Movies like shadowPLAY (2026)
The best movies like shadowPLAY (2026) are Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), Eleanor the Great (2025) and An Adventure in Space and Time (2013). If shadowPLAY hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSunset Boulevard (1950)8.3/10 from 3,089 votes
- NewestFather Mother Sister Brother (2025)Released 2025
Brand Upon the Brain! (2007)
After returning home to his long-estranged mother upon a request from her deathbed, a man raised by his parents in an orphanage has to confront the childhood memories that have long haunted him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEleanor the Great (2025)
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAn Adventure in Space and Time (2013)
Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles while wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry's glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama. Allied with a team of unusual but brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever made.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAnuja (2024)
When a brilliant nine-year-old working in a sweatshop gets a chance to attend school, she must make a difficult choice for her and her sister's future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGood One (2024)
On a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, 17-year-old Sam contends with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Truth About Emanuel (2013)
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHere (2024)
An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJust Charlie (2017)
Football star Charlie has the world at her feet. With a top club desperate to sign her, her future is seemingly mapped out. But the teenager sees only a nightmare. Raised as a boy, Charlie is torn between wanting to live up to her father's expectations and shedding this ill fitting skin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHead Full of Honey (2018)
A young girl tries to help her grandfather, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s, navigate his increasing forgetfulness, and ends up going on a remarkable adventure with him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFather Mother Sister Brother (2025)
Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAftersun (2022)
Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSleep, My Love (1948)
A woman wakes up in the middle of the night on board a train, but she can't remember how she got there. Danger and suspense ensue.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlicka (2006)
Katy McLaughlin desires to work on her family's mountainside horse ranch, although her father insists she finish boarding school. Katy finds a mustang in the hills near her ranch. The headstrong 16 year old then sets her mind to tame a mustang and prove to her father she can run the ranch. But when tragedy happens, it will take all the love and strength the family can muster to restore hope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJimmy P. (2013)
At the end of WWII, Jimmy Picard, a Native American Blackfoot who fought in France, suffers from unexplainable symptoms and is admitted to a military hospital. When doctors suspect schizophrenia, an eccentric psychoanalyst takes up the case and starts a conversation with the veteran.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSunset Boulevard (1950)
A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Locket (1946)
A dark personal secret drives a young woman to use every man she encounters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisI Believe in Unicorns (2015)
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLucky (2017)
Follows the journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off-the-map desert town. He finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWonderstruck (2017)
The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Corner in Wheat (1909)
On a whim, a greedy tycoon decides to corner the world market in wheat. This doubles the price of bread, forcing grain producers into charity lines and others further into poverty. The film contrasts the differences between the lives of those who work to grow the wheat and the life of the man who dabbles in its sale for profit.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisExposure (2017)
The pattern-living Paul Fowler has his routines disrupted by the contact-seeking photographer Jane.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Os Santos (2022)
Kaio just wanted a night of sex with Eduardo, a guy he just met on a dating app. But strange things happen when the Santos family shows up unannounced and prepares a special feast for the two of them.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Hollywood 90028 (1973)
Mark, a cameraman who aspires to work on serious Hollywood films but can only find work making porno loops, turns to murder when his personal and professional frustrations reach their breaking point.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Dios te salve, María (2025)
In a religious retreat, Maria and Camila defy the rules to live a night of confessions and discoveries through an intimate journey of youthful rebellion and search for identity that will test their friendship and faith. Between laughter and secrets, they discover that growing up is also an act of courage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Crescendo (TBA)
As the end-of-year concert approaches, Théa, a young student pianist at a conservatory, finds herself losing all her nerve due to her fascination with one of her elders, Cécile.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Jump (2008)
JUMP is a psychological drama revealing for the first time the extraordinary circumstances behind the unjust murder trial of the young Jew, Philippe Halsman, who would later become the most sought after celebrity portrait photographer of his generation.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Night Like This (2025)
A stone-broke gay actor and a privileged screw-up with a failing business cross paths on a winter night and join forces in a quest around London to find a meaning to their miserable lives, but when their unlikely connection turns into something deeper, fears and demons from their past come to jeopardise the whole mission.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Waterlover, Watercarrier (2022)
A homosexual movie about two strangers in quarantine.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
A Plea (2024)
A young girl is forced to reckon with the changing nature of her relationship
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Kika (1993)
When American author Nicholas brings in a cosmetologist named Kika to prepare the corpse of his recently deceased son, she inadvertently revives the young man, then falls in love with him. Forces conspire against the couple, though, as Nicholas wants Kika for himself.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
Like shadowPLAY and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like shadowPLAY?
The closest matches to shadowPLAY are Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), Eleanor the Great (2025) and An Adventure in Space and Time (2013). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after shadowPLAY?
Start with Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), the closest match to shadowPLAY.
What is the highest-rated movie like shadowPLAY?
Sunset Boulevard (1950), rated 8.3/10 by 3,089 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like shadowPLAY?
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like shadowPLAY?
Yes: Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), Eleanor the Great (2025) and An Adventure in Space and Time (2013).
How are movies similar to shadowPLAY chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside shadowPLAY, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.