What To Watch If You Love Creepy Home Invasion Films Like 'The Strangers '

Funny Games is Michael Haneke's 2007 American remake of his own 1997 Austrian film of the same name. Haneke has said that the film is a reflection and criticism of violence used in media. The characters Paul (Michael Pitt) and Peter (Brady Corbet) are like the three assailants in The Strangers, in the sense that they are ruthless, find humor in their own depravity, and seemingly have no reason to be attacking the family they are stalking. 

If you liked The Strangers, then you will definitely enjoy the follow-up, 2018's The Strangers: Prey at Night. This one follows a different family, played by Christina Hendricks, Martin Henderson, Bailee Madison, and Lewis Pullman, who make the mistake of stopping off at a mobile home park for the night while on the way to taking their troubled daughter to boarding school. The titular strangers in the film have only gotten more ruthless, and more brutal. 

Hush, from husband-wife duo Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, uses its 81-minute runtime to the fullest, in a tense, stressful thriller. Just like The Strangers, the villain in Hush seemingly has no motive for being as homicidal as they are. Siegel plays a deaf writer named Maddie, who lives alone in a house deep in the woods. When a masked killer arrives, wielding a crossbow, she has to fight for her life in silence.

The Den, not unlike The Strangers, is the kind of movie that stays with you. It also makes you terrified of something seemingly innocuous, like having a computer, or using an online chat/video website like Chatroulette. The film follows Elizabeth (Melanie Papalia), who plans to chat with as many strangers as possible for her graduate project in sociology. She wants to see how many meaningful conversations she can accumulate, but ends up with a much darker conclusion.

The Rental is a home invasion film for when the home is not your own. Two couples think they're heading out for a lovely weekend getaway, when they start to notice really unsettling things, like hidden cameras in the showers. The anonymity, brutality, and lack of motive make this movie like The Strangers, as well as some other movies on this list, like The Open House. Violent triple feature?

Technically Sinister does touch on a kind of home invasion, it's just done by a supernatural force rather than a bunch of creepy, violent humans. True crime writer Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) moves his family into the home of the late family he plans to research for his next book. When things get really spooky and haunted, Oswalt decides to bring his family back to their old house, not realizing that that seemingly innocuous action has actually sealed their fates.

You're Next is another bloody home invasion movie in which the attackers wear strange masks. The masked assailants attack during a dysfunctional family reunion, and Erin (Sharni Vinson) takes it upon herself to try to protect everyone, while managing some gnarly kills of her own. You're Next is from Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, the team behind Blair Witch (2016) and The Guest (2014).

So there technically is a reason for the violent group of mask-wearing murderers to invade a home in The Purge, but that terrifying feeling of being trapped and violated is very much still there. The Purge follows James Sandin (Ethan Hawke), who is trying to protect his family during the annual “Purge,” a 12-hour timespan during which all crime, including murder, are temporarily legal. Like The Strangers, once the killers in The Purge hone in on a target, there is no escaping them.

Black Christmas may have received mixed reviews when it was released, but it has since become a beloved horror classic. The film follows a group of sorority sisters who are harassed by anonymous phone calls, before being attacked and murdered by an unknown killer. The lack of motive, or even any real resolution, is what makes films like Black Christmas and The Strangers so terrifying. 

Sick, co-written by Scream writer, Kevin Williamson, is a brutal home invasion film that uses all of its 83-minute runtime. Set during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Parker (Gideon Adlon) invites Miri (Beth Million) to quarantine at her family's lake house, which is miles away from any other people. That distance seems great at first, until they are being attacked, and have no way of getting help. 

The Thing is much more sci-fi over human killers, but its ending is just as bleak and hopeless. This classic John Carpenter film follows a group of American researchers in Antarctica after they inadvertently ignore a desperate warning not to enter a Norwegian base. It is there that they encounter the titular “thing,” an extraterrestrial life-form that assimilates, then imitates, other beings. When The Thing can turn into anything, how do you trust anyone?

The Guest is a great embodiment of the phrase, “No good deed goes unpunished.” The Peterson family is very welcoming when they are visited by David Collins (Dan Stevens), a former U.S. Army sergeant who says he was their late son Caleb's best friend. Only their daughter, Anna (Maika Monroe) is suspicious of the man who seems to want to ingratiate himself into her family. Things suddenly go from 0 to 100, and the seemingly unnecessary violence and brutality of the outcome mirror the dark energy of The Strangers.

The Mist also finds characters trapped by something violent, without really knowing why. In this case, the evil is not quite human, and forces a group of characters to hunker down in a grocery store. The brutality of The Strangers is another thing that makes The Mist a good option for a double feature. The ending of The Mist is as memorable as it is gut-wrenching. 

The Invitation is a slow-burn nightmare that only continues to get worse and worse. The film follows Will (Logan Marshall-Green), who has been invited, along with his girlfriend, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), to the home of his ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new husband, David (Michiel Huisman), for a dinner party. Though they are invited inside in this film, the confusion, horror, and threat of physical danger makes it similar to the vibes of The Strangers.

Seven (also stylized as Se7en) is another movie with an incredibly bleak ending, just like The Strangers. It follows William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a seasoned detective who is one week from retirement, and his new parter, David Mills (Brad Pitt), who recently moved to the area with wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow). The less-than-compatible partners are assigned to a case where a John Doe (Kevin Spacey) is savagely killing people based on the seven deadly sins.

The Open House, not unlike The Strangers, is a slasher but without the whodunnit, because you just never find out who the killer is. The lack of a motive and “just because” attitude is a big part of The Strangers, and of this Netflix film in which things don't work out so well for poor Dylan Minnette. The killer seemingly has no reason to be doing this, which makes everything all the creepier. 

ATM is like if The Strangers took place at an isolated ATM vestibule, instead of an isolated vacation home. Co-workers David (Brian Geraghty), Emily (Alice Eve), and Corey (Josh Peck) stop at an ATM booth on the way home, and find themselves trapped and fighting for their lives against a violent stranger. In a possible nod to Urban Legend, ATM makes the seemingly innocuous puffer coat with a fur-lined hood absolutely terrifying.

This isn't technically a home invasion film, but it captures some of the same feelings that those films evoke, like violation, and the idea that nowhere is safe. The Lodge comes from directing duo Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, who were also responsible for horrifying slow burn, Goodnight Mommy, in 2014. The film follows Grace (Riley Keough), who ends up trapped in a remote cabin with her new fiancé's two children, while their father is stuck at work. 

The set up for Creep is quite different from The Strangers, but the idea of being stalked by a violent stranger, and not being safe in your own home, make the two a perfectly eerie double feature. Creep follows a struggling videographer named Aaron, who accepts a job to film a strange man named Josef, who is alone in a remote cabin. Things with Josef get weirder and weirder, until Aaron realizes (too late) that he is not safe with him.

When down-on-their-luck punk band, the Ain't Rights, find out their gig is cancelled, they don't have much of a choice when they are offered a replacement, even though they find out the location is a neo-Nazi skinhead bar. Bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) stumbles upon a crime the bar employees don't want anyone else to know about, and suddenly the night goes from an unpleasant gig to a brutal fight for survival. Green Room isn't a home invasion film, but it is as cutthroat as The Strangers. The bar employees are willing to do whatever it takes to keep the band members quiet. This movie is the last theatrical release of late star Yelchin, who tragically died a year after the film's premiere.