The LighthouseMovies like The Lighthouse
- Key Features:
- Psychological horror, Isolation, Madness, Supernatural elements, Gothic horror, Paranoia, Slow burn, Seafaring, Historical setting, New England, 1870s, Black and white, Director-driven, Cerebral
- Tone:
- serious, stylized, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, Art house enthusiasts, Cerebral viewers
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Dread → Descent
The Lighthouse

Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity while living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.
The Lighthouse
Three lighthouse keepers on an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland discover something that isn't theirs to keep.

Pirates take over a lighthouse on a rocky island. They then execute a devious plan to cause ships to run aground, pillaging their wrecks. A lone member of the lighthouse crew survives, and he deperately fights their plot. A shipwrecked maiden that avoids the pirates slaughter soon complicates the situation.

Something lurks off the coast of Block Island, silently influencing the behavior of fisherman, Tom Lynch. After suffering a series of violent outbursts, he unknowingly puts his family in grave danger.

A wildlife volunteer on an uninhabited island off the British coast descends into a terrifying madness that challenges her grip on reality and pushes her into a living nightmare.

Trapped within an eerie mist, the residents of Antonio Bay have become the unwitting victims of a horrifying vengeance. One hundred years earlier, a ship carrying lepers was purposely lured onto the rocky coastline and sank, drowning all aboard. Now they're back – long-dead mariners who've waited a century for their revenge.

A lighthouse keeper and his wife living off the coast of Western Australia raise a baby they rescue from an adrift rowboat.

1840 and another ship crashes on the rocks of an almost deserted island in Scotland. Three sailors survive the wreck and make it to shore where the few locals take them in as they wait for the mainland boat to come for them. But the sailors' survival story has only just started as they uncover the strange past of the once vibrant island.

In 1630, a farmer relocates his family to a remote plot of land on the edge of a forest where strange, unsettling things happen. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, each family member's faith, loyalty and love are tested in shocking ways.

A gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

A young man who arrives at a remote island finds himself trapped in a battle for his life.

Thousands of birds flock into a seaside town and terrorize the residents in a series of deadly attacks.

Two couples on an oceanside getaway grow suspicious that the host of their seemingly perfect rental house may be spying on them. Before long, what should have been a celebratory weekend trip turns into something far more sinister.

In the heart of a city, the inhabitants of a tower wake up one morning to find that their building is shrouded in an opaque fog, obstructing doors and windows - a strange dark matter that devours anything that tries to pass through it. Trapped, the residents try to organize themselves, but to ensure their survival they gradually succumb to their most primitive instincts, until they sink into horror...

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.

Emma has a strong aversion towards her family’s new house, especially the attic. After moving in, she becomes miserable and reclusive. The rest of her family also seems unhappy and unsettled. The situation escalates one day when Emma is in the attic alone. All of a sudden someone who looks exactly like Emma attacks her viciously.

World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.

Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.

A lone fisherman on his daily run finds himself lost in a thick fog which proves impossible to navigate. The worst is yet to come when his encounter with a seemingly abandoned sailboat becomes a fight for survival against an enemy unknown.

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.

After a violent storm, a dense cloud of mist envelops a small Maine town, trapping David Drayton and his five-year-old son in a local grocery store with other local residents. They soon discover that the mist conceals deadly horrors that threaten their lives, and worse, their sanity.

A severely injured man and woman awake in an abandoned sanitarium only to discover that a sadistic caretaker holds the keys to their freedom and the horrific answers as to their true identity.

In a rambling, isolated house, Emily’s first night-shift as carer to an elderly dementia patient turns into a nightmare as she is tormented by a vengeful spirit and uncovers the house's dark secrets.

A group of friends seal themselves inside a secluded Cape Cod vacation home after a mysterious orange fog leaks from an old nearby factory. Once trapped, they quickly learn there is no escape.

A man's nervous breakdown causes him to leave his wife and live in his attic for several months.

Three friends head to the seafront for a drunken weekend, only to be imprisoned on the top floor of their holiday apartment by a malevolent paranormal force.

Shortly after moving into a dark, brooding mansion, a psychologist and his co-workers are terrorized by a horrible evil being.

The quiet life of Baker Dill, a fishing boat captain who lives on the isolated Plymouth Island, where he spends his days obsessed with capturing an elusive tuna while fighting his personal demons, is interrupted when someone from his past comes to him searching for help.

Lizzy is a tough, resourceful frontierswoman settling a remote stretch of land on the 19th-century American frontier. Isolated from civilization in a desolate wilderness where the wind never stops howling, she begins to sense a sinister presence that seems to be borne of the land itself, and when a newlywed couple arrive at a nearby homestead, their presence amplifies Lizzy's fears, setting into motion a shocking chain of events.

The Marquis d’Urfé finds refuge in the home of a strange family after becoming lost in a hostile forest while working as an emissary for the King of France.

