Movies like The Settlers (2023)
The best movies like The Settlers (2023) are The Nightingale (2018), The Proposition (2005) and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007). If The Settlers hooked you with its drama and western, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedAnatomy of a Murder (1959)7.8/10 from 1,246 votes
- NewestThe Unholy Trinity (2025)Released 2025
- In SpanishThe Clan (2015)Also in Spanish
The Nightingale (2018)
In 1825, Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & western
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Proposition (2005)
In 1880s Australia, a lawman offers renegade Charlie Burns a difficult choice. In order to save his younger brother from the gallows, Charlie must hunt down and kill his older brother, who is wanted for rape and murder. Venturing into one of the Outback's most inhospitable regions, Charlie faces a terrible moral dilemma that can end only in violence.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)
Beginning just after the bloody Sioux victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn, the story is told through two unique perspectives: Charles Eastman, a young, white-educated Sioux doctor held up as living proof of the alleged success of assimilation, and Sitting Bull the proud Lakota chief whose tribe won the American Indians’ last major victory at Little Big Horn.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHostiles (2017)
A legendary Native American-hating Army captain nearing retirement in 1892 is given one last assignment: to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory back to his Montana reservation.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & western
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSweet Country (2018)
In 1929, an Australian Aboriginal stockman kills a white station owner in self-defense and goes on the lam, pursued by a posse.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western & drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Revenant (2015)
In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western & drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Mountain Men (1980)
The story concerns two grizzled mountain men -- Bill Tyler and Henry Frapp -- during the dying days of the fur-trapping era. The plot begins when Running Moon runs away from her abusive husband Heavy Eagle and comes across the two seedy fur trappers. The mountain men take her in, unaware that Heavy Eagle has dispatched an army of Indian braves to reclaim her.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisMystery Road (2013)
A murdered girl is found under a bridge on a remote road and indigenous detective Jay Swan gets the case. Jay finds that no-one is that interested in solving the murder of an indigenous teenager and he is forced to work alone.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & western
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHigh Ground (2021)
In a remote corner of the wild country, a bloody war rages. Travis is a bounty hunter with one last hope of redemption. Gutjuk is a young Indigenous man trying to save the last of his family. Together they embark on a manhunt, which unravels a secret that ultimately pits them against each other.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama & western
Popcorn FlickMovies like this100 Rifles (1969)
When half-breed Indian Yaqui Joe robs an Arizona bank, he is pursued by dogged lawman Lyedecker. Fleeing to Mexico, Joe is imprisoned by General Verdugo, who is waging a war against the Yaqui Indians. When Lyedecker attempts to intervene, he is thrown into prison as well. Working together, the two escape and take refuge in the hills, where Lyedecker meets beautiful Yaqui freedom fighter Sarita and begins to question his allegiances.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978)
The true story of a part Aboriginal man who finds the pressure of adapting to white culture intolerable, and as a result snaps in a violent and horrific manner.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Clan (2015)
In Argentina, between 1982 and 1985, the Puccios, a well-established family of San Isidro, an upper-class suburb of Buenos Aires, kidnap several people and hold them as hostages for a ransom.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisQuigley Down Under (1990)
American Matt Quigley answers Australian land baron Elliott Marston's ad for a sharpshooter to kill the dingoes on his property. But when Quigley finds out that Marston's real target is the aborigines, Quigley hits the road. Now, even American expatriate Crazy Cora can't keep Quigley safe in his cat-and-mouse game with the homicidal Marston.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisPost Mortem (2010)
In Chile, 1973, during the last days of Salvador Allende's presidency, an employee at a Morgue's recording office falls for a burlesque dancer who mysteriously disappears.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisWaiting for the Barbarians (2020)
At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisThe Unholy Trinity (2025)
Set against the turbulent backdrop of 1870s Montana, in the moments before the execution of Isaac Broadway, he gives his estranged son, Henry, an impossible task: murder the man who framed him for a crime he didn’t commit. Intent on fulfilling his promise, Henry travels to the remote town of Trinity, where an unexpected turn of events traps him in town and leaves him caught between Gabriel Dove, the town’s upstanding new sheriff, and a mysterious figure named St. Christopher.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Aura (2005)
