65 Home Invasion Movies Make for This Comprehensive Horror Guide!

The label “home invasion” is actually fairly broad, when you’re using that term in direct relation to the genre. A masked lunatic could invade a home. An alien could invade a home. Two petty crooks could invade a home housing a small but resourceful child (if you can’t guess the film I’m referencing you should slap yourself in the face) all by his lonesome. Hell, even a ghost could invade a home. That diversity leaves it as something of a challenge when assembling a definitive guide to the sub-genre.

But I tried, because I love these films, and they almost always freak me out. I’m obviously not alone in this position, as the sub-genre is red hot right now, thankfully providing some reprieve from the abundance of found footage, exorcism and supernatural films that are still clogging the waterways.

If you’re anything like me, you’re going to love this list (which is assembled in no particular order). It’s the vacation from the norm that you know you’re needing!

1 You’re Next

Our Score: B+

Aubrey and Paul Davison welcome his family for a reunion in their isolated vacation house. Their sons Crispian comes with his girlfriend Erin; Felix with his girlfriend Zee; Drake with his wife Kelly; and their daughter Aimee comes with her boyfriend Tariq. When they are ready to have dinner, they are attacked by a stranger with a crossbow, and Drake is wounded by an arrow and Tariq dies. They discover that their cell phones are jammed and they are trapped in the house. Erin tries to protect the house, closing doors and windows, but the masked killers murder the members of the family. Are the killers lunatic? What is the motive for slaughtering the Davison family?

2 You Are Not Alone

Our Score: B-

Natalie is a college graduate visiting her hometown over the 4th of July. The night she arrives, she is stalked by a sociopathic killer.

3 Hush

Our Score: A+

A deaf writer who retreated into the woods to live a solitary life must fight for her life in silence when a masked killer appears at her window.

4 Intruder

Our Score: B-

During one of Oregon’s most violent storms, a young cellist seeks solitude and comfort in the safety of her large apartment, but soon realizes she might not be home alone. With the modern and simple tone of Paranormal Activity paired with the cinematic elegance of Hitchcock’s Rope, INTRUDER is a disturbing psychological thriller that will make you think twice about being home alone. Starring John Robinson (Elephant, Lords of Dogtown) and the rising Scottish actress Louise Linton (Lions for Lambs) in her first US leading role. Written and directed by Travis Zarwiny.

5 The Strangers

Our Score: A

After returning from a wedding reception, a couple staying in an isolated vacation house receive a knock on the door in the mid-hours of the night. What ensues is a violent invasion by three strangers, their faces hidden behind masks. The couple find themselves in a violent struggle, in which they go beyond what either of them thought capable in order to survive.

6 When a Stranger Calls (1979)

Our Score: C+/B-

High school student Jill Johnson is traumatized over an evening of babysitting by a caller who repeatedly asks, “Have you checked the children lately?” After notifying the police, Jill is told that the calls are coming from inside the house…

7 Funny Games (1997)

Our Score: B+

Two seemingly well-educated young men, who call each other Paul and Peter among other names, approach a family on vacation. They are, apparently, friends of the neighbors, and, at the beginning, their true intentions are not known, but soon, the family is imprisoned and tortured in its own house violently, which the viewers are forced mostly to imagine and to share a certain complicity with the criminals. It might be some kind of game with the lives of husband, wife, son, and dog, but why are they doing it?

8 Funny Games (2007)

Our Score: B+

In this English-language remake of a deconstruction in the way violence is portrayed in the media, a family settles into its vacation home, which happens to be the next stop for a pair of young, articulate, white-gloved serial killers on an excursion through the neighborhood.

9 Them AKA Ils

Our Score: A+

Clémentine, a teacher in a French School in Bucharest, lives with her husband, Lucas, in a remote real estate in Snagow. During the night, Clémentine is woken by weird noises outside their house, and Lucas sees their car being stolen. The lights are turned off, the phones are disconnected and they see that they are no longer alone. When weird lights appear outside, they hide in the cellar and try to ask for help from what could be a dreadful night of pure terror.

10 The Blood Lands

Our Score: B-/B

It’s Ed and Sarah’s first night at their new home – an isolated farmhouse on the Scottish borders. This should be a new beginning away from their stressful London lives. And at first it is; come sunset they fall in love all over again on a wander in the woods. But as darkness falls, Sarah suspects they’re not alone, Ed goes to investigate and quickly, the evening becomes a nightmare. It suddenly dawns on them; they do not belong here. And they certainly aren’t welcome either….

