American NightmareMovies like American Nightmare
- Key Features:
- Serial killer, Cat and mouse, Psychological horror, Dark secrets, Fear, Violence-high, Mystery, Radio, Sinister plot, Young adult
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Thrill-seekers, Mystery enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread
American Nightmare

A deranged female serial killer stalks seven young people whom phone a radio call-in show to discuss their darkest fears and a night-long game of cat-and-mouse is put into motion by the darkly sinister-looking murderess.
American Nightmare
Rod leads a radio show dedicated to horror. Until suddenly the announcer begins to receive strange calls from a child who desperately asks for help. At first thinks that it is a bad joke until he discovers that this is not the case. These calls hide a dark secret…

After a massive party one evening, 17-year-old Tina begins experiencing nightmares in which she is haunted by an unusual creature.

On Halloween night at a horror theme park, a costumed killer begins slaying innocent patrons who believe that it's all part of the festivities.

While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that's dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls' boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game.

A young student is haunted by recurring dreams of her mother murdering her father, but her nightmare is just beginning as she tries to prove to her loved ones that she is not insane.

Teenage friends Kit and Libby make prank phone calls for fun but then find themselves involved in a brutal double murder committed by one of their targets.

Sue Ann is a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own.

A group of teenagers spend the night in a furniture shop for a graduation party. When one of them talks her boyfriend into a game of hide-and-seek, a psycho killer starts hunting them down one by one.

Kimberly, a teenager suffering from agoraphobia, has not left the house since her mother's unsolved murder. On the eve of Thanksgiving, she begins to suspect that the safe harbor of home and her doting father may be a dangerous mirage.

Nicole Walker always dreamed of being swept away by someone special — someone strong, sexy and sensitive who would care for her more than anything else in the world. David is all that and more: a modern-day knight who charms and seduces her, body and soul. But her perfect boyfriend is not all he seems to be. His sweet facade masks a savage, dark side that will soon transform Nicole's dream into a nightmare.

A student's chances of getting into a good college hang in the balance when inappropriate photos of her are posted on the Internet.

A collection of short stories. In one a woman who leaves her house late at night to drive to the store while a killer is loose encounters some problems. In the second an arcade whiz kid's obsession with a game leads to deadly consequences. In the third a small town priest loses his faith and decides to leave town, but in the desert is stalked by a mysterious black pick-up truck. In the final story, a family's problem with a rat is larger than they think.

When Susan was a little girl, she rejected the Valentine of a lovestruck classmate. Decades later, she’s come to the hospital for a routine medical examination, and finds herself trapped in a bizarre nightmare, made all the worse as her vengeful childhood valentine, disguised among the hospital staff, begins murdering everyone in his path as a means of proving his undying ‘romantic’ obsession…

On Halloween, a group of friends encounter an extreme haunted house that promises to feed on their darkest fears. The night turns deadly as they come to the horrifying realisation that some nightmares are real.

Fiona Wagner, a journalism student, tracks a cold-blooded killer with the help of her detective father and a therapist.

A series of down-on-their-luck individuals enter the decrepit and spine-chilling Rialto theater, only to have their deepest and darkest fears brought to life on the silver screen by The Projectionist – a mysterious, ghostly figure who holds the nightmarish futures of all who attend his screenings.

After witnessing a brutal murder on Halloween night, a young woman becomes the next target of a maniacal entity.

A homicide detective teams up with a criminal profiler to catch a serial killer whose crimes are inspired by the children's game, Hangman.

Rachel is a criminology student hoping to land a position as a teacher's assistant for professor Robert Starkman. She's sure this position will pave the way to an FBI career, and she's willing to do anything to obtain it -- including killing her classmates. The school psychiatrist, Dr. Daniels, becomes aware that Rachel is insane, but Rachel is skilled at her dangerous game of death and identity theft.

While a group of young actors rehearse a new musical about a mass murderer, a notorious psychopath escapes from a nearby insane asylum.

When her mother is killed in a mysterious house fire, rebellious teen Debbie Strand is sent to live with her grandmother, where she becomes even more unhinged. She develops an intense crush on her hunky creative writing teacher, Peter Rinaldi, but her numerous attempts at seduction end in failure. Soon Peter's friends start turning up dead, and he fears that his fiancée, Marilyn, may be Debbie's next victim.

Strippers in Manhattan are being stalked and murdered by a psycho. A hard-nosed police detective and a conflicted ex-boxer-turned-private-eye, hired by the strip club owners, set out to find him before he strikes again.

