Movies like Pretty Poison (1968)
The best movies like Pretty Poison (1968) are The Dancer Upstairs (2002), Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009) and The Whisper Man (2026). If Pretty Poison 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 ratedAnatomy of a Murder (1959)7.8/10 from 1,245 votes
- NewestRedwood Diaries (2026)Released 2026
The Dancer Upstairs (2002)
A police detective in a South American country is dedicated to hunting down a revolutionary guerilla leader.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisJesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009)
Jesse Stone and Captain Healy are shot during an unauthorized stake-out in Boston. Meanwhile, a cryptic letter sent from Paradise leads the mother of a kidnapped child to Stone. Though her son was declared dead, she hopes he will reopen the case.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Whisper Man (2026)
When his young son vanishes, a widower enlists help from his estranged father, a retired detective who put away the serial killer now linked to the case.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBack Roads (2019)
A young man cares for his younger sisters after their mother is imprisoned for murdering their abusive father. When he strikes up an affair with a married woman, long-dormant family secrets bubble to the surface.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Prayer for the Dying (1987)
Martin, an I.R.A. hitman, is seen by a Catholic priest while carrying out a hit. He grows a bond with the priest and his niece. But his past and his former employers put all their lives in danger.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBlue Story (2019)
Blue Story is a tragic tale of a friendship between Timmy and Marco, two young boys from opposing postcodes. Timmy, a shy, smart, naive and timid young boy from Deptford, goes to school in Peckham where he strikes up a friendship with Marco, a charismatic, streetwise kid from the local area. Although from warring postcodes, the two quickly form a firm friendship until it is tested and they wind up on rival sides of a street war. Blue Story depicts elements of Rapman's own personal experiences and aspects of his childhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKiller Heat (2024)
An expat PI is hired to investigate a suspicious death in Crete, Greece, where jealousies run deep amongst the victim's powerful family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisArgo (2012)
As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA 'exfiltration' specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe November Man (2014)
An ex-CIA operative is brought back in on a very personal mission and finds himself pitted against his former pupil in a deadly game involving high level CIA officials and the Russian president-elect.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGirl in the Basement (2021)
Sara is a teen girl who is looking forward to her 18th birthday to move away from her controlling father Don. But before she could even blow out the candles, Don imprisons her in the basement of their home.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Number 23 (2007)
Animal control officer Walter Sparrow becomes obsessed with a novel that he believes was written about him, as more and more similarities between himself and his literary alter ego seem to arise.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCanary Black (2024)
Top level CIA agent Avery Graves is blackmailed by terrorists into betraying her own country to save her kidnapped husband. Cut off from her team, she turns to her underworld contacts to survive and help locate the coveted intelligence that the kidnappers want.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSiberian Education (2013)
The story of a gang of children growing up in a community of banished criminals, in a forgotten corner of the former Soviet Union. This community rejects the world outside. The only law it obeys… is its own. Against this backdrop two best friends, Kolyma and Gagarin, gradually become fierce enemies as they find themselves on opposite sides of the strict code of honour of the ‘honest criminal’ brotherhood.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
Samantha Caine is a small-town schoolteacher and mom with no memory of her life before washing up on a beach eight years ago. After a car accident and a violent home invasion trigger flashes of her past, she discovers she used to be a deadly CIA assassin. Teaming up with a wisecracking private investigator, Samantha must return to her old ways to take down the people who tried to erase her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNocturnal Animals (2016)
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAmerican Murderer (2022)
The True story of how charismatic con man Jason Derek Brown bankrolls his extravagant lifestyle through a series of scams. On Brown’s trail: Lance Leising, a dogged FBI special agent determined to put Brown behind bars. When Brown’s funds run low and his past catches up with him, he plots his most elaborate scheme yet, pitting himself against Leising in a deadly game of cat and mouse — and becoming the most unlikely and elusive fugitive on the FBI’s most-wanted list.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisDisturbia (2007)
Kale has a life most teenagers would envy. He spends his days endlessly playing video games, surfing the net, eating junk food and watching cable. He has complete free reign of the house, and a beautiful young hottie named Ashley has just moved in next door. There’s only one problem—he’s not allowed to leave the house. Kale’s under court-ordered house arrest for three months, and if he takes one step beyond a 100-foot perimeter of the house, his next confinement will be in a real prison.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Enforcer (2022)
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Anderson Tapes (1971)
Thief Duke Anderson—just released from ten years in jail—takes up with his old girlfriend in her posh apartment block, and makes plans to rob the entire building. What he doesn't know is that his every move is being recorded on audio and video, although he is not the subject of any surveillance.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPalmetto (1998)
After being released from prison on a bum charge, Harry Barber is out for payback to regain his lost two years. He's hired by Mrs. Malroux to fake the kidnapping of her stepdaughter (the daughter of a dying millionaire). He discovers that he is being set up on multiple levels and will soon face a longer sentence if he doesn't prove the truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBerserk! (1967)
A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisRoad to Nowhere (2010)
A passionate filmmaker creating a film based upon a true crime casts an unknown mysterious young woman bearing a disturbing resemblance to the femme fatale in the story. Unsuspectingly, he finds himself drawn into a complex web of haunting intrigue: he becomes obsessed with the woman, the crime, her possibly notorious past, and the disturbing complexity between art and truth. From the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to Verona, Rome, and London, new truths are revealed and clues to other crimes and passions, darker and even more complex, are uncovered.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & romance
SnoozefestMovies like thisRedwood Diaries (2026)
When strange entries begin appearing in her diary written in handwriting that isn't hers, new student Evie Quinn is pulled into a chilling mystery as the messages reveal secrets, predict impossible events, and point toward a truth someone has desperately tried to bury.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & drama
The Interpreter (2005)
After Silvia Broome, an interpreter at United Nations headquarters, overhears plans of an assassination, an American Secret Service agent is sent to investigate.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAnatomy of a Murder (1959)
Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTaste of Freedom (2024)
An aspiring chef Varia learns the importance of staying true to her Ukrainian roots when she stumbles upon a legendary cookbook from 1929 — and its author's ghost, the legendary chef Olha Franko.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both romance & drama
The Newton Boys (1998)
The story of the Newton gang, the most successful bank robbers in history, owing to their good planning and minimal violence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both crime & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Night of the Generals (1967)
A German intelligence officer investigates a prostitute's killing in Warsaw during World War II. He lands on three major Nazi generals as suspects, two of whom are also involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & crime
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe State I Am In (2001)
Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDiary of a Lost Girl (1929)
Thymian Henning, an innocent young girl, is raped by the clerk of her father's pharmacy. She becomes pregnant, is rejected by her family, and must fend for herself in a harsh, cruel world.
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 Pretty Poison?
The closest matches to Pretty Poison are The Dancer Upstairs (2002), Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009) and The Whisper Man (2026). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Pretty Poison?
Start with The Dancer Upstairs (2002), the closest match to Pretty Poison.
What is the highest-rated movie like Pretty Poison?
Anatomy of a Murder (1959), rated 7.8/10 by 1,245 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Pretty Poison?
Redwood Diaries (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Pretty Poison?
Yes: The Dancer Upstairs (2002), Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009) and The Whisper Man (2026).
How are movies similar to Pretty Poison chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Pretty Poison, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.