Movies like The Reconstruction of William Zero (2015)
The best movies like The Reconstruction of William Zero (2015) are Lapsis (2021), Sleep, My Love (1948) and Doctor Who: Dark Water / Death in Heaven (2014). If The Reconstruction of William Zero hooked you with its science fiction and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedOnce Upon a Time in America (1984)8.4/10 from 6,320 votes
- NewestSpace/Time (2025)Released 2025
Lapsis (2021)
In a parallel present, delivery man Ray Tincelli is struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother. After a series of two-bit hustles and unsuccessful swindles, Ray takes a job in a strange new realm of the gig economy: trekking deep into the forest, pulling cable over miles of terrain to connect large, metal cubes that link together the new quantum trading market. As he gets pulled deeper into the zone, he encounters growing hostility and the threat of robot cablers, and must choose to either help his fellow workers or to get rich and get out.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSleep, My Love (1948)
A woman wakes up in the middle of the night on board a train, but she can't remember how she got there. Danger and suspense ensue.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDoctor Who: Dark Water / Death in Heaven (2014)
In this epic two-part finale, the Doctor comes face to face with the mysterious Missy, and an impossible choice is looming. With Cybermen on the streets of London, old friends unite against old enemies, and the Doctor takes to the air in a startling new role.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMarjorie Prime (2017)
A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBrainstorm (1983)
Two brilliant research scientists have invented a device capable of recording and playing back sensory experiences only to have devastating results when one of them records their own death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSpellbound (1945)
When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man's murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
Based on an "actual event" that took place in 1943. About a US Navy Destroyer Escort that disappeared from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and sent two men 40 years into the future to 1984.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
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 & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJonathan (2018)
Jonathan is a young man with a strange condition that only his brother understands. But when he begins to yearn for a different life, their unique bond becomes increasingly tested.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
SnoozefestMovies like thisDoctor Who: A Christmas Carol (2010)
Amy Pond and Rory Williams are trapped on a crashing space liner, and the only way the Eleventh Doctor can rescue them is to save the soul of a lonely old miser. But is Kazran Sardick, the richest man in Sardicktown, beyond redemption? And what is lurking in the fogs of Christmas Eve?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisSpace/Time (2025)
After a fatal test shuts down their project, a disgraced team of scientists enters the criminal underworld to rebuild a forbidden space-bending engine that could rescue humanity or annihilate it entirely.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Last Mimzy (2007)
Two siblings begin to develop special talents after they find a mysterious box of toys, and soon their parents and even their teacher are drawn into a strange new world – and find a task ahead of them that is far more important than any of them could imagine.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStar Trek: Generations (1994)
Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the Enterprise-D find themselves at odds with the renegade scientist Soran who is destroying entire star systems. Only one man can help Picard stop Soran's scheme...and he's been dead for seventy-eight years.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMan from Reno (2014)
A mystery outside of San Francisco brings together small-town sheriff Paul Del Moral, Japanese author Aki Akahori, and a traveler from Reno who soon disappears, leaving behind his suitcase and a trail of questions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Deadly Affair (1967)
Charles Dobbs is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa, a survivor of a Nazi Germany extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. So Dobbs hires a retiring inspector, Mendel, to quietly make inquiries. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe House on Telegraph Hill (1951)
Concentration camp survivor Victoria Kowelska finds herself involved in mystery, greed, and murder when she assumes the identity of a dead friend in order to gain passage to America.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTime Without Pity (1957)
Alec Graham is sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Jennie, with whom he spent a weekend at the English country home of the parents of his friend Brian Stanford. Alec’s father, David Graham, a not-so-successful writer and alcoholic who has neglected his son in the past, flies in from Canada to visit his son on death row. David then goes on a quest to try and clear his son’s name while battling “the bottle.”
