After director James Wan kick-started one of the most profitable and well-known horror franchises of the modern era with his groundbreaking low-budget movie Saw, but before he began one of the others with The Conjuring, he started a third series with the equally-popular supernatural chiller Insidious.
The movie’s success spawned 3 sequels, with the recently-wrapped Insidious 5 bringing back the original cast under the direction of lead actor Patrick Wilson. While fans wait for the next installment in the series, the best horror movies like Insidious can offer plenty of entertainment to make the time pass more quickly.
The Conjuring (2013)
Available to stream on HBO Max
Though based on a real case investigated by paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren, The Conjuring is every bit as much a blockbuster jump scare experience as Insidious, with James Wan’s visual ingenuity on full display throughout.
The non-stop terrorizing of the Perron family in the film by a devilish presence that inhabits their new home is packed full of unforgettably hair-raising frights and macabre designs.
It Follows (2014)
Available to stream on Netflix
Finding a way to fight back against a seemingly unstoppable paranormal threat is a big part of what makes the plots of movies like Insidious and The Conjuring so popular and few modern films have combined this effect with shocking jump scares quite as well as It Follows.
The movie’s premise is simple enough as it revolves around a curse transmitted person-to-person by sexual intercourse, resulting in a shape-shifting entity slowly stalking the victim until it catches up to them and brutally murders them. The path to beating the curse is more complex, however, and the film treats its concept with a level of seriousness and thought that Insidious fans will respect, if not outright love.
Grave Encounters (2011)
Available to stream on Pluto TV, Tubi, Vudu, and Crackle
Insidious fans who enjoyed the paranormal investigation angle of the film the most will certainly want to check out this found footage horror movie about a team of ghost hunters who lock themselves in an abandoned psychiatric hospital that is allegedly haunted by the ghosts of its mistreated patients and unethical staff.
Though several shades darker and more grounded in reality than a horror movie like Insidious, Grave Encounters also inevitably descends into a surreal state of nightmarish horror that leaves a lasting impression.
Poltergeist (1982)
A lot of the plot of Insidious is directly influenced by this horror movie classic from cinematic icons Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg. Elise and her paranormal investigators, Specs and Tucker, are quite clearly direct homages to the film as the story of each film boils down to a last ditch attempt to rescue a child who has been taken into the spirit world by malevolent forces.
Though Insidious a much more new-school in its approach to horror, the original Poltergeist remains an effectively frightening experience with wildly ghoulish concepts that are impressively realized.
Host (2020)
Available to stream on Shudder and AMC+
Horror movie fans who enjoyed Insidious’ twists on the idea of a haunting in a feature film plot will likely get a kick out of Host, which revolves entirely around a Zoom call between a group of friends that turns deadly when the séance that they conduct through the call invites a demonic presence into all of their lives.
The idea of a movie that is made up entirely of a character’s computer screen had already been famous years earlier by the movie Unfriended, which many Insidious fans would also surely get a kick out of, but Host has little time for build up and goes straight for the jump scares, making it a more intense experience.
Lights Out (2016)
Available to stream on Hulu
Before joining James Wan’s Conjuring universe to direct a prequel about the iconically demonic doll Annabelle, director David F. Sandberg made a name for himself in modern horror movies with this expansion of one of his short film ideas.
Lights Out is a concept-driven horror story that sees a family mercilessly stalked by a murderous figure that can only be seen in the dark. Like Insidious though, the movie places an equal amount of emphasis on family problems as it does on ghostly threats.
Sinister (2012)
Available to stream on Peacock
Scott Derrickson’s supernatural horror movie follows a writer who, after moving with his young family into a new house, discovers a box of 8mm home movies in the attic. Upon inspection, each one appears to be from a different home and depicts the gruesome murders of each house’s family, with an eerie figure connecting all of them.
Sinister, much like Insidious, is a movie all about inducing terror by any means necessary, leading to all kinds of visceral frights and jumps throughout the movie.
