Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Send Help:
The Monkey
The Monkey is a middling but watchable entry in the 2025 horror slate. It doesn’t reach the high bar set by of Oz Perkin’s best films, nor does it fully honor the emotional undercurrents of King’s original story, but it’s never boring. If nothing else, it reaffirms Oz Perkins as a horror director worth watching—even when the material doesn’t quite land.
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.
Evil Dead Rise
There aren’t many horror franchises able to reinvent themselves as often as Evil Dead does while still maintaining relevancy and quality. Maybe it’s because Sam Raimi holds his creation so close to his heart that only a select few are able to take on the premise, or maybe it’s because the premise seems simple and malleable enough to make nearly anything work. It can shoot for the downright zany and ludicrous with Evil Dead II or Army of Darkness, or it can strive to be like Lee Cronin’s newest spin Evil Dead Rise – a movie so sick and twisted that you can’t help but give it its dues by the time the credits roll.
Cocaine Bear
Cocaine Bear reinvents the boundaries of cinema and what’s possible for the medium moving forward. An absolutely groundbreaking work that sets the tone for 2023. Just kidding. But it’s still goofy and wild. And a bear does cocaine, confirmed.
V/H/S/Halloween
V/H/S/Halloween feels like the most obvious swing this long-running Shudder anthology could take, and the holiday framing mostly works. After a few detours to specific years and even outer space, this film plants every vignette on October 31, stitching them together with a proper wraparound about The Octagon Corporation’s cursed “Diet Phantasma” soda that kills its taste testers in escalatingly nasty ways. Bryan M. Ferguson leans into splattery punch lines here, and the carnage sets the tone for a lineup that ricochets between gross-out mayhem and quieter, queasier terror.
Us
Jordan Peele’s Us was somewhat divisive when it hit theaters in 2019, but it has only grown in my estimation since. Not only did it prove that Get Out was no fluke, but it cemented Peele as a filmmaker with a knack for taking familiar horror tropes and twisting them into something fresh and conceptually bold. It’s a film that balances genre thrills with introspection, making for an experience that is as thought-provoking as it is unsettling.
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.
Ick
Joseph Kahn’s Ick is a caffeinated, genre-scrambling splatter comedy that lives on needle drops and velocity. It is shameless about both, and that is part of the fun. Kahn edits like a music-video veteran, hurling you through an opening twenty-minute life-ruiner montage scored to mid-2000s emo and alt rock. “Swing, Swing” tees up the fall of golden-boy quarterback Hank Wallace, while tracks like “Teenage Dirtbag” slide in later as the movie keeps sprinting from bit to bit. The approach is knowingly exploitative of nostalgia and pop culture, yet the film is so nakedly in on its own joke that the excess becomes a feature rather than a bug.
Dangerous Animals
Dangerous Animals is an effective piece of genre filmmaking that doesn’t overreach and knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s scary, sharply made, and full of small, clever choices that elevate it above its straightforward premise. It’s the kind of late-night horror flick that benefits from a pitch-black room and a strong stomach, and one that knows how to get under your skin without overstaying its welcome.
Get Away
Get Away operates in two distinct modes, making a dramatic shift during its second act twist that transitions the film into a blood-soaked, hyper-violent, gonzo finale. While the final act offers some chaotic fun and memorable moments, the journey to get there is an intentional slog, with the first two acts playing out like a deliberately bad horror comedy. This approach seems designed to mislead viewers into engaging with a movie that feels more amateurish than clever before attempting to redeem itself with a wild conclusion.
READ MORE: Send Help (2026), Movies Like The Monkey, Movies Like Barbarian
