6 2026 Horror Movies That Feel Like Stephen King Adaptations (But Aren't)
2026 has been a great year for horror, particularly original horror movies. As original as they are, more than a handful have to give a big thank you to Stephen King and the kind of horror that many of his novels and short stories have inspired. You'd even be forgiven for assuming these six were adaptations of his writings.
With over 65 novels and more than 200 stories to his name, you can probably find connections from his writing to just about any horror movie, but this list is looking at stronger links. Haunted houses, bad things happening to normal people, terrifying ghosts and monsters, gross-out violence, sexuality, and quiet heroism are all hallmarks of a Stephen King story.
In these six films, you'll find a parasitic fungus, a bug-eyed bunny, mind-altering cold desserts, wishes gone awry, an unwelcome hitchhiker, and a house with a mind of its own. Successful or not, they're all films that you could imagine King drawing up, a testament to his ubiquity for nearly 60 years.
Cold Storage
Cold Storage is a sci-fi horror comedy co-production between the United States and France and stars Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, and Liam Neeson, along with Sosie Bacon, Vanessa Redgrave, and Lesley Manville in supporting roles. David Koepp wrote the screenplay, based on his 2019 novel.
In the film, bioterror operatives Robert Quinn (Liam Neeson) and Trini Romano (Lesley Manville) investigate a decades-old downed space satellite that contains some kind of mutated fungus, capable of controlling the movements of animals and humans, both dead and alive.
It's a total B-movie throwback that isn't ashamed of its cornier conventions, and the violence and horror are perfectly tuned to the comedy. It's a little like The Stand with its "released pathogen" storyline, but is much more like King's early short stories, where mutant animals and rats feasted on unsuspecting people.
Hokum
Hokum is a classic, haunted hotel story, very much in line with something like The Shining. Instead of a large hotel in the Rocky Mountains, it's a bed and breakfast in Ireland. Instead of an alcoholic writer struggling to come to terms with his failures, it's an alcoholic writer struggling to forgive himself.
Instead of a ballroom of ghosts, it's just a few ghosts, and a witch too. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a depressed horror novelist who visits the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to dispose of his parents' ashes. While he's there, he learns from the employees that the top-floor honeymoon suite is permanently locked and is supposedly haunted by a witch.
"Hokum," Ohm says to the superstitious staff, but he quickly comes to realize there may indeed be something on that top floor. Incredibly atmospheric and dread-inducing, few films have such a strong sense of place save for director Damian McCarthy's other films, and The Shining, of course.
Ice Cream Man
In Stephen King's short story collection, Skeleton Crew, there are two short stories about a milkman with a mean streak. "Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)" and "Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game". Both feature a milkman named Spike who plants dangerous deliveries in his customers' orders and runs people off the road.
Ice Cream Man also explores the idea of the innocent shopkeeper in the neighborhood hiding a dark secret. Eli Roth directs the hyper-violent film about an ice cream man who sells dairy treats that turns the children who eat it into zombie-like murderers at the beck and call of the ice cream man.
Ice Cream Man took some heat when Roth admitted they used generative AI in some scenes, and the sloppy storytelling and uninspired writing have not done the film any favors with reviewers. Still, an innocent, all-American pastime like an ice cream truck turning into a violent mess is perfectly King.
Obsession
One of the best and most horrifying King conceits is the one where he puts a totally innocent character through hell. It's a Lovecraftian kind of story where someone is terrorized for no reason outside of their control. Obsession wields that idea through Nikki (Inde Navarrett), the antagonist and victim of Curry Barker's 2025 hit.
In Obsession, Bear Bailey (Michael Johnston) is a shy, young man with an unrequited crush on his co-worker and best friend Nikki. One evening, he makes a half-hearted wish with a mysterious "One Wish Willow" that Nikki loves him more than anything in the world, and before he can even toss the Willow away, Nikki is asking to come over.
It turns out that being the magical focus of a person above everything else, including bodily functions, is more of a horror show than it is a romantic comedy. What's even more horrifying is that a part of Nikki understands she's been subsumed by some other entity, and from her brief moments of lucidity, it doesn't sound like a fun time.
Passenger
Passenger, from 2026, is a supernatural horror film from André Øvredal, who has quietly directed some excellent horror movies over the past 16 years, including Trollhunter, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Passenger is the most King-aligned of any of these.
There are elements of King's short story, "The Road Virus Heads North" from Everything's Eventual, with the mysterious creature doggedly pursuing travelers. The film follows a couple, Tyler (Jacob Scipio) and Maddie (Lou Llobell), who have recently taken up the van life lifestyle.
While on the road, they encounter a brutal car crash and evidence of a mysterious entity. After leaving the crash, they realize the entity is now focused on them. It's a thrilling horror film where the scares keep ramping up as the couple keeps driving, and the inevitability of the entity is very King-coded.
The Last House
The Last House on Netflix is very much a smaller version of Under the Dome; unfortunately, its quality is more like that of the 2013 show than King's 2009 novel. Still, it has many King hallmarks, like a family bewildered by the horror they have to face, and the collapse of social norms being as dangerous an event as any monster.
In the film, married couple Ann (Greta Lee) and Jason (Wagner Moura) and their two children become trapped in their house during a storm. It's not just any storm, and five years later, they are still unable to open a door or break a window, and even if they could, the creatures outside would quickly devour them.
The Last House has a little of "The Mist" in it as well, with the claustrophobic aspects of the story. The Last House can't deliver as well as either of those Stephen King stories, but its strange ending certainly has echoes of King's notoriously offbeat ends to his books. THe performaces of Greta Lee and Wagner Moura are enough to keep things interesting at the very least.