Movies Like Gerald's Game That Will Thrill Any Horror Fan

There have been a boatload of Stephen King adaptations, and while some have risen to the heights of cinema royalty (like Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," Rob Reiner's "Stand by Me" or Frank Darabont's "The Shawshank Redemption"), many others have left something to be desired (1995's "The Langoliers," 1990's "Graveyard Shift," 2004's "Riding the Bullet").

So, you'd be forgiven for raising your eyebrows if someone told you one of the best Stephen King adaptations is a direct-to-Netflix film. Luckily for King fans with access to the streaming service, "Gerald's Game" is indeed an intelligent, engaging adaptation, and proof that it pays to pair King's prose with filmmakers like writer/director Mike Flanagan.

Adapting a King premise long considered unfilmable, "Gerald's Game" is focused on a wife and a husband (Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood) who have planned a romantic weekend getaway to breathe new life into their failing marriage. He's brought along handcuffs, she doesn't know about it — and the kinky surprise soon turns into a nightmare. Limited in character and locations yet somehow never claustrophobic, "Gerald's Game" defies its limitations to deliver an engaging, terrifying, emotional viewing experience.

If you enjoyed "Gerald's Game" and are looking for similar films that scratch the suspense itch, we've got you covered. From movies that echo the claustrophobia and survivalism themes of "Gerald's Game" to other excellent King adaptations and gems from Flanagan, here are ten film fans of "Gerald's Game" should check out.

While "Gerald's Game" is about a woman's inner strength and survival instincts, its impetus is a marriage on the rocks. 

Such themes lend themselves to what just might be the definitive film about divorce. Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 masterpiece is many things: a national allegory, a treatise on grief, and most obviously, a nightmarish study of fragmented relationships. "Possession" follows a young woman, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), who suddenly abandons her husband Mark (Sam Neill) and young son without any apparent reason. Devastated at the prospect of infidelity, Mark digs deeper. 

What he finds is much slimier, alien, and bizarre than any tryst he may have imagined in his head. Featuring not one, but two incredible performances by Adjani (to make matters worse for Mark, doppelgängers abound), "Possession" also features swirling, disorienting cinematography courtesy of French DP Bruno Nuytten. Cinematic insanity that must be seen to be believed, the less you know about "Possession" the better (not that piecemeal plot details can prepare you for the atmospheric totality Żuławski has in store).

If you came to "Gerald's Game" without reading Stephen King's novel, you may have had questions about ghosts, visions, memories and the blurred lines between them. The ambiguities are terrifying and intriguing, two emotions key to the appeal of the gothic genre.

Enter: "The Others," a 2001 English-language film directed by Chilean director Alejandro Amenábar. The film follows Grace (Nicole Kidman), a buttoned up mother who diligently looks after her two young children, both of whom suffer from light sensitivity. When bizarre events lead Grace to suspect her dark-shrouded house is haunted, her first concern is her kids, who seem especially disturbed by the ghostly presence. If you like that chilly feeling of not knowing exactly what's real and what isn't, "The Others" is a veritable nesting doll of gaslighting, changing circumstances, and rug pulls. It would make a terrific double feature with "Gerald's Game," although you might not want to plan on going to sleep soon after your viewing party.

As "Gerald's Game" progresses, the mind of its main character begins to conjure up memories from her past to help her survive, both mentally and physically. These helpful (if sometimes mocking and mean-spirited) aspects of her psyche take the form of herself, her husband Gerald, and later, herself as a child. While the apparitions manifest in response to her acute trauma, she relies on both their company and advice to survive.

In "Images," the 1972 psychological horror film directed by New Hollywood superstar Robert Altman, Cathryn (Susannah York) is contending with a similar mental breakdown, albeit with far more tragic results. Cathryn has a hard time teasing out reality from her hallucinations, as her schizophrenia is getting the better of her. And as her mental state comes apart like a rotten rope, she has a harder and harder time determining if the people who come in and out of her life are flesh and blood or figments of her imagination. Hallucinogenic, trippy, and uncanny in its representation of a fracturing mind, "Images" boasts a quiet terror that is hard to shake even after the credits roll.

Ben Young's thriller might not have broken any box-office records, but it's the kind of movie that you need to see once — and then will never, ever want to watch again. In a good way.

Bluntly put: the film is an unflinching look at a young Australian girl (Ashleigh Cummings) abducted by a predatory couple (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) who proceed to torture her in their suburban home. To say it's hard to watch is putting things delicately. But if you are going to tell a story like this, refusing to sugar coat things is the fairest way of treating the subject matter with due severity. Without ever feeling exploitative, "Hounds of Love" loosely charts a pathology of the captors, without going so far as to unnecessarily humanize them. Instead, the flick lets us in on this horrific nightmare to show that bogeymen are often just people; hurt and damaged yes, but banal in a terrifying way.

This is, ultimately, one of the theses of "Gerald's Game": that what goes bump in the night is no monster, but a neighbor, a partner, a family member; that under the cheap rubber mask there's always some hurt, angry individual looking for a way to regain a sense of control and power.

"Gerald's Game" helmer Mike Flanagan has overseen a number of cinematic adaptations of Stephen King's work, carving out a space for himself as one of the preeminent page-to-screen directors of King's novels. But "Gerald's Game" has a great deal in common with one of Flanagan's non-Stephen King projects: 2016's "Hush." 

Released on Netflix after its premiere at South by Southwest, "Hush" presents an enticing (and spine-tingling) spin on the home invasion genre. The film follows Maddie Young (played by Flanagan's co-writer Kate Siegel), an author rendered deaf and mute after a bacterial infection at a young age. Living in a cabin in the woods may be no problem for Maddie, but her disability, and her isolated home, prove particularly challenging when a masked man (John Gallagher Jr.) arrives wielding a crossbow. Unable to hear and unable to call for help, Maddie seems to be the perfect victim. Luckily, much like Jessie of "Gerald's Game," Maddie is grossly underestimated, both by the audience and the masked man prowling outside.

One thing "Gerald's Game" pulls off exceedingly well is teasing drama, suspense, and satisfaction out of the resourcefulness of its lead, who faces incredible odds. Drawing from its tension-filled predecessors (including, but not limited to, Terence Young's anxiety riddled "Wait Until Dark"), "Hush" also features one of the greatest on-screen cats of the 21st Century. So if you watched "Gerald's Game" and couldn't help but enjoy the heck out of that German shepherd, good news: Mike Flanagan is a genius when it comes to drawing killer performances out of animals.