20 best movies like Bad Dreams (1988)

After Jake Tilton is given a mystical "monkey's paw" talisman that grants its possessor three wishes, he finds his world turned upside down after his first two wishes result in his malevolent coworker, Tony Cobb, being resurrected from the dead. When Cobb pressures Jake into using the final wish to reunite Cobb with his son, his intimidation quickly escalates into relentless murder - forcing Jake to outwit his psychotic friend and save his remaining loved ones.

Whether you’re a fan of Sydney's iconic genre film festival A Night of Horror, or just a fan of the best and bloodiest in new horror cinema, you can’t afford to miss this fright-filled anthology. Zombies, demonic entities, self-surgery, cannibalism and more await in the dark corners of this terrifying offering from some of the most talented filmmakers working in the genre today.

A young woman recuperating at her father's run-down home after a tragic accident soon encounters a terrifying presence with a connection to her long-deceased mother.

Studying under a disciple of Aleister Crowley, the leader of an upper class group invokes a supernatural force that slowly devours the village of Marienbad and its inhabitants, threatening to spread beyond its geographical limits. The mayor from the town nearby commissions the building of a dam which would flood the valley and therefore submerge the village forever sealing the evil force under water after leader and his followers were incapacitated to be kept from escaping. However, fate ensured the leader's freedom as he remained in the depths when the waters covered Marienbad. Now 40 years later an array of disappearances and deaths in mysterious circumstances are threatening the town next to the reservoir that now covers Marienbad.

Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.

Celia (Monica Keena, Freddy vs. Jason) has had a rough life, with a mother who died in childbirth and a father who disappeared. Unfortunately for Celia, death is not any easier than life. When she is drugged and raped at a frat party, Celia dies from an overdose, and must battle the terrible Soul Eaters who roam the afterlife.

Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

On a bitterly cold December night, a paranormal investigations team has set their sights on the bloody Hillcrest Sanatorium to answer the age old question: Is there life after death? With rumours of hauntings and local children gone missing, they may just get their answer the hard way when members of the team mysteriously disappear, leaving behind unnerving evidence.

Trevor Blackburn is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Faith, in a brutal ritual. He's sentenced to live in an experimental rehabilitation community and falls into a coma. When he wakes up, he meets the mysterious Dr. Elk, who tortures Trevor in an attempt to learn the whereabouts of a powerful occult book. As other patients start to disappear, Trevor begins to wonder who and where he really is.

Seven female directors present seven short films.

A couple and their 12-year-old son move into a giant house for the summer. Things start acting strange almost immediately. It seems that every time some gets hurt on the grounds the beat-up house seems to repair itself.

A young girl, Johanna, is attacked and seemingly murdered. Her father receives a phone call from the police pronouncing her dead as he sees her walk in the front door of their house. Strange things begin to happen to Johanna; she is disorientated and becomes pale and unresponsive. Similar attacks begin to happen, and Johanna’s father takes it on himself to find out the truth. He embarks on a dark thrill ride of lost memories, conspiracy, and zombie-like symptoms. Finding the mysterious darkness within is the source of the bizarre world he has uncovered.

Deputy Langley tracks a kidnapped girl to an abandoned ghost town. However, the town is not abandoned, but haunted by the spirits of an outlaw, Devlin, and his gang, who hold the equally deceased townspeople hostage until the outlaws can be killed by a lawman.

A woman tries to exonerate her brother's murder conviction by proving that the crime was committed by a supernatural phenomenon.

Taking all that was great from the first installment, ABCs OF DEATH 2 aims to be a wilder, leaner, faster paced and even more entertaining anthology this time around, with a new crop of award-winning, visionary filmmakers from around the globe.

Mourning the accidental death of his wife and having just moved to New York with his young son, laconic police psychologist Cal Jamison is reluctantly drawn into a series of grisly, ritualistic murders involving the immolation of two youths.

After a serial killer strangles several women with a necktie, London police identify a suspect—but he's the wrong man.

Anna returns home after spending time in a psychiatric facility following her mother's tragic death and discovers that her mother's former nurse, Rachel, has moved into their house and become engaged to her father. Soon after she learns this shocking news, Anna is visited by her mother's ghost, who warns her that Rachel has evil intentions.

After a car crash, a criminal psychologist (Halle Berry) comes to, only to find that she's a patient in the same mental institution that currently employs her. It seems she's been accused of murdering her husband -- but she has no memory of committing the crime. As she tries to regain her memory and convince her co-workers of her innocence, a vengeful spirit uses her as an earthly pawn, which further convinces everyone of her guilt.

Suspecting that people around him are turning into evil creatures, a troubled man questions whether to protect his only friend from an impending war, or from himself.

The teenager Madison McBride is traumatized by the loss of her deranged father when she was nine years old and the suicide of her beloved brother Brandon one year ago. She decides to join the Richard Miller University, where Brandon committed suicide, to overcome her demons. While walking to her dorm, she meets the weird janitor Wilbur Mackey that tells her that the place is haunted.

Twenty five years ago, the SS Corona Queen disappeared in the region known as, "The Bermuda Triangle". Now, it has returned. Seven people go on board to learn the truth behind her disappearance but the ship did not return alone...

A dark terror has come to the picture-perfect town of Jerusalem's Lot, and it's up to a writer with a haunted past to uncover the horror that has taken over the town.

A troubled young woman wakes up one day as a different person - someone who is stalked by creatures.

A couple attempts to unravel a sinister plot within the English countryside estate of a dying man who has gathered an eclectic and notable group of house guests.

Mary is a horror-movie junkie whose obsession is out of control, leading her over-protective father to ban her from seeing scary flicks. But when she and her friends sneak out to see a film called The Wisher, its creepy antagonist seems to escape into her life and make her darkest desires come true.

