Movies like Ben Is Back (2018)
The best movies like Ben Is Back (2018) are Hillbilly Elegy (2020), Echo Valley (2025) and Silent Night (2023). If Ben Is Back hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedPalmer (2021)8.1/10 from 2,026 votes
- NewestThe Whisper Man (2026)Released 2026
Hillbilly Elegy (2020)
An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisEcho Valley (2025)
Kate lives a secluded life—until her troubled daughter shows up, frightened and covered in someone else's blood. As Kate unravels the shocking truth, she learns just how far a mother will go to try to save her child.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSilent Night (2023)
A tormented father witnesses his young son die when caught in a gang's crossfire on Christmas Eve. While recovering from a wound that costs him his voice, he makes vengeance his life's mission and embarks on a punishing training regimen in order to avenge his son's death.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBeautiful Boy (2018)
After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPalmer (2021)
After 12 years in prison, former high school football star Eddie Palmer returns home to put his life back together—and forms an unlikely bond with Sam, an outcast boy from a troubled home. But Eddie's past threatens to ruin his new life and family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisRequiem for a Dream (2000)
The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like this'R Xmas (2001)
A New York drug dealer is kidnapped, and his wife must try to come up with the money and drugs to free him from his abductors before Christmas.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBraven (2018)
A logger defends his family from a group of dangerous drug runners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRoom (2015)
Held captive for 7 years in an enclosed space, a woman and her young son finally gain their freedom, allowing the boy to experience the outside world for the first time.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisFour Good Days (2021)
A mother helps her daughter work through four crucial days of recovery from substance abuse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHoney Boy (2019)
The story of a child star attempting to mend his relationship with his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father over the course of a decade, loosely based on Shia LaBeouf’s life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDrugstore Cowboy (1989)
Portland, Oregon, 1971. Bob Hughes is the charismatic leader of a peculiar quartet, formed by his wife, Dianne, and another couple, Rick and Nadine, who skillfully steal from drugstores and hospital medicine cabinets in order to appease their insatiable need for drugs. But neither fun nor luck last forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCape Fear (1991)
Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMean Dreams (2016)
When two youngsters meet and fall for each other, they must go on the run from the girl's corrupt father, who is also the sheriff of the town.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThis Boy's Life (1993)
When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies 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 drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFinestkind (2023)
Two brothers from opposite sides of the tracks are reunited as adults. Desperate circumstances force them into a deal with an organized crime syndicate in Boston, and a young woman gets caught in the middle.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both 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: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBullet (1996)
A tough, Jewish ex-con just released from prison crosses a powerful drug dealer and former prison rival in his return to a life of crime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisChangeling (2008)
Los Angeles, 1928. When single mother Christine Collins leaves for work, her son vanishes without a trace. Five months later, the police reunite mother and son. But when Christine suspects that the boy returned to her isn't her child, her quest for truth exposes a world of corruption.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNorthern Lights (TBA)
A 17-year-old snowmobile rider on the brink of going professional is driven by a quiet desire to escape her small-town life. When she discovers she is pregnant, her carefully imagined future is thrown into uncertainty, forcing her to confront the tension between motherhood and ambition.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Jesus of Montreal (1989)
A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Tale of Two Sisters (2003)
Two sisters return home after a stay in a mental institution, only to face disturbing events and a strained relationship with their stepmother. As eerie occurrences unfold, dark family secrets begin to surface, blurring the line between reality and nightmare.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTo Market to Market (1987)
A man from an upper class family is manipulated into laundering drug money by his brother.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Dandelions (1974)
Rick (Rutger Hauer), a disaffected sailor turned hard drinking womanizer, returns home from six months at sea to find his wife (Corrigan), whom he was deeply in love, has unexpectedly left him and is now a junkie whore. Devastated, he tries to ease his pain with booze and cheap thrills. His wife's best friend (Dagmar Lassander) makes a move on him, and when he spurns her (after scewing her first, naturally) she plots her revenge. She does so in an ingenious way, by exploiting a fantasy woman of his, but her plan backfires with tragic consequences.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Juno (2007)
Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, sixteen year old high-schooler, Juno MacGuff, makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThere Will Be Blood (2007)
Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisChiko (2008)
This is the story of Isa, who grows up in a Hamburg suburb. It might be one of the world's richest cities but every beast has its belly and here, in the very underbelly, Chiko lives in a world where violence, staking and keeping a claim, and drug taking are the norm. Where down is not an option, Chiko is determined to rise to the top, whatever and whomever it costs.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Circle (2015)
An otherworldly evil is slipping into a small town in Sweden. Six unrelated girls have been chosen to fight this evil. Together they must overcome their differences in order to save themselves and the world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisGyeongju (2014)
A Beijing professor returns to his stomping grounds for a friend's funeral. Reflecting on the past, he meets a tea shop owner who sparks feelings of love in a time of pain.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Ben Is Back?
The closest matches to Ben Is Back are Hillbilly Elegy (2020), Echo Valley (2025) and Silent Night (2023). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Ben Is Back?
Start with Hillbilly Elegy (2020), the closest match to Ben Is Back.
What is the highest-rated movie like Ben Is Back?
Palmer (2021), rated 8.1/10 by 2,026 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Ben Is Back?
The Whisper Man (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Ben Is Back?
Yes: Hillbilly Elegy (2020), Echo Valley (2025) and Silent Night (2023).
How are movies similar to Ben Is Back chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Ben Is Back, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.