It’s happening again. The second film in the R.L. Stine Fear Street trilogy takes us back to Shadyside where, as we saw in Fear Street Part One: 1994, Deena (Kiana Madeira) and Josh (Benjamin Flores Jr.) are looking for a way to save Deena’s girlfriend, Sam (Olivia Scott Welch). The Shadyside witch has possessed Sam — and has been wreaking havoc on the town for centuries. Deena and Josh seek out the assistance of C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), one of the only survivors of the 1978 Massacre at Camp Nightwing. C. Berman tells them the story of what happened that night at camp. Long story short: so much blood! Definitely at least one decapitation! Is that summer camp nostalgia tugging at your heartstrings or what?

Mike Flanagan’s 2017 horror film takes the idea of a getaway-gone-wrong and dials it up to 100. Married couple Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald (Bruce Greenwood), looking to spice things up, head out of the city to their vacation home for a few days — but for Jessie, it turns into a complete nightmare. Gerald’s idea of “romance” is to handcuff his wife to the bed and attempt to enact a sexual assault fantasy. Things only get worse from there: Gerald has a heart attack and dies on top of her, leaving her trapped. It doesn’t take long for Jessie to become consumed by repressed memories, vivid hallucinations, and something extremely sinister and perhaps very real as she fights for survival. Gerald’s Game is an excellent addition to the psychological horror genre and contains an absolute master-class performance from Gugino.

You can practically smell summer when you see wind whipping through that grassy green Kansas field — but leave it to Stephen King and Joe Hill, who wrote the novella that In the Tall Grass is based on, to make that idyllic notion as scary as possible. While traveling through Kansas on their way to San Diego, siblings Becky (Laysla De Oliveira) and Cal (Avery Whitted) hear a boy yelling for help in the grassy field right off the road. They head into the field to offer their help and wind up fighting for their lives. Becky and Cal quickly learn that in the tall grass you can’t trust other people, your own senses, or even the ground beneath your feet. It’ll make you rethink the phrase “I’m just stepping outside for a little fresh air.”

If straight horror isn’t your thing, but you’re still looking for a summer movie that spends its entire runtime filling you with dread and anxiety, Leave the World Behind –– starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke –– is for you. Equal parts social commentary and psychological thriller, the movie, directed by Sam Esmail and based on the novel by Rumaan Alam, follows the Sandfords as matriarch Amanda (Roberts) plans an impromptu vacation for her family. It’s supposed to be all relaxation, beach time, and family hangouts, but almost immediately things go haywire: The internet is down, there are widespread blackouts, and no one really knows what’s going on in the outside world except for the fact that society is imploding. Add to that chaos the fact that when the blackouts first start, the owner of the house the Sandfords are staying in — Ali’s G.H. Scott — and his daughter (Myha’la) want to seek safety in their own home, throwing Amanda (and her biases) off-kilter.

You know who would absolutely go bonkers for summer movie season? Pearl (Mia Goth). Remember Pearl? The psycho killer from Ti West’s X? Well, this prequel gives us that psycho killer’s origin story: Set in 1918 Texas, young Pearl dreams of being a film star.  When she’s not spending her time at the local movie theater, she’s getting into some of her favorite hobbies, including abusing her father and killing animals. That’s right, she’s a psychopath from the start. And in Pearl, we watch her grow into the killer we already know she becomes. Mixing a love of classic cinema and brutal, unforgiving gore, Pearl is an audacious option for all of your summer scare needs.

If you’re thinking about quintessential summer horror movies, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre must be high on the list — it’s a classic. Set 50 years after Leatherface’s original summer of ’73 murder spree, the 2022 sequel finds that pesky guy with the big power tool back at it. This time, he’s after a new group of young adults (the cast includes Elsie Fisher and Sarah Yarkin), as well as Sally (Olwen Fouéré), the sole survivor of the 1973 killings — now a Texas Ranger looking for payback. It’s a new year with new victims, but the same old Leatherface.

Ah, the City of Light! Paris sure got to show off its sparkle during the 2024 Olympics, didn’t it? Well, what if the city was under attack by giant killer sharks that have adapted to live in the Seine? That’s Under Paris. Terrifying shark movies are a tried-and-true staple of summer horror, and in this take on the genre, you even get a little environmentalism thrown in for good measure. Here, Bérénice Bejo stars as Sophia, a marine biologist who must work to save Paris from the same giant shark that killed her entire team — including her husband — three years prior while trying to study the effects of the Great Pacific garbage patch. Now that shark is back, deadlier than ever, and a triathlon is about to fill the river with a buffet of unsuspecting swimmers.