Obsession Takes Five Chainsaw Awards — The Fans Have Spoken, Fiends

The 2026 Chainsaw Awards winners are in: Obsession leads with five fan-voted wins, Backrooms follows with three.

The ballots are counted, the cornfields are quiet, and horror fans have had their say. The 32nd Chainsaw Awards aired Sunday night on Shudder, hosted by Devon Sawa, honouring the best horror released between July 2025 and June 2026 — and one little wish-gone-wrong nightmare walked off with the whole trophy shelf.

Turn the lights down. Here’s who won.

Quick Specs

Ceremony: The 32nd Chainsaw Awards (fan-voted)

Aired: Sunday, October 25, 2026, on Shudder

Host: Devon Sawa

Top winner: Obsession — five awards

Runner-up: Backrooms — three awards

Catch the replay: Shudder and YouTube

Obsession’s Big Night

Curry Barker’s Obsession took Best Wide Release Movie, Best Director and Best Screenplay for Barker himself, Best Lead Performance for Inde Navarrette as Nikki Freeman, and the write-in Best Kill for the Brick Kill. Five wins. For a film Harper already called a conqueror in our Obsession review, consider this the coronation.

Backrooms followed with three: Best First Feature for Kane Parsons, Best Cinematography for Jeremy Cox, and Best Score for Parsons and Edo Van Breemen. If you haven’t taken the trip yet, start with our Backrooms review — then keep the lights on.

The Rest of the Winners

Best Limited Release Movie: Dust Bunny

Best Streaming Premiere: V/H/S/Halloween

Best International Movie: Exit 8

Best Series: Widow’s Bay

Best Supporting Performance: Amy Madigan, Weapons

Best Costume Design: Kate Hawley, Frankenstein

Best Makeup FX: Mike Hill, Frankenstein

Best Creature FX: Jim Henson’s Creature Shop, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2

Best Documentary Feature: In Search of Darkness: 1995–1999

Best Non-Fiction Series: The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs — fresh off Joe Bob’s Halloween House Party this weekend

Best Video Game: Resident Evil: Requiem

Two Editor’s Eyeball Awards went to rising star Joe Bird and to James A. Janisse and Chelsea Rebecca of Dead Meat. And the night’s most contested honour, the Chainsaw Award for Goodest Boy, went to Indy, the canine star of Good Boy — presented by Cujo star Dee Wallace, because of course it was.

Full disclosure, up front: these are fan-voted awards, not critics’ picks — which is exactly why they matter. This is the audience horror actually belongs to, voting with its whole chest.