16 Best Terrifying Movies Like Sinister to Watch Tonight

The macabre story in Sinister introduced people to director Scott Derrickson’s alien “Bughuul” character. The “Bughuul” has since become a famous movie monster, leading to a 2015 follow-up. Fans of the movie may think that Sinister is the only movie that can compare, but they only need to know where to look.

The best horror movies like Sinister, focus on scaring the audience all the way through. They do this by telling stories that are so interesting that the audience can’t look away, even if they have to watch through their fingers.

The Top 16 Movies Like Sinister To Watch:

The Empty Man

A movie about a cult that didn’t get much attention when it first came out but now has a strong cult following, The Empty Man is a great choice for horror fans looking for something different.

The title being isn’t as real as something like the Bughuul, but their eerie presence is felt throughout the whole story. Fans of Sinister who liked the mystery part of the movie will love this dark detective story.

The Shining

A perfect and scary horror movie is hard to find, but Stanley Kubrick’s version of Stephen King’s The Shining is one of them. The terrifying events that one family went through in a haunted hotel have been the basis for many horror films in the decades since it came out, but few of them can match the overall feeling of dread that Kubrick created in every scene.

Aside from its historical value, though, sinister fans should see this movie just for its terrifying mood.

In a Lonely Place

One thing that made “Sinister” stand out was that it was mostly about the writing process. The movie also shows how far Ellison Oswalt is ready to go to find information for his new book. He is so focused on his work that his family starts to question that he will always be there for them. Ellison doesn’t want to spend time with his kids, so he stays up late to work on his studies. It’s remarkable how hard Ellison works on his writing, but it makes you wonder what his real goals are.

When it comes to academic passion, the 1950 crime movie “In a Lonely Place” also plays with the noir genre. The story is about a failed Hollywood author who is accused of murder. Dixon Steele, played by Humphrey Bogart, hasn’t written a hit movie since World War II. He has a lot of doubts about his artistic process and the glamour of Hollywood, and he often loses control when he is angry. The police question Steele’s new neighbour, Laurel Grey (Gloria Grahame), and she clears him when they think he killed someone. She starts to think Steele might be involved, though, when she sees links between his books and the recent crimes.

The Blair Witch Project

A lot of people still think that this found footage movie is the best of the bunch. It does a lot with very few tools.

The movie follows a small film crew as they try to record a local legend in the woods around a small town in Maryland. The acting and cinematography are very good, and the cameras are left in the hands of the actors, so the audience has to imagine the scary thing that stalks the characters at night. Fans of scary films who liked how creepy the 8mm footage in Sinister was will love how scary the 16mm shots are in The Blair Witch Project.

Insidious

There are a lot of well-known and successful horror movie films that director James Wan started. One of them is the scary Insidious series, which he made with co-writer Leigh Whannell.

The first film in the series mixed haunted house and possession tropes to make something truly memorable. The scary figures that terrorise the family in the movie are enough to make even the most experienced horror fan jump a little. It’s a great scary movie, just movies like Sinister.

The Mothman Prophecies

The jump scares in “Sinister” are there, but the movie doesn’t depend on them. Sinister’ moves much more slowly than other films about demon possession. Things look like they could go badly for the Oswalt family at any time. The watcher is pulled into Ellison Oswalt’s point of view. The writer is still interested in all the secrets the house hides in the shadows, even though he’s scared of the tapes he watches.

The 2002 mysterious tale “The Mothman Prophecies” is also a great movie that flows well with slow motion. The movie feels like a true-crime thriller, like “Sinister,” because it is so true to life. But unlike “Sinister,” the events in “The Mothman Prophecies” are based on some real events. The movie is said to be based on a real sighting of a monster and strange events that happened in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. It starts off with a sad event that is just as scary as the ritual deaths in “Sinister.”

Author John Klein from The Washington Post is played by Richard Gere in the movie. John and his wife, Mary (Debra Messing), are in a car accident because Mary swerves the car quickly because she saw a dark person in their way. She ends up in the hospital and dies of a brain tumour. John sees the same person in Point Pleasant again after two years.

The Conjuring

The Conjuring is another huge hit from James Wan that started an even bigger and more widespread horror movie franchise. It has some similarities to Insidious, but it takes place in the past and is based on true stories of supernatural events that happened at a family home in Rhode Island.

While The Conjuring had a lot of classic scares, it was the quality of the acting that made it more than just another ghost or possession movie. Fans of Sinister will enjoy the dramatic quality of the film as well as the mix of slow-building tension and shocking scares.

Hereditary

Ari Aster’s first full-length movie, Hereditary, has some of the best performances in modern horror movies. Toni Collette’s performance as a grieving mother dealing with her mental health and her relationship with her son is especially strong.

The movie has magical parts, but it’s more of a nightmare mood piece. If you’re a fan of Sinister, though, it has all the creative killings you could want.

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The Blackcoat’s Daughter

“Sinister” is scary in part because it takes place in a small space. The movie mostly takes place in the home of the Stevenson family, which is now home to Ellison Oswalt’s family. Ellison is completely obsessed with finding out why the Stevensons died. After finding a bunch of strange videotapes in the attic, he rarely leaves it. Ellison’s wife and kids have to stay with him, which makes “Sinister” feel much shut in. Scott Derrickson builds tension by slowly sharing more about the last crime. This makes the brutal parts even more shocking.

