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Movies that feel like The Skeleton Key (2005)

If you loved The Skeleton Key, the closest films we have are Footprints on the Moon (1975), Noroi: The Curse (2005) and Next of Kin (1982). All three share The Skeleton Key's dread and unsettling feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 8 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on HBO Max, Shudder and ARROW and others, checked against today's data.

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

🍅 38% Rotten Tomatoes6.5 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Iain Softleycontemplativedreadunsettlingtwistytensedreamlike
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If The Skeleton Key hit the spot, these will too

Footprints on the Moon poster
Footprints on the Moon
1975 · dir. Luigi Bazzoni
6.6thriller · mystery · drama

Both are built on the same subject: dreams

The difference: Made in the 1970s, in a different era of the craft

Alice, a young translator, finds the real world slowly merging with her recurring nightmares as she tries to solve the puzzle of her recent memory loss. A postcard leads her to the island of Garma where the locals seems to know her. Is she who she thinks she is? And what significance does her dream of an astronaut abandoned on the moon have?

Noroi: The Curse poster
Noroi: The Curse
2005 · dir. Koji Shiraishi
6.8horror · mystery · thriller

Common ground: occult

The difference: Missing the stillness of The Skeleton Key

A documentary filmmaker explores seemingly unrelated paranormal incidents connected by the legend of an ancient demon.

Next of Kin poster
Next of Kin
1982 · dir. Tony Williams
🍅 100%6.2horror · mystery

The same preoccupation in both: haunted house

The difference: Critics rated this one higher still

After Linda inherits a retirement home, she witnesses a series of strange events which seem connected to a dark and unspeakable evil.

In the Mouth of Madness poster
In the Mouth of Madness
1995 · dir. John Carpenter
🍅 61%7.1horror · mystery · drama

Both land stillness and dread at once

The difference: Leans harder into fantasy than The Skeleton Key does

An insurance investigator visits a small town while looking into the strange disappearance of a popular horror novelist. He soon finds that the impact of the author’s books is far more than inspirational.

K-PAX poster
K-PAX
2001 · dir. Iain Softley
🍅 41%7.4science fiction · drama · mystery

Both are Iain Softley's work, and they rhyme

The difference: Not nearly as dread-soaked as The Skeleton Key

Prot is a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a far away planet. His psychiatrist tries to help him, only to begin to doubt his own explanations.

Marrowbone poster
Marrowbone
2017 · dir. Sergio G. Sánchez
🍅 49%6.7thriller · horror · mystery

One thread runs through both: attic

A young man and his three younger siblings are plagued by a sinister presence in the sprawling manor in which they live.

The Grudge poster
The Grudge
2004 · dir. Takashi Shimizu
🍅 41%5.9horror · mystery · thriller

Both keep coming back to the same thing: nurse

An American nurse living and working in Tokyo is exposed to a mysterious supernatural curse, one that locks a person in a powerful rage before claiming their life and spreading to another victim.

Red Riding Hood poster
Red Riding Hood
2011 · dir. Catherine Hardwicke
🍅 10%5.4thriller · drama · fantasy

Unsettling and twisty in the same breath

Valerie is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter, but her parents have arranged for her to marry another man. Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter plan to run away together when Valerie's older sister is killed by a werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. Panic grips the town as Valerie discovers that she has a unique connection to the beast--one that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect ... and bait.

The Nameless poster
The Nameless
1999 · dir. Jaume Balagueró
🍅 20%5.8thriller · mystery · horror

Both lean on tension more than on drama

The mutilated body of a six year old girl is found in a water hole. The girl is identified as the missing daughter of Claudia. However, only two peices of evidence could be used to identify her; a bracelet with her name on it near the crime scene, and the fact that her right leg was three inches longer than her left. All other methods of identification were removed from her body. Five years later Claudia, now addicted to tranquilizers, receives a phone call from someone claiming to be her daughter, asking for her mother to come find her before 'they' kill her. Other mysterious clues show up, further indicating that Claudia's daughter is indeed still alive, and very much in danger. Claudia, a run-down ex-cop, and a parapsychology reporter put together the clues to discover Angela's whereabouts

I Walked with a Zombie poster
I Walked with a Zombie
1943 · dir. Jacques Tourneur
🍅 85%7mystery · horror · drama

Common ground: plantation

A nurse in the Caribbean turns to voodoo in hopes of curing her patient, a mindless woman whose husband she's fallen in love with.

Malignant poster
Malignant
2021 · dir. James Wan
🍅 77%6.2horror · mystery

Common ground: dreams

Madison is paralyzed by shocking visions of grisly murders, and her torment worsens as she discovers that these waking dreams are in fact terrifying realities with a mysterious tie to her past.

Good Manners poster
Good Manners
2018 · dir. Marco Dutra
🍅 96%6.7fantasy · horror · mystery

Horror with a pulse of dream logic, in both cases

Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of São Paulo, is hired by mysterious and wealthy Ana as the nanny for her unborn child. The two women develop a strong bond, but soon Clara discovers a terrifying secret about the child.

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The best-reviewed films that share The Skeleton Key’s defining feeling.