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEach Dawn I Die (1939)
A corrupt D.A. with governatorial ambitions is annoyed by an investigative reporter's criticism of his criminal activities and decides to frame the reporter for manslaughter in order to silence him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Wrinkle in Time (2003)
Meg and Charles Wallace are aided by Calvin and three interesting women in the search for their father who disappeared during a government experiment. Their travels take them around the universe to a place unlike any other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Five People You Meet In Heaven (2004)
On his 83rd birthday, Eddie, a war vet and a maintenance worker at the Ruby Pier amusement park, dies while trying to save a girl who is sitting under a falling ride. When he awakens in the afterlife, he encounters five people with ties to his corporeal existence who help him understand the meaning of his life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Worth the HypeMovies like thisInside (2006)
Alex has a disturbing hobby of following strangers...until one night he gets caught. Instead of calling the police, the couple--fascinated by Alex's resemblance to their dead son--asks him to stay, and Alex finds himself trapped in a horrifying existence of desperation, despair, and insanity.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
The Island (2005)
In 2019, Lincoln Six-Echo is a resident of a seemingly "Utopian" but contained facility. Like all of the inhabitants of this carefully-controlled environment, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to The Island — reportedly the last uncontaminated location on the planet. But Lincoln soon discovers that everything about his existence is a lie.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoax (2005)
Years before she saw a man being swallowed by a wave, inside a swimming pool. With this event, time ceased to be linear, and in a split second her family disappeared, leaving only behind the traces of their presence. Through the window´s reflex she realises her face has changed - the face is longer and the hair; she has memories inside her head, that she doesn´t recognize. In another time, she returns to that place to try to confirm her memory.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisCara x Jagger (2019)
Cara X Jagger is an unforgettable love story centered on a pair of young lovers who are faced with the most unlikely dilemma that could potentially make or break their relationship. Cara is doing everything in her power to forget a painful event that ruined her relationship with Jagger while Jagger is fighting to remember his life after he lost his memory due to a terrible accident.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Sleepwalker (2022)
A recluse painter’s careful routine is shaken up when a mysterious young woman knocks on his door. An encounter that will confront him with his past.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The Morning Sea (TBA)
After the stillbirth of his child, a young photographer Hiroshi, begins to see spirits as he searches for new purpose.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Last Orders (2001)
Jack Dodd was a London butcher who enjoyed a pint with his mates for over 50 years. When he died, he died as he lived, with a smile on his face watching a horse race on which he had bet, with borrowed money. But before he died he had a final request, 'Last Orders', that his ashes be scattered in the sea at Margate. The movie follows his mates, Ray, Lenny and Vic and his foster son Vince as they journey to the sea with the ashes. Along the way, the threads of their lives, their loves and their disappointments are woven together in their memories of Jack and his wife Amy
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHourglass (2024)
A man arrives at a final point in time, an existential space where the future no longer exists and there is nothing left to do but turn inward. As the reality around him becomes frozen and devoid of purpose, he embarks on a journey through his consciousness, attempting to piece together his identity and trace the love that was lost in the past.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Nostalgia (1983)
Russian poet Andrei Gorchakov journeys through Italy with his interpreter Eugenia to research the life of an 18th-century Russian composer who once lived abroad. Isolated and consumed by an unrelenting longing for his homeland, Andrei becomes drawn to Domenico, a radical mystic obsessed with spiritual redemption. Through austere imagery and extended temporal rhythms, Tarkovsky examines exile, memory, and the profound melancholy of being unable to belong fully to either place or language.
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 The Reconstruction of William Zero?
The closest matches to The Reconstruction of William Zero are Lapsis (2021), Sleep, My Love (1948) and Doctor Who: Dark Water / Death in Heaven (2014). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Reconstruction of William Zero?
Start with Lapsis (2021), the closest match to The Reconstruction of William Zero.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Reconstruction of William Zero?
Once Upon a Time in America (1984), rated 8.4/10 by 6,320 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Reconstruction of William Zero?
Space/Time (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Reconstruction of William Zero?
Yes: Lapsis (2021), Sleep, My Love (1948) and Doctor Who: Dark Water / Death in Heaven (2014).
How are movies similar to The Reconstruction of William Zero chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Reconstruction of William Zero, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.