12 Best Movies Like Until Dawn

The 2015 video game “Until Dawn” was something of a sleeper hit in the world of horror gaming, but it eventually spawned a full-fledged franchise of interactive adventures. In 2025, the story finally got its long-awaited cinematic adaptation, directed by “Lights Out” creator David F. Sandberg, who returned to the horror genre following a detour into superheroes that ended when “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” bombed at the box office.

Loosely adapted from the game, “Until Dawn” retains the spirit of its source material by incorporating the concept of the butterfly effect that was so critical to the original game … but with a twist. While trying to solve the mysterious fate of a young woman’s (Ella Rubin) sister, she and her friends find themselves trapped in a time loop, forced to meet their demise again and again. But they’re only working with a limited number of chances to get it right, facing a fate worse than death should they fail.

With fans giving “Until Dawn” strong reviews, and the film’s box office more than tripling its budget, it stands to reason we might just have some sequels on the horizon. While we wait for news, you might be looking for something similar to watch, and you might even be surprised just how time loop movies and TV shows are out there — including plenty in the horror genre. Each one has its own unique charms, so here are the 12 best movies like “Until Dawn” that you should check out next.

A movie about a couple caught in a time loop while running from bloodthirsty killers? Based on that concise description, you’d be forgiven for thinking “ARQ” was a survivalist slasher that ripped off “Until Dawn.” But this one came out back in 2016 and isn’t quite a horror movie; not in the strictest sense, anyway. Instead, it’s a sci-fi thriller, and the insidious danger isn’t from a demonic entity or psychotic serial killer. Instead, the threat comes from an apparent home invader.

Released on Netflix, “ARQ” took the idea of a time loop and put it to thrilling use with the story of Renton (Robbie Amell of “Arrow” fame) and his wife Hanna (Rachael Taylor), who live in a dystopian near-future where the world is facing a devastating energy crisis. Renton once worked on a government project called A.R.Q., which could theoretically be used to create an infinite supply of energy — and he stole the tech and is keeping it in his basement. But when a home invader threatens Renton and his wife, they use the machine to stay alive — and unwittingly trap themselves in a repeating temporal loop.

Straddling the line between mind-bending sci-fi and slasher horror, “ARQ” is a gripping survival story that somehow keeps you guessing even as the couple relives the same moments over and over. An underrated Netflix gem, its middling reviews don’t do it justice as a tension-riddled, edge-of-your-seat nailbiter.

If you want to check out a movie like “Until Dawn,” but with a bit more humor and a meta narrative, what you’re looking for is the 2015 horror-comedy “The Final Girls.” Titled for the clichéd horror trope of leaving one girl alive at the end of a slasher movie, the film doubles down and features an ensemble female cast that includes Malin Åkerman, Nina Dobrev, Alia Shawkat, and Taissa Farmiga.

Åkerman plays Amanda Cartwright, a former horror movie scream queen who is struggling to get more respectable work decades after her first major role in an ’80s classic called “Camp Bloodbath.” When Cartwright is killed in a car wreck, her daughter Max (Farmiga) and her friends attend a screening of her mother’s beloved film. When the theater is set on fire, the teens escape, only to somehow find themselves within the world of the film and forced to relive the terrifying events of the movie over and over. To stay alive, they’ll have to use their knowledge of movie clichés to escape a killer wielding a machete.

Certainly more tongue-in-cheek than “Until Dawn,” “The Final Girls” takes the idea of the time loop and infuses it with “Deadpool”-style meta humor and over-the-top gore. Not only will it provide plenty of scares, but plenty of laughs too.

Director Vincenzo Natali might be best known for the cult horror classic “Cube,” as well as wiriting and directing the Adrian Brody-led sci-fi thriller “Splice.” But the director — whose more recent work has been on television (including the upcoming MCU entry “VisionQuest”) — has actually produced two horror movies that involve time loops, including his most recent effort, “In the Tall Grass.” But it’s 2013’s “Haunter” that makes our list, a time-bending horror story that revolves around a ghost and an old home hiding deadly secrets.

“Haunter” stars Abigail Breslin as Lisa Johnson, a recently deceased girl and ghost who is haunting a home in Canada. She and her family don’t realize they are dead, forced to relive the events that led to their demise. But when Lisa begins to catch on that they are not quite alive, she discovers a unique ability to explore parallel timelines. Soon, she uncovers evidence of a dark conspiracy surrounding the house and the man who once lived there, who may also be responsible for her strange circumstances.

A bit low budget, “Haunter” excels thanks to its premise, which is a bizarre take on the haunted home and time loop ideas. Mixing them together, while adding another mysterious apparition on the hunt for blood, makes it all the more engrossing.

