12 Best Movies Like The Black Phone

Based on the eponymous 2004 short story by Joe Hill, 2021’s “The Black Phone” found director Scott Derrickson going back to his genre roots following his “Doctor Strange” stint, and became one of the biggest hits of 2020s horror cinema.

The story follows suburban kids Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen Blake (Madeleine McGraw), whose lives are irrevocably transformed by a masked, child-abducting serial killer known as the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). Soon after Gwen starts having psychic dreams about the Grabber, Finney is kidnapped by him, and his only hope for survival may be a disconnected rotary dial phone that allows him to communicate with the Grabber’s previous victims.

Financially and critically successful, “The Black Phone” prompted a recently-released sequel that’s already blowing everyone away at the box office. If you’re among the many fans of Derrickson’s chilling vintage horror concoction, here are 12 other great movies you should watch next.

“Split” stars James McAvoy as a man with dissociative identity disorder who abducts teenage girls Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), Claire (Haley Lu Richardson), and Marcia (Jessica Sula), imprisoning them in a basement. Caught in a claustrophobic setting at the mercy of an unstable and unpredictable individual, the girls scramble to survive and break free while their captor’s 23 different personalities wrestle for control inside him. All the while, a threat looms over the proceedings: The man’s 24th personality is lying dormant somewhere in his mind, threatening to come out into the open at any moment — and all signs point to it being the most violent and deranged personality of all.

A critical and commercial success, “Split” was the film that saw writer-director M. Night Shyamalan find his way back into audiences’ good graces after years of films with mixed reception. Although it’s far from an accurate portrayal of mental illness, it’s a gripping, handsomely-directed isolation thriller that occasionally makes deeply effective incursions into all-out horror. James McAvoy gives an incredible performance as the variously-named protagonist, communicating both his menace and his anguished, vulnerable humanity. The rest of the ensemble — particularly Anna Taylor-Joy, in one of her breakthrough roles — is similarly strong. Like “The Black Phone,” it’s a great, unconventional showcase for its typically more restrained lead actor. Also like “The Black Phone,” it’s a movie that, by filtering its taut close-quarters concept through the lens of a bitter struggle for survival, manages to excavate it for deep reserves of horror.

The 2017 Andy Muschietti-directed adaptation of “It” blows up the innocence-shattering tragedy of Stephen King’s novel into a massive blockbuster thrill ride — while still very much honoring the suffocating, existential terror at its heart. Bill Skarsgård stars as Stephen King’s “It” villain Pennywise, a shapeshifting, malevolent entity. Meanwhile, Jaeden Martell, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Wyatt Oleff, and Nicholas Hamilton play the Derry kids who are terrorized by Pennywise one year after he murders seven-year-old Georgie Denbrough (Jackson Robert Scott).

This dark, nostalgia-tinged crowd-pleaser was able to one-up the iconic 1990 miniseries and become the highest-grossing horror film of all time. Part of that success can be attributed to the movie’s strength as an adaptation, carrying over not only the themes and emotional underpinnings of King’s novel, but also its particular, earthy atmosphere, while also honoring King’s knack for a big barn-burning moment. The merits of “It” on its own also deserve mention — particularly its excellent ensemble of teen actors, and the room the movie gives them to fully inhibit the horror and despair of their characters’ situation, with very few concessions to make the movie more “family-friendly.” In its late-Cold-War-era evocation of overwhelming fear and steely self-preservation as experienced by a group of small town kids, it’s a movie that has a lot in common with “The Black Phone.” And the same goes for its 2019 sequel, less well-rounded but still essential for fans of the first installment.

Prior to “The Black Phone,” Scott Derrickson’s two big claims to the status of horror A-lister were “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” and “Sinister,” both of which established him as a filmmaker with a deep love for the genre’s fundamental gnarliness. Of the two, “Sinister” is particularly noteworthy as an aesthetic precursor to “The Black Phone” that should very be of interest to any fans of the latter.

