Movies like The Burden of Being (2014)
The best movies like The Burden of Being (2014) are 2073 (2024), The Mandela Effect (2019) and Right at Your Door (2006). If The Burden of Being hooked you with its science fiction and thriller, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Shawshank Redemption (1994)8.7/10 from 31,829 votes
- NewestNot Without Hope (2025)Released 2025
2073 (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 thisThe Mandela Effect (2019)
A man becomes obsessed with facts and events that have been collectively misremembered by thousands of people. Believing the phenomena to be the symptom of something larger, his obsession eventually leads him to question reality itself.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRight at Your Door (2006)
A dirty bomb goes off in Los Angeles, jamming freeways and spreading a toxic cloud.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisParallel (2024)
Grief-stricken after the loss of her child, Vanessa takes refuge at a lake house only to be met with an aberration of herself from a parallel universe and realizes the multiverse gates hold the key to releasing her grief or trapping her forever.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCruel & Unusual (2014)
Wrongly condemned for killing his wife, a man finds himself in a mysterious institution where he is sentenced to relive her death for eternity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNowhere to Run (1993)
Escaped convict Sam Gillen single-handedly takes on ruthless developers who are determined to evict a widow with two young children.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisProdigy (2017)
Jimmy is a committed child psychologist who uses his own playbook, but when he is brought in to work with Ellie, he is completely unprepared for his subject—a 9-year-old psychopathic genius with nothing to lose. As he begins to understand the extent of her capabilities and the fate that has been planned for her, he struggles to overcome her defenses before it is too late for them both.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & science fiction
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisOmni Loop (2024)
Diagnosed with a black hole growing inside her chest and stuck in a loop reliving the last five days of her life, a 55-year-old wife and mother from Miami, Florida decides to solve time travel in order to go back and be the person she always intended to be.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisColdwater (2013)
A teenage boy is sent to a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness. As we learn about the tragic events that sent him there, his struggle becomes one for survival with the inmates, counselors, and the retired war colonel in charge.
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 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 thisDoctor Who: Last Christmas (2014)
The Doctor and Clara face their Last Christmas. Trapped on an Arctic base, under attack from terrifying creatures, who are you going to call? Santa Claus!
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisParadise Hills (2019)
A young woman is sent to Paradise Hills to be reformed, only to learn that the high-class facility's beautiful facade hides a sinister secret.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both science fiction & thriller
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 thisNot Without Hope (2025)
A group of friends' fishing boat capsizes off the coast of Mexico and they're left alone stranded at sea and struggling for survival.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both thriller & drama
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 thisBrute Force (1947)
Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Lords of Discipline (1983)
Will arrives for his last year at Military Academy, in the Deep South USA, in the 1960's. A black student, Pearce, has been accepted, for the first time and Will is asked to keep an eye out for the inevitable racism. The racists come in the form of The Ten, a secret group of the elite students. They want Pearce to leave on his own free will, but are prepared to torture him to make it 'his free will'. Will is forced to help Pearce and he is prepared to risk his own career to do so.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & 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 thisCloak and Dagger (1946)
Italian partisans help a professor sent by the OSS to find an atomic scientist held by Nazis.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Butterfly Effect (2004)
A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both science fiction & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Man Escaped (1956)
A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisWhite Heat (1949)
A psychopathic criminal with a mother complex makes a daring break from prison and then leads his old gang in a chemical plant payroll heist. After the heist, events take a crazy turn.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
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: Similar story and style · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLa Strada (1954)
When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisBrute (1997)
Shipped off to a Romanian orphanage to finish his sentence, a British criminal finds romance but also discovers corruption inside the facility.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
The King of Comedy (1982)
Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin attempts to achieve success in show business by stalking his idol, a late night talk-show host who craves his own privacy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisJohnny Handsome (1989)
A career criminal who has been deformed since birth is given a new face by a kindly doctor and paroled from prison. It appears that he has gone straight, but he is really planning his revenge on the man who killed his mentor and sent him to prison.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSalvador (Puig Antich) (2006)
The story of Salvador Puig Antich, one of the last political prisoners to be executed under Franco's Fascist State in 1974.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Burden of Being?
The closest matches to The Burden of Being are 2073 (2024), The Mandela Effect (2019) and Right at Your Door (2006). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Burden of Being?
Start with 2073 (2024), the closest match to The Burden of Being.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Burden of Being?
The Shawshank Redemption (1994), rated 8.7/10 by 31,829 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Burden of Being?
Not Without Hope (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Burden of Being?
Yes: 2073 (2024), The Mandela Effect (2019) and Right at Your Door (2006).
How are movies similar to The Burden of Being chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Burden of Being, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.