Andy Muschietti’s two-part IT adaptation works because Pennywise is only half the story. Bill Skarsgård’s shape-shifting clown supplies the nightmare fuel, but the Losers’ Club gives the horror movies their heart. Watching a group of lonely kids find one another while confronting something the adults of Derry either cannot or will not see turns IT into far more than a monster movie.

That combination is part of what makes Stephen King adaptations so difficult to replicate. His horror frequently grows out of childhood trauma and communities where something feels wrong long before the supernatural explanation arrives. IT Chapter Two adds another layer by asking what happens when those frightened children grow up without ever truly escaping what happened to them.

The best movies to watch after IT therefore, aren’t simply other films with scary monsters. Some recreate the chemistry of young friends facing danger together, while others capture Derry’s sense of a community hiding something rotten beneath the surface. A few come directly from King himself. All 10 understand that coming-of-age horror works best when audiences care about the people being frightened long before the monster appears.

The Lost Boys (1987)

Santa Carla looks like a sun-soaked beach town when Michael and Sam Emerson arrive with their newly single mother, but the fictional California community has a serious vampire problem. Michael becomes entangled with David and his dangerously charismatic group, while Sam teams up with self-appointed vampire hunters Edgar and Alan Frog to figure out why people keep disappearing.

The Lost Boys has considerably more teenage swagger than IT, but both movies understand how quickly young people recognize danger that adults dismiss. The Frog brothers bring a wonderfully scrappy “we have to solve this ourselves” energy, and the movie’s shift from an earlier, younger-skewing concept helped create the cult teen horror it ultimately became. The Frog brothers were originally envisioned very differently, but aging them up helped give the finished movie its unmistakable attitude.

Fright Night (2011)

Charley Brewster has a problem that sounds ridiculous even when he says it aloud: the charming man who just moved in next door is a vampire. Colin Farrell’s Jerry operates almost completely in plain sight, confident that nobody will take a teenager seriously when he starts connecting his neighbor to the disappearances occurring around their Las Vegas suburb.

That makes the 2011 remake an especially good IT companion. Jerry and Pennywise are very different monsters, but both benefit from worlds in which the people most capable of recognizing danger are also the easiest to dismiss. Anton Yelchin keeps Charley vulnerable enough for the threat to matter, while David Tennant’s deeply reluctant vampire expert provides enough humor to stop the movie from becoming oppressively grim.

The Faculty (1998)

The students of Herrington High already know something is wrong with the adults running their school. They just don’t initially realize that “wrong” means their teachers are being taken over by alien parasites. Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty assembles a deliberately mismatched group of teenagers, including characters played by Elijah Wood, Josh Hartnett, Clea DuVall, Jordana Brewster, Laura Harris, and Usher.

The premise pushes one of IT‘s central ideas to its logical extreme: what happens when the adults aren’t merely ignoring the threat, but actually are the threat? The students who would normally have little reason to trust one another become their own improvised Losers’ Club. The movie has only grown in cult stature since 1998, and its mixture of teen drama, paranoia, and creature horror makes it a much better IT follow-up than its initial reputation might suggest.

Super 8 (2011)

J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 feels like a bridge between the Steven Spielberg adventures of the 1980s and the wave of nostalgic, kid-led genre stories that followed. Set in 1979, it begins with a group of friends making a homemade zombie film when they witness a catastrophic train crash outside their small Ohio town. Soon, strange disappearances and a military presence suggest something survived the wreck.

The creature provides the spectacle, but Super 8 is ultimately about the children. Joe is grieving his mother, Alice is dealing with an alcoholic father, and the group already has its own tensions before anything extraterrestrial arrives. Anyone who loved watching the Losers’ Club simply ride bikes, argue, and make one another laugh will understand the appeal. The danger matters because Abrams makes the friendships believable first.

Summer Of 84 (2018)

Summer of 84 removes the supernatural element while preserving much of what makes this kind of coming-of-age horror work. Teenager Davey Armstrong becomes convinced that his neighbor, police officer Wayne Mackey, is the serial killer responsible for the disappearances of local boys. His friends reluctantly agree to help him investigate.