After a freak, fatal accident, the soul Karl—aka The Address Book Killer—ends up trapped in the electrical grid. He targets Terry and her son for his next victims, turning home technology against them as deadly weapons.

After witnessing a horrific and traumatic event, Julia Lund, a graduate student in psychology, gradually comes to the realization that everything which scared her as a child could be real. And what's worse, it might be coming back to get her..

When a disgraced architect awakens from a coma, he is confronted by an agent of evil with a proposition; kill five people to reconcile his life's misdeeds and live, or decline the offer and die. As he proceeds with his grim assignment and begins collecting the fifth and final soul, he learns that his pact may have eternally horrifying consequences…

A young psychiatric intern unearths secrets about the mental health facility in which he works.

A 19th century vampire stalks a more powerful vampire lord in his quest to gain revenge over the death of his mistress. In his search for the vampire lord in Eastern Europe he kills many of his servants and fellow vampires while cursing another to vampirism as well.

A young couple moves into what appears to be the perfect home, but when they discover that they will soon become parents, things begin to fall apart. Rachel, the expectant mother, is haunted by a ghost in a red dress, while Kevin, the soon to be father, has frightening nightmares even while he’s awake. The once happy couple is torn apart by horrific events, which all seem to be centered around the birth of their unborn child.

A group of paranormal investigators enter the abandoned home of paedophile and serial killer John Gacy, hoping to find evidence of paranormal activity. Upon entering the house they set-up cameras throughout the abandoned house while going room to room with hand-held cameras, performing séance's and asking for John Gacy to come forward. As the evening progresses it seems the investigators are not prepared for the horror still within the house.

A Harvard Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

In the aftermath of a family tragedy, an aspiring author is torn between love for her childhood friend and the temptation of a mysterious outsider. Trying to escape the ghosts of her past, she is swept away to a house that breathes, bleeds… and remembers.

The sequel is set just weeks after Annie Barlow's deadly confrontation with the Judas Killer. In this elevated sequel, we meet June, a woman whose carefully constructed life is beginning to unravel due to lucid nightmares so awful they disturb her waking life

Still/Born follows Mary, a new mother who lost one of her twins in childbirth. As she struggles with the loss of one of her children, she starts to suspect something sinister is after her surviving child - a supernatural entity that has chosen her child and will stop at nothing to take it from her.

A rookie cop's world is turned upside down when she comes face to face with Paymon - King Of Hell. Officer Jessica Loren has the last shift at a transitioning police station, assigned to wait for a crew picking up bio-hazard waste from the armoury. But unbeknownst to her, cult leader John Michael Paymon has haunted the department ever since he committed suicide in custody. Jessica is about to find out just how dangerous he still is, all alone on the graveyard shift.............

In 1944, in the Belgian - German border, seven German soldiers survive an American attack in the front and lock themselves in a bunker to protect the position. Under siege by the enemy and with little ammunition, they decide to explore underground tunnels to seek supplies and find an escape route. While in the tunnel, weird things happen with the group.

John has inherited a castle in Italy and he moves there with his wife Susan and their blind daughter Rebecca. What they don't realize is that there is somebody else in the castle--an abused child left to die in the basement who has now become the castle freak and is out to wreak havoc.

When a nun broke her covenant with God to save the life of her unborn son, Aman, he was cursed for life. As an adult, Aman has killed those who have crossed him. But his curse brings his victims back to life and they pursue him for revenge, so Aman enlists a young gunman to fight by his side against his undead victims.

Five men heist the Camp Pendleton payroll and kidnap a pilot and his daughter, who are forced to fly them to Mexico. Enroute a double cross has one of the thieves parachute with the loot into an abandoned graveyard surrounded by strange scarecrows. The rest of the team jump after their loot and their former partner. Everything happens during the course of one very dark night.

Dr. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, move from Boston to Ludlow, in rural Maine, with their two young children. Hidden in the woods near the new family home, Ellie, their eldest daughter, discovers a mysterious cemetery where the pets of community members are buried.

A young journalist goes deep undercover within a mountain commune and becomes manipulated by a duplicitous cult leader.

Kate Bowman (Jocelin Donahue) is an average social worker who, after the sudden death of her twin sister, is investigating the mysterious deaths of other people who died in their sleep. Shortly before their deaths, the victims all reported a supernatural force that appeared to them while they were suffering from sleep paralysis. When Kate investigates further into the case, she opens herself up to the creature's wrath and soon finds herself and her family suffering from an ancient evil.

A police officer and a psychologist investigate the deaths of five people who were killed while trying to summon ghosts.

Smith, a mob informer hiding out with the Witness Protection Program, decides to make a break for it and hide out in the Arizona desert. The Feds catch up with him and rescue him just before a group of hitmen can manage to silence him for good. In the course of getting Smith away from the mafia thugs, the pair of agents assigned to protect him turn onto an abandoned stretch of highway nicknamed 'Route 666' after the mysterious death of a prison chain gang. As the three continue on their way, they soon discover just what happened to the chain gang, and how the highway earned its name.

A man emerges with his autistic daughter and three others from a hospital elevator to find themselves trapped in the building with devilish monsters.

The idyllic lives of Phil and Kate seem complete when they select the winsome young Camilla as a live-in nanny for their newborn child. But the lovely young Camilla s not what she appears to be.

Rachel Carson, a best-selling crime novelist, is devastated and filled with guilt over the accidental death of her son. Hoping that a change of scenery will help alleviate her suffering, she leaves her home in the city and moves into a vacant country house owned by a friend and begins a relationship with charming local Angus. But, just as her life is taking a turn for the better, Rachel realizes she's being romanced by a ghost, leading her to doubt her own sanity.