2020’s “Lucky” is proof that not all time loop movies have to involve time travel. You don’t have to go back in time to repeat events over and over, as is the case with May (Brea Grant), a writer of self-help books who is struggling with her latest work. But her life turns into a nightmare when she wakes up in the middle of the night to a masked intruder attempting to break into her home. Yet her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh) seems oddly dismissive, not because he doesn’t believe her but because being terrorized in their beds is apparently an ordinary occurrence.

Sure enough, to May’s chagrin, Ted is right: the next night they are targeted by the same man, and then again the next night, and the night after that. And nobody but May seems to think the repetitive attacks are unusual at all. According to everyone around her, the attacks are easily explained — yet nobody seems willing to explain them to her.

With a similar premise to “Until Dawn,” you’d be forgiven for thinking “Lucky” was a simple slasher with a twist. But in fact, the film is a treatise on trauma, the story of a woman who is crying for help and cannot get anyone to take her seriously.

With a name like “Redux Redux,” you’d be right to surmise there’s some kind of time or dimensional shenanigans going on. The film, released in 2025, tells the story of a psychotic killer who criss-crosses dimensions to hunt for victims. But this insidious slasher isn’t exactly the villain, at least not in the traditional sense. Because “Redux Redux” stars Michaela McManus as Irene Kelly, a distraught mother whose daughter was murdered in cold blood — and who sets out on a revenge spree across the multiverse.

Unable to find justice for her daughter, Irene decides to hunt down her daughter’s killer — a man named Neville (Jeremy Holm) — and put him in the ground, once and for all. And then she does it again. And again, and again, and again, as she traverses different realities, hunting down and murdering Nelson more times than she can count, all while trying to find a reality where her daughter isn’t dead. Along the way, she meets Mia (Stella Marcus), a young woman whom she saves from death at Nelson’s hands and who insists on accompanying Irene on her extra-dimensional killing spree.

An exploration of grief — not to mention the catharsis we all seek in mourning — “Redux Redux” is both wish fulfillment and a cautionary tale. More sci-fi thriller than horror, it presents a new twist on the idea of the time loop slasher tale, with a greater emphasis on deeper themes of love and loss.

Like “Redux Redux,” “The Void” explores not time travel but other dimensions, only in schlocky, B-movie fashion. The 2016 film sends viewers on a terrifying journey to realms beyond, mixing elements of Lovecraftian horror and survivalist fare. Toss in a demonic cult and wrap it in a style and tone that harkens back to ’80s low-budget classics, and you’ll have an idea of what you’re getting into in “The Void.”

The movie begins at a mostly-abandoned hospital that’s being operated by a skeleton staff, where Sheriff Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) brings a badly injured man (Evan Stern) he finds on the roadside. When he arrives, though, he finds a nurse murdering a patient — and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Before long, they realize that the hospital contains a strange gateway to another world that has dark designs on our earthly dimension. Within this gateway is a demonic entity that wants everyone dead, and it’s up to Carter to help the remaining staff and patients stay alive and keep an ancient evil from being unleashed upon the world.

Strangely unnerving, “The Void” makes good use of its homage to ’80s slashers, thanks largely to its practical creature effects and a low budget that’s used to good effect. Perfect for a late-night get-together with friends, “The Void” is a strong entry from indie studio Astron-6, whose other releases include B-movies like “Manborg” and “Psychogoreman.”

In “The Descent” we meet Sarah (Shauna Macdonald), who is still reeling from the loss of her husband and daughter a year after their deaths. Trying to move on, she sets off for a fun spelunking adventure in the Appalachian mountains with a group of friends that turns into a living nightmare. After winding up trapped partway down the cave, and later discovering that they didn’t even venture into to the right cave to begin with, they’re left to rely on their own skills to make it out alive. But being trapped and lost turn out to be the least of their problems, as skulking in the darkness with them are a species of subterranean humanoid monsters, dubbed “crawlers,” who have a taste for human blood.

Preyed upon by seemingly endless crawlers, with a metaphorical ticking clock working against them as a result, “The Descent” is a frantic bid for survival against seemingly insurmountable odds that have made it an enduring favorite among fans of horror. And while “The Descent” doesn’t dabble in the same time-based antics that are so integral to “Until Dawn,” it manages to pull off a similar feeling of claustrophobia and escalating tension throughout its runtime. That’s not a coincidence: “Until Dawn” writer Gary Dauberman and director David F. Sandberg have acknowledged “The Descent” — one of the scariest movies of all time — as an inspiration.

The sci-fi horror movie “Timecrimes” previously made our list of movies to watch if you loved “Tenet.” But in truth, it’s probably even better suited for fans of “Until Dawn,” particularly given its grisly tone. While it certainly has a similar time-twisting concept to the Christopher Nolan action movie, the story is centered on a man who unwittingly uses a time travel machine to escape a masked assailant’s apparent murder spree.