A gem from found-footage horror’s heyday, “Sinister” finds Derrickson availing himself of a nifty concept to deliver a series of gut punches. “The Black Phone'”s Ethan Hawke stars as Ellison Oswalt, a flailing true crime writer who moves into a new home with his family, and winds up discovering a box of Super 8 snuff films in the attic, each depicting a gruesome family murder. He becomes obsessed with the films and the sprawling, mysterious mythology they appear to hint at, only for the horrors they contain to start encroaching on the life of his own family.

In addition to structuring a shrewd mystery-horror framework that uses the audience’s own morbid curiosity against itself, Derrickson has a field day with the Super 8 films, presented to the viewer as Ellison puts them on. Each one essentially allows the director to let his imagination run wild in ominous and context-free horror shorts, making “Sinister” a relentless parade of scares that’s been dubbed one of the scariest movies ever made — and an exercise in mood-setting that led directly to “The Black Phone.”

The feature directorial debut of Zach Cregger, who would later find enormous critical and box office success with “Weapons,” “Barbarian” is one of the most notable success stories of 2020s indie horror so far. Written by Cregger himself, the film tells the story of Tess (Georgina Campbell), a woman who arrives in Detroit for a job interview, but finds that her Airbnb has been mistakenly double-booked. She ultimately finds the other occupant, Keith (Bill Skarsgård), trustworthy enough that she decides to spend the night there anyway while Keith sleeps on the couch. A twisted, shocking series of events unfolds from there, leading Tess deeper and deeper into a waking nightmare as the secrets of the house reveal themselves.

This is absolutely a movie you want to go into knowing as little as possible, so it’s best to leave the plot description at that. All you need to know is that “Barbarian” is one of the most original, effective, and exhilaratingly unpredictable American horror films we’ve had in years. And its crisp formal classicism, intrigue-favoring tone, foreboding set design, and surprisingly detailed inner mythology make it an easily recommendable watch if you’re looking for movies similar to “The Black Phone.” Both films are quintessential examples of the current era of horror, in which the genre is sliding away from the metaphorical overfussiness of 2010s “prestige horror” and towards a greater sense of unbridled fun, while still retaining the previous era’s penchant for elegant composition and nerve-racking cinematic technique.

In recent years, American director Mike Flanagan has become something of an emissary of neoclassical horror. His films and TV shows use vintage scaremongering techniques — creepy houses full of darkness, agonizingly careful editing, well-established visual geography — to startle and shock viewers. At the same time, they place those techniques in service of deeply emotional, character-driven storytelling, honoring not just the fearsomeness but also the sadness and tragedy in their nightmarish scenarios. Although Flanagan’s work skews more dramatic on the whole, that willingness to amp up horror adrenaline through drama and vice-versa makes him a kindred spirit to Scott Derrickson in today’s cinematic landscape.

A great example of that is “Oculus,” the film in which Mike Flanagan honed his studio horror filmmaking chops prior to his fruitful Netflix tenure. “Oculus” is an adaptation of Flanagan’s earlier short film “Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan,” and unfolds in two parallel timelines. In the first, set in 2002, a family moves into a new house that begins to be haunted by a cursed mirror. In the second, set in 2013, the family’s two children, now adults, face a crossroads when brother Tim Russell (Brenton Thwaites) is finally discharged from the psychiatric hospital where he’s been processing his childhood trauma, only for sister Kaylie (Karen Gillan) to rope him into her effort to prove their supernatural predicaments were real. Like “The Black Phone,” it’s a taut, stylish, and deeply affecting horror flick that makes the best of old-school tactics.

The original “The Strangers,” written and directed by Bryan Bertino, is still one of the purest and most nerve-racking horror films of the 21st century. Its premise is so simple it flirts with genius: A couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) stay at a remote vacation home near a forest. Over the course of one terrifying night, they gradually come to the realization that the house’s premises have been infiltrated; soon enough, they are being terrorized by three masked strangers (Gemma Ward, Kip Weeks, and Laura Margolis) whose intentions are utterly indecipherable.

