Horror is having a moment. It has spread across popular culture, and now it’s enshrined in a museum.
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ new exhibit, The Horror Show, opens Sept. 26, promising an immersive journey into the conventions, creatures, characters, and fears that have kept audiences screaming for decades.
Instead of a typical museum format, The Horror Show is designed as a literal and figurative journey through six themed “chambers” each exploring a different facet of the genre: gothic, psychological, science, slasher, religion, and ghosts.
The result is a hybrid museum/haunted house that aims to explore the question: Why do horror films matter so deeply?
Guests must first make their way down the introductory sound installation “The Hallway” before entering the gothic chamber, a crypt full of vampires and nods to other shadowy figures, including the cape worn by Bela Lugosi in 1931’s Dracula.
Next, in the psychological chamber, guests find themselves in an unsettling all-white clinical space that explores the “boundaries between reality and delusion” among costumes, props and storyboards from films like Psycho, Get Out, The Babadook, and The Silence of the Lambs.
The science chamber transforms into a laboratory setting, with special effects, prosthetics and artifacts from several Frankenstein adaptions, Alien, The Fly, The Substance and an original mask from Creature from the Black Lagoon will be on display. Next, step foot into the home of the killer himself in the slasher chamber, where infamous bogeymen like Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, and Ghostface lurk in dark corners alongside weapons and props from iconic slasher films like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Saw.
The religion chamber explores the throughline between possession, morality, belief, and body, and how that disconnect can go seriously wrong. Featured items include costumes and props from newer films like Midsommar, Sinners, as well as possession classics like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. Lastly, The Ghost Chamber conjures the supernatural by having guests enter a haunted living room where they can engage with allegedly haunted items from the set of The Conjuring, The Ring and more.
And there’s only one way out: Traversing The Blood Room. A gory immersive finale showing guests the anatomy behind a true horror blood bath. Participant discretion is advised.
Beyond the galleries, the museum’s accompanying programming begins with a retrospective film series hosted by iconic horror director John Carpenter from through Oct. 25.
The Monster Mash on October 24 for an all ages event delving into special effects makeup demos, tours, and various film screenings throughout the day. On Halloween, the museum will host Museum After Dark, a goth-themed after hours costume party for guests 21+. On Nov. 19, Oscar-winning actress Sissy Spacek will join the museum for a 50th anniversary screening of Carrie.
For younger or less gore-inclined horror fans the Zombies! exhibition offers a family-friendly exploration of how filmmakers create the living dead.
So whether you come for monsters, slashers, ghosts, or simply the thrill of the genre, The Horror Show is ready to prove that sometimes the best place to confront your fears, is at the cinema.
The Gory Details:
The Horror Show will run from Sept. 26, 2026 to July 25, 2027 on the fourth-floor Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery inside the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, Ca.
Admission Prices:
Adults: $25
Seniors (62+): $19
Students (18+ with ID): $15
Children (17 and under): Free
