The film industry has been up-and-down, as a whole, in 2025. While the domestic box office actually crossed $8 billion for only the third time since the global spread of COVID-19, its overall totals were incredibly top heavy, featuring more than a few prequels, sequels and spinoffs outpacing more than a few fair-weather franchises that didn’t age too well, along with many misfires.

While it was a great year for horror, I would argue it was not a good year for great films. There were some exceptional individual performances sprinkled throughout many releases, but those separate instances (good acting, music, special effects, etc.) outnumbered the whole (bad writing, direction, overall movies) by a wide margin.

For example, let’s take a look at the Domestic Top 10 Films of 2025:

  • A Minecraft Movie ($423.9 million) was bombarded by memes and flying popcorn.
  • Lilo & Stitch ($423.7 million) received the now-patented Walt Disney live-action adaptation.
  • Superman ($354 million) slightly underperformed but still won the superhero sweepstakes.
  • Jurassic World: Rebirth ($339.6 million) still excited prehistoric fans of all ages.
  • Zootopia 2 (currently at $378.8 million) won’t be the last animated buddy-cop comedy.
  • Wicked: For Good ($335 million) proves The Wizard of Oz is still made of gold.
  • Sinners ($279.6 million) was the top critical and commercial original film of the year.
  • The Fantastic Four: First Steps ($274 million) was wobbly for the MCU.
  • How to Train Your Dragon ($262 million) wasn’t the only live-action adaptation of this list.
  • Avatar: Fire and Ash (currently at $342.6 million) means another guaranteed trip to Pandora.

Did you notice a familiar theme? Only one true horror movie can be found in that list, which is coincidentally the only original new release of the bunch, as well. Streaming has definitely spoiled us as more of the lower-to-mid budgeted films get regulated to small-screen releases, inevitably, and not movie theaters. The only way to possibly change that scenario is to regularly visit your neighborhood movie theater on opening nights.

Otherwise, it’ll only be more of the same Franchise Syndrome filling theaters.

Quite a few gems were sprinkled throughout the year that could easily get lost during the awards season shuffle. Bring Her Back made body horror brutal again for A24 Films. The Conjuring: Last Rites shocked many by shooting fire out of the gate and winning its premiere weekend as the fourth (and final?) chapter of the franchise. Animatronic mayhem returned to Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.  Guillermo del Toro revived the ghost of Frankenstein. Predator: Badlands became the highest-grossing film of the franchise domestically (I enjoyed it quite a bit, but audiences quickly abandoned it after a couple of weeks), and I will never look at thorny knickknacks the same way after watching Weapons.

That was a pretty great list of feature films, but the horrors didn’t stop there.

Small-screen screams streamed through a variety of services, prolonging the pain. At the top of the list, Predator: Killer of Killers did a great job of renewing interest in the once-sleepy franchise. Paired with Prey, I truly believe the franchise will prosper through streaming more than appearing in movie theaters. Alien: Earth retconned the purpose-driven lives of cyborgs, synthetics and hybrids, but I really just wanted to see more Xenomorphs! The slow-burn supernatural storyline of IT: Welcome to Derry was simply too similar to the previous IT feature films to truly interest me in little more than this backstory (even though I still watched every episode, hoping for something more). And Marvel Zombies reanimated the MCU, bringing a delicious, darker side to superheroes.

Specifically for horror feature films, the majority of the wide releases either went the mid-budget or the indie route. Studios were frequently not providing the big budgets for the genre, anymore (See movies like Good Boy, The Carpenter’s Son and Clown in a Cornfield). And when they did, audiences weren’t receptive to many, as The Running Man, The Strangers: Chapter 2 and 28 Years Later faltered, while M3GAN 2.0 switched genres entirely, to poor reception.

As the awards season winds down, Sinners is receiving a whole lot of attention for filmmakers Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan, and rightfully so. I absolutely enjoyed the film, even though the storyline could have been improved by throwing in some vague undead plot points much earlier than late in the big-battle climax. It’s my odds-on favorite for winning many of this year’s major trophies.

For more winners, please see Jason’s 2025 #HauntLife Movie Awards, as well as the results of our votes in the 2025 Music City Film Critics’ Association Awards.