Movies like Compulsion
If Compulsion hooked you with its thriller and drama, these are the films to watch next. Every pick says why it matches.
The Cry of the Owl (2009)
Fleeing New York City, a failed marriage and a fragile mental history, artist Robert Forrester moves to small-town Pennsylvania. There he becomes fascinated with the simple domesticity of a beautiful neighbor, watching her through the windows of her home --- until she invites him in for coffee. He is drawn into a relationship with the young woman whose boyfriend goes missing; Robert becomes a murder suspect, gradually sensing he is the target of a larger plot.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisAlex of Venice (2015)
After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Wife (2017)
A wife questions her life choices as she travels to Stockholm with her husband, where he is slated to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBreathe In (2013)
When a foreign exchange student arrives in a small upstate New York town, she challenges the dynamics of her host family's relationships and alters their lives forever.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBroken (2007)
A waitress confronts all the wrong turns she has made in her short life and ultimately ends up facing the biggest wrong turn of all: her dangerous ex-boyfriend who's determined to win back her love or die trying.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisSubmission (2018)
A well-respected professor who is a celebrated novelist and loving husband loses himself when he becomes obsessed with an ambitious and talented student.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisFelicia's Journey (1999)
Seventeen and pregnant, Felicia travels to England in search of her lover and is found instead by Joseph Ambrose Hilditch, a helpful catering manager whose kindness masks an unsettling secret.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Second (2018)
The persona of a celebrated author is threatened when her best friend and muse reveals the dark secret behind her first novel's provenance, igniting an incendiary tale of sex, lies and betrayal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Adoration (2013)
Lil and Roz are two lifelong friends, having grown up together as neighbors in an idyllic beach town. As adults, their sons have developed a friendship as strong as that which binds their mothers. One summer, all four are confronted by simmering emotions that have been mounting between them, and each find unexpected happiness in relationships that cross the bounds of convention.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Neighbor (2020)
A middle-aged man in a stagnant marriage, finds his life upended when an attractive young woman and her seemingly abusive husband move in next door.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Oranges (2011)
A man's affair with his friend's much-younger daughter throws two neighboring families into turmoil.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAddicted (2014)
A gallerist risks her family and flourishing career when she enters into an affair with a talented painter and slowly loses control of her life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisAll I See Is You (2017)
After a successful experimental surgery restores her eyesight, a young woman sees her marriage spiral in a disturbing direction.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisLittle Woods (2019)
For years, Ollie has illicitly helped the struggling residents of her North Dakota oil boomtown access Canadian health care and medication. When the authorities catch on, she plans to abandon her crusade, only to be dragged in even deeper after a desperate plea for help from her sister.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisUna (2017)
When a young woman unexpectedly arrives at an older man's workplace, looking for answers, the secrets of the past threaten to unravel his new life.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMercy (2009)
A young novelist tries to write about love, but realizes he will first need some real-life experience before taking on the subject.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Never Here (2017)
An artist whose work involves capturing images of strangers begins to believe she herself is being observed.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
The Boy Downstairs (2018)
A young woman is forced to reflect on her first relationship when she inadvertently moves into her ex boyfriend's apartment building.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Complete Unknown (2016)
Tom’s birthday dinner party is turned upside down by the unexpected arrival of Alice, an old flame who changed her identity and vanished without a trace 15 years prior.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Crooked Somebody (2018)
An attention-seeking psychic is kidnapped and tries to use the situation to boost his popularity.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPermission (2018)
Anna and Will, were each other’s first every-things: first kiss, first love, first and only relationship. Now, 10 years in, at Anna’s 30th birthday party, as Will is about to propose, the couple’s best friend makes a drunken toast, suggesting that they should sleep around before their inevitable marriage. The joke lands like a lead balloon, but the thought lingers until Anna proposes that they try opening their relationship – as a sexual experiment.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Wife's Nightmare (2014)
Liz, just returned home after a mental breakdown, has to welcome a relative stranger into her home when Caitlin, a young, vivacious woman, claims to be her husband's daughter.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHospitality (2018)
A woman with a checkered past must protect her son when a man brings trouble to her isolated bed and breakfast.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
The Lovers (2017)
The separation of a long married couple goes awry when they fall for each other again.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisKill for Me (2013)
Rent’s a bitch. And that is why, six months after her best friend went missing, Amanda finally gives in to getting another roommate, Hailey. The two college students turn out to have something in common, however: abusive men. For Hailey, it’s her dad. For Amanda, it’s a stalkery ex-boyfriend. But problems can be solved and, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. In other words, Kill for Me, I kill for you.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Tenant (1976)
A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in Paris where he finds himself drawn into a rabbit hole of dangerous paranoia.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFarewell, My Lovely (1975)
Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend, a former lounge dancer. While also investigating the murder of a client and the theft of a jade necklace, Marlowe becomes entangled with seductress Helen Grayle and discovers a web of dark secrets that are better left hidden.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDear Mr. Gacy (2010)
A chronicle of the interaction between college student Jason Moss and the object of his obsession, serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Rookie (1990)
Veteran cop Nick Pulovski is used to playing musical partners; many of the partners he's had in the past have died on the job, and often as a result of Nick's risky tactics. But the rookie who's been assigned to help Nick bust a carjacking ring is almost as hotheaded as he is … and when Nick gets kidnapped, his newbie partner is his only hope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisKen Park (2003)
Teen skater Ken Park (nicknamed Krap Nek; his name spelled and pronounced backward) kills himself at a Visalia skate park; his death bookends the lives of four other young people who knew him: Shawn, the most conventional; Tate brims with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother; and Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Compulsion?
The closest matches to Compulsion are The Cry of the Owl, Alex of Venice, The Wife.
How are movies similar to Compulsion chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Compulsion, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.
Are there English movies like Compulsion?
Yes: The Cry of the Owl, Alex of Venice, The Wife.