Movies like As I Lay Dying (2013)
The best movies like As I Lay Dying (2013) are The Birth of a Nation (2016), The Beguiled (1971) and The Road (2009). If As I Lay Dying hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedPaths of Glory (1957)8.3/10 from 3,438 votes
- NewestSpringsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)Released 2025
The Birth of a Nation (2016)
Nat Turner, a former slave in America, leads a liberation movement in 1831 to free African-Americans in Virginia that results in a violent retaliation from whites.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Beguiled (1971)
Offbeat Civil War drama in which a wounded Yankee soldier, after finding refuge in an isolated girls' school in the South towards the end of the war, becomes the object of the young women's sexual fantasies. The soldier manipulates the situation for his own gratification, but when he refuses to completely comply with the girls' wishes, they make it very difficult for him to leave.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Road (2009)
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones and, when the snow falls, it is gray. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFree State of Jones (2016)
In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. Opposed to slavery, Knight would rather help the wounded than fight the Union. After his nephew dies in battle, Newt returns home to Jones County to safeguard his family but is soon branded an outlaw deserter. Forced to flee, he finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves hiding out in the swamps. Forging an alliance with the slaves and other farmers, Knight leads a rebellion that would forever change history.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Walk the Line (1970)
Henry Tawes, a middle-aged sheriff in a rural Tennessee town, is usually the first man to criticize others for their bad behavior. Miserable in his marriage, Henry falls in love with teenage seductress Alma, who is the daughter of local criminal and moonshiner Carl McCain. Henry's moral character comes further into question when he is tempted to conceal Carl's crimes in order to prolong his relationship with Alma.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisTrue Grit (2010)
Following the murder of her father by a hired hand, a 14-year-old farm girl sets out to capture the killer. To aid her, she hires the toughest U.S. Marshal she can find—a man with 'true grit'—Reuben J. 'Rooster' Cogburn.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Brave (1997)
A down-on-his-luck American Indian recently released from jail is offered the chance to "star" as the victim of a snuff film, the resulting pay of which could greatly help his poverty stricken family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLawless (2012)
In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, the lookout. Though the local police have taken bribes and left the brothers alone, a violent war erupts when a sadistic lawman from Chicago arrives and tries to shut down the Bondurants operation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHillbilly Elegy (2020)
An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBastard Out of Carolina (1996)
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDisgrace (2008)
Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Homesman (2014)
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDesperation Road (2023)
Ex-con Russell Gaines is attempting to rebuild his life with the help of his father, Mitchell. However, the arrival of Maben sends his new life into chaos, leading the pair to go on the run - as their violent pasts catch up to them, the pair must learn to trust each other if they hope to live out the rest of their days.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKillers of the Flower Moon (2023)
When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this12 Mighty Orphans (2021)
Haunted by his mysterious past, a devoted high school football coach leads a scrawny team of orphans to the state championship during the Great Depression and inspires a broken nation along the way.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAngela's Ashes (1999)
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBack Roads (2019)
A young man cares for his younger sisters after their mother is imprisoned for murdering their abusive father. When he strikes up an affair with a married woman, long-dormant family secrets bubble to the surface.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Patriot (2000)
After proving himself on the field of battle in the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin wants nothing more to do with such things, preferring the simple life of a farmer. But when his son Gabriel enlists in the army to defend their new nation, America, against the British, Benjamin reluctantly returns to his old life to protect his son.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWinter's Bone (2010)
After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Safety of Objects (2002)
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCool Hand Luke (1967)
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDoctor Zhivago (1965)
The life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during World War I and then the October Revolution.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPaths of Glory (1957)
A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisScarface (1932)
In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCrash (1996)
A car crash victim inexplicably finds himself aroused by car accidents and becomes involved with an underground subculture of like-minded souls.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBrother of Sleep (1995)
In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
All the President's Men (1976)
During the 1972 elections, two reporters' investigation sheds light on the controversial Watergate scandal that compels President Nixon to resign from his post.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLomax (2014)
In 1941, folklorist Alan Lomax traveled from the Library of Congress to the Mississippi Delta to record an oral history of the blues. Equipped with 500 pounds of audio equipment powered by his car battery, he ventured across nameless roads to discover the most beautiful and harrowing songs ever sung.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025)
Bruce Springsteen, a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggles to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like As I Lay Dying?
The closest matches to As I Lay Dying are The Birth of a Nation (2016), The Beguiled (1971) and The Road (2009). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after As I Lay Dying?
Start with The Birth of a Nation (2016), the closest match to As I Lay Dying.
What is the highest-rated movie like As I Lay Dying?
Paths of Glory (1957), rated 8.3/10 by 3,438 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like As I Lay Dying?
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like As I Lay Dying?
Yes: The Birth of a Nation (2016), The Beguiled (1971) and The Road (2009).
How are movies similar to As I Lay Dying chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside As I Lay Dying, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.