Movies like Festival of Fear (1986)
The best movies like Festival of Fear (1986) are Voice (2005), The Cat (2011) and Goodnight Mommy (2022). If Festival of Fear hooked you with its mystery and horror, these 20 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Festival of Fear
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Closet (2020)7.1/10 from 214 votes
- NewestThe Ugly (2025)Released 2025
- In KoreanVoice (2005)Also in Korean
Voice (2005)
While practicing after hours in her high school, an aspiring singer is mysteriously killed and her body vanishes. Her invisible ghost is trapped in the school, but her best friend is able to hear her voice.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Cat (2011)
So-yeon suffers from claustrophobia and inherits a Persian cat when its owner dies. She begins having nightmares and people around her begin dying as she searches for the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGoodnight Mommy (2022)
When twin brothers arrive home to find their mother’s demeanor altered and face covered in surgical bandages, they begin to suspect the woman beneath the gauze might not be their mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Inhabitant (2022)
Like any other teenage girl, Tara is just surviving high school — yet her father and mother seem strangely distant. Amidst a nearby spree of gruesome ax murders, Tara has sightings of terrifying entities, forcing her to question her own sanity and shocking ancestry.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
SnoozefestMovies like thisNocebo (2022)
A fashion designer suffers from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband until help arrives in the form of a Filipino caregiver who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hideout (2007)
A mystery-thriller about an Italian woman who moves to Davenport to open a restaurant. After her husband commits suicide, she spends fifteen years recovering at a Minnesota mental hospital. When she builds herself up enough to begin another restaurant, she discovers that a murder took place there fifty years earlier. She decides to investigate and finds a secret plot.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBody Cam (2020)
As a police officer investigates the gruesome murder of her colleague, she discovers that a mysterious supernatural force is behind it.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWarning: Do Not Play (2019)
A struggling director makes a desperate bid to dig into the urban legend about a film shot by a ghost, at the risk of her own life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Red Shoes (2005)
A woman who finds a pair of pink high heels on a subway platform soon realizes that jealousy, greed, and death follow them wherever they go.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDoor Lock (2018)
Kyung-min lives alone in a one-room apartment. One day, she finds traces of a stranger breaking into her room and soon a mysterious murder case begins to unravel.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Ugly (2025)
One day while overseeing a documentary crew filming his blind father at work, Im Dong-hwan gets a phone call that his missing mother’s remains have been found after forty years. Determined to find the truth of her disappearance, Dong-hwan embarks on a twisted odyssey through his family’s traumatic past, uncovering dark secrets along the way.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Closet (2020)
After moving into a new house, a young girl begins displaying strange and disturbing behavior until, one day, she disappears behind a closet. While the devastated father is left with no clue about his daughter's disappearance, an exorcist shows up to help.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMr. Arkadin (1955)
Claiming that he doesn't know his own past, a rich man enlists an ex-con with an odd bit of detective work. Gregory Arkadin says he can't remember anything before the late 1920s, and convict Guy Van Stratten is happy to take the job of exploring his new acquaintance's life story. Guy's research turns up stunning details about his employer's past, and as his work seems linked to untimely deaths, the mystery surrounding Mr. Arkadin deepens.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Mimic (2017)
The mother of a missing child takes in a lost girl she finds in the woods, but soon begins to wonder if she is even human.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRecalled (2021)
Soo-jin, who lost her memories due to a horrible incident, starts suspecting her husband. She is confused between reality and illusion, truth and lies.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNoise (2025)
A young woman with a hearing impairment investigates her sister’s mysterious disappearance from her apartment, but as she searches for answers, strange sounds and an ominous presence begin to haunt her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGuimoon: The Lightless Door (2021)
In 1990, at a secluded community center, the custodian murders all the guest lodgers and kills himself. Ever since, on every Old Year's Night, paranormal events begin to take place within the building. Eventually, the center is shut down and left abandoned for years. A renowned paranormal investigator who had lost his mother during an exorcism and three college students who heard about the rumor of the unexplained phenomena heads over to the building, resolved to uncover the buried secret.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Limits of Control (2009)
A mysterious stranger works outside the law and keeps his objectives hidden, trusting no one. While his demeanor is paradoxically focused and dreamlike all at once, he embarks on a journey that not only takes him across Spain, but also through his own consciousness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2022)
A young woman with psychokinetic powers breaks out of a Louisiana asylum and makes her way to New Orleans, where she falls into the city’s netherworld of misfits and miscreants.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery
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 this
Like Festival of Fear and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Festival of Fear?
The closest matches to Festival of Fear are Voice (2005), The Cat (2011) and Goodnight Mommy (2022). Below are 17 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Festival of Fear?
Start with Voice (2005), the closest match to Festival of Fear.
What is the highest-rated movie like Festival of Fear?
The Closet (2020), rated 7.1/10 by 214 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Festival of Fear?
The Ugly (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Korean movies like Festival of Fear?
Yes: Voice (2005), The Cat (2011) and Warning: Do Not Play (2019).
How are movies similar to Festival of Fear chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Festival of Fear, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.