Based on a true story, it’s a taut and to-the-point 86-minute film, intent only on dialing up the scares until it’s reached near-unbearable levels, and then keeping it there through a brutal finale. Unlike the Grabber, with his singular choice of facewear, the titular strangers’ masks are pointedly simple: A white bag with two holes for visibility, and two doll masks of the sort you might find at a neighborhood costume store. Every choice Bertino makes is steeped in minimalism, right down to the vacation home’s design.

And yet, that minimalism yields an exercise in survival horror with a similar level of exuberance to “The Black Phone.” Anyone with an appreciation for the effectiveness of Scott Derrickson’s direction, and for the way he smartly calibrates “The Black Phone” so that the momentary scares don’t shortchange the overarching scariness, owes it to themselves to see what Bertino does with pacing and mood in “The Strangers.”

A great deal of the appeal of “The Black Phone” stems from its 1970s setting, which adds a tinge of melancholy, heavy atmosphere, and analog crunchiness to the proceedings. The same is very much true of the 2024 box office phenomenon “Longlegs,” directed by Osgood Perkins. A crime procedural chiller in the tradition of “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Cure,” “Longlegs” polarized viewers and critics, but Perkins’ command of tone and mood were praised. It’s one of the most atmospheric horror films we’ve had in years if not decades — and it features a villain not too far off from the aesthetic ballpark of The Grabber.

Both films investigate the violence, senseless evil, and myriad perils lurking beneath the idyll of suburbia, but “Longlegs” makes that investigation particularly literal. Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) is a rookie FBI agent who gets assigned to the case of a string of murder-suicides around Oregon. In each occurrence, a father kills his entire family and then dies by suicide, leaving behind a letter full of Satanic references signed by the mysterious entity “Longlegs.” As Lee puts clues together to get to the bottom of the case, inching closer to the realization that supernatural forces may be involved, the movie eventually introduces us to the antagonist, played by Nicolas Cage. It’s a performance that finds Cage chewing into the opportunity for scandalous wickedness in the same manner as Ethan Hawke in “The Black Phone,” with a similarly chilling and indelible film around him.

In 2016, the hit found-footage creature horror flick “Cloverfield” became a sprawling blockbuster franchise through an unexpected lateral move. Directed by Dan Trachtenberg, “10 Cloverfield Lane” plotted a way forward for the “Cloverfield” movies by telling an entirely new story with the same dark sci-fi spirit — and ambiguously set within the same broad universe.

“10 Cloverfield Lane” tells of Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), a young woman who, following a road accident, wakes up chained to a bed in a bunker. The bunker’s owner is a taciturn man named Howard (John Goodman), who tells Michelle that he kidnapped her to save her life in the wake of an alien attack that left the outside world uninhabitable. Is he telling the truth? As Michelle ponders her best odds for survival and recovers from a leg injury, her interactions with Howard and with Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), the bunker’s other occupant, become increasingly fraught with tension and uncertainty.

Although “10 Cloverfield Lane” is not an out-and-out horror film like the other entries on this list, it’s still very much in the same spirit of claustrophobic, white-knuckle suspense as “The Black Phone.” Trachtenberg exhibits a stunning level of control and precision in his feature debut, and the trio of central performances is nothing short of amazing, especially John Goodman in particular. Between this and “The Black Phone,” there’s something about creepy genre movie antagonists that just seems to bring the best out of great ’90s actors.

Another great watch for fans of “The Black Phone” is “Cobweb,” an underrated 2023 horror film that subscribes to the same tradition of elegant horror, and similarly filters its mayhem through the perspective of a child. In the plot, eight-year-old Peter (Woody Norman) has gotten used to the lack of space and freedom afforded by his overprotective parents Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Anthony Starr). One day, he begins to hear sounds coming from a wall of his bedroom — first taps, then a voice. His parents admonish him for his findings and insist it’s all in his head. As Peter’s behavior becomes erratic due to his circumstances, Carol and Mark become more aggressive, and Peter begins to suspect that his family may be harboring a terrible secret.

