Movies like Shell Shock (1964)
The best movies like Shell Shock (1964) are The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Battleground (1949) and The Boy in the Woods (2023). If Shell Shock hooked you with its drama and war, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedForrest Gump (1994)8.5/10 from 30,848 votes
- NewestThe Punisher: One Last Kill (2026)Released 2026
The Scarlet and the Black (1983)
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBattleground (1949)
Members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division are fighting for their country amidst the rugged terrain of Bastogne, Belgium, in December 1944. Holley and his American compatriots have already seen one of their own, Roderigues, perish under enemy fire. The men try to rebuff another series of Nazi attacks, but what they really need is a change in the weather. Without clear skies, they'll never get the air support they need.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Boy in the Woods (2023)
The remarkable true-life survival story of a Jewish boy hiding and being hunted in the forests of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, based on Maxwell Smart's memoir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTaking Sides (2002)
One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 1930s, Wilhelm Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. In the bombed-out Berlin of the immediate post-war period, the Allies slowly bring law and order to bear on an occupied Germany. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe War (1994)
The son of a Vietnam War Veteran must deal with neighborhood bullies as well as his dad's post-traumatic stress disorder while growing up in the deep south in the 1970's.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDevotion (2022)
The harrowing true story of two elite US Navy fighter pilots during the Korean War. Their heroic sacrifices would ultimately make them the Navy's most celebrated wingmen.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBattle of the Bulge (1965)
In the winter of 1944, the Allied Armies stand ready to invade Germany at the coming of a New Year. To prevent it, Hitler orders an all-out offensive to re-take French territory and capture the major port city of Antwerp.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFixed Bayonets! (1951)
The story of a platoon during the Korean War. One by one, Corporal Denno's superiors are killed until it comes to the point where he must try to take command responsibility.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Big Red One (1980)
A veteran sergeant of World War I leads a squad in World War II, always in the company of the survivor Pvt. Griff, the writer Pvt. Zab, the Sicilian Pvt. Vinci and Pvt. Johnson, in Vichy French Africa, Sicily, D-Day at Omaha Beach, Belgium and France, and ending in a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where they face the true horror of war.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOverlord (1975)
During World War II, a young man is called up and, with an increasing sense of foreboding, undertakes his army training ready for D-Day, June 6th, 1944.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Monuments Men (2014)
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Guns of Navarone (1961)
A team of allied saboteurs are assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFlyboys (2006)
The adventures of the Lafayette Escadrille, young Americans who volunteered for the French military before the U.S. entered World War I, and became the country's first fighter pilots.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Four Feathers (1939)
A disgraced officer risks his life to help his childhood friends in battle.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Longest Day (1962)
The retelling of June 6, 1944, from the perspectives of the Germans, US, British, Canadians, and the Free French. Marshall Erwin Rommel, touring the defenses being established as part of the Reich's Atlantic Wall, notes to his officers that when the Allied invasion comes they must be stopped on the beach. "For the Allies as well as the Germans, it will be the longest day"
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Duellists (1977)
In 1800, as Napoleon Bonaparte rises to power in France, a rivalry erupts between Armand and Gabriel, two lieutenants in the French Army, over a perceived insult. For over a decade, they engage in a series of duels amidst larger conflicts, including the failed French invasion of Russia in 1812, and shifts in the political and social systems of Europe.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & war
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMunich - The Edge of War (2021)
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Codes of War (2025)
War stories about family, ethics and honor include the true story of two U.S. Marines who in a span of six seconds, must stand their ground to stop a suicide truck bomb, a Navy Corpsman who attempts to hold on to his humanity, and a WW2 soldier who gets separated from his squad and is forced to re-evaluate his code.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Call to Spy (2020)
The story of Vera Atkins, a crafty spy recruiter, and two of the first women she selects for Churchill's "secret army": Virginia Hall, a daring American undaunted by a disability and Noor Inayat Khan, a pacifist. These civilian women form an unlikely sisterhood while entangled in dangerous missions to turn the tide of the war.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Horse Soldiers (1959)
A Union Cavalry outfit is sent behind confederate lines in strength to destroy a rail supply center. Along with them is sent a doctor who causes instant antipathy between him and the commander. The secret plan for the mission is overheard by a southern belle who must be taken along to assure her silence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both war
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: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShades of Gray (1948)
After the suppression of "Let There Be Light" (a documentary about combat-induced post-traumatic stress disorders which presented many inconvenient and demoralizing truths), the U.S. Army Signal Corp created this dramatized up-beat remake of the film. Only this time, the production excluded the involvement of John Houston, the producer of the original documentary.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Stop-Loss (2008)
A veteran soldier returns from his completed tour of duty in Iraq, only to find his life turned upside down when he is arbitrarily ordered to return to field duty by the Army.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & war
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Juggler (1953)
A Holocaust survivor moves to Israel and experiences difficulty adjusting to life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
ending world in a waiting room (TBA)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both war
Shadow on the Wall (1950)
Angered that her sister Celia has stolen her fiance, Dell Faring kills her and allows Celia's husband David, knocked out in an argument with Celia, to take the blame and end up on death row. Later Dell, finding out that David's young daughter Susan was witness to the crime and is undergoing psychiatric treatment, plans to eliminate her before her memory returns.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Being Billy (2026)
William (Billy) Livesey is a Falklands Veteran with dementia, living in a care home. A brief connection with new carer Lisa stirs memories in Billy, taking him back to the closing stages of the Falklands War in 1982 and a life changing incident that took place for him, his close friend (and fellow Para) Stu and Argentinian soldier Pablo. Memories from the past help guide Billy through the fog of dementia and re-connect him to the present. Some Wars Never End....
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Fremont (2023)
Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor's guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Punisher: One Last Kill (2026)
As Frank Castle searches for meaning beyond revenge, an unexpected force pulls him back into the fight.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisForrest Gump (1994)
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events—in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Shell Shock?
The closest matches to Shell Shock are The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Battleground (1949) and The Boy in the Woods (2023). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Shell Shock?
Start with The Scarlet and the Black (1983), the closest match to Shell Shock.
What is the highest-rated movie like Shell Shock?
Forrest Gump (1994), rated 8.5/10 by 30,848 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Shell Shock?
The Punisher: One Last Kill (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Shell Shock?
Yes: The Scarlet and the Black (1983), Battleground (1949) and The Boy in the Woods (2023).
How are movies similar to Shell Shock chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Shell Shock, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.