Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for horror movies like It Follows:
Smile
While Smile delivers on a couple creative and freaky scares, it ultimately falls apart with a prototypical first hour and a generally confusing second one. Sosie Bacon stars as a traumatized doctor looking for answers to her visions.
Ring
Ring is among the most influential movies to ever come out of Japan. Setting aside it’s successful attempt to blend Japanese filmmaking into the mainstream, Hideo Nakata‘s wildly successful 1998 film is one of the horror genre’s most well-regarded releases. It transcended where it came from, becoming an international powerhouse and spawning and English-language remake due to its popularity.
Barbarian
Zach Cregger‘s Barbarian is still refreshing and thrilling, and it’s easily one of my favorite theater experiences of 2022. Films try over and over again to use the schlocky marketing bit of audiences screaming in theaters only to be disappointing in actual terror when places in front of you – but Barbarian is genuinely jaw-dropping.
undertone
A24 knew exactly what they were doing when they marketed undertone. Although it may not end up being the scariest movie you’ll see in 2026, it’s certainly in the running for the scariest you’ll hear. The trailers leaned heavily into the film’s unsettling sound design, and for good reason. That’s the entire hook. A pretty simple premise executed with confidence has become A24‘s bread and butter over the last decade, and while undertone won’t be joining the studio’s horror hall of fame anytime soon, it’s another reminder that modest ambitions carried out well can still make for an effective night at the movies.
Scream 6
Despite a nearly complete turnover of legacy characters, the Scream franchise keeps on rolling – and it may be as good as any since the original hit theaters in 1996. Scream 6 gets bolder and better, and the movie builds on the best aspects of Radio Silence’s last installment of the franchise.
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.
Talk to Me
Talk to Me is the latest elevated horror movie from A24, a studio that’s completely redefined and reimagined the state of the genre, introducing new ideas and themes into it over the past decade. Talk to Me attempts to do the same, pitting trauma and coping mechanisms with demonic forces to a scary degree.
Hereditary
Hereditary is the rare debut that instantly reshapes a genre. Ari Aster’s 2018 feature moves with an icy confidence, turning domestic grief into occult nightmare, and it still feels like a defining horror film of the century. Backed by A24, the film has the precision and patience of a masterwork: long takes that corner you in the frame, sound design that hums with unease, and edits that withhold just enough to make every cut feel like a trapdoor.
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.
Midsommar
Midsommar is one of the more daring movies of the last 20 years. Ari Aster’s sophomore film is a follow up to his audacious breakout horror hit Hereditary, which features similar, gory visual motifs to Midsommar. Florence Pugh stars in a movie that’s equal parts sadistic and hectic, upsetting and unnerving. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it grows in my estimation upon each rewatch (for which there have been many).
READ MORE: Horror Movies Like Smile, Horror Movies Like Passenger