The man is Hector (Karra Elejalde), and after discovering a naked woman unconscious in the forest, he is attacked by a mysterious man whose face is obscured by bloodied bandages. With the help of a nearby scientist, Hector hides from the man inside a strange chamber, only to discover that the chamber is a time machine and he’s been sent back in time one hour. He then sets out to save the young woman he’d found in the forest from the bandaged mystery man.

With a debt owed to classic sci-fi stories like “By His Bootstraps” and “–All You Zombies–,” writer-director Nacho Vigalondo weaves a story about fate and destiny as one man tries to outrun his own past — literally. And while it lacks a lot of the gore of a traditional slasher film, the spine-tingling nature of the chase, and Hector’s repeated attempts to stop a murder, make it ideal for horror fans looking for something with a strange twist.

Some time loop movies hook you right away with the mystery of continually repeating events. “Triangle” goes a different route, telling what seems to be a horror story involving a deadly killer before revealing its time loop premise midway through. Melissa George plays Jess, one of a group of friends who encounter a storm while out at sea on a boat. When they get a strange, unexplainable distress signal from an unknown craft, it sets in motion a series of events that may never end.

Unable to find the person who sent the distress signal, the friends find refuge on an abandoned ocean liner. When a masked killer starts picking them off, though, it becomes clear that something odd is going on … especially when they meet duplicates of themselves that seem to want them dead. As the bodies begin to pile up — quite literally — the mystery only deepens, and before long, they notice that their own actions are creating the very situation they are stuck in.

Like “Until Dawn,” “The Cabin in the Woods” takes a paint-by-numbers horror story and gives it a bizarre, sci-fi twist. Intentionally aping classic horror tropes, the picture begins with a gaggle of young adults descending upon a remote cabin for a weekend of debauchery, only to be picked off by an unseen killer.

Our protagonists all fit into the usual stereotypes, and in typical slasher movie fashion, they even have an ominous run-in with a mysterious stranger who foreshadows their doom. But that’s where “The Cabin in the Woods” breaks from the mold, as the longer they stay, the deeper the slowly unraveling mystery gets, with strange forces far beyond their control at play.

Receiving high praise from critics and audiences alike, “The Cabin in the Woods” is arguably the best satire of the horror genre ever put to film — because it’s played for far more than laughs, with genuine thrills, spills, and chills. While we won’t dive too deep into spoilers, as the twists and turns this one takes are best experienced fresh, just know that there’s some decidedly meta themes that are the core of what makes the film so great. And while we can tell you that it isn’t time travel working against our heroes, like “Until Dawn,” “The Cabin in the Woods” sees an ensemble cast in a desperate bid for survival with an equally unexpected twist.

If there’s only one true comp for “Until Dawn,” it might be 2017’s “Happy Death Day,” a movie that took over a decade to hit theaters. The Blumhouse film follows Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), a wild, debaucherous college student who is always getting into trouble. She parties hard, is having an affair with her professor, and on her birthday, guess what? She gets killed by a shadowy man in a mask … and then she wakes up.

That’s right, Tree somehow awakens after her own murder on her birthday, alive and well. Without any explanation as to why, she is forced to relive her own death day over and over. Tree must figure out how to escape the time loop, but to do it, she’ll have to discover the identity of her murderer and learn a little bit about herself in the process.

As much a mystery as it is a slasher film, “Happy Death Day” is like a mashup of “Until Dawn” and “Groundhog Day.” Admittedly, with a PG-13 rating, the film tones down the violence a bit and plays with the comedic nature of its premise. At the same time, its somewhat more tame rating also makes it perfect for a watch with the family — and the fact that there’s a sequel, “Happy Death Day 2U,” means you can make a whole evening of it. 

Whether it’s the masked killer, the time loop, or the “survive the night” premise, there are many ways to compare other movies to “Until Dawn.” But “The Night House” might be the most unique. In the film, we meet Beth Parchin (Rebecca Hall), a woman picking up the pieces of her life after her husband’s suicide. Living in a picturesque but rural lakehouse, her isolation allows her time to find out more about her late husband, which leads to uncomfortable questions the more she learns. It turns out he hid far more from her than she could have ever expected. At the same time, she begins to notice things she never did before — the most disturbing of which is what seems to be an exact duplicate of her and the home she lives in across the water.

A mind-bending, trippy story about loss that will have you questioning your own reality, the mystery at the heart of “The Night House” is punctuated by some truly chilling moments that make it more than your average thriller. Directed by David Bruckner — who’d previously directed the horror fan favorite “The Ritual” — “The Night House” is modern horror at its best, and distinct from both his previous works and “Until Dawn” in many ways. But if you’re willing to check out a quality title that similarly plays with the rules of time and space, “The Night House” is one you absolutely can’t miss.