Ouija: Origin Of Evil (2016)
One of the most surprising horror hits of recent years, Mike Flanagan’s prequel to the almost-completely forgotten 2014 Hasbro produced horror movie Ouija demonstrates the director’s Stanislavskian approach to maximum effort no matter what the project.
Set in the 1960s and focussing on the family drama of a widow and her two young daughters experiencing increased freedoms as women due to their circumstances, Origin of Evil not only improves greatly upon its predecessor but actually enriches the story of that movie too. Flanagan weaves together domestic drama and supernatural horror in a very similar way to James Wan and Insidious fans should definitely check it out, even if they haven’t seen the first film.
The Ritual (2017)
The Ritual was the feature-length debut of director David Bruckner, who had made a name for himself with horror movie fans with a number of highly-memorable segments in anthology movies over the course of the preceding decade.
Demonstrating a lot of the same visual creativity that James Wan injected into Insidious, this story follows a group of friends who become lost in a Swedish forest and begin to feel a malevolent presence haunting their dreams and stalking them through the trees.
Before I Wake (2016)
Another Netflix movie, also directed by the prolific Mike Flanagan but produced before Ouija: Origin of Evil despite being eventually released several years after it on Netflix, Before I Wake revolves around a young boy whose dreams and nightmares manifest into reality as he sleeps.
Fans of Insidious’ astral plane of “The Further” will no doubt enjoy this creative chiller for its dreamlike designs and emotional performances.
The Woman In Black (2012)
Available to stream on Pluto TV and Paramount+
Daniel Radcliffe leads this classic haunted house fright-fest adapted from Susan Hill’s novel of the same name and Insidious fans will surely notice the shared influence of the ghostly imagery.
Radcliffe plays a young lawyer sent to a decaying gothic mansion to put affairs in order for its sale but quickly finds the local townspeople fear the secluded house for good reason. Though not set in the modern day, The Woman in Black is very much a contemporary thrill ride of a horror movie.
The Others (2001)
Another very classically influenced ghost story, The Others was written, directed, and scored by Alejandro Amenábar and received significant critical acclaim and box office success for a horror movie back in 2001.
Set in the usual type of isolated old English estate, the plot follows Nicole Kidman’s single mother as she begins to suspect that the house is occupied by more than just her family and the servants. The desperation of Kidman’s character to protect her children from an intangible enemy will remind an Insidious fan very much of the Lambert family’s struggles in Insidious.
Crimson Peak (2015)
An even more opulent take on the archetypal English ghost story than even The Woman in Black or The Others, Guillermo del Toro directs this sumptuous and sweeping gothic drama set mostly at the titular manor.
Filled with the director’s unceasing eye for detail and macabre designs, Crimson Peak features a star-studded cast with a standout performance from Jessica Chastain. Movie fans who like Insidious will find a lot to love in the film’s creepy ghost designs.
Mama (2013)
Jessica Chastain also steals the show in this oddly ethereal supernatural horror movie as she plays a woman forced into a maternal role she had never seen for herself after the discovery of her boyfriend’s nieces, who had been presumed dead and were found living feral in an abandoned house in the woods.
Adapted by director Andy Muschietti from his short film of the same name, and executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, Mama slips more gracefully between drama and horror than most movies of its kind as familial bonds begin to form between the characters in the shadow of the children’s imaginary guardian figure, who intrudes into their lives and reveals themselves as not so imaginary after all. Insidious fans are sure to appreciate each of the little flourishes that go into making the film’s take on a haunted house narrative more unique.
It (2017)
Available to stream on Netflix and HBO Max
Andy Muschietti brought the horror genre to a wider audience than has been seen for quite some time with his massively popular first chapter in his adaptation of Stephen King’s iconically complicated novel of the same name.
The movie follows a group of small-town Kids on Bikes as they become menaced by an otherworldly evil that typically manifests itself into the form of a man-eating clown called Pennywise. An Insidious fan is sure to love every twist, turn, and drop on this ghoulish rollercoaster experience.
