Best movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock

Similar in 85%

Class Trip (1998)

Plot Summary:

A schoolboy Nicholas always worries about something. When he goes on a school skiing trip, all his visions and nightmares take him over.

Similar in 77%

The Last Wave (1977)

Plot Summary:

White Australian lawyer David Burton agrees with reluctance to defend a group of aborigines charged with murdering one of their own. He suspects the victim was targeted for violating a tribal taboo, but the defendants deny any tribal association. Burton, plagued by apocalyptic visions of water, slowly realizes danger may come from his own involvement with the aborigines and their prophecies.

Similar in 84%

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

Plot Summary:

Peter Greenaway's first fiction feature (after the mock-documentary The Falls) made him immediately famous and was named one of the most original films of the 1980s by British critics. The action is set in the director's beloved 17th century. Ambitious young artist Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins) is invited by Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to make 12 elaborate sketches of her estate. Besides money, the contract includes sexual favors that Mrs. Herbert will offer to the draughtsman in the absence of Mr. Herbert. Entirely confident in his ability to weave a web of intrigues, Mr. Neville eventually becomes a victim of someone else's elaborate scheme. The film is structured as a sophisticated intellectual puzzle like the ones popular in the 17th century.

Similar in 89%

The Happiest Place on Earth (2015)

Plot Summary:

A daycare teacher's dreams of a home and family of her own are threatened by the loss of her husband's newspaper job and his subsequent disappearance.

Similar in 88%

Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018)

Plot Summary:

Valentine's Day, 1900. Three schoolgirls and their governess mysteriously disappear in Hanging Rock, Australia, without a trace.

Similar in 81%

Jindabyne (2006)

Plot Summary:

Stewart Kane, an Irishman living in the Australian town of Jindabyne, is on a fishing trip in isolated hill country with three other men when they discover the body of a murdered girl in the river. Rather than return to the town immediately, they continue fishing and report their gruesome find days later. The story of a murder and a marriage - a film about the things that haunt us.

Similar in 83%

The Fine Art of Love: Mine Ha-Ha (2005)

Plot Summary:

A group of young girls are brought up in a college within dark forests and gloomy lakes. Young Hidalla and her friends Irene, Vera, Blanka, Melusine and Rain are brought up in an isolated world: the girls don't know anything about live outside the college's high walls. At the age of 16, some of them start asking questions about their origins, their parents and the true purposes of the Headmistresses strict rules. When two of them disappear mysteriously, the initial fairytale atmosphere grows more and more eerie.

Similar in 78%

Afterschool (2008)

Plot Summary:

A prep-school student (Ezra Miller) accidentally films the drug-related deaths of two classmates, then is asked to put together a memorial video.

Similar in 82%

Blow-Up (1966)

Plot Summary:

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he accidentally captures on film the commission of a murder. The fact that he has photographed a murder does not occur to him until he studies and then blows up his negatives, uncovering details, blowing up smaller and smaller elements, and finally putting the puzzle together.

Similar in 87%

Shock Corridor (1963)

Plot Summary:

Determined to pull in the Pulitzer Prize, reporter Johnny Barrett will go to any length necessary to win the coveted award. When he learns of an unsolved murder committed at a mental institution, Barrett devises a scheme to solve it and earn himself recognition. With the assistance of a psychiatrist and his girlfriend, Barrett convinces the doctors at the institution to commit him. Once inside, he begins his investigation -- and gradually loses his mind.

Similar in 81%

Doubt (2008)

Plot Summary:

In 1964, a Catholic school nun questions a priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled young student, suspecting him of abuse. He denies the charges, and much of the film's quick-fire dialogue tackles themes of religion, morality, and authority.

Similar in 83%

Don't Look Now (1973)

Plot Summary:

After Laura and John Baxter lose their only child in a horrible drowning, they are greeted by strange sightings of her throughout their everyday lives. When two old ladies approach them in Italy with news that their daughter may still be alive, it seems too good to be true. Perhaps it is.

