Movies like The Story of Southern Islet (2021)
The best movies like The Story of Southern Islet (2021) are No Such Thing (2002), Lord of Illusions (1995) and Before I Wake (2016). If The Story of Southern Islet hooked you with its fantasy and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedFaust (1926)7.9/10 from 430 votes
- NewestHadestown: The Musical (2026)Released 2026
- In ChineseA Writer's Odyssey (2021)Also in Chinese
No Such Thing (2002)
A young journalist journeys to Iceland to find her missing fiancé only to encounter a mythical creature who longs to die.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both fantasy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLord of Illusions (1995)
During a routine case in L.A., NY private investigator Harry D'Amour stumbles over members of a fanatic cult who are preparing for the resurrection of their leader Nix, a powerful magician who was killed 13 years earlier.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & fantasy
SnoozefestMovies like thisBefore I Wake (2016)
An orphaned child's dreams—and nightmares—manifest physically as he sleeps.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisStarve Acre (2024)
When their son starts acting strangely, a couple unwittingly allow dark and sinister forces into their home, awakening a long-dormant ancient evil rooted deep in the countryside.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMedusa (2020)
After being bitten by a lethal snake, a young woman experiences changes in her senses and appearance, as she sheds her old self and slowly turns into a deadly weapon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Craft: Legacy (2020)
An eclectic foursome of aspiring teenage witches get more than they bargained for as they lean into their newfound powers.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Unhealer (2021)
A botched faith healing bestows supernatural Shaman powers on a bullied teenager. When his lifelong tormentors pull a prank that kills someone he loves, he uses his powers for revenge and goes on a bloody rampage to settle the score.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both fantasy & horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisA Writer's Odyssey (2021)
Lu Kongwen is the author of a fantasy novel series following a heroic teenager, also named Kongwen, on a quest to end the tyrannical rule of Lord Redmane, under the guidance of a Black Armor. But through a strange twist of fate, the fantasy world of the novel begins to impact life in the real world, leading Guan Ning to accept a mission from Tu Ling to kill the author.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both fantasy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020)
Every few hundred years, the most powerful demon on earth—a snake demon—awakens, and the Yin-Yang Masters are summoned to the capital. Meanwhile, the Princess of the realm has her own plans, as she conspires to claim the demon’s power.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & fantasy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisNocebo (2022)
A fashion designer suffers from a mysterious illness that puzzles her doctors and frustrates her husband until help arrives in the form of a Filipino caregiver who uses traditional folk healing to reveal a horrifying truth.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Sun Also Rises (2007)
A polyptych of interconnected stories in different time-zones, shifting between a Yunnan village, a campus, and the Gobi Desert.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both fantasy & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSuper Me (2021)
Sang Yu is so exhausted from trying to stay awake. Every time he closes his eyes, a demon chases and kills him in his dreams. One night Sang realizes he has a special power: he can bring treasures from his dreams into reality. Almost overnight, he becomes a rich man. But his wealth also attracts the attention of a ruthless gangster.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & fantasy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDark Harvest (2023)
In a small Midwestern town, a deadly annual ritual unfolds when the mythical nightmare, Sawtooth Jack, rises from the cornfields and challenges the town’s teenage boys in a bloody battle of survival.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Knight's War (2025)
A fearless knight braves a deadly realm to save the Chosen One’s soul. Facing witches, demons, and brutal foes, he discovers her return could ignite chaos and doom humanity.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisResurrection (1980)
The story of a woman who survives the car accident which kills her husband, but discovers that she has the power to heal other people. She becomes an unwitting celebrity, the hope of those in desperate need of healing, and a lightning rod for religious beliefs and skeptics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Asphyx (1972)
Hugo is a brilliant turn-of-the-century scientist, loved and respected by his family and friends, admired by his colleagues. But he is a man quickly becoming obsessed with a curious and frightening question...What is the mysterious apparition found in the photographs of his dying subjects?
