Best Movies Like Five Nights at Freddy’s (December 2025)
If you liked Five Nights at Freddy’s or the recently released sequel, first of all, we have to say: you are a very particular kind of person. We mean that with the utmost respect, because those movies are wild. But if you’re a movie lover looking for something in roughly the same category, here are our picks for the best movies like Five Nights at Freddy’s.
What are the best movies like Five Nights at Freddy’s?
We could go in a few different directions when picking movies that share a similar tone, story, or overall vibe. A supernatural horror film with a distinctly childlike creep factor, Five Nights at Freddy’s uses animatronics and robots to absolutely freak us out. Maybe it’s because a lot of us came from the Furby generation — you know that you took the batteries out of that thing, and it still woke up! Or if you’re a little older, you’re sure to remember PlaySkool’s My Buddy doll. There’s just something extra terrifying about non-living things that suddenly feel like they shouldn’t possess a spirit of any kind.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
Willy’s Wonderland (2019)
Nick Cage has been in some interesting movies over the years, but he always gives an absolutely epic performance. Willy’s Wonderland is one of those cases where Nick Cage plays a loner type whose car breaks down. He gets picked up by a mechanic who offers an exchange: he’ll fix the car in exchange for Nick Cage’s character, the Janitor, agreeing to clean an abandoned family fun center. The exchange is kind of a deal with the devil, though, because the family fun center is actually filled with eight murderous animatronics who are possessed by the spirit of a cannibalistic killer and his buddies.
Unbeknownst to the Janitor, he’s been set up to be a human sacrifice. What wasn’t expected, however, was how tough it would be to kill this guy. Though technically considered a horror comedy, Willy’s Wonderland leans harder into the horror than Freddy’s. This should be a good match if you’re looking for your first watch.
M3GAN (2022)
Mixing the lifelike doll trope with the absolute real-life horror of artificial intelligence, M3GAN is basically our worst AI nightmare realized. M3GAN is a lifelike doll programmed with advanced AI to be a child’s perfect, ever-devoted companion. Forget coloring books and stuffed animals — we’ve got M3GAN now! But for any parents who weren’t immediately terrified by her unnervingly human look, they’re about to be in for some serious buyer’s remorse once this doll turns hostile. If you like this one, there’s also a recently released sequel you can check out, M3GAN 2.0.
Child’s Play (1988)
We have to imagine you’ve seen this movie at some point in your life, or at least one of the many sequels. After serial killer Charles Lee Ray, AKA The Lakeshore Strangler, is fatally wounded in a police chase, he uses a voodoo ritual to transfer his soul into the body of a Good Guy talking doll. Meanwhile, a widowed mother, desperate to get her son the must-have toy of the season, manages to buy one from a street peddler. Lucky find.
Once the doll is home, all hell breaks loose. Chucky’s not exactly sticking to his old strangling methods, since being pint-sized makes that tricky. No problem, though, because a whole array of household weapons does the job just fine. The real terror, though, is that no one believes a doll could be responsible. Child’s Play is an absolute horror classic; it’s unsettling, unhinged, sometimes campy, and weirdly fun to revisit.
Dead Silence (2007)
This is one of those horror movies that belongs to a particular era — the mid-2000s pocket of sleek-but-not-great genre films that millennials rented at Blockbuster with zero hesitation. Think Stay Alive, the remake of When a Stranger Calls, Disturbia, or the many Final Destination sequels. Dead Silence fits right in, and we say that lovingly.
Directed by James Wan, the movie follows a man (Ryan Kwanten) who returns to his creepy hometown after his wife dies under mysterious (and disturbing) circumstances. The town’s local legend points to a murdered ventriloquist named Mary Shaw, known for her eerie puppets. It’s not just the puppets that are the problem, because Ms. Shaw had an even eerier habit of ripping out tongues. Though the movie is not high art, if you’re looking for something with the same haunted-toy energy as Five Nights at Freddy’s, Dead Silence should do the trick. But remember, don’t scream.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
You probably remember reading these books as a kid; it’s hard to forget those tales or the drippy, black ink illustrations. If you don’t, you might’ve missed out on some top-tier childhood nightmares. Though this movie adaptation of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark definitely taps into that nostalgia, it’s not necessary for viewing enjoyment.
In the movie, none of the horrifying characters from the stories are just illustrations on a page. They’re real, and they’re coming after the teenagers who stumble upon Sarah Bellows’ mysterious book while exploring an abandoned house. Once they take it, new stories begin to write themselves in real time. Even worse, each story targets a member of the group. Though director André Øvredal may be less well known as a filmmaker, producer Guillermo del Toro’s influence is all over this thing. The movie is still, technically speaking, YA-friendly – it’s creepy enough to send shivers up the spines of all ages.
How we picked the best movies like Five Nights at Freddy’s
We could have gone a few different directions in picking our favorite horror movies, like Five Nights at Freddy’s. That movie does something very particular by bringing horror into a Young Adult, teenage world. Though the movie was geared toward fans of the video game, it expands beyond its target audience. Likewise, these films work similarly. Were most of us supposed to watch Child’s Play as kids? Probably not, but it happened. For our picks, we tried to choose movies that had a similar nostalgia-induced horror trip, creepy animatronics, or horror flicks specifically created for teens.
Source: Comingsoon.net