Movies like Insel Guru (1990)
The best movies like Insel Guru (1990) are Strange Darling (2024), Below Her Mouth (2017) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015). If Insel Guru hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Substitute (1996)7.0/10 from 621 votes
- NewestGuru (2026)Released 2026
Strange Darling (2024)
Nothing is what it seems when a twisted one-night stand spirals into a serial killer’s vicious murder spree.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBelow Her Mouth (2017)
An unexpected affair quickly escalates into a heart-stopping reality for two women whose passionate connection changes their lives forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)
Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSongs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
This complex portrait of modern-day life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation explores the bond between a brother and his younger sister, who find themselves on separate paths to rediscovering the meaning of home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCrimes of Passion (1984)
Fashion designer Joanna Crane leads a double life. By night she is China Blue, a prostitute who's attracted the attention of a sexually frustrated private detective, and a psychopathic priest in possession of a murderous sex toy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFritz the Cat (1972)
In late 1960s New York City, fed up with monotonous college life and police repression, free-spirited Fritz, an impenitent seducer and unrestrained party-animal, decides to explore the world. And just like that, as he flees NYC, heading to San Francisco, Fritz embarks on an endless adventure of illumination. Immersed in a world surrounded by drugs and sex, Fritz participates in mad orgies, brings about a revolution, incites mass urban riots, and crosses paths with drug-addled Nazi bikers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Little Death (2014)
A comedy film that looks into the loosely connected lives of people with strange sexual fantasies.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOriginal Sin (2001)
A young man is plunged into a life of subterfuge, deceit and mistaken identity in pursuit of a femme fatale whose heart is never quite within his grasp.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSwitchblade Sisters (1975)
The leader of an inner city girl gang is challenged when a new girl moves into the neighborhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCoffy (1973)
After her younger sister gets involved in drugs and is severely injured by contaminated heroin, a nurse sets out on a mission of vengeance and vigilante justice, killing drug dealers, pimps, and mobsters who cross her path.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRise of the Footsoldier 3 (2017)
In the late 1980s, Pat Tate journeys from peddling pills in Marbella to his time in prison, where he solidifies his power before his release to reclaim his turf.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisXiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (1998)
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisRise of the Footsoldier (2007)
Carlton Leach rises from one of the most feared generals of the football terraces to becoming a member of a notorious gang of criminals who rampaged their way through London and Essex in the late '80s and early '90s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)
A man named Seligman finds a fainted wounded woman in an alley and he brings her home. She tells him that her name is Joe and that she is nymphomaniac. Joe tells her life and sexual experiences with hundreds of men since she was a young teenager while Seligman tells about his hobbies, such as fly fishing, reading about Fibonacci numbers or listening to organ music.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMore (1969)
A German student, Stefan, now finished with his studies, hitchhikes to Paris. There he meets a free-spirited American girl, Estelle, who he follows to Ibiza. The two begin a sad and dark path into heroin addiction.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Addiction (1995)
A vampiric doctoral student tries to follow the philosophy of a nocturnal comrade and control her thirst for blood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Substitute (1996)
When an inner-city Miami schoolteacher gets her knee broken after standing up to the school's gang leader, her mercenary combat specialist boyfriend goes undercover as a substitute teacher to take down the punk. Soon he discovers a conspiracy of criminals at work, and must reassemble his team from his last jungle raid to stop them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBenny Loves You (2019)
Jack, a man desperate to improve his life, throws away his beloved childhood plush, Benny. It’s a move that has disastrous consequences when Benny springs to life with deadly intentions!
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisHungry Hearts (2015)
The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHeavy Traffic (1973)
A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLove & Other Drugs (2010)
Maggie is an alluring free spirit who won't let anyone – or anything – tie her down. But she meets her match in Jamie, whose relentless and nearly infallible charm serves him well with the ladies and the cutthroat world of pharmaceutical sales. Maggie and Jamie's evolving relationship takes them both by surprise, as they find themselves under the influence of the ultimate drug: love.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSeduction of the Innocent (1961)
Jeanette, a pretty high school student, is looking for “kicks”. She starts hanging out with a wild crowd, and begins popping bennies, uppers and other pills. Soon she graduates from barbiturates to marijuana…
Why it matches: Similar story and style
It's My Hobby (1974)
A high school student faces a moral dilemma, should he turn in a friend who is dealing pills.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
All My Tomorrows (1979)
A Centron Film presentation, produced by Gordon-Kerchoff, this color film is about a teenage girl who overdoses on alcohol and pills, and winds up in a coma, opens with the girl recovering in a hospital bed. This scare film from 1979 is essentially a public service announcement on the dangers of getting involved in drugs and the horrible effects that using drugs and overdosing can have on an individual and their loved ones.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Stoner's Night Out (TBA)
Presented by Voices in Society and Travelers Insurance Indemnity, this untitled PSA-style film from the 1970s is a compilation of various anti-drug use PSAs from National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Abuse Information (NCADI). The films were assembled by a film collector who did public screenings of cult films; he often showed this compilation under the moniker “Stoner’s Night Out”. NCADI is the information service for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The PSAs that comprise this film combine footage of drug use as well as interviews. Overall, this film warns of the short-term and long-term effects of drug use with the later segments of the film focusing on marijuana use specifically.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Guru (2026)
Matt, a charismatic coach, captivates crowds until he spirals into a disturbing downward spiral.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Ashram Children: I Am No Body, I Have No Body (2019)
The first 20 years of the film-maker's life he grew up in two places: in Jerusalem, and in an ashram in India, a thing he had to keep a secret. in the ashram it wae expected of him to devote his entire being to his guru. Thus, in his words, he could finally define the purpose of his life, understand the "truth" of the meaning of life and be enlightened 20 years later (quite a few in psychological therapy), the director sets out on a quest to find out what was hidden in his life in India, why his life in the Ashram still affects him even when he has not visited in years, And whether he grew up in a cult.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
The Guru (2002)
Bored with Bollywood movies but fascinated with their Hollywood counterparts from his youth, Ram dreams to become a singer and actor in America, the country where dreams are made. He is encouraged when his American-based close friend, Vijay Rao, comes for visit, and brags about driving a Mercedes and living in a penthouse.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
SnoozefestMovies like thisAll of Me (1984)
Just before stubborn millionaire Edwina Cutwater dies, she asks her uptight lawyer, Roger Cobb, to amend her will so that her soul will pass to the young, vibrant Terry Hoskins – but the spiritual transference goes awry. Edwina enters Roger's body instead, forcing him to battle Edwina for control of his own being.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEmanuelle Around the World (1977)
The increasingly politicised Emanuelle gets deeper into fighting an international trade composed of sex, violence and high profile players.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
SnoozefestMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Insel Guru?
The closest matches to Insel Guru are Strange Darling (2024), Below Her Mouth (2017) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Insel Guru?
Start with Strange Darling (2024), the closest match to Insel Guru.
What is the highest-rated movie like Insel Guru?
The Substitute (1996), rated 7.0/10 by 621 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Insel Guru?
Guru (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there German movies like Insel Guru?
The closest matches are in other languages.
How are movies similar to Insel Guru chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Insel Guru, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.