Movies like Tenderness (2009)
The best movies like Tenderness (2009) are The Son of No One (2011), Reservation Road (2007) and Insomnia (2002). If Tenderness hooked you with its crime and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Silence of the Lambs (1991)8.3/10 from 18,822 votes
- NewestBarron's Cove (2025)Released 2025
The Son of No One (2011)
A rookie cop is assigned to the 118 Precinct in the same district where he grew up. The Precinct Captain starts receiving letters about two unsolved murders that happened many years ago in the housing projects when the rookie cop was just a kid. These letters bring back bad memories and old secrets that begin to threaten his career and break up his family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisReservation Road (2007)
Two fathers' lives intersect when one of them is involved in a terrible and sudden hit-and-run car accident that leaves the other's son dead. In response, the two men react in unexpected ways as a reckoning looms in the near future.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInsomnia (2002)
Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Killer Inside Me (2010)
Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he is a little slow and maybe boring, but that is the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his "sickness": He is a brilliant, but disturbed sociopathic sadist.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisGone Baby Gone (2007)
When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons—they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSleepers (1996)
Two gangsters seek revenge on the state jail worker who during their stay at a youth prison sexually abused them. A sensational court hearing takes place to charge him for the crimes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Woodsman (2004)
After twelve years in prison, Walter returns home. His family has abandoned him, save for his brother-in-law. Few know he's a sex offender and pedophile. Walter finds an apartment and is regularly visited by his parole officer. He gets a job at a lumber mill and starts seeing a coworker. Then his new world begins to unravel; as his past becomes known, he strikes up a high-risk friendship with a young girl and realizes that a man loitering near a schoolyard is a child molester prowling for his next victim.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrisoners (2013)
After his six-year-old daughter is abducted, a desperate father takes justice into his own hands when he loses faith in the detective leading the investigation, setting both men on a collision course as the search descends into obsession and moral compromise.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Disappearance of Alice Creed (2009)
A rich man's daughter is held captive in an abandoned apartment by two former convicts who abducted her and hold her ransom in exchange for her father's money.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMystic River (2003)
The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them suffers a family tragedy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBefore the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007)
When two brothers organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store, the job goes horribly wrong, triggering a series of events that send them and their family hurtling towards a shattering climax.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Boston Strangler (1968)
Boston is being terrorized by a series of seemingly random murders of women. Based on the true story, the film follows the investigators path through several leads before introducing the Strangler as a character. It is seen almost exclusively from the point of view of the investigators who have very few clues to build a case upon.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPolytechnique (2009)
A dramatization of the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, on December 9, 1989, where 14 female engineering students were murdered (and 13 were wounded) by a 25 year old psychotic misogynist armed with a semi-automatic weapon.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBarron's Cove (2025)
When his young son is viciously murdered by a classmate, a grieving father with a history of violence kidnaps the child responsible, igniting a frenzied manhunt fueled by a powerful politician -- the father of the kidnapped boy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTo Catch a Killer (2023)
Baltimore. New Year's Eve. A talented but troubled police officer is recruited by the FBI's chief investigator to help profile and track down a mass murderer.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKidnapped: The Hannah Anderson Story (2015)
On the afternoon of August 3, 2013, 16-year-old Hannah Anderson was abducted after finishing cheerleading practice in a San Diego suburb. When the bodies of her mother and brother were found in the burned home of family friend James DiMaggio later that day, an AMBER Alert was issued, and a frantic multi-state manhunt for Hannah began. For a week she was kept prisoner by the increasingly unstable DiMaggio as they made their way across the state. One week later, the two were found in Idaho and DiMaggio was killed in a shootout with FBI agents, leaving Hannah as the sole survivor. As the dust settled, questions began to emerge about the nature of the relationship between Hannah and her kidnapper...and what really happened?
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & crime
Summer of Sam (1999)
Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American Northeast Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Stranger Beside Me (2003)
While working at a Seattle clinic for women in the 1970s, Ann Rule becomes friends with Ted Bundy. Based on a book by Ann Rule.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
The Little Things (2021)
Deputy Sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon joins forces with Sgt. Jim Baxter to search for a serial killer who's terrorizing Los Angeles. As they track the culprit, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke's past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisIn Her Skin (2009)
Tale of a 15-year-old Australian girl who went missing.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Badge (2002)
A sheriff begins an investigation into the death of a local transsexual after hearing that high ranking politicians may have been involved. Although he is homophobic, his investigation causes him to be rejected by others, forcing him to seek help from the people he once despised.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisTexas Killing Fields (2011)
In the Texas bayous, a local homicide detective teams up with a cop from New York City to investigate a series of unsolved murders.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisIn the Bedroom (2001)
Summertime on the coast of Maine, "In the Bedroom" centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York born Ruth Fowler, a music teacher. His son is involved in a love affair with a local single mother. As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBoy A (2008)
Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLevity (2003)
Manuel Jordan is a man who is free after serving 23 years for killing a teenager during an attempted robbery. After nearly two decades of staring at his victim's face on a newspaper clipping in his cell, the newly paroled man seeks redemption. Instead, redemption—in the form of a mysterious minister and two needy women— finds him.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Crossing Guard (1995)
Unable to move on from the loss of his daughter, Freddy, now a shell of the person he was before, swears to kill the man responsible for her death.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWinged Creatures (2009)
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisJesse Stone: Sea Change (2007)
Police Chief Jesse Stone's relationship with his ex-wife worsens, and he fears he's relapsing into alcoholism. To get his mind off his problems, Jesse begins working on the unsolved murder of a bank teller shot during a robbery. Also, his investigation of an alleged rape draws him into conflict with the town council — which hopes to preserve Paradise's reputation as an ideal seaside resort.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNitram (2021)
Based on true events, "Nitram" lives with his parents in suburban Australia in the mid-90s. He lives a life of isolation and frustration at never fitting in. As his anger grows, he begins a slow descent into a nightmare that culminates in the most heinous of acts.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Tenderness?
The closest matches to Tenderness are The Son of No One (2011), Reservation Road (2007) and Insomnia (2002). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Tenderness?
People who watched Tenderness most often go on to The Son of No One (2011), Reservation Road (2007) and Insomnia (2002).
What is the highest-rated movie like Tenderness?
The Silence of the Lambs (1991), rated 8.3/10 by 18,822 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Tenderness?
Barron's Cove (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Tenderness?
Yes: The Son of No One (2011), Reservation Road (2007) and Insomnia (2002).
How are movies similar to Tenderness chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Tenderness, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.