Movies like The Knife Thrower
The best movies like The Knife Thrower are Siberian Education (2013), Each Dawn I Die (1939) and Above the Rim (1994). If The Knife Thrower hooked you with its drama and crime, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedJust Mercy (2019)7.8/10 from 2,573 votes
- NewestSalvable (2025)Released 2025
Siberian Education (2013)
The story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against this backdrop two best friends, Kolyma and Gagarin, gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEach Dawn I Die (1939)
A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAbove the Rim (1994)
Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRun (1991)
When a law student accidentally kills the son of a mob boss in a fight, he finds himself relentlessly pursued by the mob and the police.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Cold Blood (1967)
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNo One Would Tell (1996)
Shy sixteen-year-old Stacy Collins can't believe that the most popular guy in school, an attractive athlete named Bobby Tennison, is interested in her. At first she is flattered by his constant attention, but then he becomes possessive and jealous-telling her who she can speak to and what she can wear. Threats escalate into violence when Bobby thinks Stacy has stepped out of line. Soon she is walking on egg shells and living in fear. Having seen the tell-tale bruises, Stacy's best friend convinces her to break things off with Bobby-but in a moment of weakness, Stacy goes to meet him. It will be the last time she is seen alive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWinged Creatures (2009)
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisI Want to Live! (1958)
Brazen perpetual offender Barbara Graham tries to go straight but she finds herself implicated in a murder and sent to death row.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSalvable (2025)
When a battered boxer past his prime finds his dreams and his relationships on the ropes, he falls back in with a dangerous crowd and has to take the biggest swing of his life to reclaim his hope and his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Parts You Lose (2019)
An unlikely friendship unfolds between a young deaf boy, Wesley, and a fugitive criminal who takes refuge in an abandoned barn on the family’s rural North Dakota farm.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrue Believer (1989)
Eddie Dodd is a burnt out former civil rights lawyer who now specializes in defending drug dealers. Roger Baron, newly graduated from law school, has followed Eddie's great cases and now wants to learn at his feet. With Roger's idealistic prodding, Eddie reluctantly takes on a case of a young Korean man who, according to his mother, has been in jail for eight years for a murder he didn't commit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Most Hated Woman in America (2017)
The true story of Madalyn Murray O'Hair -- iconoclast, opportunist, and outspoken atheist -- from her controversial rise to her untimely demise.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJust Mercy (2019)
The powerful true story of Harvard-educated lawyer Bryan Stevenson, who goes to Alabama to defend the disenfranchised and wrongly condemned — including Walter McMillian, a man sentenced to death despite evidence proving his innocence. Bryan fights tirelessly for Walter with the system stacked against them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStranger on the Third Floor (1940)
Newspaper reporter Michael Ward plunges into a nightmare of guilt, fearing that his "evidence" has sentenced the wrong man to death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAll Day and a Night (2020)
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMaximum Risk (1996)
Alain Moreau's investigation into the death of his identical twin brother leads him from the beauty of the south of France to the mean streets of New York City and into the arms of his brother's beautiful girlfriend. Pursued by ruthless Russian mobsters and renegade FBI agents, the duo race against time to solve his brother's murder and expose an international conspiracy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe System (2022)
When a young soldier, newly returned from war, gets caught up in a drug bust, he is recruited by the authorities to go undercover in a notoriously dangerous prison in order to figure out what is really going on.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Blood (2014)
When her husband goes missing during their Caribbean vacation, a woman sets off on her own to take down the men she thinks are responsible.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime
SnoozefestMovies like thisTarget Number One (2020)
Ex heroin junkie, Daniel Léger, gets involved in a drug deal with the wrong people for the wrong reasons. When the deal goes sour, Daniel gets thrown into a Thai prison and slapped with a 100-year sentence. While he tries to survive his Bangkok incarceration, the news of his conviction captures the attention of Globe and Mail journalist Victor Malarek, who decides to go after the shady undercover cops responsible for wrongly accusing Daniel.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Glass Key (1942)
A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMidnight (1934)
Jury foreman Edward Weldon's questioning leads to the death sentence for Ethel Saxon. His daughter Stella claims to have killed her lover, the gangster Garboni, just as Saxon was to sit in the electric chair.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & crime
Underworld (1927)
Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Next Three Days (2010)
Life seems perfect for John Brennan until his wife, Lara, is arrested for a murder she says she didn’t commit. Three years into her sentence, John is struggling to hold his family together, raising their son and teaching at college while he pursues every means available to prove her innocence. With the rejection of their final appeal, Lara becomes suicidal and John decides there is only one possible, bearable solution: to break his wife out of prison.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Kiss (2007)
One day Kyoko watches television and sees a man turning himself in to the police after murdering a family. Something within Kyoko connects with the man, as she recognizes a similar soul. Despite the worries of the killer's lawyer, she approaches the killer and the two start corresponding.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & drama
Anna and the King of Siam (1946)
In 1862, a young Englishwoman becomes royal tutor in Siam and befriends the King.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTen Years Thailand (2018)
A collection of short films by five Thai directors imagining their country ten years into the future.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Face of a Fugitive (1959)
A man who was falsly accused for murder escapes the sheriffs and starts a new life in a town at the border of the States to Mexico. But he cannot settle in peace as his chasers are trying to find him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
October Sonata (2009)
When Sangchan and Rawee meet and fall in love the day before he leaves to study abroad, he promises to return on October 8th of every year to see her. As the years pass and new relationships arise, Sangchan's faith in their love is tested.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
In 15th-century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDeadly Dancer (1990)
A police detective, investigating a string of murders of strippers at a Los Angeles night club, must race against the clock to clear his name when he's wrongfully accused of being the killer.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Knife Thrower?
The closest matches to The Knife Thrower are Siberian Education (2013), Each Dawn I Die (1939) and Above the Rim (1994). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Knife Thrower?
Start with Siberian Education (2013), the closest match to The Knife Thrower.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Knife Thrower?
Just Mercy (2019), rated 7.8/10 by 2,573 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Knife Thrower?
Salvable (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Knife Thrower?
Yes: Siberian Education (2013), Each Dawn I Die (1939) and Above the Rim (1994).
How are movies similar to The Knife Thrower chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Knife Thrower, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.