Academy Museum Unveils The Horror Show Exhibition Featuring ‘Carrie’ 50th Anniversary Screening, John Carpenter Retrospective
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- Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will debut 'The Horror Show' exhibition Sept. 26 in the Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery on the museum's fourth floor, running through July 25, 2027
- The exhibition is organized into six themed chambers — Gothic, Slasher, Ghosts, and Religion among them — and will display rare original props, costumes, production materials, and interactive displays
- Film programming includes a Nov. 19 'Carrie' 50th anniversary screening with Sissy Spacek appearing in person, a John Carpenter: Prince of Darkness series, a Halloween 'The Craft' screening, a January Hammer films series, and the Oct. 24 Monster Mash featuring the U.S. premiere of the 4K restoration of 1958's 'Horror of Dracula'
- Willem Dafoe and Osgood Perkins sit on the advisory team; Dafoe called horror 'a popular form, born of modest financial resources and with a strong, lasting independent streak'
- Featured films and artifacts include 'Get Out,' 'The Hunger,' 'Sinners,' 'The Shining,' original storyboards from 'Psycho,' a mask from 'Creature of the Black Lagoon,' costumes from 'Midsommar,' and costumed figures of Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Ghostface, and Art the Clown
- An adjacent interactive exhibit called 'Zombies!' will offer a more family-friendly counterpoint to the main show's gorier material
Why it matters: The Academy Museum's first major horror exhibition — a 10-month run with a Carpenter retrospective and Spacek's personal appearance for 'Carrie's' 50th anniversary — signals that horror is now treated as a museum-grade genre alongside prestige cinema. Fans get rare access to originals like 'Psycho' storyboards and a 'Creature of the Black Lagoon' mask typically locked in studio archives, and the run's length positions the show as a sustained cultural event rather than a seasonal gimmick.
