Movies like Maniac (1980)
The best movies like Maniac (1980) are Nightmare (1981), Maniac (2012) and Sleepaway Camp (1983). If Maniac hooked you with its horror, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedA Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)7.4/10 from 6,065 votes
- NewestManiac (2012)Released 2012
Nightmare (1981)
A drug-treated schizophrenic plagued by horrible nightmares is released from the hospital and goes on a killing spree.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisManiac (2012)
As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSleepaway Camp (1983)
Years after a terrible boating accident, Angela is sent to Camp Arawak where a series of bizarre and violent "accidents" begin to claim the lives of various campers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPieces (1982)
A frustrated Boston detective searches for the maniac responsible for mutilating a number of university coeds.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisDon't Go in the House (1979)
As a child, Donald was tormented by his mother who used fire as a punishment. Now a deranged adult, Donald stalks women at clubs, then takes them home where he kills them with a flamethrower.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Burning (1981)
A caretaker at a summer camp is burned when a prank goes tragically wrong. After several years of intensive treatment at hospital, he is released back into society, albeit missing some social skills. What follows is a bloody killing spree with the caretaker making his way back to his old stomping ground to confront one of the youths that accidentally burned him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStage Fright (1987)
While a group of young actors rehearse a new musical about a mass murderer, a notorious psychopath escapes from a nearby insane asylum.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Driller Killer (1979)
An artist slowly goes insane while struggling to pay his bills, work on his paintings, and care for his two female roommates, which leads him taking to the streets of New York after dark and randomly killing derelicts with a power drill.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisSlaughterhouse (1987)
Faced with the town lawyer, the sheriff, and a rival slaughterhouse owner trying to purchase his land, Lester Bacon decides to take matters into his own hands, ordering his hulking and mentally deranged son to permanently dispose of anyone who conspires against them.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisMansion of the Doomed (1976)
An insane surgeon finds himself up to his armpits in eyeballs after guilt prompts him to begin removing the eyes of abducted people in hopes of performing transplants on his daughter who lost her own in a car-accident he caused.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Terror Train (1980)
A masked killer targets six college kids responsible for a prank gone wrong three years earlier and who are currently throwing a large New Year's Eve costume party aboard a moving train.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisDeath Spa (1988)
Michael's health club is beseiged with a series of terrible murders involving killer saunas and other grisly devices. Michael's wife killed herself a while before and her brother holds Michael responsible. Michael needs to stop the bloodshed before he loses all of his clients.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisPsycho III (1986)
When Maureen Coyle, a suicidal nun who resembles Norman's former victim, Marion Crane, arrives at the motel, all bets are off and "Mother" is less than happy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Toolbox Murders (1978)
A ski-masked maniac kills apartment complex tenants with the contents of a toolbox.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Ugly (1997)
A female psychologist wants to understand the minds of a confessed serial killer who spent the last five years in a mental hospital because of his state.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter, Nancy Thompson, traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger, who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, must devise a plan to lure the monster out of the realm of nightmares and into the real world...
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFriday the 13th (1980)
Camp counselors are stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer camp that was the site of a child's drowning.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDeath Game (1977)
George Manning is a well-to-do businessman, husband, and father. While his family is away on his birthday, he invites a pair of rain-soaked young women into his house to wait out an evening thunderstorm. The two girls seduce Manning and ultimately kidnap and torture him in his own home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe New York Ripper (1982)
A burned-out New York police detective teams up with a college psychoanalyst to track down a vicious serial killer randomly stalking and killing various young women around the city.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Blade in the Dark (1983)
Bruno, an up and coming film composer, has been hired to write the score to a new horror movie. After moving into a secluded villa, life begins to imitate art as a vicious killer starts bumping off anyone and everyone who happens to pay him a visit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Five friends head out to rural Texas to visit the grave of a grandfather. On the way, they stumble across what appears to be a deserted house, only to discover something sinister within. Something armed with a chainsaw.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBeyond the Darkness (1979)
A disturbed young embalmer digs the grave of his recently deceased girlfriend and brings her body to his family villa with help from his strange housekeeper. But his bouts of insanity are just beginning.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNightmare at Shadow Woods (1987)
Twins Todd and Terry seem like sweet boys -- that is, until one of them takes an axe to the face of a fellow patron at the local drive-in.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisFaceless (1988)
A detective investigating a missing model in Paris uncovers a plastic surgeon’s horrifying secret.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisAnguish (1987)
An ophthalmologist's assistant with an unhealthy interest in human eyeballs goes on a killing spree to collect eyeballs for his overbearing mother's collection. Reality soon takes a bizarre turn, both for the characters and the audience.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Bloody Valentine (1981)
Twenty years after a Valentine's Day tragedy claimed the lives of five miners, Harry Warden returns for a vengeful massacre among teen sweethearts gearing up for another party.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOgroff (1983)
Ogroff, an AWOL-solider-turned-hermit, lives in the French backwoods, and, still believing war to be raging, slaughters anyone who enters them. One day, a family's car breaks down in Ogroff's domain and a fight for their lives begins.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
The Wizard of Gore (1970)
A talk show hostess and her boyfriend investigate a shady magician who has the ability to hypnotize and control people's thoughts in order to stage gory onstage illusions using his powers of mindbending.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisDark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Bubba, an intellectually disabled man, is falsely accused of attacking a young girl. Disguised as a scarecrow, he hides in a cornfield, only to be hunted down and shot by four vigilante men. After they are acquitted due to lack of evidence, the men find themselves being stalked one by one.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHell High (1989)
A teacher still haunted by the death of two teens that she accidentally caused as a young girl goes berserk when four teens start harassing her and then attack her in her home.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like this
Like Maniac and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Maniac?
The closest matches to Maniac are Nightmare (1981), Maniac (2012) and Sleepaway Camp (1983). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Maniac?
People who watched Maniac most often go on to Nightmare (1981), Maniac (2012) and Sleepaway Camp (1983).
What is the highest-rated movie like Maniac?
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), rated 7.4/10 by 6,065 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Maniac?
Maniac (2012) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Maniac?
Yes: Nightmare (1981), Maniac (2012) and Sleepaway Camp (1983).
How are movies similar to Maniac chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Maniac, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.