LOS ANGELES, CA.- Just in time for the Halloween season, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures has opened The Horror Show, an immersive exhibition examining the enduring pull of horror cinema and the ways filmmakers have transformed fear, anxiety and the supernatural into some of the medium’s most memorable images.
On view from September 26, 2026, through July 25, 2027, the exhibition approaches horror not simply as a genre built around scares, but as a cultural form that has repeatedly reflected social anxieties, psychological fears and changing ideas about monsters, morality and the unknown.
At the center of the exhibition is a deceptively simple question: why do horror films matter so deeply to so many people?
Rather than answering it through a conventional chronological survey, The Horror Show turns the museum experience itself into something closer to a cinematic encounter. Visitors begin with an introductory sound installation before entering “The Hallway,” a transitional space inspired by one of horror cinema’s most familiar devices: the dark corridor that seems to promise that something is waiting just beyond sight.
From there, the exhibition branches into six themed galleries devoted to Gothic horror, psychological horror, science, slashers, religion and ghosts. Each is designed as an environment in which costumes, creatures, props and other objects can be encountered within settings that evoke the worlds from which they emerged.
The range of films represented stretches across nearly a century of cinema. Among them are Dracula and Frankenstein, both released in 1931, The Horror of Dracula from 1958, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, The Shining, Poltergeist, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Misery, The Silence of the Lambs, Ringu, Ju-on, The Blair Witch Project, Get Out and Midsommar.
Beyond familiar monsters and unsettling imagery, the exhibition also looks behind the screen, considering how filmmakers build suspense and create the visual and psychological effects that have defined horror across generations.
The exhibition is organized by Senior Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel with Assistant Curator Nicholas Barlow and Curatorial Assistant Alexandra James Salichs, with additional support from THI Moving Image Lab Curatorial Fellow Bradford Nordeen.
Running alongside The Horror Show is Zombies!, a family-friendly exhibition that takes a lighter approach to one of horror cinema’s most durable creatures.
Visitors enter a playful imaginary cemetery filled with eerie sounds and imagery while learning how filmmakers create the undead for the screen. Behind-the-scenes material from films including 28 Days Later demonstrates how performers, makeup artists, designers and other members of a production team turn actors into zombies.
The exhibition also traces the evolution of the zombie in popular culture through film posters and other materials connected to movies including White Zombie from 1932 and George A. Romero’s landmark Night of the Living Dead from 1968.
Rather than presenting zombies simply as terrifying creatures, the exhibition examines how their appearance and meaning have changed as filmmakers repeatedly reinvented them for new audiences.
An interactive animatronic puppet created especially for the Academy Museum by Spectral Motion adds another layer to the experience, allowing visitors to see how practical effects and mechanical techniques contribute to bringing imaginary creatures to life.
The museum describes Zombies! as a companion exhibition suitable for visitors of all ages, emphasizing the craft and illusion behind horror rather than the fear itself.
Zombies! is curated by Alexandra James Salichs, curatorial assistant at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Together, the two exhibitions offer complementary views of horror cinema: one exploring the genre’s deeper cultural and psychological resonance, and the other revealing the playful ingenuity required to manufacture monsters.
The Horror Show and Zombies! are on view at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures through July 25, 2027.