A quiet, epileptic taxidermist plans the perfect crime. All he needs is the right opportunity. An accident, perhaps…
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisUlzana's Raid (1972)
After fierce war chief Ulzana and a small war party jump the reservation bent on murder and terror, an inexperienced young lieutenant is assigned to track him down.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both western
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSin Nombre (2009)
Sayra, an Indigenous Latina American teenage girl from Honduras, Central America, hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, who intends to emigrate to Mexico and then enter the United States. Sayra's life collides with a pair of Indigenous Latino American gang members from Mexico, North America who have boarded the same USA-bound train.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisKillers of the Flower Moon (2023)
When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Way West (1967)
In the mid-19th century, Senator William J. Tadlock leads a group of settlers overland in a quest to start a new settlement in the Western US. Tadlock is a highly principled and demanding taskmaster who is as hard on himself as he is on those who have joined his wagon train. He clashes with one of the new settlers, Lije Evans, who doesn't quite appreciate Tadlock's ways. Along the way, the families must face death and heartbreak and a sampling of frontier justice when one of them accidentally kills a young Indian boy.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama & western
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969)
While confronting the disapproving father of his girlfriend Lola, Native American man Willie Boy kills the man in self-defense, triggering a massive manhunt, led by Deputy Sheriff Christopher Cooper.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both western & drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisAnatomy of a Murder (1959)
Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisDiary of a Lost Girl (1929)
Thymian Henning, an innocent young girl, is raped by the clerk of her father's pharmacy. She becomes pregnant, is rejected by her family, and must fend for herself in a harsh, cruel world.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBerserk! (1967)
A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisJonathan of the Bears (1995)
A young boy witnesses his parents' murder. Later, as he grows up, he befriends a bear in the wilderness and the chief of a local Indian tribe, and he stays with the Indians, but makes an enemy of the chief's son. As he enters adulthood he sets out to find the men responsible for his parents' deaths.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both western
The 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: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisWhere the Boys Are (1960)
Good girls Merritt, Melanie, Tuggle and Angie - all students at mid-western Penmore University - are planning on going to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for spring break to get away from the mid-western snow despite not having much money to spend once there. On the drive down, they admit their real purpose is to go where the boys are.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Say That You Love Me (2006)
Fatou is a teenager yearning for attention and love in Sweden's suburbs. When she is gang raped by some class mates her whole world starts falling apart.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Corto Maltese: The Secret Court of the Arcane (2002)
At the end of 1918 while civil war is raging on in Russia, antagonism is slowly spreading to the East, between the Oral mountains and Shanghai. Stuck between a desire to save what's left of the great Imperial Russia, and starting from a clean slate, old generals, secret organizations, and mercenaries attracted by gold, struggle to take advantage of the events. As Corto Maltese returns to Shanghai, he barely gets time to cross paths with his old friend/nemesis Rasputin, and escape a murder attempt before being contacted by members of a Chinese secret organization called "The Red Lanterns". In the heart of violent Manchurian horizons, Corto and Rasputin launch themselves into a fabulous treasure hunt, following the tracks of the mysterious armor-plated train of Kolchak. A steel monster spiked with canons and machine guns, this trains protects the counter-revolutionaries gold...
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
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Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like The Settlers?
The closest matches to The Settlers are The Nightingale (2018), The Proposition (2005) and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after The Settlers?
Start with The Nightingale (2018), the closest match to The Settlers.
What is the highest-rated movie like The Settlers?
Anatomy of a Murder (1959), rated 7.8/10 by 1,246 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like The Settlers?
The Unholy Trinity (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there Spanish movies like The Settlers?
Yes: The Clan (2015), Post Mortem (2010) and The Aura (2005).
How are movies similar to The Settlers chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside The Settlers, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.