It’s not a movie that tries to reinvent the wheel, but “Cobweb” is nonetheless a sturdy and emotionally persuasive horror film. The curveball-filled screenplay by Chris Thomas Devlin mines a lot from the terrifying idea of discovering, as a child, that your parents may not be as trustworthy as they ought to be. This makes “Cobweb” a worthy addition to the canon of child-centric horror films about the loss of innocence. As such, it already has a lot in common with “The Black Phone” even before you get to how much visual and aesthetic ground the two movies share. Plus, by virtue of both its plot and its appropriately gloomy and orange-strewn color palette, “Cobweb” makes for pretty perfect Halloween viewing.

The James Wan-directed 2010 hit “Insidious” has become so culturally ubiquitous, what with the pop culture iconography it spawned and the massive franchise that was launched in its wake, that it’s easy to forget it was once just an original horror flick looking to win over spring audiences. The plot centers on of a married couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) whose son (Ty Simpkins) falls into a mysterious coma. They soon discover that he is being held captive by evil spirits in a nether realm, and it’s up to paranormal investigator Elise Rainier (Lin Shaye) to find a way to rescue him.

If “The Black Phone” stars Mason Thames as an endangered child and Madeleine McGraw as a kid with supernatural abilities that place her in communication with the supernatural, “Insidious” combines those two characteristics into Ty Simpkins’ Dalton Lambert. At its heart, “Insidious” is a film about a family struggling to hold together and ward off malevolent encroaching forces. This makes “Insidious” slightly different from the dysfunctional family drama of “The Black Phone,” but places it in the same tradition of horror as a conduit for deep-seated familial anxieties — also carried off here with great filmmaking aplomb.

“The Black Phone” gets a lot of mileage out of the analog mystery of the vintage phone call. Scott Derrickson makes the titular rotary dial phone a character of its own, initially rattling viewers’ nerves with its sudden rings and empty static, only to reveal it as a life-saving asset. In that sense, one could deem “The Black Phone” a spiritual successor to the phone-centric antics of “The Ring.”

Adapted from a 1998 Japanese classic, 2002’s “The Ring” is a crowd-pleaser that set the tone for 21st-century Hollywood supernatural horror. You probably know the gist: A mysterious VHS tape displays a white ring against a black background, followed by an amalgam of bizarre footage. Then, the phone rings, and a voice whispers “Seven days.” The viewer is thereby cursed to be killed by a creepy long-haired spirit in that period, unless they make a copy of the tape and pass it along.

“The Ring” explores this iconic setup through the investigative efforts of journalist Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts, who almost didn’t take her role). In the hands of Watts and director Gore Verbinski, Rachel’s story becomes both an engrossing mystery and an almost folklorish exercise in pure, befuddling dread.

Jordan Peele’s follow-up to 2017’s “Get Out” arrived in 2019, and it was even more ambitious, densely imaginative, and relentlessly terrifying than its predecessor. “Us” begins with a prologue in which a young Adelaide Wilson (Madison Curry) encounters her doppelgänger in a boardwalk house of mirrors, becoming traumatized as a result of what she experiences there. Then, Peele’s original script jumps to a fateful vacation three-plus decades later, in which an adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), her husband (Winston Duke), and their two kids (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) are terrorized by exact copies of themselves.

Peele’s film positively teems with mythology, small details you may have missed, and intriguingly open-ended political subtext. But, before anything else, it’s just an absolute hoot — tense, spine-tingling, and morbidly compelling in equal measure, with some of contemporary horror’s most indelible images. Its dramatic purposefulness, family focus, and survival-driven immediacy also make it a great watch if you love “The Black Phone.” And, much like Ethan Hawke, James McAvoy, Nicolas Cage, and John Goodman, Lupita Nyong’o makes a full-course meal out of the opportunity to play an intimidating horror villain, delivering one of the best performances — horror or otherwise — of the 2010s.