by Mayté Rodríguez Cedillo and Fernando Favela  Arts and Culture Travel * BajaTraveler.com
photos Courtesy ©️Academy Museum Foundation/ Emily Shur

It begins with sound. Before a single object comes into view, the introductory gallery fills with a low, textured hum — the kind of noise a body registers before the mind does. Then comes The Hallway: narrow, dim, deliberately familiar to anyone who has ever watched a character walk down one and known, with absolute certainty, not to. Six doors wait at the end of it.

AT A GLANCE — The Horror Show opens September 26, 2026, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles and runs through July 25, 2027. The exhibition gathers 396 objects from 167 films across six themed galleries — Gothic, Psychological, Science, Slasher, Religion and Ghosts — in the fourth-floor Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery. A family-friendly companion show, Zombies!, runs alongside it. General admission is $25.

Six Chambers, 396 Objects, One Question
The exhibition is built around a single line of inquiry: why do horror films matter so deeply to so many? To answer it, Senior Exhibitions Curator Jessica Niebel — working with Assistant Curator Nicholas Barlow and Curatorial Assistant Alexandra James Salichs — has assembled 396 objects drawn from 167 films and arranged them by theme rather than chronology. The Gothic room gives way to the Psychological, then Science, Slasher, Religion and Ghosts, each staged as a setting the visitor steps into rather than a case to lean over. Costumes, creature builds, production drawings and props from Frankenstein (1931), The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Exorcist (1973), Alien (1979), Halloween (1978), The Shining (1980), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Ringu (1998), Ju-on (1998), Get Out (2017) and Midsommar (2019) sit alongside the storyboards and effects tests that produced them. The curatorial advisory group reads like a genre summit in its own right: Willem Dafoe, Osgood Perkins, Tananarive Due, effects artist Howard Berger, Ariel Baska and Angela Marie Smith.

Why Horror, and Why Now
Because horror is no longer the genre studios tolerate — it is the one paying the bills. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners took $364.5 million worldwide in 2025, with roughly a fifth of its domestic opening weekend coming from IMAX screens alone, numbers a prestige drama would envy. The people who lived through the earlier, less respectable era notice the shift. “Back when I started, we would sort of get the lousy table in the commissary by the kitchen door,” Robert Englund observed of the exhibition’s arrival, “and now horror films have saved a couple of studios.” That reversal is the real subject here. An institution founded by the Academy — the same body that spent decades handing its statuettes to almost anything else — has given its marquee fourth-floor gallery to slashers, ghosts and practical-effects monsters for ten months. The museum is not slumming. It is catching up.

Zombies!, and Why to Bring the Family
The companion exhibition is the reason this works as a family trip rather than a solo indulgence. Zombies! sets visitors down in a pretend cemetery and pulls the curtain back on the craft: behind-the-scenes footage from 28 Days Later (2002), a visual history running from White Zombie (1932) through Night of the Living Dead (1968), and an interactive animatronic puppet built for the museum by Spectral Motion, the Los Angeles shop behind decades of screen creatures. Curated by Alexandra James Salichs, it treats the undead as a design problem rather than a scare — latex, hinges, sound and folklore. Admission is free for visitors 17 and younger, which means a family of four with two teenagers pays for two adult tickets and nothing more.

Making a Weekend of It
Plan for a Wednesday-through-Monday window and buy timed tickets before you travel. The museum sits at 6067 Wilshire Boulevard on the Miracle Mile, open 10am to 6pm six days a week and closed Tuesdays; entry is by advance online reservation only, through the website or the museum’s app. For readers driving up from San Diego or crossing at Tijuana, it is a straightforward run north with the Getty, LACMA and the Petersen within a short radius of the same hotel. The programming calendar rewards a return visit: a month-long John Carpenter retrospective, a Monster Mash special-effects makeup day on October 24, Museum After Dark on October 31, a 50th-anniversary screening of Carrie with Sissy Spacek on November 19, and a Hammer Films celebration in January 2027.

✦ BAJATRAVELER® TAKEAWAY
This is the rare blockbuster exhibition that is actually worth scheduling a trip around, and the reason is restraint: the curators built settings instead of spectacle, and trusted 396 objects to carry the argument. Go on a weekday morning, before the Halloween crowds discover it, and give yourself two unhurried hours — the sound design alone deserves that much. At $25, it is the best-value cultural ticket in Los Angeles this season, and the ten-month run means there is no excuse to miss it. Pair it with Zombies! even if you arrive without children; the craftsmanship on display there is the most quietly impressive thing in the building.

Plan Your Visit
On view September 26, 2026 through July 25, 2027. Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery, fourth floor, Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, 6067 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036.
Open 10am–6pm, six days a week; closed Tuesdays. Tickets by advance online reservation only, via the museum website or mobile app. General admission $25 adults, $19 seniors (62+), $15 students. Free for visitors 17 and younger and for California residents with an EBT card.
Information: academymuseum@oscars.org | 323-930-3000
→ academymuseum.org

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
When does The Horror Show open at the Academy Museum, and how long does it run?
The Horror Show and its companion exhibition Zombies! both open September 26, 2026, and remain on view through July 25, 2027 — a ten-month run. The exhibition occupies the fourth-floor Marilyn and Jeffrey Katzenberg Gallery at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

How much are tickets to the Academy Museum, and do I need to book ahead?
General admission is $25 for adults, $19 for seniors 62 and over, and $15 for students. Visitors 17 and younger enter free, as do California residents with an EBT card. Tickets are sold only as advance online reservations through the museum’s website or mobile app.

Is The Horror Show appropriate for children?
The Horror Show is an adult-oriented exhibition built around horror tropes and imagery. Zombies!, its companion show, is explicitly family-friendly: a playful pretend cemetery that explains how filmmakers build the undead, with an interactive animatronic puppet by Spectral Motion.

What films are represented in the exhibition?
396 objects from 167 films, including Frankenstein (1931), The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Exorcist (1973), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Alien (1979), The Shining (1980), Poltergeist (1982), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Misery (1990), Ringu (1998), Get Out (2017) and Midsommar (2019).

Is there special programming tied to the exhibition?
Yes. A month-long John Carpenter retrospective, a Monster Mash special-effects makeup day on October 24, Museum After Dark on October 31, a 50th-anniversary screening of Carrie with Sissy Spacek on November 19, and a Hammer Films celebration in January 2027.