Movies and shows like Archive 81: What to watch after the Netflix series

Movies and shows like Archive 81: What to watch after the Netflix series

Mamoudou Athie stands in front of TV screens in Archive 81
If you’re one of the many Netflix subscribers who helped Archive 81 climb the streamer’s top 10, you may be looking for more chilling horror titles to watch next. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the best movies and shows like Archive 81 to add to your watchlist.

Check out: The best original streaming shows on every platform

Based on a podcast of the same name, Archive 81 tells the story of an archivist hired to restore video from a New York City apartment building that burned down in the 90s. After he relocates to a remote facility to begin his work in isolation, he starts seeing disturbing things in the tapes he’s working on. A young woman chronicling the building’s history may have disappeared, and she may have a surprising connection to the archivist.

Read on for a list of things you can watch after Archive 81 if you’re hooked on the Netflix horror series. And if you haven’t watched it yet, hit the link below to see what all the hype is about.

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Netflix

Netflix is still the leading premium streaming service, with over 200 million worldwide subscribers. It offers thousands of movies and TV shows to binge watch, including its always growing list of original films and series, including Stranger Things, The Witcher, Bridgerton, and many more.


Movies and shows like Archive 81

Shows like Archive 81

Movies like Archive 81


Shows like Archive 81

Brand New Cherry Flavor (2021)

Rosa Salazar and Katherine Keener at a party in Brand New Cherry Flavor - shows like Archive 81

Another Netflix original miniseries, Brand New Cherry Flavor, like Archive 81, is all about moving images and the 90s. An emerging filmmaker moves to Hollywood hoping to make it big. Once there, she mistakenly trusts a ruthless and backstabbing producer, and her quest for revenge includes hallucinogenics, curses, and some of LA’s larger-than-life local characters.


The X-Files (1993-2018)

Mulder and Scully in The X-Files

20th Television

One of the best features of The X-Files is how it could redefine itself from one episode to the next. Developed when TV seasons were over 20 episodes long, it had room to experiment and shift dramatically in tone with its monster-of-the-week format. Calling The X-Files a show like Archive 81 is not entirely accurate, mostly because it depends on which episode or season you’re on. But there’s plenty of overlap. There are some great cult-centric episodes like season four’s “The Field Where I Died” or season two’s “Die Hand Die Verletzt.” Many other episodes — like “Beyond the Sea” (season one), “Home” (season four), or “Milagro” (season six) — achieve a dark and creepy tone that may well appeal to fans of Archive 81.

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Hulu

Hulu offers not only thousands of movies and TV shows to stream, it also has original shows and films like The Handmaid’s Tale. You can upgrade to Hulu Plus Live TV to get live channels, including your local stations.


Yellowjackets (2021-ongoing)

Juliette Lewis and Sophie Thatcher in Yellowjackets.

Told across two timelines, Yellowjackets is a show like Archive 81 in that it revolves around a mystery set in the 90s and the ways it reverberates into the present day. It’s also cleverly creepy and one of the best shows around. A high school girls soccer team is stranded in the wilderness in 1996 when their plane crashes on the way to a national tournament. The girls eventually descend into Lord of the Flies-esque group madness, with more than a few hints of the supernatural. In the present, reminders of the woods creep into the survivors’ lives.

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Showtime

Showtime offers up great movies and some of the best and most innovative original TV shows, and you can get all of that for a low monthly price.


Homecoming (2018-2020)

Julia Roberts sits at her desk in Homecoming - shows like archive 81

Based on a hit podcast like Archive 81, Homecoming follows a social worker who can’t remember any of the details from her work with the Geist Group, a facility for veterans trying to reintegrate into society after active duty. Trying to move on in her new life as a waitress, she begins to realize the work she was doing, and her inability to remember it, may be tied to a disturbing conspiracy.

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Amazon Prime Video

Amazon Prime Video offers access to thousands of movies and TV shows to stream. That includes great original shows and movies like The Boys and The Tomorrow War. You can also sign up for other premium services within Amazon Prime Video.


