brother’s Killer inadvertently reopens the unsolved case of Billy London, an adult-film performer brutally murdered in Hollywood 30-odd years ago. The circumstances of his death have courted curiosity for decades, but when director Rachel Mason rounds up friends and family to pay tribute to London, they end up joining forces to solve this murder once and for all. It’s the kind of premise that reads like catnip to any true-crime fan, affirming this genre’s value beyond surface-level entertainment. Through intimate archival footage and keen-eyed reporting, My Brother’s Killer aims to transcend true crime in every way that matters.

Never After Dark

Shōgun’s Moeka Hoshi stars in Never After Dark as Airi, a wandering medium who makes a living guiding restless spirits into the next plane. She gets way more than she bargained for when she’s summoned to a remote cabin to assist a spirit much stronger than her abilities — but Dave Boyle’s ghost story is more concerned with the living than the dead. Never After Dark aims to subvert our expectations of the traditional possession narrative: It’s not ghosts or spirits that pose the biggest threat in the film, but a far less predictable hunter who might have lured Airi right into a sadistic trap.

Normal

Bob Odenkirk rebranded in a major way with Nobody, the kind of John Wick rip-off that actually brought something delightfully new to the genre. The 2021 film has already sired a franchise of its own, but the brain trust behind both assassin sagas still has unfinished business. Normal will feature Odenkirk in another similar-but-not adventure, reteaming him with writer Derek Kolstad (who’s had a hand in every Wick movie, as well as Nobody) for a gritty neo-Western. Odenkirk is a substitute sheriff responding to what looks like a run-of-the-mill bank robbery, only to uncover a larger conspiracy in the process. Said intrigue will undoubtedly force him to call on a particular set of skills — and sure, we’ve seen this before, but watching Odenkirk in this role hasn’t gotten old yet.

Obsession

Ever wanted somebody so bad you made a deal with a dark entity to win their heart? Yeah, me neither — but that’s not the case for the tortured hero of Curry Barker’s Obsession. After using an old toy called the One Wish Willow to get himself out of the friend zone, Bear (Michael Johnston) becomes the object of obsession for the girl of his dreams. But as that aforementioned toy is almost certainly haunted, his one wish soon curdles into a nightmare he can’t wake up from. Expect great scares, cutting gags, and gore that truly goes there from this debut, which made something of a splash at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Over Your Dead Body

Scream queen Samara Weaving stars in two blood-soaked comedies at SXSW. While one is the long-awaited sequel to her breakout turn in Ready or Not, the other feels almost cut from that same cloth. The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone directs this dark comedy about a couple heading to a remote cabin under the guise of reconnecting. In truth, though, one (Jason Segel) has plans to murder the other (Weaving) — and when that secret comes to the fore, all bets are entirely off. This comes from the guy who directed Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping, so this is sure to be laugh-out-loud funny. But Over Your Dead Body also has the backing of 87North, the stunt-focused production team behind Atomic Blonde and Nobody, setting this up to be the Mr. and Mrs. Smith remix we never knew we needed.

Pretty Lethal

The shadow of John Wick looms large over so many actioners of the decade, but Pretty Lethal is set to take that influence away from the neon-lit clubs and suit-clad machismo we might be used to. The Prime Video film is shaping up to be the Ballerina we deserved. Another film produced by 87North, it follows a troupe of dancers who wind up stranded en route to a showcase in Budapest. When they seek refuge at a local inn run by a former prima turned crime boss (Uma Thurman), a small detour turns into the fight of their lives. As they’re forced to weaponize their ballet training for deadly results, Pretty Lethal grounds its “fight like a girl” premise in the bloody stakes of a truly gritty world.

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Ready or Not didn’t necessarily need a sequel, but the one we’re getting looks too damn good to pass up. The film takes place just moments after Grace Le Domas (Samara Weaving) escapes a ritual sacrifice at the hands of her devil-worshipping in-laws — only for her to stumble into yet another twisted game of hide-and-seek with double the players and even direr consequences. The directing duo known as Radio Silence has assembled a murderer’s row of genre players, from David Cronenberg to Sarah Michelle Gellar to Kathryn Newton, for this rematch, so we can expect nothing less than more explosive, bloody fun.

The Saviors

Adam Scott is also pulling double duty at this year’s SXSW. Aside from the haunting Hokum, he’ll star in a paranoid sci-fi alongside future X-Files star Danielle Deadwyler. In The Saviors, they’re a couple on the cusp of divorce, renting out their guest home to raise enough money to separate for good. But when their new tenants seem to trigger strange events — from flickering lights to weird, unrecognizable tech — Sean and Kim begin to suspect foul play. Do their Middle Eastern renters present a familiar threat, or is there something supernatural at play? Uncovering the secret brings Sean and Kim closer together, but it might not be enough to save the world.

Sender

Britt Lower trades one mind-numbing mystery box for another in Sender. The Severance star is Julia, a newly sober, freshly unemployed woman fighting to rebuild her life in a new rental. Starting over means furnishing her place, which she does with constant shipments from an Amazon knockoff called Smirk. But when packages she didn’t order start turning up at her house — and their contents hint not-so-subtly to the past she’d rather forget — Julia begins to suspect foul play. Her search for whomever is taunting her pitches Sender into a paranoid fever dream, one that Lower will certainly make a meal out of.

Serling

The legacy of a show as iconic as The Twilight Zone has been softened somewhat by time, but every genre fan deserves to know just how monumental the show was — and how hard its host, Rod Serling, worked to make it so. That’s the aim of Serling, an intimate doc that roots its story in a first-person account of Serling’s own life. Archival recordings and personal dictations put us directly in the writer’s shoes, exploring how his work changed TV forever. It’s more than just a making of The Twilight Zone; it’s a portrait of a bygone era and a storyteller who used genre to try and shape it.

They Will Kill You

Mix Hotel Artemis, Ready or Not, and The Raid all together, and you might come close to the cocktail of insanity that They Will Kill You is offering. Zazie Beetz may be another John Wick clone as Asia, a maid with a jagged past — but seeing a Black woman center stage in something so narratively and aesthetically ambitious feels like a win either way. Asia becomes the target of the residents of the Virgil, a historic hotel that doubles as a satanic cult. As she’s forced to fight for her life to escape this unescapable death trap, They Will Kill You offers brutal kills in one hand and irreverent laughs in the other. (The film is produced by It director Andy Muschietti, so that brand of gonzo horror-comedy makes a lot of sense.)

Wishful Thinking

It’s kind of quaint, and maybe even a little bit cosmic, when two nepo babies find love. Such is the meta milieu behind Wishful Thinking — but it’s hard to root for Julia (Maya Hawke) and Charlie (Lewis Pullman) knowing that their relationship could be destroying the world. After a strangely spiritual couples therapy session, Julia and Charlie find that the lows and highs of their bond trigger supernatural events, from natural disasters to economic implosions. With much more at stake than their own happiness, these crazy kids have to decide if their relationship is actually worth the effort... or if those karmic consequences are a sign to quit while they’re ahead.