Bound together by a desire to play "Mazes and Monsters," Robbie and his four college classmates decide to move the board game into the local cavern. Robbie loses his mind, and the line between reality and fantasy fuse into a harrowing nightmare.

A young rock band, half from England and half from the US, drop out of college and move to the Sunset Strip to chase their dreams.

A seductive teen becomes vindictive when her boyfriend tries to end the relationship.

When six friends fly off on a weekend getaway and are suddenly plagued by engine trouble, they're forced to land on a remote island. Looking for shelter, they're grateful to encounter Ma and Pa and their children - an eccentric family living in the island's backwoods. But what begins as simple hospitality turns into a terrifying race for survival as the friends start disappearing one by one ... and turning up dead.

Twins Todd and Terry seem like sweet boys -- that is, until one of them takes an axe to the face of a fellow patron at the local drive-in.

At a seedy theater in a sleepy suburban town, a group of friends get together for a midnight screening of an early 1970s horror film, unaware that the director has something more in store for them.

Three socially awkward sorority girls invite three fraternity pledges over for a night of fun, but when the group holds a séance, the girls find themselves possessed by a shaman who transforms them into lustful, uninhibited succubi.

On Halloween night a group of college students get trapped in a mysterious board game that brings their darkest secrets and fears to life, where they must play to escape…and win to survive.

A detective tries to track down a masked killer who reappears every Halloween to wreak bloody havoc.

A masked killer targets six college kids responsible for a prank gone wrong three years earlier and who are currently throwing a large New Year's Eve costume party aboard a moving train.

Passengers on a murder mystery train that crashes into a river must decide whether to risk waiting for help in the wreckage or take their chances in the murky depths below.

Beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

A psychology student who experienced night terrors as a child must face the chilling realization that her nightmares were not all in her head.

Returning from vacation, the Miller family find their home has been broken into. After cleaning up the mess they continue with their lives, shaking off the feeling of being violated. But little do they know the nightmare has just begun.

Michael is a young boy living in a typical 1950s suburbanite home... except for his bizarre and horrific nightmares, and continued unease around his parents. Young Michael begins to suspect his parents are cooking more than just hamburgers on the grill outside, but has trouble explaining his fears to his new-found friend Sheila, or the school's social worker.

A young Mexican woman crosses the border in search of the American dream, only to instead find her worst nightmare lying within.

After a series of brutal slayings, a teen and her friends take on an evil force that's plagued their notorious town for centuries.

Rebellious teen Amy defies her parents by going to a trashy carnival that has pulled into town. In tow are her boyfriend, Buzz, and their friends Liz and Richie. Thinking it would be fun to spend the night in the campy "Funhouse" horror ride, the teens witness a murder by a deformed worker wearing a mask. Locked in, Amy and her friends must evade the murderous carnival workers and escape before it leaves town the next day.

Publisher Will Atenton quits a lucrative job in New York to relocate his wife, Libby, and their daughters to a quaint town in New England. However, as they settle into their home the Atentons discover that a woman and her children were murdered there, and the surviving husband is the town's prime suspect. With help from a neighbor who was close to the murdered family, Will pieces together a horrifying chain of events.

A teenage boy is haunted in his dreams by deceased child murderer Freddy Krueger, who is out to possess him in order to continue his reign of terror in the real world.

Best friends Emily and Lesley go on a road trip to the desert. When Emily decides to get off the highway and take a "short cut," they become the target of a relentless and psychotic trucker who forces them to play a deadly game of cat and mouse.

During a live punk-rock New Year's Eve TV programme, the presenter gets a phone call from a psycho calling himself "Evil" saying that when New Year's strikes in each US time zone, he will murder someone.

In this deadly game of cat and mouse, Roland Wolf is writing a book on the life of game show host Christian Legagneur--or is he?

Teenagers in a small town are dropping like flies, apparently in the grip of mass hysteria causing their suicides. A cop's daughter, Nancy Thompson, traces the cause to child molester Fred Krueger, who was burned alive by angry parents many years before. Krueger has now come back in the dreams of his killers' children, claiming their lives as his revenge. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, must devise a plan to lure the monster out of the realm of nightmares and into the real world...

A group of teenagers at a party find themselves being stalked by a maniacal killer in a Santa Claus costume.

A young couple's dream of starting a family shatters as they descend into the depths of paranoia and must struggle to survive an evil presence that wants nothing more than their very own lives.

