Movies like The Paperboy (2012)
The best movies like The Paperboy (2012) are Clemency (2019), Infamous (2006) and A Perfect World (1993). If The Paperboy hooked you with its thriller and drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedThe Silence of the Lambs (1991)8.3/10 from 18,829 votes
- NewestLike Father Like Son (2025)Released 2025
Clemency (2019)
Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisInfamous (2006)
While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisA Perfect World (1993)
A kidnapped boy strikes up a friendship with his captor: an escaped convict on the run from the law, headed by an honorable U.S. Marshal.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisStone (2010)
Parole officer Jack Mabry has only a few weeks left before retirement and wishes to finish out the cases he's been assigned. One such case is that of Gerald 'Stone' Creeson, a convicted arsonist who is up for parole. Jack is initially reluctant to indulge Stone in the coarse banter he wishes to pursue and feels little sympathy for the prisoner's pleads for an early release. Seeing little hope in convincing Jack himself, Stone arranges for his wife to seduce the officer, but motives and intentions steadily blur amidst the passions and buried secrets of the corrupted players in this deadly game of deception.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisMystic River (2003)
The lives of three men who were childhood friends are shattered when one of them suffers a family tragedy.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Life of David Gale (2003)
A man against capital punishment is accused of murdering a fellow activist and is sent to death row.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisEquus (1977)
A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLet Him Go (2020)
Following the loss of their son, a retired sheriff and his wife leave their Montana ranch to rescue their young grandson from the clutches of a dangerous family living off the grid in the Dakotas.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSleepers (1996)
Two gangsters seek revenge on the state jail worker who during their stay at a youth prison sexually abused them. A sensational court hearing takes place to charge him for the crimes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDark Places (2015)
A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & mystery
SnoozefestMovies like thisIn the Heat of the Night (1967)
African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDoubt (2008)
In 1964 Bronx, two Catholic school nuns question the new priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled African-American student.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisZodiac (2007)
Police conduct a manhunt for the Zodiac Killer, a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s and early 1970s, taunting police with letters, bloodstained clothing, and ciphers mailed to newspapers.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both mystery & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Secret in Their Eyes (2009)
Hoping to put to rest years of unease concerning a past case, retired criminal investigator Benjamín begins writing a novel based on the unsolved mystery of a newlywed’s rape and murder. With the help of a former colleague, judge Irene, he attempts to make sense of the past.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both mystery & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Gateway (2021)
A social worker assigned to the care of the daughter of a single mother intervenes when the dad returns from prison and lures them into a life of crime.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Devil All the Time (2020)
In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters converge around young Arvin Russell as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisApt Pupil (1998)
One day in 1984, Todd Bowden, a brilliant high school boy fascinated by the history of Nazism, stumbles across an old man whose appearance resembles that of Kurt Dussander, a wanted Nazi war criminal. A month later, Todd decides to knock on his door.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisGone Girl (2014)
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both mystery & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisLike Father Like Son (2025)
Eli is a young man whose father waits on death row for the crime of murder in the first degree. As Eli’s life begins to fall apart, he discovers similar terrifying triggers in himself and takes extreme measures to ensure that the family’s string of savagery comes to an end.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons—they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisMississippi Burning (1988)
Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & mystery
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWinter's Bone (2010)
After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & mystery
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPrisoners (2013)
After his six-year-old daughter is abducted, a desperate father takes justice into his own hands when he loses faith in the detective leading the investigation, setting both men on a collision course as the search descends into obsession and moral compromise.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisNocturnal Animals (2016)
Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Dr. Steven Murphy is a renowned cardiovascular surgeon who presides over a spotless household with his wife and two children. Lurking at the margins of his idyllic suburban existence is Martin, a fatherless teen who insinuates himself into the doctor's life in gradually unsettling ways.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWind River (2017)
An FBI agent teams with the town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both mystery & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like thisCapote (2005)
A biopic of writer Truman Capote and his assignment for The New Yorker to write the non-fiction book "In Cold Blood".
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisAlice (2022)
Alice spends her days enslaved on a rural Georgia plantation, restlessly yearning for freedom. After a violent clash with plantation owner Paul, Alice flees through the neighboring woods and stumbles onto the unfamiliar sight of a highway, soon discovering the year is actually 1973.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both thriller & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Book of Henry (2017)
Susan, a single mother of two, works as a waitress in a small town. Her son, Henry, is an 11-year-old genius who not only manages the family finances but acts as emotional support for his mother and younger brother. When Henry discovers that the girl next door has a terrible secret, he implores Susan to take matters into her own hands.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & thriller
Worth the HypeMovies like this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Paperboy?
The closest matches to The Paperboy are Clemency (2019), Infamous (2006) and A Perfect World (1993). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Paperboy?
People who watched The Paperboy most often go on to Clemency (2019), Infamous (2006) and A Perfect World (1993).
What is the highest-rated movie like The Paperboy?
The Silence of the Lambs (1991), rated 8.3/10 by 18,829 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Paperboy?
Like Father Like Son (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like The Paperboy?
Yes: Clemency (2019), Infamous (2006) and A Perfect World (1993).
How are movies similar to The Paperboy chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Paperboy, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.