The supernatural horror movie “The Blackcoat’s Daughter” is about Bramford Academy, a Catholic high school for girls that is all by itself. The story is broken up into three different plots. Two of them happen fully at the school in New York. Rose, played by Lucy Boynton, and Kat, played by Kiernan Shipka, stay at Bramford during winter break while the other girls go home. Rose is trying to hide the fact that she is pregnant from her parents, and Kat’s family was killed in a car accident not long ago. At the same time, a young woman named Joan (Emma Roberts) drives to Bramford, but no one in the audience knows why.

The Autopsy Of Jane Doe

Fans of horror movies who liked how Sinister’s demonic plot slowly came apart will really enjoy André Øvredal’s scary campfire story about a father and son coroner team who get more than they expected when they try to figure out how a strangely perfect body died.

The Autopsy of Jane Doe has a story that feels more full and complex than most mysterious horror films, even though it mostly takes place in a single small area.

The Ring

The American remake by Gore Verbinski of Hideo Nakata’s famous Japanese horror film is a gem in its own right. It takes the best parts of the original film and adds the director’s own striking visual style.

The Ring’s focus on dark images is what makes it so scary. It follows a reporter as they try to find out where a modern folk tale about a videotape that kills viewers seven days after they watch it came from. The scary images on the doomed tape would look great with the Bughuul’s collection of scary home movies.

The Conjuring 2

The “The Conjuring” movie series has been a huge hit. The supernatural horror movie “The Conjuring” (2013) by James Wan presented Ed (Patrick Wilson) and Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga), who are based on real psychologists who study the unexplained. However, “The Conjuring” doesn’t really follow the “true story” part, but it’s still a very scary movie. Similar to “Sinister,” the scary parts are made even scarier by the fact that they seem real.

The world of “The Conjuring” was created after the first movie’s success. Eight films have been made since “The Conjuring,” but only “The Conjuring 2” really lives up to the first one. Like “Sinister,” Wan’s 2016 follow-up is about family problems that happen while they are looking into an evil presence.

The second movie is based on the Enfield poltergeist case and is set in a London neighbourhood in 1977. It follows Peggy Hodgson (Frances O’Connor) and her four children, Janet (Madison Wolfe), Margaret (Lauren Esposito), Billy (Benjamin Haigh), and Johnny (Patrick McAuley). After Janet plays with a strange Ouija board, she sees an old man who seems dangerous. Peggy asks the Warrens for help because she doesn’t understand why her daughter is sleepwalking. “The Conjuring 2” is scary, but the family in the story makes it even more interesting.

Oculus

Next to The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Mike Flanagan’s famous American gothic story about an evil mirror is one of the smallest-scale horror hits of the past few years. It still tells a full story with well-rounded characters.

Like Sinister, Oculus was made by Jason Blum, who is known for his low-budget horror films. The movie stays true to the horror genre, but like Sinister, that makes the story stronger.

The Devil’s Candy

A young family gets more than they bargained for when they move into the house that used to belong to a serial killer. The killer starts showing up at their door on a regular basis, and the family doesn’t know it.

Sean Byrne’s visceral thriller is about as intensely scary as even the most experienced horror movie fans can handle. It has razor-sharp tension and a monster enemy that feels even scarier because it’s so real. If you like scary movies like sinister and want to feel the same constant fear that Sinister does, you should look for this secret gem.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes is one of the figures that has been shown in films the most. The British detective from Arthur Conan Doyle has been in more than 70 full-length films. Doyle’s original stories are mostly puzzles, but many of the early Holmes tales had scary or suspenseful parts as well. He believed that “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” This is one of the remarkable things about Holmes. Holmes is naturally sceptical of any claims of magical activity.

In “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” which Doyle wrote in 1902, there is a strange animal that stalks a town in England’s West Country. Many films have been made from the original story, but the 1959 movie is the best of all of them. Christopher Lee played Sir Henry Baskerville, a rich man who comes back to the West Country to claim his fortune, and Peter Cushing played Sherlock Holmes in the movie. These three people brought out the scary parts of the story. They had worked together on many Hammer horror films before, like “The Horror of Dracula,” “The Curse of Frankenstein,” and “The Mummy.” Fisher builds tension by blurring the lines between real crimes and supernatural events, just like Scott Derrickson does.

Antlers

One of the best things about “Sinister” is how Scott Derrickson uses myths from small towns. The deaths of the Stevenson family have become a tale in the small, remote town of Chatford. What’s true and what’s not has become less clear. The 2021 horror movie “Antlers” by Scott Cooper also deals with similar issues of family pain and tradition. A young boy who is having problems is pulled to a local monster story in the movie.

Ford Weaver, played by Jeremy T. Thomas, is abused by his meth dealer father, Frank (Scott Haze). Lucas’s teacher, Julia Meadows (Keri Russell), finds drawings of scary monsters in his desk. Julia thinks Lucas has a hard time at home and tries to connect with him. Julia and her brother, local sheriff Paul (Jesse Plemons), were raised by a drunken father. The abuse they went through as kids is implied in many places in the story. Julia finds out that Lucas’s drawings weren’t just from his mind; they were actually inspired by the fact that his father had been attacked by a cannibalistic spirit that can move bodies.

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