11 Black Christmas (1974)

Our Score: A+

It’s time for Christmas break, and the sorority sisters make plans for the holiday, but the strange anonymous phone calls are beginning to put them on edge. When Clare disappears, they contact the police, who don’t express much concern. Meanwhile Jess is planning to get an abortion, but boyfriend Peter is very much against it. The police finally begin to get concerned when a 13-year-old girl is found dead in the park. They set up a wiretap to the sorority house, but will they be in time to prevent a sorority girl attrition problem?

12 Inside

Our Score: A

Four months before Christmas, Sarah and Matthieu Scarangelo were in a car crash, of which Sarah and her unborn baby were the only survivors. On Christmas Eve, Sarah stays home alone, where she grieves her husband and prepares to go to the hospital the next morning for the delivery. As night falls, a woman knocks on Sarah’s door asking to use the phone. When she refuses, the woman reveals that she knows Sarah and tries to force her way in. Sarah calls the police; they inspect the home and determine the woman has left, but promise to keep watch over Sarah through the night. The woman returns and tries to take Sarah’s unborn child, but Sarah locks herself in the bathroom. The strange woman torments Sarah through the night and kills all who try help her.

13 Silent House (2011)

Our Score: C+

This movie is about Sarah as she and her dad go to their lakeside retreat to pack things up inside because it is being sold. While there, her uncle also helps get the place up to scratch so they can sell it. The uncle has to leave to get an electrician to check the wiring, but after he goes she starts hearing noises and seeing what she thinks are people inside the house. Soon she and her dad are attacked by someone or something and they end up in a fight for their lives. But there’s something more going on here than she thinks.

14 Kristy

Our Score: C/C+

College girl Justine works hard to support herself at Bryce College, where she studies. During Thanksgiving, her boyfriend Aaron goes home and Justine has plans to stay on campus with her roommate, Nicole. Out of the blue, Nicole’s father invites her to Aspen, while Justine remains in the dorm. One night, Justine drives to a convenience store to buy supplies and meets Violet, who threatens her. Shaken, Justine returns to campus, where she soon finds herself being hunted down by Violet and three hoodlums from a cult. Justine has to fight to survive.

15 Body

Our Score: C+

A night out turns deadly when three girls break into a seemingly empty mansion.

16 The Collector

Our Score: B+/A-

When the Chase family moves to an isolated house in the middle of nowhere in Detroit, Arkin is hired to fix the windows and the doors. Later he meets his daughter and his wife that has a debt with dangerous sharks and needs money, but his week payment is not enough to pay her debts. Arkin plots to heist the safe of Michael Chase during the night to raise the necessary money. However, when he arrives in the house, he finds that a sadistic criminal has imprisoned the family and planted traps everywhere. Arkin seeks a way out of the deadly house to save his life.

17 The Dark

Our Score: C-

During the New York City blackout of 2003, Kate, a struggling 30-something model with a troubled past, has just moved into her girlfriend Leah’s Brooklyn loft, but already doubts about their relationship have begun to loom. When Leah leaves for the weekend, Kate unexpectedly finds herself alone in the apartment in the middle of the worst blackout in North American history. As darkness falls over the city, Kate’s paranoia grows and she begins to believe someone in the building is stalking her. With no one to help her and escape out of reach, Kate is forced to confront her deepest fears as she fights to survive through the night.

18 Intruders

Our Score: C+/B-

Anna suffers from agoraphobia so crippling that when a trio of criminals break into her house, she cannot bring herself to flee. But what the intruders don’t realize is that agoraphobia is not her only problem.

19 Straw Dogs (1971)

Our Rating: B+

Upon moving to Britain to get away from American violence, astrophysicist David Sumner and his wife Amy are bullied and taken advantage of by the locals hired to do construction. When David finally takes a stand it escalates quickly into a bloody battle as the locals assault his house.

20 Wait Until Dark

Our Rating: B+

Susy was recently blinded and recently married. Susy’s husband, Sam, is asked to hold a doll for a woman he doesn’t know as they get off an airplane. The woman disappears. Later, she’s found dead by her former associates, Mike and Carlino, small-time hoods, in Susy’s basement apartment. (Both occupants of the apartment are then absent.) The doll woman’s newer partner in crime, Harry Rote, who murdered her for self-dealing, presses Mike and Carlino into a scheme to recover the doll, which contains a fortune in smuggled heroin. After disposing of the body, the thugs return while Susy is present to continue their search. They assume Susy’s blindness will enable them to search her apartment under her very nose for the doll. In Sam’s absence, Mike pretends to be an old friend of Sam’s, while the three together spin for Susy a story of a murder investigation of her husband from which only the finding of the missing doll can save him. Rote is a predator, and his stalking of Susy becomes ever…