Movies like The Returning (2026)
The best movies like The Returning (2026) are Watching the Detectives (2007), 2073 (2024) and Freaked (1993). If The Returning hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedYoung Frankenstein (1974)7.9/10 from 3,530 votes
- NewestNot Without Hope (2025)Released 2025
Watching the Detectives (2007)
Neil, a self-proclaimed film geek and owner of Gumshoe video, has always been content to live vicariously through his favorite films noir. But when he meets Violet, a real-life femme fatale, his mundane world gets turned upside down and the line between reality and the movies quickly begins to blur.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like this2073 (2024)
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFreaked (1993)
A vain actor, his best friend, and an activist end up at a mutant freak farm run by a weirdo scientist.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHere Today (2021)
Veteran comedy writer Charlie Berns, who is slowly but surely losing his grip on reality, befriends a talented young New York street singer Emma Payge. Together, they form an unlikely yet hilarious and touching friendship that kicks the generation gap aside and redefines the meaning of love and trust.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEraserhead (1977)
First-time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAfterburn (2025)
Set against the backdrop of a postapocalyptic Earth whose Eastern Hemisphere was destroyed by a massive solar flare, leaving what life remains mutated from radiation and fallout. The story revolves around a group of treasure hunters who extract such objects as the Mona Lisa, the Rosetta Stone and the Crown Jewels while facing rival hunters, mutants and pirates.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSleeper (1973)
Miles Monroe, a clarinet-playing health food store proprietor, is revived out of cryostasis 200 years into a future world in order to help rebels fight an oppressive government regime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNot Without Hope (2025)
A group of friends' fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico and they're left alone stranded at sea and struggling for survival.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Giver (2014)
In a seemingly perfect community, without war, pain, suffering, differences or choice, a young boy is chosen to learn from an elderly man about the true pain and pleasure of the "real" world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOsiris (2025)
Special Forces commandos on a mission are abducted mid-operation by a mysterious spacecraft. Upon waking aboard, they find themselves prey to a relentless alien race in a fight for survival.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReturn to Nuke 'Em High Volume 1 (2013)
Return to the Class of Nuke 'Em High follows a young couple that are up against the school glee club. Unfortunately, the glee club has mutated into a gang called The Cretins. When the other students begin to undergo mutations, our couple must solve the mystery and save Tromaville High School
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAmazon Women on the Moon (1987)
Centered on a television station which features a 1950s-style sci-fi movie interspersed with a series of wild commercials, wacky shorts and weird specials, this lampoon of contemporary life and pop culture skewers some of the silliest spectacles ever created in the name of entertainment.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisBrazil (1985)
Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFrom Beyond (1986)
The Resonator, a powerful machine that can control the sixth sense, has killed its creator and sent his associate into an insane asylum. When a psychiatrist becomes determined to continue the experiment, she unwittingly opens the door to a hostile parallel universe.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBorder Hunters (2025)
After his police officer brother is killed by a drug dealer who flees to the protection of his cartel-connected uncle in Mexico, an American man with a diverse law enforcement/military background goes south of the border to get revenge
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHard to Die (1990)
While doing the inventory for a lingerie outlet in a high rise office building, five attractive women are terrorized by a series of bizarre killings. They suspect that the strange janitor, who witnessed another series of killings six months previously, is at the bottom of the whole thing. Little do they know the real horror that they face in the end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisYoung Frankenstein (1974)
A young neurosurgeon inherits the castle of his grandfather, the famous Dr. Victor von Frankenstein. In the castle he finds a funny hunchback, a pretty lab assistant and the elderly housekeeper. Young Frankenstein believes that the work of his grandfather was delusional, but when he discovers the book where the mad doctor described his reanimation experiment, he suddenly changes his mind.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisGirl on a Bicycle (2013)
Paolo, an Italian tour bus driver living in Paris, has just summoned up the courage to propose marriage to his German girlfriend Greta. However, a chance encounter with a French woman on a bicycle the very next day turns Paolo's life upside down.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
SnoozefestMovies like thisMotherly (2022)
Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStrange Brew (1983)
Something is rotten at the Elsinore Brewery. Bob and Doug McKenzie (as seen on SCTV) help the orphan Pam regain the brewery founded by her recently-deceased father. But to do so, they must confront the suspicious Brewmeister Smith and two teams of vicious hockey players.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEnd of Days (1999)
Cynical bodyguard Jericho is hired by a man possessed by Satan, who is in search of his bride. When Jericho realizes what is happening, he must do everything he can to save the woman and the world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Amityville Horror (2005)
George Lutz, his wife Kathy, and their three children have just moved into a beautiful, and improbably cheap, Dutch colonial mansion nestled in the sleepy coastal town of Amityville, Long Island. However, their dream home is concealing a horrific past and soon each member of the Lutz family is plagued with increasingly strange and violent visions and impulses.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDe Civitate Rei (1993)
Costante dies and leaves his wife Torella his computer discovery. Torella entrusts the disk to her husband’s friend Gervasio, a lazy man scorned by his family. Twenty years later, Torella tries to get back the disk but Gervasio, who has become rich thanks to the discovery, agrees to go to court over it and comes away the winner. He therefore summons divine misfortune: he loses his third son, suffocated by wealth; kills his wife in a blind rage; and is executed by his first-born son who, after a violent panic attack and reckoning with his conscience, chooses life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Fiorenzo (1995)
A man is sick and he doesn’t show himself. Three people don’t go to visit him and they show themselves.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
I HAD A... (DREAM) (2026)
I HAD A... (DREAM) unfolds as a trip where dance, stop-motion animation, sound, and imagery interplay, far from established dimensions and expectations. Mushrooms immerse the viewer in a dreamlike space, where the film becomes a site for deviation and disruption.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Coming SoonMovies like thisUne brèche écarlate (2025)
Through thread and textile, an Asian seamstress tries to escape from the factory.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Crocodile Dundee (1986)
When a New York reporter plucks crocodile hunter Mick Dundee from the Australian Outback for a visit to the Big Apple, it's a clash of cultures and a recipe for good-natured comedy as naïve Dundee negotiates the concrete jungle. He proves that his instincts are quite useful in the city and adeptly handles everything from wily muggers to high-society snoots without breaking a sweat.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFriday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
After his revival in a hospital morgue, Jason fixes his vengeful attention on the Jarvis family and a group of hitherto carefree teenagers.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
Like The Returning and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Returning?
The closest matches to The Returning are Watching the Detectives (2007), 2073 (2024) and Freaked (1993). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Returning?
Start with Watching the Detectives (2007), the closest match to The Returning.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Returning?
Young Frankenstein (1974), rated 7.9/10 by 3,530 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Returning?
Not Without Hope (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
How are movies similar to The Returning chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Returning, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.