Movies like Expulsion (2020)
The best movies like Expulsion (2020) are Panic in Year Zero! (1962), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Andromeda Strain (1971). If Expulsion hooked you with its science fiction and drama, 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
- NewestSpace/Time (2025)Released 2025
Panic in Year Zero! (1962)
While on a fishing trip, Harry Baldwin and his family hear an explosion and realize that Los Angeles has been leveled by a nuclear attack. Looters and killers are everywhere. Escaping to the hills with his family, he sets about the business of surviving in a world where, he knows, the old ideals of humanity will be the first casualties.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
An alien and a robot land on Earth after World War II and tell mankind to be peaceful or face destruction.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Andromeda Strain (1971)
When virtually all of the residents of Piedmont, New Mexico are found dead after the return to Earth of a space satellite, the head of the US Air Force's Project Scoop declares an emergency. A group of eminent scientists led by Dr. Jeremy Stone scrambles to a secure laboratory and tries first to isolate the life form while determining why two people from Piedmont - an old alcoholic and a six-month-old baby - survived. The scientists methodically study the alien life form, unaware that it has already mutated and presents a far greater danger in the lab, which is equipped with a nuclear self-destruct device designed to prevent the escape of dangerous biological agents.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLapsis (2021)
In a parallel present, delivery man Ray Tincelli is struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother. After a series of two-bit hustles and unsuccessful swindles, Ray takes a job in a strange new realm of the gig economy: trekking deep into the forest, pulling cable over miles of terrain to connect large, metal cubes that link together the new quantum trading market. As he gets pulled deeper into the zone, he encounters growing hostility and the threat of robot cablers, and must choose to either help his fellow workers or to get rich and get out.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSpace/Time (2025)
After a fatal test shuts down their project, a disgraced team of scientists enters the criminal underworld to rebuild a forbidden space-bending engine that could rescue humanity or annihilate it entirely.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisStargate SG-1: Children of the Gods (2009)
An alien similar to Ra appears out of the Stargate, killing five soldiers and kidnapping another, a year after the original Stargate mission. A new team is assembled, including some old members, and they go in search of the missing soldier in order to find out how Ra could still be alive. Meanwhile, the alien Goa'uld kidnap Sha're and Skaara, implanting them with symbiotes and making them Goa'uld hosts.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisStar Trek: First Contact (1996)
The Borg, a relentless race of cyborgs, are on a direct course for Earth. Violating orders to stay away from the battle, Captain Picard and the crew of the newly-commissioned USS Enterprise E pursue the Borg back in time to prevent the invaders from changing Federation history and assimilating the galaxy.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStar Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
After years of war, the Federation and the Klingon empire find themselves on the brink of a peace summit when a Klingon ship is nearly destroyed by an apparent attack from the Enterprise. Both worlds brace for what may be their deadliest encounter.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies 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 thisThe Last Mimzy (2007)
Two siblings begin to develop special talents after they find a mysterious box of toys, and soon their parents and even their teacher are drawn into a strange new world – and find a task ahead of them that is far more important than any of them could imagine.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStar Trek: Insurrection (1998)
When an alien race and factions within Starfleet attempt to take over a planet that has "regenerative" properties, it falls upon Captain Picard and the crew of the Enterprise to defend the planet's people as well as the very ideals upon which the Federation itself was founded.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
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 thisDoctor Who: Planet of the Dead (2009)
A meeting in a London bus with jewel thief Lady Christina takes a turn for the worse for the Doctor when the bus takes a detour to a desert-like planet, where the deadly Swarm awaits.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThings to Come (1936)
The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Arrival (1996)
Zane Ziminski is an astrophysicist who receives a message that seems to have extraterrestrial origins. Eerily soon after his discovery, Zane is fired. He then embarks on a search to determine the origins of the transmission that leads him into a Hitchcockian labyrinth of paranoia and intrigue.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
Based on an "actual event" that took place in 1943. About a US Navy Destroyer Escort that disappeared from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, and sent two men 40 years into the future to 1984.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Time Shifters (1999)
Tom Merrick gets caught up in a time-traveling conspiracy and must set the timeline right before it is irrevocably altered.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisStar Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
A surprise visit from Spock's father provides a startling revelation: McCoy is harboring Spock's living essence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
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 thisSymmetropia (2017)
A man receives the most intense immersion therapy for an irrational fear (symmetry) ever. He’s blindfolded and driven to a forest where all the trees look the same, so that he is surrounded by symmetry. Also he is listening to tape of palindromes being read out loud.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & science fiction
The 6th Day (2000)
A world of the very near future in which cattle, fish, and even the family pet can be cloned. But cloning humans is illegal - that is until family man Adam Gibson comes home from work one day to find a clone has replaced him. Taken from his family and plunged into a sinister world he doesn't understand, Gibson must not only save himself from the assassins who must destroy him to protect their secret, but uncover who and what is behind the horrible things happening to him.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like this7 Splinters in Time (2018)
A detective investigates a murder, only to find that the victim is... himself. Soon, he discovers multiple versions of himself, not all of them friendly.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction & thriller
Multiverse: The 13th Step (2017)
A man move to a new house found a surprising connection with a girl he know only from texting. Until he aware that the girl is actually a missing girl who previously living in the same house.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & science fiction
beyond money (2017)
In a near future, Lucía (Adriana Ugarte) decides to sell some of her most treasured experiences to get rich. Surrounded by luxury we all want to have, she will discover where is her balance. Would you sell your most treasured experiences? How much.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & science fiction
Alien: Reign of Man (2017)
Stranded on a distant planet, a team must fight aliens and activate a machine meant to restore Earth to a time before its downfall.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Kamen Rider Heisei Generations FINAL: Build & Ex-Aid with Legend Riders (2017)
Kamen Riders Build and Ex-Aid team up with the legendary heroes of the Heisei Generation - OOO, Fourze, Gaim, and Ghost.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
Greater (2022)
A college student named Jean finds herself mysteriously engulfed within cyberspace, with no explanation of how to navigate its terrifying potential.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
The Big Bang (2011)
A private detective is hired to find a missing stripper but the job turns complicated when everyone he questions ends up dead. From the mean streets of Los Angeles to the desolate desert of New Mexico, Cruz must contend with a brutal Russian Boxer, three brash LAPD detectives, an aged billionaire looking for the Big Bang, and the billionaire's stunningly gorgeous wife. The solution to the mystery will cost ten lives, net $30 million and just might explain - well - everything.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisHappy Death Day 2U (2019)
Collegian Tree Gelbman wakes up in horror to learn that she's stuck in a parallel universe. Her boyfriend Carter is now with someone else, and her friends and fellow students seem to be completely different versions of themselves. When Tree discovers that Carter's roommate has been altering time, she finds herself once again the target of a masked killer. When the psychopath starts to go after her inner circle, Tree soon realizes that she must die over and over again to save everyone.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Expulsion?
The closest matches to Expulsion are Panic in Year Zero! (1962), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Andromeda Strain (1971). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Expulsion?
Start with Panic in Year Zero! (1962), the closest match to Expulsion.
What is the highest-rated movie like Expulsion?
Doctor Who: A Christmas Carol (2010), rated 8.0/10 by 251 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Expulsion?
Space/Time (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Expulsion?
Yes: Panic in Year Zero! (1962), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and The Andromeda Strain (1971).
How are movies similar to Expulsion chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Expulsion, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.