'The Odyssey' Proves What The Next Christopher Nolan Movie Should Be
The Odyssey (2026) embraces a lot of different tones and styles of filmmaking. It’s a war movie about PTSD, focusing on a survivor trying to make his way home in a world he no longer recognizes. It’s a love story about how the heart can stay true regardless of the challenges set before it. It’s an amazing adventure movie, with lots of huge set pieces and imaginative showcases. It’s also very much a horror movie, a genre director Christopher Nolan has only ever flirted with in the past.
Although many of Nolan’s movies have underlying scary elements and heavy themes to them, they don’t usually embrace horror as a core aspect. Fear is a very big part of Nolan’s Batman trilogy, for example, but never to the point where it actually overtakes the superhero elements. However, horror is very much central to The Odyssey, especially as Odysseus makes his way across the seas. That’s why Nolan’s next movie should fully lean into horror.
Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' Is Horrifying
The Odyssey is a lot of things during its lengthy run-time, but it’s most effective when it allows itself to be a horror movie. The ancient epic has plenty of ghostly creatures and furious battles to make for an exciting story, but Nolan wisely never uses them for major set pieces. Instead, many of the supernatural creatures encountered in the film are furious beasts of supernatural origin that claim the lives of several soldiers. The cyclops is a nearly silent threat that casually consumes multiple men and turns out to be far faster than it should be. The Laestrygonians are reimagined as brutish and silent soldiers, capable of easily batting away men with a single blow.
Circe’s painful transformation of the soldiers into pigs comes complete with gruesome body horror right out of The Fly (1986), the sea-witch literally shaping their bodies into animal forms. The shades of the Underworld are hollow and haunting, especially once they decide to charge the surviving soldiers. The biggest scare comes late in the story when the crew encounters the Scylla, a vicious multi-headed creature that quickly grabs and consumes six men; a sacrifice Odysseus accepted for a chance to save the rest of his crew. All of these beats are shocking, visually arresting, and deeply effective. It underscores the horror of Odysseus’ adventures and reiterates the dangers surrounding him. It’s also the most effective time Nolan has played with horror as a tone.
Nolan Is Always Changing Genres - And Should Do Horror Next
Christopher Nolan’s most admirable trait as a filmmaker may just be his flexibility. While certain aspects of his style are unmistakably printed across all of his movies, there’s a willingness to experiment with tenor and tone that’s made him one of the 21st century’s most exciting directors. The twisty period-pulp of The Prestige (2006) is far removed from the bittersweet sci-fi of Interstellar (2014) and the self-reflective exploration of Oppenheimer (2023). The Odyssey itself is an outlier in his filmography, an unabashed period-piece epic and love story all rolled into one. However, it’s the horror elements that are most memorable in the movie.
Nolan never lets the inventive visuals or gruesome forces overtake the scene, instead being very deliberate with how much of the monsters we see in any given moment. This allows the jump scares, atmosphere, and explosion of action to come together to amazing effect. Nolan’s next movie should fully embrace that genre to tell a full scary story, pushing him to embrace that tone and flex those creative muscles even more.
What Kind Of Horror Movie Should Christopher Nolan Make?
If Nolan were to make a full horror movie next, hypothetically, it’s worth considering what kind of scary movie would catch his attention. He actually cut his teeth as a director on Hitchcock-style thrillers like Following (1999) and Insomnia (2002), so it wouldn’t be surprising to see him return to that more grounded approach. However, The Odyssey’s mix of big CGI monsters, dreadful tension, and clever use of jump scares makes it more exciting to imagine what he could do with supernatural creatures.
His monsters in The Odyssey are imaginative and inhuman, highlighting a clever eye for body horror and finding the grace in the grotesque. Nolan notably isn’t too gory a director, either. While there are some brutal moments in the scary turns in The Odyssey, even the rampage at the end of the film is shot so that most of the blood, guts, and gore is off-screen. That suggests he wouldn’t be as interested in a slasher film, even though Nolan took everything he learned from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and applied it to Inception.
If Guillermo del Toro hadn’t just done his own version, then the melancholy of Nolan’s writing style and clear interest in monsters would have made him ideal for an adaptation of Frankenstein. His love for finding the humanity in extreme situations and clear love for monsters might make him ideal for something in the Alien series, especially, although that franchise has been chugging along nicely lately and doesn’t need more cooks in the kitchen. At the end of the day, I don’t really care what kind of horror movie Nolan wants to try, especially after The Hollywood Reporter reported on how much he respected Obsession (2026) and Backrooms (2026). After seeing what he can do with scary imagery in The Odyssey, I just want Nolan to make a full horror movie of his own.
