10 Movies To Watch If You Love Insidious

Published Aug 23, 2026, 10:40 AM EDT Sky Blanton is a Movie Contributor at ScreenRant with professional experience covering movies, television, and pop culture. Her published work spans news, interviews, features, and opinion pieces, with a focus on film, franchise storytelling, and the entertainment industry. She earned her bachelor's degree in Communications with a concentration in Professional Writing and a minor in Business Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. There is a specific kind of horror movie that gets more interesting the less you understand it. Insidious is a great example. What begins as a frightening mystery surrounding Dalton's comma eventually leads the Lambert family into The Further, where they discover that the danger is not confined to their home. Suddenly, the movie has moved far beyond a family dealing with a generic haunting trope and into something stranger, with new questions emerging every time the family gets closer to an answer. That is the feeling these movie recommendations are chasing. Not just ghosts, demons, or haunted houses, but the thrill of realizing a horror movie is taking you somewhere you never expected. The best ones start with a premise you recognize, then introduce a disturbing ideal, reveal, or piece of lore that changes how you see everything that came before it. 10 Barbarian (2022) Directed by Zach Cregger Barbarian is at its best when it makes you wonder whether you should trust what you are seeing. Tess arrives at a Detroit rental and finds Keith already staying there, creating an uncomfortable situation that could easily belong to a typical home invasion trope. Tess then discovers a hidden room in the basement. There is a camera, a stained mattress, and a tunnel leading deeper beneath the house. By the time she finds out what lives down there, the movie has become far stranger than what the opening had suggested. That discovery makes Barbarian a great choice for anyone who loved the way Insidious kept expanding on its own lore. The basement is only the beginning, eventually leading Tess into the disturbing history of the house and the man who once lived there. Even more surprising, the movie keeps finding ways to change its focus without feeling like it has abandoned the original story and tension. If the best part of Insidious was realizing there was something much bigger behind the haunting, Barbarian knows how to create that same feeling of unease and surprise. 9 The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016) Directed by André Øvredal The Autopsy of Jane Doe gives its characters a corpse that seems to break every rule of forensic science. Tommy and Austin Tilden receive an unidentified young woman whose body looks almost untouched from the outside, yet her autopsy reveals shattered bones, a severed tongue, blackened lungs, and stab wounds throughout her organs. Her blood is still flowing, but her eyes suggest she has been dead for days. The deeper they cut into Jane Doe, the less her body makes sense. Suddenly, the morgue loses power, the other bodies disappear, and Tommy and Austin find symbols carved inside Jame's skin that point back to the Salem witch trials. The question is no longer how Jane died. It is why she refuses to stay dead and what she wants from the two men trapped with her. Like Insidious, the movie becomes more unsettling the more its characters learn. By the time Tommy and Austin understand what they are dealing with, knowing the truth in The Autopsy of Jane Doe offers them very little comfort. 8 Oculus (2013) Directed by Mike Flanagan Oculus starts with Kaylie Russell believing an antique mirror was responsible for her parents' deaths, and she is determined to prove it. She fills a room with cameras, sets up a system that can smash the mirror, and brings her brother Tim back into the house to watch it happen. The problem is that the mirror does not need to attack them to be dangerous. It can make them see things that are not there, forget what they have done, and mistake one person for the other. Kaylie and Tim know the mirror is manipulating them, so they try to account for every possible trick. It still catches them off guard. The movie's use of two timelines adds to the disorientation, as memories from their childhood are scattered in with what is happening in the present. In the end, the question is not whether the mirror is supernaturally affected. It is whether anyone can recognize what is real before it is too late. 7 Talk to Me (2022) Directed by Mike and Danny Philippou There is something deeply wrong with the fact that the teenagers in Talk to Me can summon the dead with an embalmed hand and still treat it like a party trick. They light a candle, say "talk to me," and let a stranger's spirit take over their body while everyone else watches and records it. The 90-second limit makes the possessions seem controlled, until Mia lets Riley take a turn and refuses to let the actual possession end. Mia becomes convinced that one of the spirits is her dead mother, and every attempt to reach her pulls Mia further away from the people around her. The movie keeps adding new questions about what the spirits want and whether anything Mia sees can be trusted. By the time the full implications that come with the hand become clear, Talk to Me has gone far beyond a story about teenagers messing with ghosts. 