Similar in 88%

Gerry (2002)

Plot Summary:

Two friends named Gerry become lost in the desert after taking a wrong turn. Their attempts to find their way home only lead them into further trouble.

Similar in 90%

Walkabout (1971)

Plot Summary:

Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aborigine boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.

Similar in 88%

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Plot Summary:

In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.

Similar in 88%

A Field in England (2013)

Plot Summary:

During the Civil War in 17th-Century England, a small group of deserters flee from a raging battle through an overgrown field. They are captured by an alchemist, who forces the group to aid him in his search to find a hidden treasure that he believes is buried in the field. Crossing a vast mushroom circle, which provides their first meal, the group quickly descend into a chaos of arguments, fighting and paranoia, and, as it becomes clear that the treasure might be something other than gold, they slowly become victim to the terrifying energies trapped inside the field.

Similar in 76%

The White Ribbon (2009)

Plot Summary:

Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years just before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. The abused and suppressed children of the villagers seem to be at the heart of this mystery.

Similar in 82%

Solaris (1972)

Plot Summary:

A psychologist is sent to a space station orbiting a planet called Solaris to investigate the death of a doctor and the mental problems of cosmonauts on the station. He soon discovers that the water on the planet is a type of brain which brings out repressed memories and obsessions.

Similar in 89%

The Hole (2001)

Plot Summary:

Four teenagers at a British private school secretly uncover and explore the depths of a sealed underground hole created decades ago as a possible bomb shelter.

Similar in 78%

Innocence (2004)

Plot Summary:

A look inside an offbeat boarding school for young girls.

Similar in 82%

The Falling (2014)

Plot Summary:

It's 1969 at a strict English girls' school where charismatic Abbie and intense and troubled Lydia are best friends. After a tragedy occurs at the school, a mysterious fainting epidemic breaks out threatening the stability of all involved.

Similar in 84%

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

Plot Summary:

Takes place in a chateau, an ambiguous story of a man and a woman who may or may not have met last year at Marienbad.

Similar in 85%

Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)

Plot Summary:

This story takes place in a small town on the Hungarian Plain. In a provincial town, which is surrounded with nothing else but frost. It is bitterly cold weather — without snow. Even in this bewildered cold hundreds of people are standing around the circus tent, which is put up in the main square, to see — as the outcome of their wait — the chief attraction, the stuffed carcass of a real whale. The people are coming from everywhere. From the neighboring settlings, even from quite far away parts of the country. They are following this clumsy monster as a dumb, faceless, rag-wearing crowd. This strange state of affairs — the appearance of the foreigners, the extreme frost — disturbs the order of the small town. Ambitious personages of the story feel they can take advantage of this situation. The tension growing to the unbearable is brought to explosion by the figure of the Prince, who is pretending facelessness. Even his mere appearance is enough to break loose destructive emotions.

Similar in 75%

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

Plot Summary:

A recently released patient from a mental institution returns home with her sister, only to face disturbing events between her stepmother and the ghosts haunting their house- all of which are connected to a dark past in the family's history.

Similar in 79%

Jane Eyre (2011)

Plot Summary:

After a bleak childhood, Jane Eyre goes out into the world to become a governess. As she lives happily in her new position at Thornfield Hall, she meet the dark, cold, and abrupt master of the house, Mr. Rochester. Jane and her employer grow close in friendship and she soon finds herself falling in love with him. Happiness seems to have found Jane at last, but could Mr. Rochester's terrible secret be about to destroy it forever?.

Similar in 84%

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Plot Summary:

After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesic, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

Similar in 81%

Donnie Darko (2001)

Plot Summary:

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

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Hearts in Atlantis (2001)

Plot Summary:

A widowed mother and her son change when a mysterious stranger enters their lives.

Similar in 82%

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Plot Summary:

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

Similar in 87%

Cracks (2009)

Plot Summary:

Jealousy flares after the headmistress of an elite boarding school for girls becomes obsessed with a new student.