Movies like Lights Out (2010)
The best movies like Lights Out (2010) are The Caveman's Valentine (2001), Suburbicon (2017) and The Ritual Killer (2023). If Lights Out hooked you with its drama and mystery, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedRemember (2015)7.3/10 from 785 votes
- NewestMaigret and the Dead Lover (2026)Released 2026
- In FrenchInspector Lavardin (1986)Also in French
The Caveman's Valentine (2001)
Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & mystery
SnoozefestMovies like thisSuburbicon (2017)
In the quiet family town of Suburbicon during the 1950s, the best and worst of humanity is hilariously reflected through the deeds of seemingly ordinary people. When a home invasion turns deadly, a picture-perfect family turns to blackmail, revenge and murder.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Ritual Killer (2023)
Unable to process the death of his daughter, Detective Boyd embarks on a hunt for a serial killer who murders according to a brutal tribal ritual: Muti. The only person who can help Boyd is Professor Mackles, an anthropologist who hides an unspeakable secret. The line between sanity and madness thins as Boyd goes deeper into the killer’s world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisTime Without Pity (1957)
Alec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford. Alec’s father, David Graham, a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in from Canada to visit his son on death row. David then goes on a quest to try and clear his son’s name while battling “the bottle.”
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRemember (2015)
With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSleep, My Love (1948)
A woman wakes up in the middle of the night on board a train, but she can't remember how she got there. Danger and suspense ensue.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Deadly Affair (1967)
Charles Dobbs is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa, a survivor of a Nazi Germany extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. So Dobbs hires a retiring inspector, Mendel, to quietly make inquiries. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInspector Lavardin (1986)
Inspector Lavardin is called to a provincial village to investigate a murder – only to find that one of his ex-lovers is the victim’s widow.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAurora Teagarden Mysteries: Reunited and It Feels So Deadly (2020)
Aurora's high school reunion turns deadly when a body is found in the hotel pool. Aurora and her Real Murders Club help investigate which classmate was most likely to kill.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Truth About Emanuel (2013)
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Adversary (2002)
Based on the 2000 book of the same name by Emmanuel Carrère, it is inspired by the real-life story of Jean-Claude Romand. L'Adversaire's protagonist Jean-Marc Faure (Auteuil) pursues an imaginary career as a doctor of medicine in a plot more closely based on Romand's life and Carrère's book than was Laurent Cantet's 2001 film L'Emploi du Temps. The film was nominated for a Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBarron's Cove (2025)
When his young son is viciously murdered by a classmate, a grieving father with a history of violence kidnaps the child responsible, igniting a frenzied manhunt fueled by a powerful politician -- the father of the kidnapped boy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMaigret and the Dead Lover (2026)
Commissioner Maigret rushes to the Quai d’Orsay with Lieutenant Janvier. There, they find Mademoiselle Larrieu in a state of shock. That very morning, she discovered the bullet-riddled body of Mr. Berthier-Lagès, a renowned former ambassador whom she had served as a housekeeper for 46 years. While searching the victim's apartment, Maigret and Janvier uncover hundreds of letters. The diplomat had maintained a fifty-year-long love correspondence with a certain Princess of Vuynes, whose husband - by a strange coincidence - had died just a few days earlier. As he confronts the various members of the two families and the suspicious silence of Mademoiselle Larrieu, Maigret finds himself faced with surprise after surprise, watching his certainties crumble - until the solution to the mystery finally hits him in the face at the very last moment...