With a serial strangler on the loose, a bookkeeper wanders around town searching for the vigilante group intent on catching the killer.

The pregnant Alice finds Freddy Krueger striking through the sleeping mind of her unborn child, hoping to be reborn into the real world.

On her bachelorette-party weekend with friends in New Orleans, Tara falls for the darkly-sexy bartender Patrick. Waking in his bed the next morning, Tara instantly regrets her unfaithfulness and flies back home to her fiancé. But her secret flame becomes a full-on fire when Patrick shows up at her house and begins stalking her every move. He spirals into madness and delusion, determined to have Tara no matter what the cost.

A college professor teaching a course called "The Psychology of Fear" brings his students (including a psychic) to his home, one dark and stormy night to tell scary stories. The first involves a young couple whose car breaks down by an old, abandoned house. The second has four trendy teenage girls getting lost in a bad part of town and chased by a pack of vicious dogs. Last, a woman on crutches confronting a stalker at the answering service where she works the night shift.

A cocksure, road-raging family man finds himself pursued and terrorized by the vengeful van driver he chooses to tailgate.

A high-end musical theater camp is terrorized by a bloodthirsty killer who hates musical theater.

As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.

Angela is throwing a decadent Halloween party at New Orleans' infamous Broussard Mansion. But after the police break up the festivities, Maddie and a few friends stay behind. Trapped inside the locked mansion gates, the remaining guests uncover a horrifying secret and soon fall victim to seven vicious, blood-thirsty demons.

A college student unwittingly releases terrifying entities from her school's past via a Halloween-themed computer meme.

When two friends open a Halloween fun house on Devil's Night it is all fun and games until their former sorority sisters begin to arrive. These six sisters are confronted by their past as the night spins out of control.

A serial killer murders a girl from his neighborhood. The residents begin to suspect him one by one, as he tries to cover his tracks and plans another kill before escape.

A ferocious, misogynistic, and morally deprived serial killer is active in Las Vegas. Obsessed with the collapse of the Twin Towers, and with Nazi tendencies, he even targets underage girls.

When a group of naive teens working at a movie theater in a small Christian town discover a mysterious film hidden in its basement, they unleash an alluring succubus who gives them a sex education…written in blood.

Teenagers Nancy, Quentin, Kris, Jesse and Dean are all neighborhood friends who begin having the same dream of a horribly disfigured man who wears a tattered sweater and a glove made of knives. The man terrorizes them in their dreams, and the only escape is to wake up. But when, one by one, they start dying violently, the friends realize that what happens in the dream world is real, and the only way to stay alive is to stay awake.

When five hardcore Internet gamers are invited to a special party thrown by the website Hellworld, they endure a night of unspeakable terror.

A suburban housewife learns that she has psychic connections to a serial killer, and can predict this person's motives through her dreams.

A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.

Three sorority pledges are tasked with ensuring that the gals of Sigma Alpha Pi throw a killer party at an abandoned fraternity house. Unfortunately a vengeful spirit decides to take the killer epithet literally

A young medical student struggling to pay tuition is drawn into the shady world of underground body-modification.

As the Keenans try to bring their family closer together, they unwittingly enter themselves into a game of life or death. With four deranged killers patrolling the halls of their hotel and competing for the most creative kills, the odds are definitely stacked against them.

A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.

Young Penny goes on a retreat with her psychologist; the intention is to help her overcome her phobia, an intense fear of cars. Unexpected events find her in a nightmarish situation where her worst fears come true.

A beautiful lonely girl named Melissa tries to make new friends from a town she's currently living in. The only problem is, each of the boys that she spends time with end up brutally murdered. Her sixteenth birthday is on the way, but Melissa turns out to be a suspect when it seems she's the last person who has seen her boyfriends alive.

Technology brings us closer. Or perhaps it brings strangers, a little too close. But how much can you really trust someone? With a new ride share service, you never know who will be getting in a car with. Or if you'll ever get out.

In a small New Mexico town, teenager Hilary gets into a fender bender and innocently exchanges her personal information with the other driver, a terrifying and bizarre serial killer who stalks the country’s endless miles of roads and streets with his old rusty car, hungrily searching for his next unsuspecting victim.

A college professor wakes up to find his wife has not returned home, then struggles to understand her disappearance.

Six young actresses auditioning for a movie role at a remote mansion are targeted by a mysterious masked murderer.

A deranged, misogynistic killer assaults a journalist. When he discovers that she survived the attack, he follows her to the hospital to finish her off.

