Movies like The Devil
If The Devil hooked you with its horror and history, these are the films to watch next. Every pick says why it matches.
The Devils (1971)
In 1634 France, charismatic Father Urbain Grandier becomes the target of sexually depraved Sister Jeanne's accusations of witchcraft, which corrupt officials of church and state are all too happy to exploit.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach (1970)
A pastor and ethnographer visits a remote corner of 19th-century Lithuania where folk customs associated with the area's pagan past still have a hold on the population.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror & history
Mother Joan of the Angels (1961)
A Polish priest arrives at a convent hoping to save the Mother Superior who is supposedly possessed by eight demons.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSzamanka (1996)
Anthropology professor Michal develops two overwhelming obsessions. The first one is a mummified, 3,000 year-old, perfectly preserved body of a shaman he and his colleagues have recently dragged out of a swamp. The second is an enigmatic student he meets by chance at a railway station.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMark of the Devil (1970)
In 1700s Austria, a witch-hunter's apprentice has doubts about the righteousness of witch-hunting when he witnesses the brutality, the injustice, the falsehood, the torture and the arbitrary killing that go with the job.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisMarketa Lazarová (1967)
Mikolás and his brother Adam end up with a young German hostage of noble blood during a robbery. While their clan prepares for the wrath of the German king, Mikolás is sent to pressure his neighbor Lazar into a defense pact. Persuasion fails and he abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa on the eve of her initiation as a nun in an act of vengeance.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWitchfinder General (1968)
England, 1645. The cruel civil war between Royalists and Parliamentarians that is ravaging the country causes an era of chaos and legal arbitrariness that allows unscrupulous men to profit by exploiting the absurd superstitions of the peasants; like Matthew Hopkins, a monster disguised as a man who wanders from town to town offering his services as a witch hunter.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Hourglass Sanatorium (1973)
Józef visits a dilapidated sanatorium to see his father, undertaking a strange journey through its many rooms, each of which conjures worlds composed of his memories, dreams, and nightmares.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Third Part of the Night (1972)
Set during the Nazi occupation of Poland, the story follows Michał, who witnesses the murder of his mother, wife and child and then is hurled into a life that is not his own; a surreal world littered with trapdoors, doppelgängers and wormholes.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBlack Death (2010)
As the plague decimates medieval Europe, rumours circulate of a village immune from the plague. There is talk of a necromancer who leads the village and is able to raise the dead. A fearsome knight joined by a cohort of soldiers and a young monk are charged by the church to investigate. Their journey is filled with danger, but it's upon entering the village that their true horror begins.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHour of the Wolf (1968)
While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & horror
Worth the HypeMovies like thisHäxan (1922)
Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisFlavia the Heretic (1974)
Puglia, southern Italy, around 1400. A convent is invaded by the Tarantula cult, whose fanatical and crazed members desecrate the sacred place by committing obscene and bloody acts.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & horror
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Seventh Seal (1957)
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Devil's Bath (2024)
In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Virgin Spring (1960)
Devout Christians Töre and Märeta send their only daughter, the virginal Karin, and their foster daughter, the unrepentant Ingeri, to deliver candles to a distant church. On their way through the woods, the girls encounter a group of savage goat herders who brutally rape and murder Karin as Ingeri remains hidden. When the killers unwittingly seek refuge in the farmhouse of Töre and Märeta, Töre plots a fitting revenge.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisValerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
Valerie, a Czechoslovakian teenager living with her grandmother, is blossoming into womanhood, but that transformation proves secondary to the effects she experiences when she puts on a pair of magic earrings. Now seeing the world around her in a different light, Valerie must endure her sexual awakening while attempting to discern reality from fantasy as she encounters lecherous priest Gracian, a vampire-like stranger and otherworldly carnival folk.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSalò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1976)
Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisNights and Days (1975)
A family saga of Barbara Ostrzeńska-Niechcic and Bogumił Niechcic against the backdrop of the January Uprising of 1863 and World War I. The film is a rather straightforward and faithful adaptation of a novel by Maria Dabrowska with the same title. The plot is woven around the changing fortunes of a noble (upper-class) Niechcic family in the pre-WWI Poland. There are two main crossing threads: a social history one and an existential one.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Andrei Rublev (1966)
An expansive Russian drama, this film focuses on the life of revered religious icon painter Andrei Rublev. Drifting from place to place in a tumultuous era, the peace-seeking monk eventually gains a reputation for his art. But after Rublev witnesses a brutal battle and unintentionally becomes involved, he takes a vow of silence and spends time away from his work. As he begins to ease his troubled soul, he takes steps towards becoming a painter once again.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisDay of Wrath (1943)
In a Danish village in the early 1600s, a young woman named Anne, whose mother was thought to be a witch, develops sympathy toward an old woman, Marte, who is accused of witchcraft. The intervention of Anne's older but kindly husband, Pastor Absalon saved her mother -- but now, urged on by his overbearing mother, he refuses to help Marte. When Absalon's son returns home and is attracted to Anne, it's a matter of time before her family destiny catches up with her.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Color of Pomegranates (1969)
The life of the revered 18th-century Armenian poet and musician Sayat-Nova. Portraying events in the life of the artist from childhood up to his death, the movie addresses in particular his relationships with women, including his muse. The production tells Sayat-Nova's dramatic story by using both his poems and largely still camerawork, creating a work hailed as revolutionary by Mikhail Vartanov.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama & history
Absolute CinemaMovies like thisThe Saragossa Manuscript (1966)
During the Napoleonic wars, a Spanish officer and an opposing officer find a book written by the former's grandfather.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Cremator (1969)
In 1930s Prague, a Czech cremator who firmly believes cremation relieves one from earthly suffering is drawn inexorably to Nazism.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisGolem (1980)
Pernat finds himself in a police interrogation, accused of a murder, and unable to recall any details of the crime, or even his own life. He's released back into a world of raving lunatics and deranged dentists, murderous doctors and scientists who believe the secret of human creation is inside the walls of a cast-iron oven.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLunacy (2005)
A man takes up residence with a mysterious marquis and is soon persuaded to enter into an asylum for preventative therapy. Things are not what they seem, and the marquis may be even more sinister than what the young man might have predicted.
Why it matches: Fans watch both · both horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSavaged (2014)
After thugs brutalize a deaf-mute woman, the spirit of an Apache warrior takes over her lifeless body and sets out on a bloodthirsty quest for revenge.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & horror
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWerewolf: The Beast Among Us (2012)
Set in a 19th century village, a young man studying under a local doctor joins a team of hunters on the trail of a wolf-like creature.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & horror
SnoozefestMovies 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 this
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Devil?
The closest matches to The Devil are The Devils, Lokis: A Manuscript of Professor Wittembach, Mother Joan of the Angels.
How are movies similar to The Devil chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Devil, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.