Movies like Dreams of Life (2026)
The best movies like Dreams of Life (2026) are Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026), The Grandmother (1970) and Play Dead (2025). If Dreams of Life hooked you with its horror, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedMeshes of the Afternoon (1943)7.6/10 from 464 votes
- NewestMonkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026)Released 2026
Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026)
After a mysterious bout of amnesia, a beloved children’s television host struggles to piece together his fractured memories, only to find his once-cheerful puppet co-stars behaving with sinister intent. As reality unravels, the line between performance and nightmare begins to blur.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Grandmother (1970)
To escape neglect and abuse from his parents, a young boy plants some strange seeds and they grow into a grandmother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPlay Dead (2025)
A woman wakes up injured in a basement surrounded by corpses. To survive, she pretends to be dead while a grotesque ritual unfolds in the house above.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDolls (1987)
A precocious girl, her nasty parents, two punk-rock losers and a weak-kneed salesman inadvertently become the guests of two ghoulish senior citizens in their dark, haunted mansion.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Asphyx (1972)
Hugo is a brilliant turn-of-the-century scientist, loved and respected by his family and friends, admired by his colleagues. But he is a man quickly becoming obsessed with a curious and frightening question...What is the mysterious apparition found in the photographs of his dying subjects?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDon't Move (2024)
A grieving woman in a secluded forest encounters a killer who injects her with a paralytic drug. As her body shuts down, her fight for survival begins.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTerrifier (2011)
After witnessing a brutal murder on Halloween night, a young woman becomes the next target of a maniacal entity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Angry Black Girl and Her Monster (2023)
Vicaria is a brilliant teenager who believes death is a disease that can be cured. After the brutal and sudden murder of her brother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to bring him back to life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStrange Darling (2024)
Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEye for an Eye (2025)
Anna, grieving the sudden death of her parents, relocates from New York to a small Florida town to live with the grandmother she has never met. Isolated, vulnerable, and in need of friends, she finds brief solace in the company of two local teens. But when she becomes complicit to their unforgivable act of violence, she finds herself ensnared by Mr. Sandman – the twisted soul of a tormented child who haunts bullies’ dreams before feasting on their eyeballs when they finally wake - Anna must right her wrong before becoming a victim of this gruesome curse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Resurrected (1991)
Charles Dexter Ward, a wealthy scientist, uses an ancient diary and human remains to begin a terrifying and bloody pursuit for immortality.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReborn (2018)
A stillborn baby girl is abducted by a deranged morgue attendant and brought back to life by electro-kinetic power. On her sixteenth birthday, traumatized Tess escapes captivity and sets out to find her birth mother leaving a trail of horrifying violent destruction and chilling chaos behind her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBegotten (1991)
Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNever Let Go (2024)
As an evil takes over the world beyond their front doorstep, the only protection for a mother and her twin sons is their house and their family’s protective bond.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCurve (2016)
Clinging to a smooth, curved surface high above a sentient abyss, a woman tries to cover the few feet back to safety without losing purchase and falling to her death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGhostland (2018)
A mother of two inherits a home from her aunt. On the first night in the new home she is confronted with murderous intruders and fights for her daughters’ lives. Sixteen years later the daughters reunite at the house, and that is when things get strange...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRace with the Devil (1975)
Two couples vacationing together in an R.V. from Texas to Colorado are terrorized after they witness a murder during a Satanic ritual.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVicious (2025)
When Polly receives a mysterious box, it comes with one rule: place inside something she needs, something she hates, and something she loves. If she doesn’t obey, it will consume everything—and everyone—she’s ever known.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEraserhead (1977)
First-time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMeshes of the Afternoon (1943)
A woman returning home falls asleep and has vivid dreams that may or may not be happening in reality. Through repetitive images and complete mismatching of the objective view of time and space, her dark inner desires play out on-screen.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Bird Sits atop the Spire (2026)
A sole bird sits atop a spire, observing those around them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Witching Hour (TBA)
Lee Callahan begins to suspect her next-door neighbor is a serial killer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Holly (2026)
Holly arrives at church to pray for protection and is greeted by an entity that craves her innocence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Coming SoonMovies like thisElliot (2017)
Set in the dark depths of a strange and mysterious power supply complex, ELLIOT tells the tale of a conflicted humanoid (Elliot) struggling to maintain his reality and understand his true identity. Elliot is thrust into a disconcerting downward spiral of despair in which he is forced to recognize the perils of his own cognition and constructed ideals in a crumbling universe where the lines between fantasy, simulation, and reality are blurred, and the fibers of Elliot’s fragile existence are ruptured.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Black Moon (1975)
There is a global gender war between men and women. A teenage girl tries to escape this reality and arrives at a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old, bedridden woman who stays in contact with the world through her radio.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOlho Mágico (2023)
A woman answers a knocking at her door. Inspired by the short "Peephole".
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Soup (2021)
A neurotic young man tries to care for his sick sister.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Phantasia (2024)
X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
The New Flesh (2025)
On an isolated farm, a woman finds an injured and frightened woman in her old chicken coop. Moved by an inexplicable instinct, she decides to help her, without imagining that this silent encounter will awaken buried secrets. When tension finally gives way to trust, something dark approaches, bringing a truth that no one could have foreseen.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Like Dreams of Life and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Dreams of Life?
The closest matches to Dreams of Life are Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026), The Grandmother (1970) and Play Dead (2025). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Dreams of Life?
Start with Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026), the closest match to Dreams of Life.
What is the highest-rated movie like Dreams of Life?
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), rated 7.6/10 by 464 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Dreams of Life?
Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Dreams of Life?
Yes: Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2026), The Grandmother (1970) and Play Dead (2025).
How are movies similar to Dreams of Life chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Dreams of Life, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.