Servant (2019-ongoing)

Servant Apple TV Plus shows

So much of horror comes down to mood. While Apple’s M. Night Shyamalan-helmed horror series doesn’t have a ton of thematic overlap with Archive 81, it does share a creeping sense of unease and dark, slow-burn pace and mood. It also hints at supernatural forces and features cult behavior, so we’re checking off a few boxes making it a show like Archive 81, but mostly, if you love the chilling ambiance of the Netflix original series, you may get a similar thrill out of Servant.

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Apple TV Plus

Apple TV Plus has quickly become a major player in the streaming game since its launch in 2019. Its slate of original programming includes shows like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, Foundation, and For All Mankind as well as movies like The Banker, Greyhound, and Palmer.


Equinox (2020-ongoing)

A cult ceremony takes place, with a young woman crowned, in Equinox - shows like archive 81

Netflix’s Danish supernatural horror series has a lot in common with Archive 81. There’s childhood loss, an investigation into a disappearance, flashbacks to the 1990s, a mysterious cult, and a supernatural threat. A woman investigates the long-ago disappearance of her sister and her classmates when a survivor approaches her. The truth of what happened may be darker than anything she imagined.


Movies like Archive 81

Sinister (2012)

Ethan Hawke stands in front of a screen where a grizzly murder is projected in Sinister - movies and shows like Archive 81

Summit Entertainment

Ethan Hawke stars as true-crime writer Ellison Oswald in this terrific, underrated horror film like Archive 81. Oswald is trying to get his career back on track. As such, he moves his family into a home where a gruesome crime was committed. Soon, he discovers footage of the incident and others like it. As he investigates, he realizes there may be a supernatural force behind the deaths. And it may still be in the house.

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Shudder

Time to scream with this horror streaming service

Horror movie fans will find a lot to watch with the Shudder streaming service. It serves up a collection of classic and contemporary horror movies to chill you to your core.


Kimi (2022)

Zoe Kravitz peaks around a door in Kimi - movies and shows like Archive 81

Drawing from classic paranoid recording-based thrillers like Blowup and The Conversation — with a healthy dose of Hitchockian suspense thrown in — Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi sees a tech worker with agoraphobia venturing from the safety of her home when she hears what sounds like a violent crime recorded by a smart home device. The HBO Max original is a film like Archive 81 in its treatment of recordings as clues in a mystery, and its overall claustrophobic and paranoid mood.

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HBO Max

HBO Max is your home for Warner Bros-made movies and TV shows like The Lord of the Rings, the DC Comics superheroes, and more. It’s also the home for new and original movies and shows available nowhere else.


V/H/S (2012)

A cop with a flashlight looks at stacks of videotaped in VHS - movies like Archive 81

Magnet Releasing

As found footage horror goes, the V/H/S franchise has become a defining example of the genre. A movie like Archive 81 on this front, the first V/H/S film sees a group of criminals hired to steal a videotape from a house. Once inside, they find an old man dead, surrounded by several tapes. The film mostly consists of the contents of those tapes, played as vignettes of horror shorts by different directors.


Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Mia Farrow is shocked in Rosemary's Baby - movies like Archive 81

A woman paranoid that a cult is conspiring against her in her New York apartment building? Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby has a fair few narrative themes in common with Archive 81. And both titles beg the question: is it really paranoia if they’re genuinely out to get you?

Niamh Algar in Censor

Magnolia Pictures

There’s something so narratively exciting about archival footage that may hide answers to important questions. Like many of the titles on this list, Censor is a movie like Archive 81 in its exploration of video archives as tools for solving mysteries. In Censor, British film censor Enid thinks she might have found a clue to the disappearance of her sister in one of the “video nasties” she has to watch for work.


The Endless (2017)

Two man stand by the side of the road in The Endless

Well Go USA

Directed by Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who directed two episodes of Archive 81 and have been tapped to direct season two of Loki, The Endless has a lot in common with the Netflix miniseries. When two brothers receive a videotape in the mail from the commune where they grew up, they decide to head back, but they can’t agree on whether they’re returning to a UFO death cult or a harmless hippie commune.

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