Best movies like Dancing in the Dark
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Anna Forbes suffers an attack and sexual abuse by her father-in-law. But when she overcomes her fear and tells her husband Mark what happened he does not believe her, choosing instead to believe his father who denies everything. As Anna becomes increasingly desperate to be believed and her actions become more erratic, Mark has her committed to a mental institution for psychiatric treatment.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 224
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, thought provoking, clever, bleak, serious, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, talky
Best tv shows and movies like Dancing in the Dark (1995):
Similar in 86%
Original Intent (1990)
Plot Summary:
Matthew Cameron (Jay Richardson) is a lawyer undergoing a midlife crisis despite having a seemingly perfect life with his wife, advertising executive Jessica (Candy Clark), and his young son. When he champions a homeless shelter facing eviction, his problems only deepen. Matthew faces pressure from Jessica, whose agency is representing the corporate honcho pushing the eviction, and Matthew is forced to question his values and loyalties.
IMDB Rating: 3.5
IMDB Votes: 265
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: independent film, sincere, touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic
Similar in 88%
Rape of Love (1978)
Plot Summary:
Nicole, nurse in Grenoble, is raped one night by four men. Deeply scarred, emotionally and physically, she thinks she will never recover from the trauma. Following a friend's advice, she decides to file a lawsuit.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 240
Genere: Drama
Country: France, Belgium
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: grindhouse, psychological, rough, touching, bleak, serious, emotional, realistic, disturbing
Similar in 86%
Black and Blue (1999)
Plot Summary:
After a woman's husband beats and abuses her, she and her son join the witness protection program and move away secretly.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 568
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 96 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, serious, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, gloomy
Similar in 85%
Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story (2002)
Plot Summary:
A Louisiana woman discovers that a trusted neighbor has installed video surveillance equipment in her home to spy on her family. As a result, the real-life Wilson lobbied for a 1999 state law passed in nine other states since making video voyeurism a felony.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 628
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, serious, suspenseful, disturbing, thought provoking, realistic
Similar in 87%
The Incident (1990)
Plot Summary:
Small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, defends a Nazi prisoner of war against murder charges. Set during World War II, Cobb has to contend with the difficulties of defending the devil when the town's only doctor (Barnard Hughes) dies while at "Camp Bremen" in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 580
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: tense, thought provoking, serious, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, talky
Similar in 86%
Not Today (2013)
Plot Summary:
Caden Welles is living life as large as any 20-year-old could dream … until his eyes are opened to a world few Americans know still exists: a thriving human-trafficking trade. Spurred by a true purpose, an unlikely new friendship, and the prayers of his mother and girlfriend, Caden begins an unlikely search to rescue a young girl.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 768
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: disturbing, sentimental, uplifting, thought provoking, suspenseful, serious, emotional, realistic, christian film, vintage
Similar in 81%
The Warrior Class (2007)
Plot Summary:
Rookie lawyer Alec Brno has just been assigned the case of his career: exposing a billion-dollar oil scam led by a ruthless mafia boss. When he reluctantly falls for the gangster's beautiful but drug-addicted wife - also his key witness - Alec soon realizes that all the legal savvy in the world can't protect him from the dangerous reality of mob violence. In a system where criminals often walk free, sometimes courtroom warriors must take the battle for justice into their own hands. Written by Echo Bridge Home Entertainment.
IMDB Rating: 4.9
IMDB Votes: 214
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 77%
Suspect (2005)
Plot Summary:
Teacher Rob Dekoster is a good man, albeit a bit too frivolous and liberal with funds the local arts center's interim director. His wife Nelle, who sometimes abuses drugs, spoils his ingrate teenage stepdaughter Sandy, who is kind only to her sweet, mentally handicapped brother, Jimmy Vandevyver. After a class on sexual abuse from feminist teacher Lydia De Beule, Sandy pretends Rob abused her. Lydia, Rob's ex, eagerly helps her fabricate 'proof', which a female police commissioner eagerly believes. A frustrated judge (and father) shamelessly ignores the legal benefit of the doubt, even tricks Rob while in jail. Nelle discovers more then one sick truth.
