13 Horror Movies Like The Conjuring That You Can Watch Tonight

Before The Conjuring, before even Insidious, director James Wan made this grisly, R-rated Goosebumps-esque movie about a small town haunted by the ghost of a deceased ventriloquist and her many, many, many dolls. If The Conjuring’s Annabelle doll freaked you out, just wait until you see what Wan and his co-conspirators get up to with the haunted ventriloquist dummies in this movie. Plus, there’s a scene in a funeral parlor that’s as skin-crawling as anything Wan brought to the screen in the Conjuring universe.

Related: The Best James Wan Horror Movies, Ranked 

The Conjuring films may be “drawn from the real-life case files” of the controversial Warrens, but even all the Conjuring universe flicks combined have only scratched the surface of the various investigations that Ed and Lorraine Warren worked on during their lifetimes. While it doesn’t actually star the Warrens themselves, The Haunting in Connecticut (which came out four years before the first Conjuring film) is drawn from one of the Warrens’ most notorious cases. Featuring a particularly weird denouement, the film revolves around a family that moves into a new home (and former mortuary) with their cancer-stricken son.

A true crime writer (Ethan Hawke) finds a bunch of freaky home movies that unleash a haunting on his family in this creepy movie from director Scott Derrickson, who, like James Wan, went on to direct a big-budget superhero flick—in this case, Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Released a year before The Conjuring, Sinister takes a similar tack to Wan’s earlier Insidious films in building its own mythology around the haunting. It also feels like a movie that the Warrens could easily stroll into halfway through.

The Changeling manages to make a simple red ball bouncing down a flight of stairs super creepy—a shot that has been imitated and referenced in countless films, including The Conjuring franchise itself. The ‘80s weren’t exactly known for understated haunted house fare, but The Changeling may be one of the best—and subtlest—haunted house movies of all time. You won’t get a lot of the heart-in-your-throat jumps that you’ve come to expect from The Conjuring, but your skin will crawl, nonetheless.

Related: The Real-Life Haunting That Inspired The Changeling 

Sure, 2014’s Ouija may have been a largely uninspired cash-in on the success of films like Insidious and The Conjuring, but its 2016 prequel from celebrated director Mike Flanagan is something else. Its period trappings will call to mind The Conjuring, as will its creepy story of kids who play with an Ouija board, only to call up something much more sinister than anyone is expecting…

Related: The Best Mike Flanagan Horror Movies, Ranked 

A ghost-hunting reality show is filming an episode inside an abandoned mental hospital in this found footage flick that messes with space and time in ways that are far more ambitious than its low-budget roots might suggest. There are plenty of spooky ghosts and mind-bending set pieces to be had, plus that “paranormal investigator” angle to satisfy your need for more movies like The Conjuring.

Every Conjuring film (and every other movie on this list) owes a debt to this black-and-white classic from director Robert Wise. The first film adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s legendary novel The Haunting of Hill House—and quite possibly the greatest haunted house movie ever made—Wise’s The Haunting is a masterpiece of suggestion and shadows. Accept no substitutes, however, and steer clear of the 1999 remake, unless you want to have a very different experience.

Annabelle Comes Home took the Conjuring universe into the realm of spooky babysitter stories in 2019. It was shortly followed by this adaptation of the classic book series that gave us all nightmares when we were in elementary school. Combining a 1960s period setting and plenty of campfire story chills, Scary Stories is a perfect companion piece to any of the Conjuring movies—especially for those who want a little social conscience to go along with their scares.

Related: 14 Horror Books for Fans of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 

Director James Wan has made no secret of his affection for Italian genre maestro Mario Bava—you can see it in Wan’s filmography, in his atmospheric lighting choices, and his theatrical set pieces. Nowhere does Bava’s (extensive) filmography overlap more with Wan’s Conjuring films than in this chilly classic of mist-shrouded graveyards and decaying villages, in which the ghost of a young girl haunts a Transylvanian village.

One of the elements that helps to anchor the Conjuring films is how they bring their hauntings into the homes of realistic blue-collar families. For more of that same vibe, along with similar creepy warnings about meddling with the occult when you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, there’s always this late 90s Kevin Bacon flick, adapted from the novel of the same name by the legendary Richard Matheson. The Legend of Hell House, another film based on a Matheson novel, could also sit comfortably on this list.

Related: Richard Matheson: Where to Begin with the Legendary Sci-Fi Horror Author 

The nice thing about watching the on-screen versions of the Warrens in the Conjuring films—brought to life by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga—is that they’re good at what they do. To watch a couple of amateur ghost sleuths who are…not so good at what they do, check out Ti West’s The Innkeepers. Two employees at a New England hotel decide to investigate the paranormal rumors they’ve heard so much about, with disastrous consequences.

The Conjuring films may be drawn from the case files of the Warrens, but they also owe a debt—as just about any modern spectral fare does—to the J-horror boom of the ‘90s and early 2000s. As such, many of the movies from that era—The Ring, Dark Water, you name it—would suffice, but we recommend this underseen flick from The Grudge director Takashi Shimizu, which maintains a period feel and even features a creepy doll.

Related: 14 Dark and Twisted Cult Horror Movies You Can Watch Tonight 

This found footage debut from Escape Room director Adam Robitel was similar enough to the ghost movies that Wan and company were putting out that it landed him a gig directing the fourth Insidious installment. It’s a deeply creepy flick about aging, with a ghost story that revolves around a switchboard operator and maybe even a snake cult. It also contains at least one image so indelibly, viscerally freaky that it’s become a favorite .gif that regularly circulates on horror Twitter.