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Summary for: Beyond Halloween: Where to watch horror films in Prague year roundPrague has never lacked arthouse cinemas, but lately it's becoming a surprisingly good city for horror fans.
The latest sign comes July 24-26, when Edison Filmhub launches Heatwave Horror, a new three-day festival spanning cult classics, psychological thrillers, creature features, and some of 2026's most talked-about genre releases.
The event joins a growing calendar of horror-focused screenings and festivals that now run throughout the year, from Kino Aero's famously outrageous Shockproof Film Festival to the cult programming at Kino Balt.
A festival years in the making
Movies that make your blood run cold. That – along with their AC-ed cinema hall – is Edison Filmhub’s answer to the record-breaking temperatures we’ve all been boiling under.
A dozen films, old and new, were carefully selected by the curating team to show the wide scope of the horror genre, from angst-inducing flicks to psychologically oppressive dramas and outright gory scares.
“I’ve really been wanting to do this for a while,” says Edison Filmhub’s Ryan Keating, who built the selection together with his colleague Jaroslava Kolibačová.
The lineup moves well beyond blood and jump scares, pairing genre landmarks like Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria with newer releases, including current global hit Obsession, which takes Gen Z's global anxiety to extremes, as well as films that show the range of what horror can be.
Heatwave Horror: Tickets for individual screenings can be purchased online for CZK 185-200, and a full-festival pass for CZK 1,500. All the movies are English-friendly, and some are followed by discussions and Q&As with the audience. See the full program and tickets here.
For Keating, the festival’s opening film is not necessarily its most frightening film. He chose The Witches (1990) as his personal favorite, a dark fantasy that introduced an entire generation of children to the genre’s unsettling side.
“It’s a kids’ movie technically, but it’s directed by Nicholas Roeg and based on a book by Roald Dahl. So, of course, this movie traumatized me as a child, and I’m so glad it did. I also think it’s a really enjoyable movie to check out if you want a splash of horror, but not too much. It’s important that we’re accessible.”
What to see at Heatwave Horror
The lineup moves across the full spectrum of horror, from all-time classics to some of the genre’s newest and strangest releases.
Dario Argento’s 1977 Suspiria lifts the curtain on the terrifying reality hiding behind a prestigious European dance and ballet academy, while The Witches (1990), the cult dark fantasy starring Anjelica Huston and based on the Roald Dahl novel, is about two evil witches plotting to rid the world of children by turning them into mice.
Jordan Peele’s 2022 Nope takes a more science-fiction course, reflecting on the entertainment industry, voyeurism, and media exploitation.
Newer selections include Exit 8 (2025), a claustrophobic Japanese psychological horror film based on the 2023 video game, following a young man trapped in the endless loop of a seemingly inescapable Tokyo metro station; Backrooms (2026), a nightmarish dive into the alternate universe of apparently endless liminal spaces; and Obsession (2026), which takes the idea of “beware what you wish for” to new depths of relationship trauma and romantic horror.
The program also explores horror’s expanding boundaries with Leviticus (2026), where queer teenage relationships meet monster-entity horror; Hatching (2022), Hanna Bergholm’s psychological dive into repressed emotions through the story of a 12-year-old gymnast desperate to please her image-obsessed mother; and Nightborn (2026), a Finnish-Latvian co-production mixing Norse myths with motherhood and palpable horror.
For fans of more traditional scares, Evil Dead Burn (2026), the sixth installment in the long-running supernatural horror franchise, brings back one of horror’s most successful series.
The lineup also includes Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026), winner of the Queer Palm at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, a slasher led by Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder that combines sex, psychos, queerness, and mania with good old-fashioned horror.
Where to find horror in Prague year-round
Heatwave Horror joins a growing number of Prague screenings dedicated to horror and genre cinema.
The biggest name on Prague's horror calendar is Shockproof Film Festival (Festival otrlého diváka), showcasing, in their own words, “the most impressive, the most ridiculous, the most outrageous, and the most bizarre horror, extreme, action, gore, camp, B-movies, C-movies and porn flicks.” The autumn 2026 edition will be held on November 19-22.
Future Gate Sci-Fi Film Festival also screens its fair share of horror movies and will have its next edition late September-early October. Also organized by the Future Gate team, the annual Kinomixer film festival, typically held at Prague's Bio Oko in January, is focused on horror, sci-fi, and fantasy.
The small Žižkov cinema Kino Balt has become a year-round destination among fans looking for something outside the mainstream, with screenings of horror, B-movies, and cult oddities.
The current lineup is a bizarre blend of cult favorites and film classics, most in their original English from Hundreds of Beavers, Cannibal! The Musical, and The VelociPastor to Life of Brian and Beetlejuice.
Screenings in the small cinema, which often include food and drink tastings and even babysitting, can be sold out weeks in advance, proof of the local appetite for alternative film experiences.
Two films featured in Heatwave Horror, Backrooms and Obsession, have both crossed the USD 200 million mark at the global box office, setting records for their respective studios, a sign that indie horror is having a moment not just in Prague but worldwide.
“I’m a die-hard horror fan, and I’m so happy that now it’s really becoming something people are actively seeking out and talking about,” says Keating.
