November 2026 has 3 horror releases worth putting on the calendar: New Group reaches Shudder on November 6, Victorian Psycho opens in US theaters on November 13, and The Holy Boy arrives on Shudder on November 27. Each builds its horror around a community with something deeply wrong beneath its rules.
In New Group, high-school student Ai watches the people around her fall into a cult-like obedience that makes even group gymnastics dangerous. Students face increasingly disturbing demands backed by threats of violence, turning the pressure to fit in into body horror.
Director Yûta Shimotsu follows Best Wishes to All with a film that played Fantasia, Sitges and the 2025 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Reviewing it in October 2025, Daniel Kurland called it “an incredible, unpredictable body horror masterpiece that doubles as an indicting satire of Japan’s society.”
Victorian Psycho puts Maika Monroe in the role of Winifred Notty, a governess arriving at an isolated manor in 1858. Members of the household staff begin disappearing. Zachary Wigon directs the adaptation of Virginia Feito’s novel, with Thomasin McKenzie, Ruth Wilson and Jason Isaacs also starring.
Its Cannes premiere was on May 21, 2026, and the critical response gives some sense of its bloody, comic approach. Rotten Tomatoes’ consensus praises Monroe’s performance, while Time Out described it as “playful but punchless.”
The Holy Boy follows a grieving teacher to an Italian mountain village whose happiness depends on Matteo, an introverted 15-year-old played by Giulio Feltri. Every week, villagers gather to embrace him because his hugs are said to take away their pain and sorrow.
Paolo Strippoli’s folk horror film brings that promise of relief into a story about the boy carrying everyone else’s suffering. Following its Venice premiere, it won the Audience Award and New Wave Best Director at Fantastic Fest 2025, plus Best Director and Best Cinematography at that year’s Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