The bikes, walkie-talkies, suburban streets, and retro soundtrack make the IT comparison unavoidable, but Summer of 84 eventually heads somewhere much nastier. The boys initially approach their investigation as though they are living through an exciting summer mystery. The movie gradually strips away that fantasy. Mackey is frightening precisely because there is no cosmic explanation for him, and the ending refuses to provide the comforting sense that childhood bravery makes everyone safe.

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark (2019)

Few movies outside King’s own work feel as naturally suited to Derry as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Set in 1968, the film follows Stella and her friends after they discover a book belonging to Sarah Bellows, a young woman whose horrific stories begin writing themselves. Worse, the new stories are about them.

The monsters prey on individual fears, which immediately recalls Pennywise’s favorite method of attack. The more important connection, however, is the town. Mill Valley has buried an ugly history, and the young characters are forced to uncover what previous generations chose to ignore. Guillermo del Toro’s influence as producer is evident in the creatures, but it is the mystery surrounding Sarah and the community that makes the movie feel particularly at home beside IT.

Fear Street Part One: 1994 (2021)

Shadyside might be the closest thing on this list to Derry without actually being Derry. The town has endured generations of murders and tragedy, all seemingly connected to the curse of accused witch Sarah Fier. When Deena, Sam, Josh, Kate, and Simon become targets of resurrected killers, they realize Shadyside’s terrible reputation may have a much more sinister explanation.

Fear Street Part One: 1994 is bloodier and more slasher-driven than IT, but the similarities only deepen as the trilogy continues. The characters are confronting a cycle of violence that generations of adults have learned to accept, and the history of Shadyside’s killers stretches back centuries. It feels like IT filtered through R.L. Stine, complete with young outsiders inheriting a supernatural mess their hometown never managed to solve.

The Black Phone (2022)

Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone replaces Pennywise with a frighteningly human child killer, although the supernatural still finds its way into the story. Finney Shaw is abducted by the Grabber and imprisoned in a basement containing a disconnected telephone. The phone starts ringing anyway, allowing Finney to communicate with boys who were murdered before him.

The IT connection becomes even more interesting because the source story was written by Joe Hill, King’s son. Both stories place frightened children in violent environments and allow the supernatural to become part of how they survive them. Ethan Hawke’s Grabber is disturbing because he cannot be dismissed as some unknowable cosmic entity, while The Black Phone’s ending turns Finney’s escape into the culmination of what the previous victims have taught him.

Doctor Sleep (2019)

Doctor Sleep approaches childhood horror from the other side. Decades after surviving the Overlook Hotel, an adult Danny Torrance is still dealing with what happened to him in The Shining. His life changes when he connects with Abra Stone, a young girl whose extraordinary abilities make her a target for Rose the Hat and the True Knot.

That structure makes Mike Flanagan’s film an especially strong recommendation for anyone who preferred the adult storyline in IT Chapter Two. Both movies are interested in the uncomfortable reality that surviving childhood trauma does not mean escaping it. Danny eventually has to confront the Shining abilities he spent years suppressing, while protecting a child from predators who literally feed on young people. Few movies capture King’s recurring preoccupation with fear, memory, and adulthood quite as effectively.

Stand By Me (1986)

Release Date

August 22, 1986

Runtime

89 minutes

Director

Rob Reiner

Producers

Andrew Scheinman

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  River Phoenix

  Chris Chambers

No supernatural creature appears in Stand By Me, yet no movie captures the emotional core of the Losers’ Club better. Rob Reiner adapted King’s novella The Body into the story of Gordie, Chris, Teddy, and Vern, four boys who set out to find the body of a missing child and gradually reveal far more about themselves along the way.

The similarities to IT go well beyond children walking through the woods together. Both stories treat friendship as a temporary refuge from grief, neglect, and adults who have already failed them. Stand By Me also understands the painful truth that the friendships capable of defining childhood do not necessarily survive adulthood, something its bittersweet ending makes impossible to forget. For anyone who cared more about the Losers’ Club than Pennywise, this remains the essential next watch.