Movies like Artemis '81 (1981)
The best movies like Artemis '81 (1981) are The Lathe of Heaven (1980), Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned (2007) and Meltdown: Days of Destruction (2006). If Artemis '81 hooked you with its drama and science fiction, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.

Quick picks
- Highest ratedDoctor Who: A Christmas Carol (2010)8.0/10 from 251 votes
- Newest2073 (2024)Released 2024
The Lathe of Heaven (1980)
George Orr, a man whose dreams can change waking reality, tries to suppress this unpredictable gift with drugs. Dr. Haber, an assigned psychiatrist, discovers the gift to be real and hypnotically induces Mr. Orr to change reality for the benefit of mankind --- with bizarre and frightening results.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDoctor Who: Voyage of the Damned (2007)
When disaster hits the Titanic, the Doctor uncovers a threat to the whole human race. Battling alongside aliens, saboteurs, robot Angels and a new friend called Astrid, can he stop the Christmas inferno?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMeltdown: Days of Destruction (2006)
Despite scientist Nathan's warnings, his boss continues an experiment meant as publicity for his satellite firm: exploding an asteroid. Instead it splits, and the major piece, the size of Iceland, changes course to earth. It is deflected but so close that it shift our course closer to the sun, causing rapid extreme heating, hopefully only mid-term. Nathan warns his sister, TV journalist Carly, and she her lover, police detective Tom. He brings his unruly daughter Kim, her ex-con lover C.J. and her mother, nurse Bonnie, when Nathan offers a flight to a friend's Arctic weather station. Tom takes charge of a dangerous trip to the airport, as everywhere on earth things catch fire and people fight for water, transport and sheer looting.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDoctor Who: Deep Breath (2014)
The newly-regenerated Doctor arrives in Victorian London, and Clara Oswald struggles to embrace the man he has become. All the while, they reunite with the Paternoster Gang to investigate a series of combustions that have been occurring all around the city.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like this2073 (2024)
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & science fiction
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 thisIf There Be Thorns (2015)
Christopher and Cathy Dollanganger live together as man and wife with Cathy's two sons who are unaware of the incestuous nature of their parents' relationship. But when a mysterious woman moves in next door and befriends the younger boy, Bart, he begins a strange transformation and displays accusatory behavior towards Cathy and Christopher. When Christopher discovers their mysterious neighbor is, in fact, his mother Corrine Dollanganger, all of the family's long-hidden secrets are revealed in a tragic climax.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSeeds of Yesterday (2015)
The Sheffield family reveal and go through some home truths as their middle child inherits the Foxworth mansion. The family's ghosts looming over, and more tragedies are in store as the curse lives on.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
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 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 science fiction & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 thisSpectral (2016)
A special-ops team is dispatched to fight supernatural beings that have taken over a European city.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGirl in the Box (2016)
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
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 thisDr. Strange (1978)
A psychiatrist becomes the new Sorcerer Supreme of the Earth in order to battle an evil Sorceress from the past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBad Sister (2015)
As a top student at St. Adeline's Catholic Boarding School, Zoe senses that something is not quite right about the school's new nun-- a sense proven to be true when it is revealed the "good' nun is an imposter with a fatal attraction to Zoe's brother.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMy Dinner with Hervé (2018)
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien who has come to Earth in search of water to save his home planet. Aided by lawyer Oliver Farnsworth, Thomas uses his knowledge of advanced technology to create profitable inventions. While developing a method to transport water, Thomas meets Mary-Lou, a quiet hotel clerk, and begins to fall in love with her. Just as he is ready to leave Earth, Thomas is intercepted by the U.S. government, and his entire plan is threatened.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & 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 thisTalhotBlond (2012)
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Mouth of God, Aaron Kinsella (2023)
Aaron Kinsella throws a party for his closest friends, but he has a special announcement he has to make.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Todd Tarantula (2023)
A psychedelic journey across Los Angeles to find his stolen motorbike leads antihero Todd Tarantula through a time-bending experience where he must uncover the secrets of his past.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & science fiction
28 Years Later: Part III (TBA)
The third installment in the 28 Days Later sequel trilogy. Plot TBA.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & science fiction
Azrax Melawan Sindikat Perdagangan Wanita (2013)
When a human trafficking syndicate abducts a local girl, warrior-preacher Azrax springs into action. With the aid of two men whose sister and girlfriend were also taken, he travels to Hong Kong to dismantle the syndicate and bring the kidnapped girls home.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
20th Century Boys 3: Redemption (2009)
The final showdown, and the final reveal. Who is Friend? How can he be stopped?
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Stuff (1985)
Amalgamated Dairies hires David Rutherford, an FBI man turned industrial saboteur, to investigate a popular new product called “the Stuff,” a new dessert product that is blowing ice cream sales out of the water. Nobody knows how it’s made or what’s in it, but people are lining up to buy it. It's got a delicious flavor to die for!
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCthulhu (2008)
A Seattle history professor, drawn back to his estranged family on the Oregon coast to execute his late mother's estate, is reacquainted with his best friend from childhood, with whom he has a long-awaited tryst. Caught in an accelerating series of events, he discovers aspects of his father's New Age cult which take on a dangerous and apocalyptic significance.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisWayúu: La Niña de Maracaibo (2012)
A detective, goes from Spain to the Venezuelan Guajira, hired by the king of Wuayuus, to protect her, Niña de Maracaibo (wife of King, who belongs to an aristocratic family in the city) the detective tries to discover a conspiracy greater than initially imagined. Where he is only one piece in a plot which mixes smuggling, power struggles and tribal magic. The clash of two opposite visions, the 'Western' Spanish researcher, and the 'native' the Wuayuu original owners of Caribbean, converts this format film apparently 'police' in a thesis film revealing the mystery of the still existing singular South American identity.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Jelly (2021)
Jelly is a short film about a teenage girl who undergoes initiation into her school's new cult as a vehicle to explore tokenism and exploitation in mainstream, disingenuous feminist spaces.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Witness to Waco: Inside the Siege (2009)
An in-depth look into the Branch Davidians, a religious cult led by David Koresh in the late 1980s and early 1990s that ultimately met with a tragic, fiery end.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Like Artemis '81 and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Artemis '81?
The closest matches to Artemis '81 are The Lathe of Heaven (1980), Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned (2007) and Meltdown: Days of Destruction (2006). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Artemis '81?
Start with The Lathe of Heaven (1980), the closest match to Artemis '81.
What is the highest-rated movie like Artemis '81?
Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol (2010), rated 8.0/10 by 251 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Artemis '81?
2073 (2024) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Artemis '81?
Yes: The Lathe of Heaven (1980), Doctor Who: Voyage of the Damned (2007) and Meltdown: Days of Destruction (2006).
How are movies similar to Artemis '81 chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Artemis '81, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.





























