SpaceMovies Like Hereditary
Looking for movies like Hereditary? Here are 10 films with similar devastating, slow-burn, terrifying vibes, matching themes, and the same emotional impact.
Last updated Oct 1, 2026
Best Movies Like Hereditary
The best movies like Hereditary are Midsommar, The Babadook, Rosemary's Baby, The Witch. Each shares the devastating, slow-burn, terrifying tone and explores similar themes of family trauma, grief, mental illness, the occult, fate.
If you loved Hereditary (2018) for its devastating family drama disguised as horror, Toni Collette's shattering performance, and scenes that stay with you for days, these 10 movies deliver a similar experience. We picked each one based on shared tone, themes, and emotional feel — not just surface-level genre tags.
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1. Midsommar
2019 HorrorWhere to watch MidsommarAfter a family tragedy, a grieving young woman joins her boyfriend and his friends at a remote midsummer festival in rural Sweden, where the friendly commune's rituals become increasingly disturbing. Written and directed by Ari Aster, the filmmaker behind Hereditary, it applies the same slow escalation to grief and a toxic relationship. The big difference is the setting, where most of the horror unfolds in bright daylight.
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2. The Babadook
2014 HorrorWhere to watch The BabadookA widowed mother struggling to raise her troubled young son finds a strange pop-up book about a figure called Mister Babadook, and their home is soon haunted by it. The Babadook shares Hereditary's interest in grief, exhaustion, and the resentment a parent cannot say aloud. Director Jennifer Kent works on a smaller scale, keeping the story tight around one mother and one child in a single house.
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3. Rosemary's Baby
1968 HorrorWhere to watch Rosemary's BabyA young wife moves with her actor husband into a New York apartment building, becomes pregnant, and grows convinced that their attentive elderly neighbors have plans for her baby. Hereditary owes a clear debt to this film's slow-burning paranoia and its secret group closing in on a family. Rosemary's Baby is more restrained and less graphic, building its dread through suspicion and small, unsettling details.
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4. The Witch
2015 HorrorWhere to watch The WitchIn 1630s New England, a Puritan family is exiled from their settlement and sets up a farm at the edge of a forest, where a baby vanishes and suspicion turns the family against itself. Like Hereditary, it is a story of a household destroyed from within by something evil and by its own fear. Robert Eggers keeps the period dialogue and the pace deliberate, so it rewards patience.
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5. The Exorcist
1973 HorrorWhere to watch The ExorcistWhen a young girl begins behaving violently and strangely, her desperate mother turns from doctors to priests, believing her daughter is possessed. Hereditary borrows the image of a parent watching helplessly as a child becomes something unrecognizable. The Exorcist is more of a battle between faith and evil, with priests at its center, and its shocks remain powerful decades later.
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6. It Follows
2014 HorrorWhere to watch It FollowsAfter a sexual encounter, a young woman learns she has been passed a curse: a slow-walking entity that can look like anyone will follow her until it kills her or she passes it on. It Follows does not deal with family or grief like Hereditary, but it builds a similarly relentless sense of dread from patient, wide-framed shots. It is the lightest on mythology here and the most purely atmospheric.
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7. The Conjuring
2013 HorrorWhere to watch The ConjuringParanormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren are called to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their Rhode Island farmhouse. Families under supernatural attack connect it to Hereditary, and director James Wan stages the scares with real skill. It is a more conventional haunted-house movie with clear heroes and jump scares, so it is a good pick for those who want something less bleak.
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8. Saint Maud
2019 HorrorWhere to watch Saint MaudA reclusive young hospice nurse who has recently found religion becomes fixated on saving the soul of her dying patient, a former dancer. Saint Maud matches Hereditary's way of tangling grief, faith, and mental collapse until the viewer cannot tell what is real. It is a compact character study with one central performance, and its horror is more psychological than supernatural.
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9. Lake Mungo
2008 HorrorWhere to watch Lake MungoAn Australian family whose teenage daughter drowned begins to notice strange things in photos and videos after her death, and the film presents the story as a documentary. Lake Mungo is a lesser-known gem that captures the same grief-stricken household as Hereditary, where the ghost story is really about how little we know the people we love. It relies on mood, not jump scares, and is quietly devastating.
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10. We Need to Talk About Kevin
2011 DramaWhere to watch We Need to Talk About KevinTilda Swinton plays a mother looking back on her strained relationship with her son, trying to understand what led him to commit a horrific act at his school. There is no supernatural element, yet it shares Hereditary's dread about a family where something has always been wrong and a mother's guilt over her child. It is a psychological drama told in fragments, harrowing in a very different way.
Why These Movies Are Similar to Hereditary
Hereditary is a family tragedy that slowly becomes a horror film: after a death in the family, a mother played by Toni Collette watches grief, inherited secrets, and something supernatural tear her household apart. Fans remember the suffocating dread and the sense that the family was doomed from the start. Midsommar comes from the same director, while The Babadook and The Witch are the closest in their focus on a family coming undone. The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby are the classics it draws from, Lake Mungo is a quieter hidden gem, and We Need to Talk About Kevin offers the same dread with no supernatural element.