Best Movies Like Silent Hill (December 2025)

The horror adaptations of the early 2000s were unlike anything else in the genre, for better or worse. Silent Hill, adapted from the video games by Konami, is one of those millennial classics that got a lot right, even if it wasn’t perfect. They still have another shot with the upcoming reboot. If you’ve just discovered (or rediscovered) this horror gem and are craving more, here are our picks for the best movies like Silent Hill.

What are the best movies like Silent Hill?

When it comes to horror, Silent Hill leans hard into the supernatural. Despite the movie’s strengths, it can feel a little gappy if you’re not familiar with the video games. Even if you are, that might make your love or hate for the film stronger. Whatever the public’s opinion, Silent Hill was popular enough to spawn a few sequels. For regular movie watchers unfamiliar with the video game, what works best about the movie is its atmosphere. The films on our list either evoke a similar feeling to Silent Hill or helped shape it in the first place.

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Directed by Adrian Lyne with a script from Bruce Joel Rubin, Jacob’s Ladder will absolutely leave you with a deeper level of confusion than Silent Hill. Not necessarily more confusion, mentally speaking, but a guttural confusion. Add to that a feeling of despair. Now we know what you’re thinking: why would we want to watch that? Because folks, it’s a heck of a movie. It’s also a film that’s often directly quoted as being an inspiration for Silent Hill, and it’s not hard to see the comparisons when you look at the movies side by side. Powerfully acted, written, and directed, Jacob’s Ladder is undoubtedly a psychological horror, but it’s also a profound parallel to the experience of psychosis and schizophrenia. A jagged narrative and surrealist influences in cinematography only make it more challenging to watch. Still, it’s clear that we, as viewers, are meant to feel as mentally fractured as our protagonist.

Tim Robbins plays Jacob Singer, an American soldier recently returned from Vietnam, who is essentially a ticking time bomb. He’s thrust back into civilian life, which keeps dealing him one impossible hand after another. We, as an audience, know soldiers don’t come home from Vietnam with many “happy stories” (using that term loosely). Still, it’s clear from early on that something truly horrifying happened to him overseas — something beyond the horror of war. Things get pretty trippy. Supernatural portals? Governmental experiments? Demonic entities? The film keeps all the answers tucked away until the end.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

It’s hard to pick which David Lynch film to put on here, since we could easily add more than a couple based on how heavily his work influenced Silent Hill. For this one, we opted for the most supernaturally tinged pick. If you need a quick refresher, Twin Peaks kicks off when the homecoming queen’s body is discovered, setting off an investigation that cracks open the town’s seedy underbelly. Small towns, you know. Never quite what they seem. Fire Walk With Me gives us the prequel to all this. While the film is now generally considered one of Lynch’s major works, it was initially panned and did poorly at Cannes. American audiences hated it, though it fared better in Japan and France — countries with a slightly more experimental cinematic palate.

Because David Lynch had complete control here, unlike the Twin Peaks TV series, which he left (it’s a little more complicated than just leaving, but for brevity’s sake we’ll say he wasn’t around about halfway through season 2), expect the surrealist strangeness we know from Lynch. Fire Walk With Me takes us to Deer Meadow, Washington, with the murder of Teresa Banks (played by Pamela Gidley). The FBI rolls in to investigate, but the town is far less welcoming or helpful than the citizens of Twin Peaks. We then move into the final days of Laura Palmer.

Angel Heart (1987)

If Silent Hill’s hell-adjacent atmosphere is what you’re craving, Angel Heart should satiate that hunger. Just expect more noir and a lot more sweat. Directed by Alan Parker, this supernatural thriller takes us to 1955 New Orleans, where private investigator Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke at his sloppy peak, if we do say so ourselves) gets a call that takes him to a Satanic cult in Harlem. There, he meets a man named Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro), who hires him to track down a missing singer named Johnny Favorite. (Come on, could we get any better in terms of character names?!) The deeper Harry Angel digs, the stranger and more sinister things get. 

Aside from this being a fantastic movie that inspired Silent Hill’s tone, it’s overall a much, much better film. The well-known feud between Mickey Rourke and Robert De Niro started on the set of Angel Heart. The film was also another major inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Memento. So, from the film’s quality to the pop culture tidbits, there are plenty of reasons to watch.

The Mist (2006)

The fog was one of Silent Hill’s defining features, but Stephen King was the initial inspiration for its use. The Mist was directed, produced, and written by Frank Darabont and adapted from King’s 1980 novella. The story is set in the sleepy town of Bridgton, Maine — yes, the Silent Hill video game also drew inspiration from Stephen King’s universe. However, the film version opted for Appalachia instead. After a terrible thunderstorm damages their lakeside home, a father and son head to the local supermarket to stock up on supplies. While they’re inside, an ominous mist rolls in. Hidden within it are creatures more than happy to make a snack out of anyone who steps outside. What follows is a Lovecraftian-style fight for survival as the monsters begin laying siege to the supermarket.

Though the film wasn’t received exceptionally well by critics, it’s still one of those millennial-era horror movies that’s great fun to watch, especially if you like Silent Hill. This one tilts more toward creature feature than the other picks, but at its heart, the movie is all about fear and how people respond to their own terror.

Cure (1997)

It wasn’t until last year that this writer finally got around to watching Cure, which is painful to admit. But if you can learn anything from my mistake, it’s to stop waiting around and watch it already. Written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Cure is a Japanese neo-noir mystery thriller that follows Tokyo police detective Kenichi Takabe (Kōji Yakusho), who is tracking a string of grisly murders. The murders are bizarre, all happening under the same circumstances, each victim marked with an X on the chest or neck. The apparent murderers are all caught near the scene of the crime. Something doesn’t sit right with the detective, however, as the killers have no problem admitting to their deeds, but seem to have no motive or explanation for their actions.

The detective mystery only grows stranger as the film progresses, leading us to an ending we never expect. This film is fully prepared to spread its unsettling sense of dread to anyone watching. Though it does something very different from Silent Hill (and is, overall, a much better film), there’s no denying the similar power of its atmosphere.

How we picked the best movies like Silent Hill

Our picks for the best films like Silent Hill either directly inspired the movie or its sequels or were similar in theme, tone, or atmosphere. Of course, we tried to narrow down the films that were also the best in terms of quality, subjectively speaking. Even without drawing a comparison between Silent Hill, these films are ones any cinephile should know. 

Source: Comingsoon.net