When a young boy contracts a mysterious illness, his mother must decide how far she will go to protect him from terrifying forces in her past.

A young woman with a troubled past takes a job at recently closed down hospital. Working the night shift alone she begins to experience a series of unsettling events that lead her to believe that the hospital may be connected to a number of recent murders in the area. To uncover the truth she will have to revisit the past behind the walls of Psych:9.

A year after the murder of her mother, a teenage girl is terrorized by a masked killer who targets her and her friends by using scary movies as part of a deadly game.

Tired of scaring humans every October 31 with the same old bag of tricks, Jack Skellington, the spindly king of Halloween Town, kidnaps Santa Claus and plans to deliver shrunken heads and other ghoulish gifts to children on Christmas morning. But as Christmas approaches, Jack's rag-doll girlfriend, Sally, tries to foil his misguided plans.

When five sorority girls inadvertently cause the murder of one of their sisters in a prank gone wrong, they agree to keep the matter to themselves and never speak of it again, so they can get on with their lives. This proves easier said than done, when after graduation a mysterious killer goes after the five of them and anyone who knows their secret.

Young babysitter Amanda arrives at the Lloyd residence to spend the evening looking after their young son. Soon after the Lloyds leave, a series of frightening occurrences in the gloomy old house have Amanda's nerves on edge. The real terror begins, however, when the child's biological father appears after recently escaping from a nearby mental institution.

Mikey just needs a good stable home. He's bounced from foster home to foster home his whole life. He finally lands himself with a new loving family, but their perfect little child is not what he appears to be. His previous caretakers all died of mysterious "accidents" that weren't really accidents at all. Mikey is a cold blooded killer, and it doesn't take long for him to aim his sights on his new adoptive family and anyone else who stands in his way.

After accidentally knocking her best friend off a roof, Alyce is haunted by guilt and delves into a brutal nightmare wonderland of sex, drugs and violence, her mind tearing itself apart… along with anyone else who gets in her way.

A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.

A man who runs an apartment house for women is the demented son of a Nazi surgeon who has the house equipped with secret passageways, hidden rooms and torture and murder devices.

Ten years after he brutally murdered two girls, a killer escapes from a mental institution and returns to his turf, the theme park attraction called Dark Ride. About to crash his path are a group of college kids on a road trip who stumble across the park.

A radio talk show host unravels a conspiracy about encounters with mysterious beings known as The Shadow People and their role in the unexplained deaths of several hundred victims in the 1980s.

A picture-perfect family is torn apart after Tyler finds a cache of disturbing images in his father's possession. He begins to suspect that the man he trusts most in the world may be responsible for the murder of 13 women ten years prior.

A schoolteacher with a phobia of hospitals finds herself searching for her boyfriend inside one while teaming up with a man suffering the same ordeal that she's in.

A masked maniac terrorizes the same small community where a murderer known as the Phantom Killer struck decades earlier.

After a governor issues an executive order to arrest the children of undocumented immigrants, the detained youth are offered an opportunity to have their charges dropped by volunteering to provide care to the elderly. Once inside the elder care facility, however, they discover more twisted secrets than they could have possibly imagined.

In a small town in Wisconsin, a young teenage boy claims he has dreams of young women being brutally raped and murdered. A doctor and the local sheriff discover that the boy's dreams are real and that a sinister cult might be behind the brutal murders. They must track down the vicious killer, who may be the indestructible incarnation of a demon spawned from hell.

A demonic force has chosen Freddy Krueger as its portal to the real world. Can Heather Langenkamp play the part of Nancy one last time and trap the evil trying to enter our world?

A sadistic count tortures and murders his unfaithful wife and her lover, then removes their hearts from their bodies. Years later, the count remarries and the new wife experiences nightmares and hauntings.

When four bodies are discovered among the industrial decay and urban grime of New York City, brash young detective Mike Reilly teams with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging onto a website called feardotcom.

After a hard day of volleyball at the beach, a teen whose parents are away decides to have a slumber party with her girlfriends. Their boyfriends predictably show up to scare them, but a stranger from the beach is also seen lurking around the house. Soon the group begins experiencing an attrition problem.

Admitted to Mt. Abaddon Hospital for a routine procedure, George Grieves discovers that his condition is much more serious and complicated than originally expected; and as his own fears begin to manifest around him, he learns that Mt. Abaddon is not a place where people come to get better... it is a place where people come to die.

Six friends go to party for a week during the "Sneekweek". But they are haunted by a secret from their past.