6 The Empty Man (2020) Directed by David Prior The Empty Man starts with former detective James Lasombra looking into the disappearance of a teenager named Amanda. Her friends tell him about a local legend involving an empty bottle on a bridge. According to the story, blowing into the bottle and thinking about the Empty Man will summon him. James tries the ritual himself and later finds Amanda's friends hanging beneath the bridge. The investigation takes James to the Pontifex Institute, a cult that has spent years trying to understand the Empty Man and believes the entity can be brought into the world. James eventually learns that the cult has been watching Amanda, her friends and him for reasons he cannot understand. Its leader, Arthur Parsons, explains that the Empty Man needs a human vessel and James discovers that he may have been chosen for that role. In the reveal, James learns he can no longer trust his past or who he thought himself to be. His memories, relationships, and even grief over his wife and son were created by the cult in preparation to become the Empty Man's next vessel. 5 Malignant (2021) Directed by James Wan Malignant starts with Madison Mitchell seeing murders before they happen. The killer, Gabriel, is connected to a part of Madison's childhood she cannot remember, and his appearances become more frequent as she tries to understand what is happening. The police suspect Madison may know more than she realizes, while her own memories slowly begin to reveal a strange history. It turns out that Gabriel is Madison's parasitic twin, a malformed brother who was surgically sealed inside her skull as a child and can take control of her body. Suddenly, Madison is not just trying to identify a killer. She is carrying him inside of her. Malignant takes that bizarre idea and runs with it, turning a supernatural murder mystery into increasingly outrageous body horror. 4 The Void (2016) Directed by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski The Void begins with a man crawling down a country road and ends with a black pyramid in another dimension. In between, Daniel Carter brings him to a nearly abandoned hospital, where patients transform into grotesque creatures and hooded figures surround the building. What starts as a terrifying night inside a hospital quickly becomes something harder to explain. The hospital's basement reveals Dr. Richard Powell's experiments with death and his attempts to reach beings that existed before humanity. From there, the movie throws in a cult, reanimated corpses, bizarre creatures, and a glowing triangle connected to another plane of existence. By the end, The Void has gone so far beyond its opening premise that the original question of what is happening stops mattering. 3 Smile (2022) Directed by Parker Finn Therapist Rose Cotter watches a patient die by suicide, only to start seeing the same disturbing smile painted on people who should not be smiling at her. In Smile, Rose discovers that similar deaths have happened before, suggesting that whatever terrified her patient has now been passed to her. As the visions become harder to distinguish from reality, Rose starts investigating the pattern before it consumes her life. The entity in Smile is particularly cruel because it knows exactly what Rose fears and can make its hallucinations feel completely real. Rose thinks she has escaped it more than once, only to discover she continues to be deceived. When she finally sees what has been tormenting her, it is a skinless creature with multiple rows of jaws. The reveal gives the nightmare Rose has been seeing an actual form, and somehow makes it even worse. 2 The Dark and the Wicked (2020) Directed by Bryan Bertino The Dark and the Wicked traps Louise and Michael on their family's isolated Texas farm while their father lies dying. Their mother has already taken her own life after being convinced that something was preying on the family, and her diary suggests that she was not imagining it. Before long, Louise and Michael begin seeing things that make their late mother's fears difficult to dismiss. Not only does the entity attack them, but it imitates people they know. It creates convincing visions, and makes them believe they have found a way out. Michael even returns home after leaving the farm, only to find his wife and daughters apparently dead before realizing the entire scene was another attack. The movie keeps turning familiar faces into threats, making it almost impossible for Louise and Michael to know what they can trust. 1 The Wailing (2016) Directed by Na Hong-Jin Officer Jong-goo is investigating a series of brutal attacks in a small Korean villa during 2016's The Wailing. The victims had become violently deranged, and Jong-goo soon has a personal reason to investigate when his daughter Hyo-jin develops the same symptoms. A mysterious Japanese stranger becomes the obvious suspect, especially after Jong-goo discovers disturbing evidence inside his home. A local shaman insists the stranger is a demon, while a mysterious woman named Moo-myeong claims he is actually trying to protect the village. Jong-goo finds evidence that supports both explanations, and every answer seems to create another question. That uncertainty is what makes The Wailing such a great pick for Insidious fans, especially if you enjoy supernatural horror that keeps changing what you think you know. By the time Jong-goo realizes what he has done, there is no way to undo it. Release Date April 1, 2011 Runtime 102 minutes Director James Wan