After suffering a stroke, Judith moves into a historic nursing home, where she begins to suspect something supernatural is preying on the residents. With no one willing to believe her, Judith must either escape the confines of the manor, or fall victim to the evil that dwells within it.

A lone drifter suffering from partial memory loss accepts a job to look after a psychologically troubled woman in an abandoned house on an isolated island.

Ted and his family have just moved to the sleepy coastal town of Gull Island so that he can complete work on his thesis. Everything couldn’t seem more picturesque about their new, seaside home… that is, except for the increasing number of aggressively behaving birds.

The sadistic tale of a lonely, mentally handicapped boy who befriends his reflection in an antique mirror. This demonic creature orders him to go on a murderous rampage to kill the people he loves most.

A young couple travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.

An Australian couple takes a sailing trip in the Pacific to get over the recent loss of their son. While on the open sea, they come across a sinking ship with one survivor who is not at all what he seems.

A mentally unhinged factory worker must decide whether to listen to his talking cat and become a killer, or follow his dog's advice to keep striving for normalcy.

A man with an unknown disease travels to an island with his girlfriend where his relatives once lived, hoping to find a cure to his illness. Although his relatives were all thought to be dead, he finds them living underground.

The dark secrets of a seemingly peaceful island threaten to swallow up an orphaned student when he grows close to a mysterious new teacher.

John Hall is a drifter who wanders into a small town in Maine. He needs a job and decides to seek employment at the community's top business: a large textile mill. He is hired to work the "graveyard shift" -- from around midnight to dawn -- and, along with a few others, he is charged with cleaning out the basement. This task strikes the workers as simple enough, but then, as they proceed deeper underground, they encounter an unspeakable monstrosity intent on devouring them all.

When a teenager suddenly disappears without a trace, the case is assigned to an alcoholic police officer who maintains a complicated relationship with his own troubled teenage son, suspected of drug trafficking.

A romantic getaway for two troubled college sweethearts turns into a struggle for survival when unexpected guests – and the surrounding environment – exhibit signs of a mysterious infection.

A young woman slowly goes crazy after taking a job as the caretaker for an ancient New York home.

David Nau leads a band of modern day pirates who raid yachts and sail boats of people on vacation in the Caribbean. When reporter Blair Maynard and his son arrive to investigate the mystery of the disappearing boats, Nau and his band of raiders decide to induct them into their tribe.

A man who suspects his wife is cheating on him begins having nightmarish visions of an evil presence that he believes inhabits his house.

Townspeople of a small English village begin to die in a series of horrible accidents, and a Scotland Yard inspector arrives to investigate a mysterious local medium who records conversations with the dead.

The duty manager of a seaside cinema, who is struggling with her mental health, forms a relationship with a new employee on the south coast of England in the 1980s.

Having recently found God, self-effacing young nurse Maud arrives at a plush home to care for Amanda, a hedonistic dancer left frail from a chronic illness. When a chance encounter with a former colleague throws up hints of a dark past, it becomes clear there is more to sweet Maud than meets the eye.

During the final days at the Yankee Pedlar Inn, two employees determined to reveal the hotel's haunted past begin to experience disturbing events as old guests check in for a stay.

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.

While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

Over six tumultuous decades, three unwitting guests of a cursed New England home stumble upon a sinister secret dwelling beneath its floors - an eternal witch with an insatiable thirst for the flesh of the living.

Two families' idyllic ice-fishing vacation turns deadly when they awaken a creature beneath the frozen lake, forcing them to rely on each other if they want to make it safely back to land.

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.

An English slave trader is marooned on a remote tropical island, forced to fend for himself and deal with crushing loneliness.

In an isolated farmhouse, located in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by a mysterious wooden wall, Zac and Eva, two siblings gifted with extraordinary abilities, endure every day the wrath of their strict father while witnessing how a cruel sickness lurks their beloved mother.

A group of cooks at an asylum for the criminally insane get locked in with the inmates during a massive thunderstorm

The crew of a West of Ireland trawler—marooned at sea—struggle for their lives against a growing parasite in their water supply.

Strange cravings and hallucinations befall a young couple after seeking shelter in the home of an aging farmer and her peculiar son.

In the 19th century, a young widow named Eva manages a remote winter fishing outpost in an Arctic bay, which she inherited after her husband, Magnus, was shipwrecked. The nearest settlement is three days' march away and inaccessible due to deep snow on the mountain trails. The outpost faces a harsh and brutal winter with rapidly dwindling supplies. Eva and her crew are already living on bait as their fishing catch declines. One morning on the beach, they witness a Basque whaling ship sinking far out near the cliffs known as "the Teeth," which rise steeply from the sea. Eva now faces an impossible decision, as any attempt to rescue the survivors risks depleting the last supplies for her and her men even faster.

When a deadly secret rots the mind of a grieving widower, the decision to work alone on a deserted island morphs into a terrifying race to save his sanity and his life.

In 1905, a man travels to a remote island in search of his missing sister who has been kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult.

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.

A group of families on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly – reducing their entire lives into a single day.

