Movies like Social Butterfly (2013)
The best movies like Social Butterfly (2013) are Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), Inseparable (2012) and Pariah (2011). If Social Butterfly hooked you with its drama and mystery, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Secret Life of Bees (2008)7.5/10 from 603 votes
- NewestStranger (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 & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInseparable (2012)
A troubled engineer faces pressure at work and problems at home with his moody wife. American expat Chuck, rescues him from the brink of despair and becomes an unlikely mentor.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPariah (2011)
A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
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 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 thisHounddog (2008)
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHow to Have Sex (2023)
Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday—drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Brother the Devil (2012)
Fourteen-year-old Mo is a lonely, sensitive boy whose hunger for the rant and banter of buddies makes him prone to tread dangerous territories. He idolizes his handsome older brother, Rashid, a charismatic, well-respected member of a local gang, whose drug dealing enables “Rash” to provide for his family. Aching to be seen as a tough guy himself, Mo takes a job that unlocks a fateful turn of events and forces the brothers to confront their inner demons. It turns out that hate is easy. It is love and understanding that take real courage.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIron Jawed Angels (2004)
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Dry White Season (1989)
During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Secret Life of Bees (2008)
Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Boys in the Band (1970)
Harold is celebrating a birthday, and his friend Michael has drafted some other friends to help commemorate the event. As the evening progresses, an unexpected guest shows up, the alcohol flows, the knives come out, and dormant and unspoken emotions are unleashed.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Short History of the Long Road (2019)
Nola grew up living in a van with her father, Clint—two nomads against the world. When tragedy strikes, Nola must confront the reality of life on the road alone, learning to own her grief, her past, and her new destination.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLockdown (2000)
Avery (Jones) returns to college as a competitive swimmer after getting his life back on track. But his life takes another unexpected turn when he and his two friends (Bonds, Casseus) are wrongly accused of murder and end up in prison.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBessie (2015)
The story of legendary blues performer, Bessie Smith, who rose to fame during the 1920s and '30s.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHenry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015)
Unfolding over the course of one very eventful day in his life, at 17-year-old preacher’s kid Henry's afternoon birthday pool party, the guests include an assortment of grown-ups from the family church, as well as Henry’s secular and religious teen friends — including the closeted young Logan, who clearly has eyes for Henry.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHereafter (2010)
Three people — a blue-collar American, a French journalist and a London school boy — are touched by death in different ways.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisVesper (2022)
After the collapse of Earth's ecosystem, Vesper, a 13-year-old girl struggling to survive with her paralyzed Father, meets a mysterious Woman with a secret that forces Vesper to use her wits, strength and bio-hacking abilities to fight for the possibility of a future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIntroducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999)
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Congress (2013)
An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStranger (2025)
An old farmer struggles to take care of his rundown farm alone, when a stranger appears and uninvited begins to help him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & mystery
Nappily Ever After (2018)
After an accident at the hair salon, Violet realizes she's not living life to the fullest. A soulful barber helps her put the pieces back together.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMother's Meat and Freud's Flesh (1985)
Inspired by the early trash films of John Waters, the film stars Estdelacropolis as Demira, a gay porn actor struggling with both his emotionally complicated relationship with his mother Esther and his desire to break out of porn and into mainstream movies. He connects with a Freudian psychiatrist who is convinced that his homosexuality stems from an unresolved Oedipus complex which he has repressed by denying his natural attractions to women, to which the psychiatrist's proposed solution is to hypnotize Esther into believing that she is a man so that men will become the gender that sexually repulses Demira; in his career, he is ambivalent when the first "mainstream" role he is able to land is a gore film in which he will play the victim of a cannibal family for which Esther has also been cast as the mother.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Sticky Fingers of Time (1997)
A sci-fi novelist in 1950s Brooklyn suddenly finds herself transported 40 years into the future. She quickly learns that she isn’t the only “timefreak,” and that her time may already be up.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Very Good Girls (2013)
Two New York City girls make a pact to lose their virginity during their first summer out of high school. When they both fall for the same street artist, the friends find their connection tested for the first time.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisPunk'd Pooch (2024)
After falling out years ago, Fifi, a guitarist poodle, has been invited to play at a venue with her old high school band— Punk’d Pooch. All is well until she reunites with her ex-friend and fellow guitar player, Tilly.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
One Day We'll Fly Away (2024)
A boy and his sick mom plan a trip to Italy to escape his father.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Stairway (2024)
A peek into the true coming-of-age story of Robert Mutz, a Jewish teenager who escaped Vienna in the 1930s and traveled to Houston, America as a refugee from the Holocaust. Becoming the lone survivor of his village.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Divine Sparks (2020)
A chance encounter at a German highway rest stop sparks youthful attraction between a thirteen-year-old Czech boy and a Belgian girl. In the short time between lunch and their departure, they try to meet each other. With the help of an Arab truck driver, and a man who looks like an African footballer, they overcome language barriers and avoid their families to spend a few minutes together. In this unassuming location, they share an experience that is unique to modern Europe.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Cómo pasan las horas (2005)
It chronicles a few hours in the life of a family living on the southern coast of Buenos Aires. After breakfast, a father (Guillermo Arengo) heads off with his son (Agustín Alcoba) to a desolate beach for the day, while his wife (Roxana Berco) visits her seriously ill mother (Susana Campos) in a remote, wooded area.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Social Butterfly?
The closest matches to Social Butterfly are Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), Inseparable (2012) and Pariah (2011). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Social Butterfly?
Start with Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), the closest match to Social Butterfly.
What is the highest-rated movie like Social Butterfly?
The Secret Life of Bees (2008), rated 7.5/10 by 603 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Social Butterfly?
Stranger (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Social Butterfly?
Yes: Brand Upon the Brain! (2007), Inseparable (2012) and Pariah (2011).
How are movies similar to Social Butterfly chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Social Butterfly, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.