The Heretiks To Put a Witchy Spin on the Home-Invasion Horror Movie

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The Heretiks 2026

This coven isn't interested in mercy.

The Heretiks is an an upcoming horror film combining witches, an isolated house and an apocalyptic Halloween ritual into what sounds like an ’80s-style home-invasion nightmare.

A Halloween Night That Goes Horribly Wrong

The story centers on a disaffected teenage girl who finds herself caught up in something far more dangerous than ordinary teenage misery, as when a murderous coven targets her younger sister as part of a ritual planned for Halloween night, she is forced to join forces with a renegade witch - the problem is that they're dealing with a coven that apparently has no interest in taking prisoners, so it quickly becomes more of a fight for survival inside a house where the people coming through the door really, really don't want to have a chat.

The screenplay comes from Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, whose previous work includes David Bruckner's The Night House and the 2022 Hellraiser reboot, and I think that is a pretty interesting pairing for a film built around witches and an apocalyptic ritual because both writers have experience taking supernatural horror concepts and making them considerably more uncomfortable than their basic premise might suggest.

I'm particularly curious about the home-invasion angle, because witches are usually associated with forests, old houses, rituals and general "something terrible lives over there" territory, so putting that mythology into a more contained home-invasion framework is a pretty interesting choice.

Director Gregg Bishop is also no stranger to horror, because his credits include Dance of the Dead and Siren, and The Heretiks gives him another opportunity to work with the genre while shifting toward darker supernatural territory - the cast includes Kimberly Epstein, Josie Wert, Ava Mae Seidensticker, Tess Williams and Luke Speakman.

The Heretiks witches

Fantastic Fest Gets the First Look

The Heretiks will make its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026, giving genre audiences their first opportunity to see what Bishop, Collins and Piotrowski have cooked up, where the festival runs September 17–24 in Austin, Texas.

Hopefully more details arrives soon, alongside a trailer.