Movies like The Desperate End
The best movies like The Desperate End are Hunting Season (2025), SAS: Red Notice (2021) and Black Site (2022). If The Desperate End hooked you with its action and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
The Desperate End
Quick picks
- Highest ratedHunting Season (2025)7.4/10 from 490 votes
- Newest180 (2026)Released 2026
Hunting Season (2025)
When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSAS: Red Notice (2021)
An off-duty SAS soldier, Tom Buckingham, must thwart a terror attack on a train running through the Channel Tunnel. As the action escalates on the train, events transpire in the corridors of power that may make the difference as to whether Buckingham and the civilian passengers make it out of the tunnel alive.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & action
SnoozefestMovies like thisBlack Site (2022)
A group of officers based in a labyrinthine top-secret prison must fight for their lives against Hatchet, a brilliant and infamous high-value detainee. When he escapes, his mysterious and deadly agenda has far reaching and dire consequences.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInterceptor (2022)
A U.S. Army Captain uses her years of tactical training to save humanity from sixteen nuclear missiles launched at the U.S. as a violent attack threatens her remote missile interceptor station.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe 355 (2022)
A group of top female agents from American, British, Chinese, Colombian, and German government agencies are drawn together to try and stop an organization from acquiring a deadly weapon to send the world into chaos.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 action & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPanic in Year Zero! (1962)
While on a fishing trip, Harry Baldwin and his family hear an explosion and realize that Los Angeles has been leveled by a nuclear attack. Looters and killers are everywhere. Escaping to the hills with his family, he sets about the business of surviving in a world where, he knows, the old ideals of humanity will be the first casualties.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Last Days of American Crime (2020)
In the not-too-distant future, as a final response to crime and terrorism, the U.S. government plans to broadcast a signal that will make it impossible for anyone to knowingly break the law.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGold (2022)
In the not-too-distant future, two drifters traveling through the desert stumble across the biggest gold nugget ever found and the dream of immense wealth and greed takes hold. They hatch a plan to excavate their bounty, with one man leaving to secure the necessary tools while the other remains with the gold. The man who remains must endure harsh desert elements, ravenous wild dogs, and mysterious intruders, while battling the sinking suspicion that he has been abandoned to his fate.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBest of the Best 4: Without Warning (1998)
A group of Russian mobsters have stolen a huge supply of paper for printing U.S. currency, and are now flooding the market with conterfeit bills. When one of the mobsters decides to give herself in and hand over a data CD to the DA, she is shot and killed, but not before handing the disc to an unsuspecting Tommy Lee. Despite working with the police as a martial arts instructor, Lee doesn't go to the cops with the disc, but instead goes on the run, giving the mafia time to kidnap his daughter and hold as a hostage in exchange for return of the disc. Will Tommy ever see his daughter again?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Black Book (2023)
After his son is wrongly accused of kidnapping, a deacon who has just lost his wife takes matters into his own hands and fights a crooked police gang to clear him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like this180 (2026)
When an unexpected road rage incident puts his son in critical condition, an enraged father spirals down a dark path of emotional turmoil and vengeance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Enforcer (2022)
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Quiller Memorandum (1966)
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Killer (2024)
Zee is a feared contract killer known as "the Queen of the Dead," but when she refuses to murder a young blind woman, she finds herself hunted both by criminal colleagues and a determined police detective.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
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 & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisExpend4bles (2023)
Armed with every weapon they can get their hands on and the skills to use them, The Expendables are the world’s last line of defense and the team that gets called when all other options are off the table. But new team members with new styles and tactics are going to give “new blood” a whole new meaning.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHellhound (2024)
Ready to leave his profession behind, Loreno, an assassin, lends help to an old friend, Cetan, and taking one last job in Thailand seeking out a local kingpin. A lapse in judgment means Loreno crosses paths with old colleague Paul.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRight at Your Door (2006)
A dirty bomb goes off in Los Angeles, jamming freeways and spreading a toxic cloud.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisMisdirection (2026)
A desperate couple have pulled off a string of high-end break-ins to pay off a mob debt. When they attempt to rob their latest victim, they find themselves caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. The tables are turned and the hunters become the hunted.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both action & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe President's Man: A Line in the Sand (2002)
A counterterrorism specialist is assigned by the President to track down a terrorist who is suspected of planning to set off a nuclear device in the U.S.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & drama
King of the Lost World (2005)
In this modern retelling of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fantasy action-adventure classic, a commercial airliner crashes deep in the heart of the Amazon. Now, the survivors must face a mysterious and hostile world inhabited by giant scorpions, dragons, and a simian beast that stands ten stories tall.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both action & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Genius Club (2006)
What if you had one night to solve the world’s problems? For seven geniuses, they have no choice. A terrorist culls together a scientist, a seminary student, a pro baseball player, a professor, a casino owner, a painter, and a pizza delivery guy to attempt to solve the world’s problems in one night.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & drama
Antibody (2002)
After a terrorist with an implanted nuclear detonator gets shot, a team of scientists must defuse the bomb by miniaturizing themselves and going into his bloodstream. His organism's antibodies start to mass against them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both action & thriller
Unthinkable (2010)
The government gets wind of a plot to destroy America involving a trio of nuclear weapons for which the whereabouts are unknown. It's up to a seasoned interrogator and an FBI agent to find out exactly where the nukes are.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTime Zero (TBA)
An unfulfilled engineer wakes up next to a ticking thermonuclear bomb in an underground chamber with only a phone and one instruction to save millions of people: she must convince the US President to kill himself.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both action & thriller
Megaton (2010)
Set in the ruins of the Capital Wasteland, the story follows Lars, a wandering scavenger who arrives in the fragile settlement of Megaton, only to find the town already teetering on the edge of collapse. After a cryptic encounter with a disfigured preacher and an uneasy alliance with a local mercenary, Lars is approached by a stranger offering him caps to detonate the bomb at the town’s center.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Ground Zero (2000)
When a series of tremors rocks Los Angeles, seismologist Kimberly Stevenson is sent to investigate the quake's epicenter, a desolate wilderness known as the Angeles National Forest. Two hundred miles from civilization, Kimberly and her son, Justin, set up a research facility in an isolated mountain cabin. The project takes a sinister turn when Kimberly discovers that she has stumbled upon a test site for black market nuclear weapons. With the help of mercenary Michael Brandeis, Kimberly must race against time to stop a final underground test that could trigger the most powerful quake California has ever known.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & action
Die Bombe (1988)
A terrorist drives a car to Hamburg's Rathausmarkt and unloads an unknown device that he claims can cause radioactive contamination. A special unit tries to subdue the man, but this reveals that the only way to prevent the explosion is to constantly readjust a transmitter, so they have to let him go.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & drama
Black Dawn (2006)
Jonathan Cold returns, this time he goes Undercover to stop a group of Terrorists before they bomb Los Angeles.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both action
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Desperate End?
The closest matches to The Desperate End are Hunting Season (2025), SAS: Red Notice (2021) and Black Site (2022). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Desperate End?
Start with Hunting Season (2025), the closest match to The Desperate End.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Desperate End?
Hunting Season (2025), rated 7.4/10 by 490 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Desperate End?
180 (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Desperate End chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Desperate End, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.