Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for horror movies like It Ends:
Passenger
There’s enough in Passenger to recommend to horror fans. The central premise is clever, the performances are strong, and André Øvredal demonstrates a real understanding of how to stage individual scares. But it arrives at a moment where other filmmakers are swinging bigger.
Obsession
Curry Barker – YouTube creator turned filmmaker – has emphasized that Obsession is partly inspired by a Simpsons episode where Bart gets his hands on a monkey’s paw. Which tracks, because the film is about exactly that and essentially just that: what happens when you get one wish and that wish goes so, so horribly wrong. It’s contained at such a small, intimate scale, like a messed up Twilight Zone episode that escalates in tension and stays committed to its absurdity without overbaking any of its characters or themes.
Together
Together takes a clever premise about romantic codependence and pushes it into body horror, pairing real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as partners who cannot let go even when their bodies tell them otherwise. Tim (Franco) leans hard on Millie (Brie) for everything from money to basic life skills, and their move from the city to the countryside exposes every fault line. He is an underemployed musician. She is an elementary school teacher trying to prove herself in a new job. The stress and isolation sharpen Tim’s anxieties and bring on disorienting visions of his mother and his father’s decaying corpse, which plants the film’s queasy tone long before the grotesque turn.
Leave the World Behind
Sam Esmail, renowned for his work on Mr. Robot, returns to feature filmmaking with Leave the World Behind, a star-studded drama delivered straight to Netflix that operates as an apocalyptic mystery thriller. Boasting a cast of A-listers like Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, and the promising up-and-comer Myha’la, the film carries the weight of its cast’s reputation but, unfortunately, doesn’t quite live up to expectations.
The Woman in the Yard
In a time when many horror films try to be either thinkpieces or thrill rides and fail to be either, The Woman in the Yard hits a rare sweet spot. It’s a horror film that’s genuinely tense, emotionally grounded, and smartly contained. It may not be a game-changer, but it’s a solid, satisfying entry in the modern horror canon—and a reminder that even filmmakers with inconsistent track records like Jaume Collet-Serra can deliver when the right material lands in the right hands.
Backrooms
Kane Parsons’ deliriously scary YouTube creepypasta series The Backrooms has been adapted to the big screen, and he is not the first to graduate from YouTube filmmaking and short-form horror to feature auteur in the last few years. Zach Cregger and Curry Barker have similar trajectories off the success of Barbarian/Weapons and Obsession, respectively. But Parsons makes a direct adaptation of his own highly successful and notorious Backrooms project here, becoming A24’s youngest feature director in the process.
Cuckoo
Sometimes, a good ole freak-out film that doesn’t make much sense is exactly what you need. Fortunately, Tilman Singer is responsible for two of them now. 2020’s Luz was an underappreciated shock to the horror system that signaled Singer as an auteur to look out for moving forward, and 2024’s Cuckoo only further cements him as one of the genre’s bravest image makers, even as he’s working out the kinks in his storytelling repertoire.
The Watchers
It’s not all bad, but I wished The Watchers tied together better. A monster movie with diluted monster energy, the movie wanders along, yanked forward by solid captives and a couple noteworthy scares. Ishana Night Shyamalan should keep attempting to make movies like this because I’d imagine most will achieve greater success.
Keeper
Keeper finds Oz Perkins splitting the difference between the chilly occult dread of Longlegs and the goofy pulp of his Stephen King riff The Monkey. The result is a winking slow burn that slips, scene by scene, into gawky madness. It is more confident than The Monkey, less severe than Longlegs, and most alive when it trusts atmosphere over exposition.
Final Destination Bloodlines
Final Destination Bloodlines is the rare horror legacy sequel that understands exactly what it is—and more importantly, what its fans want. Directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein, this blood-soaked revival of the Final Destination franchise doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it absolutely fine-tunes it, delivering gory set pieces, a slickly paced plot, and just enough lore expansion to make it feel like more than a rehash. It’s self-aware without being snarky, brutal without being mean-spirited, and surprisingly clever in how it weaves its mythology into something new.
READ MORE: Movies Like Passenger, Movies Like Backrooms