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both fantasy & horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWitch Hunt (2021)
In a modern America where witches are real and witchcraft is illegal, a sheltered teenager must face her own demons and prejudices as she helps two young witches avoid law enforcement and cross the southern border to asylum in Mexico.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & fantasy
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLegend of the Mountain (1979)
A traveling scholar is intent on translating a Buddhist sutra that is said to have power over the creatures of the afterlife. He slowly finds himself entangled in a mysterious plot involving witchcraft, demons, and a battle to preserve his own soul from the attacks of the supernatural underworld.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror & fantasy
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIn the Lost Lands (2025)
A queen sends the powerful and feared sorceress Gray Alys to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands in search of a magical power, where she and her guide, the drifter Boyce, must outwit and outfight both man and demon.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both fantasy & horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Surrender (2025)
A fraught mother-daughter relationship is put to a terrifying test when the family patriarch dies, and the grieving mother hires a mysterious stranger to bring her husband back from the dead.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisFaust (1926)
Murnau’s epic adaptation of Goethe’s tragedy stands with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis among the supreme achievements of German silent cinema. Gösta Ekman plays the alchemist who, his faith shaken in a time of plague, is offered the gift of healing and eternal youth… in exchange for his soul.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both fantasy & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisQueen of Serpents (2003)
Animation without dialogue, set with excerpts from Lithuanian folk songs, which tells a traditional Lithuanian tale in black and white images. After bathing with her two sisters, Egle goes to get dressed and discovers a snake in her clothes. Not caring about her promise, she agrees to marry the snake in exchange for the return of the clothes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & fantasy
Hadestown: The Musical (2026)
The tragic love of Orpheus and Eurydice is intertwined with the complex relationship of Hades and Persephone. Eurydice, struggling with poverty, is lured to the industrial underworld of Hadestown by Hades, while Orpheus, a struggling musician, ventures down below to bring her back. (Filmed live at the Lyric Theatre, London, featuring the core five original Broadway cast members.)
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & fantasy
All Small Bodies (2017)
'All Small Bodies' is a feminist, sci-fi take on the Grimm tale of Hansel and Gretel. It occurs in the distant future among the ruins of a planetary catastrophe, revealing the abuses of history and technology. In the wake of the chaotic aftermath, there are several resilient survivors including two young girls named Z and Bub. The film follows these curious adolescents who have long been lost and alone in the haunted, other-worldly woods, as they awaken their extrasensory abilities and reclaim their autonomy from a menacing dark presence.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & fantasy
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)
Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both fantasy & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRobin in the Hood (2025)
Robin, an urban horse owner from Dublin, and Marian, a traveling busker, feel trapped by an unfair economic system, but with the help of Dublin's urban horse tribe, they manage to break free.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Hellraiser (1987)
A hedonistic man finds a mysterious puzzle box that summons a group of gruesome beings known as the Cenobites. These otherworldly entities open the doors to a dominion where pain and pleasure are indivisible.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCannibal Holocaust (1980)
A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who were making a film about the area's local cannibal tribes.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisExhuma (2024)
After tracing the origin of a disturbing supernatural affliction to a wealthy family's ancestral gravesite, a team of paranormal experts relocates the remains—and soon discovers what happens to those who dare to mess with the wrong grave.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSeance (2021)
At an elite boarding school for girls, six friends jokingly engage in a late night ritual, calling forth the spirit of a dead former student who reportedly haunts their halls. Before morning, one of the girls is dead, leaving the others wondering what they may have awakened.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Story of Southern Islet?
The closest matches to The Story of Southern Islet are No Such Thing (2002), Lord of Illusions (1995) and Before I Wake (2016). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Story of Southern Islet?
Start with No Such Thing (2002), the closest match to The Story of Southern Islet.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Story of Southern Islet?
Faust (1926), rated 7.9/10 by 430 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Story of Southern Islet?
Hadestown: The Musical (2026) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Chinese movies like The Story of Southern Islet?
Yes: A Writer's Odyssey (2021), The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020) and The Sun Also Rises (2007).
How are movies similar to The Story of Southern Islet chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Story of Southern Islet, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.