Movies like The Manipulator (1971)
The best movies like The Manipulator (1971) are Play Dead (2025), Nightmare Cinema (2018) and The Tall Man (2012). If The Manipulator hooked you with its horror, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Exorcist (1973)7.8/10 from 9,023 votes
- NewestPlay Dead (2025)Released 2025
Play Dead (2025)
A woman wakes up injured in a basement surrounded by corpses. To survive, she pretends to be dead while a grotesque ritual unfolds in the house above.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNightmare Cinema (2018)
A series of down-on-their-luck individuals enter the decrepit and spine-chilling Rialto theater, only to have their deepest and darkest fears brought to life on the silver screen by The Projectionist – a mysterious, ghostly figure who holds the nightmarish futures of all who attend his screenings.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Tall Man (2012)
When her child goes missing, a mother looks to unravel the legend of the Tall Man, an entity who allegedly abducts children.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWhisper (2007)
Sinister things begin happening to kidnappers who are holding a young boy for ransom in a remote cabin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Boy Behind the Door (2020)
Bobby tries to save himself and his best friend when they are kidnapped on their way home from school.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisRest Stop: Don't Look Back (2008)
One year after running away from home, Nicole and Jesse are still missing. When Jesse's brother, Tom, returns home from active duty, he sets out with his friends Marilyn and Jared to locate the lost couple. Their search leads them to the stretch of old highway with a mysterious Rest Stop, where they find themselves in the same predicament as Nicole and Jesse: confronting a madman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMother's Day (2010)
Crazed members of a sadistic family return to their childhood home to terrorize the new owners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Deliverance (2024)
Ebony Jackson, a struggling single mother fighting her personal demons, moves her family into a new home for a fresh start. But when strange occurrences inside the home raise the suspicions of Child Protective Services and threaten to tear the family apart, Ebony soon finds herself locked in a battle for her life and the souls of her children.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisReborn (2018)
A stillborn baby girl is abducted by a deranged morgue attendant and brought back to life by electro-kinetic power. On her sixteenth birthday, traumatized Tess escapes captivity and sets out to find her birth mother leaving a trail of horrifying violent destruction and chilling chaos behind her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNever Let Go (2024)
As an evil takes over the world beyond their front doorstep, the only protection for a mother and her twin sons is their house and their family’s protective bond.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Final (2010)
A group of high school outcasts get revenge on the students that torment them.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGet Out (2017)
Chris and his girlfriend Rose go upstate to visit her parents for the weekend. At first, Chris reads the family's overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter's interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he never could have imagined.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDead of Winter (1987)
A fledgling actress is lured to a remote mansion for a screen-test, soon discovering she is actually a prisoner in the middle of a blackmail plot.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMa (2019)
Sue Ann is a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisBarbarian (2022)
In town for a job interview, a young woman arrives at her Airbnb late at night only to find that it has been mistakenly double-booked and a strange man is already staying there. Against her better judgement, she decides to stay the night anyway.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Exorcist (1973)
When a mysterious entity possesses a young girl, her mother seeks the help of two Catholic priests to save her life.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisA Nun's Curse (2020)
A group of travelers are forced to seek shelter inside an abandoned jail where a notorious nun named Sister Monday had once been assigned and was suspected of murdering prisoners.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisP2 (2007)
A businesswoman finds herself locked with a unhinged security guard in a parking garage after getting stuck working late on Christmas Eve.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGod Is a Bullet (2023)
Vice detective Bob Hightower finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies 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
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDon't Breathe (2016)
A group of teens break into a blind man's home thinking they'll get away with the perfect crime. They're wrong.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisTony (2010)
Unemployed and unemployable, Tony is a sympathetic recluse with severe social problems, an addiction to VHS action films and a horrible moustache. Occasionally he snaps and murder is the result…
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisParanoid (2000)
Chloe Keane is an stressed American fashion model living in London who is about to have the worst weekend of her life. She and her boyfriend are invited to attend a party at the house of a former rock-star named Stan and his weird family who live in the countryside. Chloe awakes the next morning only to find her boyfriend has abandoned her at Stan's house and she has been drugged and handcuffed to the bed.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisSeven Days (2010)
Like many happy people, Bruno Hamel is leading an uneventful life until one afternoon, when his daughter is raped and murdered. When the murderer is arrested, a terrible project germinates in Bruno's darkened mind. He plans to capture the "monster" and make him pay for his crime.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Strange Door (1951)
The wicked Alain plots an elaborate revenge against his younger brother Edmund, leading to a deadly confrontation in his dungeon deathtrap.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Malware (TBA)
In a future city; Kate and her son Mike are kidnapped by the Red Mutants a band of cybercriminals; while negotiating the ransom with Dr. Hartman it's discovered that the home's androids have been infected with a strange virus.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Night Skies (2007)
On March 13th, 1997 one of the largest UFO sightings ever recorded took place across the southwestern United States...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Erotic Rites of Frankenstein (1973)
After the death of Victor Frankenstein, two figures vie for control of his monster and the radical technology that created him: the scientist's daughter, and an immortal wizard assisted by a blind bird-woman with an unquenchable thirst for blood.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Hunted (2021)
A woman flees two serial killers who are hot on her heels in a forest.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTreehouse (2015)
A teenage boy discovers the perpetrators of several brutal kidnappings in his home town.
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 Manipulator?
The closest matches to The Manipulator are Play Dead (2025), Nightmare Cinema (2018) and The Tall Man (2012). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Manipulator?
Start with Play Dead (2025), the closest match to The Manipulator.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Manipulator?
The Exorcist (1973), rated 7.8/10 by 9,023 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Manipulator?
Play Dead (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Manipulator?
Yes: Play Dead (2025), Nightmare Cinema (2018) and The Tall Man (2012).
How are movies similar to The Manipulator chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Manipulator, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.