A painter facing a creative block arranges to spend the weekend in the country at his mistress's villa. While staying there, his sanity begins to disintegrate.

When the quiet and amiable Vann Siegert drifts into town, no one suspects the evil that lies beneath the surface. Despite his easy charm, Vann is merely a reflection of what those he encounters want him to be. Soon, as locals start to disappear, it becomes clear that an eerie subtraction is at work in the sleepy hamlet.

Jack Slavin is an environmentalist with a heart condition who lives with his daughter, Rose, on an isolated island. While Jack fights against developers who wish to build in the area, he also craves more contact with other people. When he invites his girlfriend, Kathleen, and her sons, Rodney and Thaddius, to move in, Rose is upset. The complicated family dynamics makes things difficult for everyone in the house.

Police sergeant Neil Howie is called to an island village in search of a missing girl whom the locals claim never existed. The investigation is further complicated as Howie’s religious views clash with those of the island’s residents.

After a catastrophic car crash, a young woman wakes up in a survivalist's underground bunker, where he claims to have saved her from an apocalyptic attack that has left the outside world uninhabitable.

Jenn has washed ashore a small tropical island and it doesn’t take her long to realize she’s completely alone. She must spend her days not only surviving the elements, but must also fend off the malevolent force that comes out each night.

An art thief trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist doesn't go as planned. Locked inside with nothing but priceless works of art, he must use all his cunning and invention to survive.

Freddie, a volatile, heavy-drinking veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds some semblance of a family when he stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a new "religion" he forms after World War II.

In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to find a place to heal. But someone — or something — from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her, and what begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears.

A ragtag group barricade themselves in an old Pennsylvania farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls ravaging the Northeast.

A weekend boating party turns into a nightmare for a group of young Londoners when they stumble upon a terrifying secret hidden in the reeds.

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.

A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.

A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.

Two priests, one in crisis with his faith and the other confronting a turbulent past, must overcome their differences to perform a risky exorcism.

A horror-thriller in which a doctor and his teenage daughter are terrorized by flesh-eating zombies at a truck stop.

A young sailor falls in love with a mysterious woman performing as a mermaid on the local pier. As they become entwined, he comes to suspect the woman might be a real mermaid who lures men to a watery death during the full moon. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2007.

Karin hopes to recover from her recent stay at a mental hospital by spending the summer at her family's cottage on a tiny island. Her husband, Martin, cares for her but is frustrated by her physical withdrawal. Her younger brother, Minus, is confused by Karin's vulnerability and his own budding sexuality. Their father, David, cannot overcome his haughty remoteness. Beset by visions, Karin descends further into madness.

In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into animals and sent off into The Woods.

In the late 18th century, two newlyweds move into the stately mansion of the Fengriffen family. The young bride is victim of terrifying visions and apparitions, threatening her very sanity. A London psychiatrist comes to her help and uncovers the terrible secret that haunts the estate.

After freezing up under pressure in the emergency room, Dr. Cahill decides to spend a few months unwinding on a little Maine island where he immediately gets off on the wrong foot with the locals. Meanwhile, a body has washed up on shore infested with a strange type of carnivorous cockroach. But when Dr. Cahill tries to warn the townsfolk of the danger, they are naturally skeptical. Will they realize the truth before it's too late?

A group of archaeologists uncover a strange structure in Northern Canada, dating over ten thousand years before the present. The team finds themselves isolated when their communication systems fail and it's not long before they begin to feel the effects of the solitude.

In the 1930s, a young reverend and his family are forced to confront their worst fears when they discover their new home holds a horrifying secret.

Kristen, a troubled young woman, is captured by the police after burning down a farmhouse and is locked in the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. Soon, she begins to suspect that the place has a dark secret at its core and she's determined to find out what it is.

Walter and his neglected wife lure a young man into their Victorian home to escape a hurricane. When the man is charged with murder by Det. Jones, he must reveal the couple's wicked secrets to save himself.

A hospice nurse working at a spooky New Orleans plantation home finds herself entangled in a mystery involving the house's dark past.

Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren't prepared for the madness that lurks within.

A delirious young woman feels trapped in a remote mansion at the mercy of a madman.

After the owner's bankruptcy, the crew is stranded on a freighter for months. Dealing with the stress of isolation, seafarers gradually surrender to madness and terror.

A widowed child psychologist lives in an isolated existence in rural New England. When caught in a deadly winter storm, she must find a way to rescue a young boy before he disappears forever.

A cataclysmic event causes a man, who dreams of winning the lottery, to become stranded on an island with his co-workers.

On a romantic getaway to Iceland, a young American couple wake up one morning to discover every person on Earth has disappeared. Their struggle to survive and to reconcile the mysterious event lead them to reconsider everything they know about themselves and the world.

Four successful elderly gentlemen, members of the Chowder Society, share a gruesome, 50-year-old secret. When one of Edward Wanderley's twin sons dies in a bizarre accident, the group begins to see a pattern of frightening events developing.


