Movies like Black Rain (1989)
The best movies like Black Rain (1989) are Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Oppenheimer (2023) and Taboo (1999). If Black Rain hooked you with its drama and history, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedOppenheimer (2023)8.0/10 from 12,872 votes
- NewestMarty Supreme (2025)Released 2025
- In JapaneseMerry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)Also in Japanese
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)
Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisOppenheimer (2023)
The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTaboo (1999)
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering on a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFlags of Our Fathers (2006)
There were five Marines and one Navy Corpsman photographed raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. This is the story of three of the six surviving servicemen - John 'Doc' Bradley, Pvt. Rene Gagnon and Pvt. Ira Hayes - who fought in the battle to take Iwo Jima from the Japanese.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSlaughterhouse-Five (1972)
Billy Pilgrim, a veteran of the Second World War, finds himself mysteriously detached from time, so that he is able to travel, without being able to help it, from the days of his childhood to those of his peculiar life on a distant planet called Tralfamadore, passing through his bitter experience as a prisoner of war in the German city of Dresden, over which looms the inevitable shadow of an unspeakable tragedy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGirl, Interrupted (1999)
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLetters from Iwo Jima (2006)
The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDie My Love (2025)
After inheriting a remote Montana house, Jackson moves there from New York with his partner Grace, and the couple soon welcome a child. As Jackson becomes increasingly absent and rural isolation sets in, Grace struggles with loneliness, creative frustration, and unresolved emotional wounds. What begins as an attempt at renewal gradually turns into an intense psychological descent, placing strain on their relationship and exposing the fragile balance between love, identity, and motherhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLady Macbeth (2016)
Rural England, 1865. Katherine, suffocated by her loveless marriage to a bitter man and restrained by his father's tyranny, unleashes an irresistible force within her, so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlood and Bones (2004)
In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMuseum (2016)
In Tokyo, Japan, several grotesque murders take place on rainy days. Detective Sawamura, who is in charge of the case, soon discovers that his own family is connected to the crimes.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMarty Supreme (2025)
Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Heroes of Telemark (1965)
Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf Pedersen in an effort to destroy the German heavy water production plant in rural Telemark.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlonde (2022)
From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, this reimagined fictional portrait of Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe blurs the lines of fact and fiction to explore the widening split between her public and private selves.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBattle Royale (2000)
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisShirley (2020)
A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNocturnal Animals (2016)
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAmerican Pastoral (2016)
Set in postwar America, a man watches his seemingly perfect life fall apart as his daughter's new political affiliation threatens to destroy their family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShoplifters (2018)
In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisVera (2022)
Vera has young woman as the main heroine, who is in the jaws of the war spy network in WW2 and also of the patriarchal society in the Balkans with full of powerful, arrogant men with whom she deals bravely and arrogantly.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Stalingrad (1993)
A German Platoon is explored through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After half of their number is wiped out and they're placed under the command of a sadistic captain, the platoon lieutenant leads his men to desert. The platoon members attempt escape from the city, now surrounded by the Soviet Army.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWar and Peace (1956)
The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Best of Youth (2003)
After a fateful encounter in the summer of 1966, the lifepaths of two brothers from a middle-class Roman family diverge, intersecting with some of the most significant events of postwar Italian history in the following decades.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisPelle the Conqueror (1987)
In the late 19th century, two Swedish emigrants, Lasse Karlsson and his son Pelle, arrive on the Danish island of Bornholm hoping to find work on a farm and save enough money to travel to the United States of America.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTouching the Void (2003)
The true story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates' disastrous and nearly-fatal mountain climb of 6,344m Siula Grande in the Cordillera Huayhuash in the Peruvian Andes in 1985.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEvil (2003)
Stockholm, in the 1950s. Erik is expelled from the local school for getting into one brawl too many. To protect Erik from his violent stepfather’s reaction to his expulsion, Erik's mother arranges for Erik to spend a year at Stjärnsberg Boarding School, the only school willing to accept him. This is Erik's last chance to graduate to Upper School and he promises his mother, for his and her sake, to do all he can to stay out of trouble.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBeneath the Surface (TBA)
Beneath the Surface introduces readers to the story of the wealthy Kingsley family of Southern California. At the center of the action are the power-hungry children of an aging billionaire, who prove unprepared for a storm of deceptions and ruthless family ambition, while out on a weekend voyage.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Bloody Crayons (2017)
A group of friends goes to an island for a short film project when they are attacked by a mysterious killer after playing a game of bloody crayons.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Kitchen Stories (2003)
Swedish efficiency researchers come to Norway for a study of Norwegian men, to optimize their use of their kitchen. Folke Nilsson (Tomas Norström) is assigned to study the habits of Isak Bjørvik (Joachim Calmeyer). By the rules of the research institute, Folke has to sit on an umpire's chair in Isak's kitchen and observe him from there, but never talk to him. Isak stops using his kitchen and observes Folke through a hole in the ceiling instead. However, the two lonely men slowly overcome the initial post-war Norwegian-Swede distrust and become friends.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Black Rain?
The closest matches to Black Rain are Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Oppenheimer (2023) and Taboo (1999). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Black Rain?
Start with Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), the closest match to Black Rain.
What is the highest-rated movie like Black Rain?
Oppenheimer (2023), rated 8.0/10 by 12,872 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Black Rain?
Marty Supreme (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Japanese movies like Black Rain?
Yes: Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Taboo (1999) and Blood and Bones (2004).
How are movies similar to Black Rain chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Black Rain, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.