The impossible architecture. The growing darkness. The madness between the margins. After two decades of being deemed “unfilmable,” the cult horror novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is finally making its way to the big screen — and the just-released teaser trailer for House of Leaves (2026) proves that reality is about to fold in on itself.

Scroll down to the bottom of the article to see the Trailer

Directed by visionary filmmaker Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse) and produced by A24, the film is already being called “a psychological labyrinth like no other.” The teaser — just under a minute — offers viewers only fragmented glimpses: a hallway that stretches forever, a door that shouldn’t exist, and a woman whispering, “The house is watching.”

The film follows Will Navidson (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who moves into a seemingly ordinary Virginia home with his partner Karen (Florence Pugh) and their two 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren. But their domestic tranquility is shattered when they discover that the inside of their home is larger than the outside — by inches, then feet, then miles. A pitch-black hallway appears where none existed before, and the descent begins.

Parallel to this storyline is Zampanò, a blind man (played by Willem Dafoe) who leaves behind a mysterious manuscript — a scholarly analysis of a documentary that may not even exist — chronicling Navidson’s discoveries and the unraveling of his family.

To add to the meta horror, the trailer shows Tommy (Lucas Hedges), a tattooed L.A. dropout who discovers the manuscript years later and slowly loses his grip on reality as he reads it.

True to the spirit of the original novel, the teaser plays with formatting even in video — with glitching subtitles, sideways shots, upside-down scenes, and a screen that folds in on itself as whispers in multiple languages bleed through the audio. One line lingers longer than the others: “This is not for you.”

The film is being praised for blending found footage, documentary realism, and surreal horror, all while keeping the audience uncertain of what is real and what is not.

House of Leaves is set to premiere in select theaters and IMAX on October 10, 2026, with an experimental companion app launching alongside it — a nod to the novel’s layered, nonlinear format.

📖 Step inside the house. And don’t expect to leave the same. 🎥 Watch the teaser trailer for House of Leaves (2026) now on A24’s official YouTube channel.