Movies like Dark Lies the Island (2019)
The best movies like Dark Lies the Island (2019) are Stretch (2014), Walking Tall: Lone Justice (2007) and In the Soup (1992). If Dark Lies the Island hooked you with its thriller and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.

Quick picks
- Highest ratedMy Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)7.5/10 from 1,079 votes
- NewestPooka (2023)Released 2023
Stretch (2014)
A hard-luck limo driver struggling to go straight and pay off a debt to his bookie takes on a job with a crazed passenger whose sought-after ledger implicates some seriously dangerous criminals.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWalking Tall: Lone Justice (2007)
In Dallas, witnesses against a drug-lord are murdered in a safe-house.The testimony of FBI agents becomes the only chance to keep him in prison. They are lodged in another safe-house, but the place is invaded and the agents are executed. However, Kate is only wounded, and her boyfriend Nick believes there is a traitor in the agency and takes her to his ranch to protect her life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisIn the Soup (1992)
An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTrafficking (2023)
Fresh out of prison, a former debt collector working for a gangland boss is told he has a terminal brain tumour. In an attempt to atone for his past he rescues a young girl from trafficking, forcing him into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with his boss.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAccident Man (2018)
Mike Fallon, the Accident Man, is a stone cold killer. When a loved one is murdered by his own crew, Fallon is forced to avenge the one person who actually meant something to him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & comedy
Popcorn FlickMovies 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 & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCoffy (1973)
After her younger sister gets involved in drugs and is severely injured by contaminated heroin, a nurse sets out on a mission of vengeance and vigilante justice, killing drug dealers, pimps, and mobsters who cross her path.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Mule (2014)
In 1983, a naive man is detained by Australian Federal Police with lethal narcotics hidden in his stomach. After being apprehended, ‘The Mule’ makes a desperate choice... to defy his bodily functions and withhold the evidence – literally.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSomewhere in Queens (2023)
Leo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family. When their son finds success on his high school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to make it happen.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Good Woman Is Hard to Find (2019)
The recently widowed mother of two, Sarah, is desperate to know who murdered her husband in front of her young son, rendering him mute. Coerced into helping a low-life drug dealer stash narcotics stolen from the local Mr. Big, she's forced into taking drastic action to protect her children, evolving from downtrodden submissive to take-charge vigilante.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHooking Up (2020)
Bailey and Darla embark upon a misguided and mutually deceitful form of therapy, one in which they must drive across the country, re-enacting Darla's colorful history as a sex addict. As their true motivations for the road trip come to light, the unlikely pair force one another to confront their issues, discovering that there might actually be more to love than just sex.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEl Gringo (2012)
A man crossing into Mexico with a satchel of $2,000,000—and a bloody past—finds himself under sudden attack in the sleepy town of El Fronteras.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBrooklyn Rules (2007)
Brooklyn, 1985. With the mob world as a backdrop, three life-long friends struggle with questions of love, loss and loyalty.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisFamily Weekend (2013)
A 16-year-old girl takes her parents hostage after they miss her big jump-roping competition.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Substitute (1996)
When an inner-city Miami schoolteacher gets her knee broken after standing up to the school's gang leader, her mercenary combat specialist boyfriend goes undercover as a substitute teacher to take down the punk. Soon he discovers a conspiracy of criminals at work, and must reassemble his team from his last jungle raid to stop them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFanny Lye Deliver'd (2019)
On an isolated English farm in 1657, Fanny lives a quiet life with her oppressive husband John and their young son. One day their life is rocked with the arrival of young couple Thomas and Rebecca who claim to have been robbed and need a place to stay. But are these strangers really who they say they are?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisKill the Irishman (2011)
Over the summer of 1976, thirty-six bombs detonate in the heart of Cleveland while a turf war raged between Irish mobster Danny Greene and the Italian mafia. Based on a true story, Kill the Irishman chronicles Greene's heroic rise from a tough Cleveland neighborhood to become an enforcer in the local mob.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Rookie (1990)
Veteran cop Nick Pulovski is used to playing musical partners; many of the partners he's had in the past have died on the job, and often as a result of Nick's risky tactics. But the rookie who's been assigned to help Nick bust a carjacking ring is almost as hotheaded as he is … and when Nick gets kidnapped, his newbie partner is his only hope.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Clique (2008)
A young girl tries to fit in with a clique of popular middle school girls after moving into the guest house of one of their homes.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisHard to Die (1990)
While doing the inventory for a lingerie outlet in a high rise office building, five attractive women are terrorized by a series of bizarre killings. They suspect that the strange janitor, who witnessed another series of killings six months previously, is at the bottom of the whole thing. Little do they know the real horror that they face in the end.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both comedy & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPatriot Games (1992)
When CIA Analyst Jack Ryan interferes with an IRA assassination, a renegade faction targets Jack and his family as revenge.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Commitments (1991)
Jimmy Rabbitte, just a thick-ya out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Snapper (1993)
Sharon Curley is a 20-year-old living with her parents and many brothers and sisters in Dublin. When she gets pregnant and refuses to name the father, she becomes the talk of the town.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPooka (2023)
A retired detective moves to a rural village in Ireland where he discovers numerous missing children. He takes the investigation into his own hands due to the absence of police.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller & drama
Cowboys & Angels (2004)
This story concerns a hapless civil servant who gets more than he bargains for when he moves into an apartment in Limerick with a gay fashion student and becomes a star on the catwalk. A contemporary story embracing the essence of what it is to be young in today's Ireland.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMe First (2014)
Feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage, Sarah confides in her daughter’s friend. In a moment of weakness, everything changes and she is suddenly faced with feelings she has never felt before. Sarah must chose between her family and her own happiness. When she makes her choice, it’s up to her daughter to put her mother’s happiness first.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
O'Donoghue's Opera (1998)
In this mock opera infused with gallows humour, Ronnie Drew and his band of bohemian merrymakers, The Dubliners, re-enact the execution ballad ‘The Night Before Larry Was Stretched’. Larry finds himself caught in a hangman’s noose as just reward for being ‘the best burglar in all Ireland’. Made in 1965, the film remained uncompleted and unseen until its restoration in 1998.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Angela's Ashes (1999)
An Irish Catholic family returns to 1930s Limerick after a child's death in America. The unemployed I.R.A. veteran father struggles with poverty, prejudice, and alcoholism as the family endures harsh slum conditions.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMy Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989)
No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWaking Ned (1998)
When a lottery winner dies of shock, his fellow townsfolk attempt to claim the money.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both comedy
Worth the HypeMovies like this
Like Dark Lies the Island and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Dark Lies the Island?
The closest matches to Dark Lies the Island are Stretch (2014), Walking Tall: Lone Justice (2007) and In the Soup (1992). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Dark Lies the Island?
Start with Stretch (2014), the closest match to Dark Lies the Island.
What is the highest-rated movie like Dark Lies the Island?
My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989), rated 7.5/10 by 1,079 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Dark Lies the Island?
Pooka (2023) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Dark Lies the Island?
Yes: Stretch (2014), Walking Tall: Lone Justice (2007) and In the Soup (1992).
How are movies similar to Dark Lies the Island chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Dark Lies the Island, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.





