IMDB Rating: 5.7
IMDB Votes: 197
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, captivating, realistic, thought provoking
Similar in 80%
The War Within (2005)
Plot Summary:
A Pakistani involved in a planned attack in New York City experiences a crisis of conscience.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, disturbing, tense, suspenseful, poignant, serious, realistic
Similar in 86%
Damaged Care (2002)
Plot Summary:
Anesthesist Doug Peeno hopes to pay for the legal costs of preventing his son Bryan being left in his first wife's bad custody with he proceeds of his present wife Linda's new job. She's the first graduate in her family and eagerly accepted a posting as medical officer in a coldly-greedy medical insurance company. Bening confronted with the medically unacceptable consequences of technically denied treatments, she rebels and finds even payments she approved were often withheld anyway.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 294
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 114 min
Plot tags: sincere, serious, emotional, realistic
Similar in 79%
Snap Decision (2001)
Plot Summary:
One mother must fight back to prove her innocence or lose her children.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 437
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: suspenseful, rough, serious, realistic, detective, tension, suspense
Similar in 88%
Just Ask My Children (2001)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of a modern-day witch hunt, in which a couple is falsely accused and imprisoned for molesting their own children.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 807
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 91 min
Plot tags: disturbing, thought provoking, serious, emotional, sad, captivating, realistic
Similar in 76%
A Date with Darkness: The Trial and Capture of Andrew Luster (2003)
Plot Summary:
Andrew Luster, the heir to the Max factor fortune, is convicted of rape on 86 counts. This Lifetime original movie recounts the rapes committed by the infamous Andrew Luster and the women who brought him to justice.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 492
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, suspenseful, disturbing, bleak, captivating, realistic, sexual, detective, sexy
Similar in 83%
The Exonerated (2005)
Plot Summary:
Six people tell their stories on a single subject - how they got wrongfully convicted to death penalty, but later got exonerated.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 463
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: serious, realistic, disturbing, suspenseful, mockumentary
Similar in 87%
Whitewash: The Clarence Brandley Story (2002)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of Clarence Brandley, a black man wrongly accused in 1980 of the murder of a 16-year-old white high school girl named Cheryl Ferguson. Brandley worked at Conroe High School, where Ferguson was visiting as a member of the Belleville High School volleyball team. Three days after her body was discovered, Brandley was arrested as the murderer. Jew Don Boney, a popular activist and Houston city council member, leads the fight to uncover the truth about the Ferguson murder. Mike DeGeurin, a Texas attorney, is brought in to act as the head defense attorney for Brandley, and is joined by a former minister, Jim McCloskey. The lawyers discover that not only is there a complete lack of evidence against Brandley, but the District Attorney, James Keeshan, has been strategizing with the presiding judge. After nine years in prison, three trials and a stay of execution that saved Brandley's life, justice finally prevails as Brandley is granted his freedom.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 165
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: disturbing, emotional, realistic, suspenseful, tense, serious
Similar in 77%
Locked in Silence (1999)
Plot Summary:
A story of a young boy who becomes an elective mute after witnessing what he believes to be the killing by his older brother of a teenage boy. The young boy's brother then tells him not to say anything because of the trouble it would cause in the family... so he doesn't say anything again. The problem is that the young boy so enjoys his acceptance by others of his mutism that it brings his family, a loving and caring farm family, to the brink of financial ruin in medical and psychological costs to cure him. Based on a true story, this is the intelligent telling of a family in crisis, and the work of doctors in dealing with this mental illness.
IMDB Rating: 6.0
IMDB Votes: 375
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: psychological, serious, realistic, disturbing, gloomy
Similar in 87%
Kira's Reason: A Love Story (2001)
Plot Summary:
Kira and Mads try to work out their marriage, after Kira has been two years in a mental institution, but is she really ready for the real world?.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 997
Genere: Drama
Country: Denmark
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: serious, psychological, clever, talky, sexy, realistic, contemplative, gloomy
Similar in 87%
America (2009)
Plot Summary:
In "America," Dr. Maureen Brennan, a psychiatrist at a youth treatment center, encounters her newest patient, a bi-racial boy named America. Through their sessions, Dr. Brennan helps America come to terms with his roller-coaster life, which began when he was taken by authorities from his crack-addicted mother, and placed into foster care as an infant. The short time of stability in his life occurred when America lived with Mrs. Harper, the elderly nanny to one of his foster families. Later reunited with his mother, she soon abandons America and he is again placed into foster care. Lagging behind in school and full of anger, America retreats further away from society after years of sexual abuse. After attempting suicide, America is placed in a treatment center where Dr. Brennan helps him open up about his painful past and discover the support and courage he needs to get his life back on track.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 698
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, uplifting, serious, realistic
Similar in 83%
The Promise (1999)
Plot Summary:
Lisa's husband, Bill, abuses her. With her sister's encouragement, she takes their three kids and leaves her husband. Bill keeps interfering with Lisa's attempts at a new life. She gets an order of protection against him, but the police can't do anything else to help her. One night Bill breaks into Lisa's apartment and shoots her. As she dies in the hospital, Lisa asks her sister to promise to take care of her three children. The sister takes the kids into her home, but Bill is still on the loose, an ever present threat.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 228
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 83%
