Courtesy of Everett Collection
I live in Los Angeles, and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t get out to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures often enough. Even though every time I’ve gone, I’ve loved it. That’ll have to change soon, as Variety reports that the Academy has announced “The Horror Show Exhibition“, a tribute to the history and craft of our favorite genre!
Notes the Academy website, “Blurring the line between museum presentation and eerie spectacle, The Horror Show will take visitors on a journey through cinema, starting with an introductory gallery sound installation, into “The Hallway” — modeled after the common horror trope—that will lead to six distinctly themed galleries: Gothic, Psychological, Science, Slasher, Religion, and Ghosts. Each gallery is designed to invite visitors into iconic settings, where they will encounter their favorite creatures, monsters, and objects.”
Public programs and film screenings include:
- John Carpenter: Prince of Darkness
- The 2026 Monster Mash on Oct. 24, featuring the U.S. premiere of the 4K restoration of Horror of Dracula
- A Halloween night screening of The Craft
- Sissy Spacek in person on Nov. 19 for the Carrie 50th anniversary screening
- January series on Hammer films.
Additional films in The Horror Show exhibit include Get Out, The Hunger, Sinners, The Shining, original storyboards from Psycho, a mask from Creature from the Black Lagoon, costumes from Midsommar, and costumed figures of Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Ghostface, and Art the Clown.
Be still, my beating heart.
The Horror Show is organized by Senior Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel with Assistant Curator Nicholas Barlow and Curatorial Assistant Alexandra James Salichs.
Actor Willem Dafoe (Nosferatu) and filmmaker Osgood Perkins (Longlegs) are on board as an advisory team for the exhibit.
Said Dafoe, “Cinema in general engages your sense of wonder, but horror can explode it. It is a popular form, born of modest financial resources and with a strong, lasting independent streak. And it has all the same possibilities for originality, inventiveness, and freedom that it did in its infancy.”
Added Perkins, “Horror is crucial to culture and cinema, and to our evolving understanding of what it means to be alive on earth. I couldn’t think of a bigger or better celebration of the films and stories that have impacted audiences so profoundly and for so long. There is something for every horror fan to appreciate and enjoy in this exhibition, a hallway of limitless doors to be opened and explored.”
The 10-month-long exhibit debuts September 26th in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery on the Los Angeles museum’s fourth floor. It will run through to July 25, 2027.
And me? I’ll be first in line.
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