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Mirror Crack'd (1980)
Jane Marple solves the mystery when a local woman is poisoned and a visiting movie star seems to have been the intended victim.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Bone to Pick: An Aurora Teagarden Mystery (2015)
A librarian with a sharp mind for murder, Aurora Teagarden is known around her small town as a master sleuth. When her friend Jane unexpectedly dies and leaves Aurora everything in her will, she also leaves a troubling murder mystery haunting her neighborhood. It is up to Aurora to piece together the clues—including a skull, its missing skeleton and a suspicious group of neighbors—and solve the murder before she becomes the unlikely killer’s next victim.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAurora Teagarden Mysteries: Haunted By Murder (2022)
A murder investigation is reignited in a house that is considered haunted by the Lawrenceton locals and where years ago Aurora and Sally, as teenagers, discovered a body.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHorns (2013)
In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to strange horns sprouting from his temples.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGarage Sale Mystery: A Case Of Murder (2017)
Jenn buys an old reel-to-reel recorder at a garage sale only to find that it includes the sound of a man pleading for his life. When the former owner of the recorder, a retired therapist, is found murdered in a patient’s apartment, Jenn’s investigation leads to other patients whose love lives are more entangled than she was first led to believe.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Black Book (2023)
After his son is wrongly accused of kidnapping, a deacon who has just lost his wife takes matters into his own hands and fights a crooked police gang to clear him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both mystery & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOverdrive (2017)
Master car thieves square off against French gangsters in the South of France with money, women and lives all on the line.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAlguien mató algo (1999)
In this silent style short, filmed in black and white with intertitles instead of spoken dialog, a precocious little girl surrounded by Tv violence and bloody church images of Catholicism, yearns to stay alive forever, as a vampire.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
In the early 1900s, Miranda attends a girls boarding school in Australia. One Valentine's Day, the school's typically strict headmistress treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It's not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers have disappeared mysteriously.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Return (2003)
Two young brothers in contemporary Russia are reunited with a father they know only from an old photograph after his sudden return from a long absence. With their mother’s reluctant consent, they set out on a remote trip that quickly becomes an uneasy test of authority, trust, and masculinity. As the journey moves deeper into the wilderness, the fragile bonds between father and sons are pushed to their limits.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBunny (2021)
Struggling to find true love, a young and depressed man named Flynn, seeks out to find the love of his life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
The Gunman (2015)
Eight years after fleeing the Congo following his assassination of that country's minister of mining, former assassin Jim Terrier is back, suffering from PTSD and digging wells to atone for his violent past. After an attempt is made on his life, Terrier flies to London to find out who wants him dead -- and why. Terrier's search leads him to a reunion with Annie, a woman he once loved, who is now married to an oily businessman with dealings in Africa.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Blue Angel (1930)
Prim professor Immanuel Rath finds some of his students ogling racy photos of cabaret performer Lola Lola and visits a local club, The Blue Angel, in an attempt to catch them there. Seeing Lola perform, the teacher is filled with lust, eventually resigning his position at the school to marry the young woman. However, his marriage to a coquette -- whose job is to entice men -- proves to be more difficult than Rath imagined.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Party (1980)
A thirteen-year-old French girl deals with moving to a new city and school in Paris, while at the same time her parents are getting a divorce.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Party 2 (1982)
After moving to a new city, a young French teenage girl falls in love with a boy and thinks of having sex with him, since her girl friends have already done it.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOver the Hill (1931)
In their farm house in a New York village, Ma Shelby prepares breakfast for her four children, Isaac, Tommy, Johnny and Susan, and then awakens them. The racket the boys make as they play and fight awakens their father, who spanks the eldest, Isaac. When a visitor chides Pa for not working, Ma sticks up for her husband, saying that he has a weak back and that he is waiting for a promised government job.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Men in Her Life (1931)
A wealthy ex-bootlegger comes to the rescue of a formerly rich society girl after her gold-digging fiancé leaves her stranded when he finds out she's broke. The bootlegger proposes a deal: he will settle her debts if she teaches him how to be "a gentleman".
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Like Lights Out and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Lights Out?
The closest matches to Lights Out are The Caveman's Valentine (2001), Suburbicon (2017) and The Ritual Killer (2023). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Lights Out?
Start with The Caveman's Valentine (2001), the closest match to Lights Out.
What is the highest-rated movie like Lights Out?
Remember (2015), rated 7.3/10 by 785 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Lights Out?
Maigret and the Dead Lover (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Lights Out?
Yes: Inspector Lavardin (1986), The Adversary (2002) and Maigret and the Dead Lover (2026).
How are movies similar to Lights Out chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Lights Out, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.