Family Sins (2004)
Plot Summary:
Based on the true story of the Burt family who seemed normal, upstanding members of the community but were actually deeply embedded in crime. The matriarch took in foster children who were subsequently molested and abused by her husband and children and she kept a woman enslaved and imprisoned in the basement for over twenty years until the woman's daughter managed to get to Rhode Island Attorney General David Morwitz and expose the horrors taking place in the Burt household.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 895
Genere: Drama
Country: USA, Canada
Duration: 86 min
Plot tags: realistic, disturbing, thought provoking, serious, bleak
Similar in 80%
Return to Innocence (2001)
Plot Summary:
Director Rocky Costanzo's searing legal drama centers on a highly credentialed child psychologist named Glen Erskine (Richard Meese) whose life is shattered when he's accused of sexually assaulting a young boy he's been treating. Based on the novel of the same name by Gary M. Frazier, this poignant tale also stars Andrew Martin, Steve De Forest, Jeff Harman and Brett Chukerman.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 823
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 110 min
Plot tags: psychological, realistic, suspenseful, disturbing, serious, art house, bleak, independent film
Similar in 81%
Open Window (2006)
Plot Summary:
The engagment between a struggling photographer and an assistant professor is marred by an act of violence.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: psychological, sincere, serious, realistic, independent film
Similar in 90%
Afterburn (1992)
Plot Summary:
Based on a true story, one woman takes on the U.S. military and General Dynamics; maker of the F-16, thought to be the very best tactical fighter in the world. Air Force Captain Theodore T. Harduvel was one of the best F-16 pilots the U.S. had to offer. After much digging, Janet Harduvel discovers a joint military and General Dynamic cover-up. She proves to be unwavering in her search for the truth to clear his name.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 670
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 103 min
Plot tags: captivating, disturbing, thought provoking, serious, suspenseful, realistic
Similar in 82%
Citizen Verdict (2003)
Plot Summary:
Marty Rockman, the notorious producer of the hit reality-TV show "So Sue Me", has a brand new concept: "Citizen Verdict". Each week a real criminal case will be tried before the American people, but this time they're also the jury. If the defendant is voted guilty in a death penalty case, Rockman will televise the execution. When an escalation in violent crime and terrorism hits the state of Florida, Governor Tyler, desperate to be seen as a tough-on-crime Republican leader in the upcoming Presidential race, decides to give Rockman his chance and "Citizen Verdict" goes into production in Tampa. Selected by phone-in vote, the show's first contestant is Ricky Carr -- a man accused of the rape and murder of popular celebrity-chef Dolly Hamilton. The case is a surefire ratings winner. But when an investigation begins, it becomes apparent that Ricky may be innocent of murder.
IMDB Rating: 4.3
IMDB Votes: 491
Genere: Drama
Country: UK, Germany
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: serious, disturbing, thought provoking, bleak, realistic, clever, cynical, biting, suspense
Similar in 77%
Cries from the Heart (1994)
Plot Summary:
A drama directed by Michael Switzer.
IMDB Rating: 6.5
IMDB Votes: 312
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 93 min
Plot tags: sincere, uplifting, touching, serious, captivating, emotional, realistic, gloomy
Similar in 79%
Color of Justice (1997)
Plot Summary:
Four young black men kill a white woman, the D.A. is very cautious in how to proceed.
IMDB Rating: 6.1
IMDB Votes: 228
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: psychological, tense, rough, thought provoking, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 80%
Terrorist on Trial: The United States vs. Salim Ajami (1988)
Plot Summary:
There is no question that the Arab terrorist portrayed by Robert Davi is guilty of killing five US citizens in Barcelona. Even his lawyers have zero respect for the rabidly sociopathic Davi. But Jewish defence attorney Ron Leibman is obsessed with the concept of Due Process, and has vowed that Davi will receive a scrupulously fair trial when the terrorist is extradited to America. The defence mounted by Leibman confounds and aggravates government prosecutor Sam Waterston--but he, like Leibman, remains a man of judiciary integrity.
IMDB Rating: 6.4
IMDB Votes: 156
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 134 min
Plot tags: independent film, tense, serious, realistic, suspenseful
Similar in 78%
Waking Madison (2010)
Plot Summary:
A woman suffering from multiple personality disorder tries to piece back together her life.
IMDB Rating: 5.5
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: psychological, suspenseful, mind bending, serious, realistic, touching, depressing, atmospheric, independent film, bleak
Similar in 81%
The Attorney (2013)
Plot Summary:
In the early 1980s, South Korea is torn by student protests over the lack of representation in the government. Song Woo-Seok is a successful attorney in Busan specializing in tax law. His views regarding civil liberties are changed by student activist Park Jin-woo. When Jin-Woo is brutally tortured and put on trial for his activism, Woo-seok decides to defend Jin-woo as his client.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Drama
Country: South Korea
Duration: 127 min
Plot tags: rough, thought provoking, serious, realistic
Similar in 89%
Tangier (2006)
Plot Summary:
In August 1996, bus drivers Marcel Van Loock and Wim Moreels are apprehended by the Moroccan Customs for drug trafficking. Inside their bus, hidden behind a false compartment, they have discovered 700 pounds of hashish. Although the owner of the bus company is arrested as well and makes a full confession clearly indicating that both drivers were unaware of the hidden drugs, the Moroccan judge sentences both men to 5 years in the Moroccan prison of Tangiers. Nothing could have prepared the two men for life inside a Moroccan prison. Without food, clothes or medical care, they must learn how to take care of themselves to survive their stay in prison. Corrupt guards, corrupt lawyers and judges, a consul who doesn't care and frequent beatings are only part of the terrible prison. Meanwhile their families at home are left without any information, any help or any hope - finding out that their own government doesn't care for Belgian people in prisons abroad.
IMDB Rating: 7.1
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama
Country: Belgium
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: rough, serious, suspenseful, disturbing, tense, bleak, realistic