Movies like Whalehead (1963)
The best movies like Whalehead (1963) are Local Hero (1983), God's Creatures (2022) and Neither Seen Nor Recognized (1958). If Whalehead hooked you, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Gold Rush (1925)8.0/10 from 1,929 votes
- NewestThe Damned (2025)Released 2025
- In FrenchNeither Seen Nor Recognized (1958)Also in French
Local Hero (1983)
An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don't go as expected.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGod's Creatures (2022)
In a windswept fishing village, a mother is torn between protecting her beloved son and her own sense of right and wrong. A lie she tells for him rips apart their family and close-knit community.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNeither Seen Nor Recognized (1958)
In a small French village, everything would be quiet if the local wildlife cop was not being ridiculed by a smart poacher.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Grand Highway (1987)
Louis, a nine-year-old boy from Paris, spends his summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother Claire has lodged him with her girlfriend Marcelle and her husband Pelo while she's having her second baby. There Louis makes friends with Martine, the ten-year- old girl next door, and learns from her about life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGrumpy Old Men (1993)
For decades, next-door neighbors and former friends John and Max have feuded, trading insults and wicked pranks. When an attractive widow moves in nearby, their bad blood erupts into a high-stakes rivalry full of naughty jokes and adolescent hijinks.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDuck Duck Goose (2018)
After he’s grounded by an injury, a high-flying bachelor is saddled with two wide-eyed orphans as they come face-to-face with the dangers and beauty of the outside world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPort of Shadows (1938)
Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean, an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSand Castle (2017)
Set during the occupation of Iraq, a squad of U.S. soldiers try to protect a small village.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBait (2019)
Martin Ward is a cove fisherman, without a boat. His brother Steven has repurposed their father’s vessel as a tourist tripper, driving a wedge between the brothers. With their childhood home now a getaway for London money, Martin is displaced to the estate above the picturesque harbour. As his struggle to restore the family to their traditional place creates increasing friction with tourists and locals alike, a tragedy at the heart of the family changes his world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisAngèle and Tony (2011)
Angèle, a beautiful young woman with a past, arrives in a small fishing harbor in Normandy. She meets Tony, a professional fisherman, who finds himself attracted to her although he dislikes her blunt ways. Tony hires her as a fishmonger, lodges her and teaches her the tricks of the trade. The relationships between Myriam, Tony's mother, and Angèle are far from easy but the young woman gradually adapts to her new environment and little by little Tony and Angèle manage to tame each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
The Fantastic Mr. Fox, bored with his current life, plans a heist against the three local farmers. The farmers, tired of sharing their chickens with the sly fox, seek revenge against him and his family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Gold Rush (1925)
A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisTwo Lovers and a Bear (2016)
Set in a small town near the North Pole where roads lead to nowhere, the story follows Roman and Lucy, two burning souls who come together to make a leap for life and inner peace.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Young One (1960)
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisPenguin Bloom (2021)
When an unlikely ally enters the Bloom family's world in the form of an injured baby magpie they name Penguin, the bird’s arrival makes a profound difference in the struggling family’s life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Fog (1980)
Strange things begin to occur as a tiny California coastal town prepares to commemorate its centenary. Inanimate objects spring eerily to life; Rev. Malone stumbles upon a dark secret about the town's founding; radio announcer Stevie witnesses a mystical fire; and hitchhiker Elizabeth discovers the mutilated corpse of a fisherman. Then a mysterious iridescent fog descends upon the village, and more people start to die.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRock Dog (2016)
When a radio falls from the sky into the hands of a wide-eyed Tibetan Mastiff, he leaves home to fulfill his dream of becoming a musician, setting into motion a series of completely unexpected events.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBoyfriends and Girlfriends (1987)
Middle-class Parisian suburbs: Blanche and Léa, office worker and student, meet and become friends. Léa is going out with Fabien, but is thinking of leaving him. Blanche falls for Léa's handsome and witty friend Alexandre, but is tongue-tied whenever she meets him. Léa goes on holiday and Blanche, still smitten with the dashing Alexandre, begins to get to know Fabien.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe River (1984)
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sower (2017)
In 1852, the mountain village in Provence where Violette lives is brutally deprived of all its men after the repression of the republicans ordered by Napoleon III. Women spend months in total isolation, desperate to see their men again. In this situation, they make an oath in case a man arrives in the village.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Damned (2025)
A 19th-century widow has to make an impossible choice when, during an especially cruel winter, a foreign ship sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
SnoozefestMovies like thisCool & Crazy (2001)
Much as Buena Vista Social Club revealed a rich and unexplored world of music and culture, Cool & Crazy introduces us to a group of men who find purpose, companionship and even fame, as members of a male choir in Berlevåg.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Tidal Time (2018)
After a boat accident where he puts his son Flavio’s life at risk, fisherman Capudemazza decides to never go fishing again. Ten years later a discovery about his son awakens a feeling in him that had been buried.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
The Rotten Wheelbarrow (2014)
This title was completed in 1984 and opened in 2014.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Escape the Usual (2023)
Escape the Usual follows a day in the life of three teenage boys during the spring of 2002 in a small fishing village along the south shore of Nova Scotia.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Man of Aran (1934)
A documentary on the life of the people of the Aran Islands, who were believed to contain the essence of the ancient Irish life, represented by a pure uncorrupted peasant existence centred around the struggle between man and his hostile but magnificent surroundings. A blend of documentary and fictional narrative, the film captures the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSeafighters (2017)
Living among the percebeiros of the Coast of Death (Galicia), this documentary shows a unique relationship between man and his surroundings, man and the sea. At the end of Europe, years after the Prestige oil spill disaster, these fishermen face an uncertain future.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Matria (2023)
Ramona’s life in a Galician fishing village is a constant hustle. Always sacrificing everything for her daughter’s future, she will be pushed to look inwards and to think that, maybe, there is something new to live for.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
A River Called Titas (1973)
An in-depth look at the lives and struggles of a fishing community living by the River Titas in Bangladesh after the Partition of India in 1947.
Why it matches: Similar story and style
Like Whalehead and something else?
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Whalehead?
The closest matches to Whalehead are Local Hero (1983), God's Creatures (2022) and Neither Seen Nor Recognized (1958). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Whalehead?
Start with Local Hero (1983), the closest match to Whalehead.
What is the highest-rated movie like Whalehead?
The Gold Rush (1925), rated 8.0/10 by 1,929 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Whalehead?
The Damned (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there French movies like Whalehead?
Yes: Neither Seen Nor Recognized (1958), The Grand Highway (1987) and Port of Shadows (1938).
How are movies similar to Whalehead chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Whalehead, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.