Best movies like Requiem for a Dream

Similar in 80%

Gummo (1997)

Plot Summary:

Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.

Similar in 83%

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Plot Summary:

Bob and his friends Dianne, Rick and Nadine have been drug addicts for years and live from one high to the next. Gus Van Sant attempts to show an intimate look into the lives of heroin addicts with his film Drugstore Cowboy.

Similar in 86%

Spun (2002)

Plot Summary:

Over the course of three days Ross, a college dropout addicted to crystal-meth, encounters a variety of oddball folks - including a stripper named Nikki and her boyfriend, the local meth producer, The Cook - but all he really wants to do is hook up with his old girlfriend, Amy.

Similar in 84%

Candy (2006)

Plot Summary:

A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle -- and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.

Similar in 88%

The Panic in Needle Park (1971)

Plot Summary:

This movie is a stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Needle Park in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves.

Similar in 83%

Naked Lunch (1991)

Plot Summary:

After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally murders his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in an Islamic port town in Africa.

Similar in 85%

Christiane F. (1981)

Plot Summary:

This movie portrays the drug scene in Berlin in the 70s, following tape recordings of Christiane F. 14 years old Christiane lives with her mother and little sister in a typical multi-storey apartment building in Berlin. She's fascinated by the 'Sound', a new disco with most modern equipment. Although she's legally too young, she asks a friend to take her. There she meets Detlef, who's in a clique where everybody's on drugs. Step by step she gets drawn deeper into the scene.

Similar in 77%

Manic (2001)

Plot Summary:

Lyle is filled with rage. After badly beating a classmate during a schoolyard fight, Lyle is committed to a juvenile mental institution in lieu of criminal prosecution. Inside the hospital, Lyle encounters a group of adolescents struggling with a variety of illnesses.

Similar in 89%

The Basketball Diaries (1995)

Plot Summary:

Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll's epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction.

Similar in 76%

Climax (2018)

Plot Summary:

Young dancers gather in a remote and empty school building to rehearse on a cold and wintry night. The all-night celebration soon turns into a hallucinatory nightmare when they learn that their sangria is laced with LSD.

Similar in 78%

Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982)

Plot Summary:

A troubled rock star descends into madness in the midst of his physical and social isolation from everyone.

Similar in 88%

Enter the Void (2009)

Plot Summary:

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

Similar in 88%

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Plot Summary:

Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.

Similar in 79%

Boogie Nights (1997)

Plot Summary:

Set in 1977, back when sex was safe, pleasure was a business and business was booming, idealistic porn producer Jack Horner aspires to elevate his craft to an art form. Horner discovers Eddie Adams, a hot young talent working as a busboy in a nightclub, and welcomes him into the extended family of movie-makers, misfits and hangers-on that are always around. Adams' rise from nobody to a celebrity adult entertainer is meteoric, and soon the whole world seems to know his porn alter ego, "Dirk Diggler". Now, when disco and drugs are in vogue, fashion is in flux and the party never seems to stop, Adams' dreams of turning sex into stardom are about to collide with cold, hard reality.

Similar in 75%

T2 Trainspotting (2017)

Plot Summary:

After 20 years abroad, Mark Renton returns to Scotland and reunites with his old friends Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie.

Similar in 87%

Gia (1998)

Plot Summary:

Gia Carangi travels to New York City with dreams of becoming a fashion model. Within minutes of arriving, she meets Wilhelmina Cooper, a wise and high-powered agent who takes Gia under her wing. With Cooper's help and her own natural instincts, Gia quickly shoots to the top of the modeling world. When Cooper dies of lung cancer, however, Gia turns to drugs – and both she and her career begin to spiral out of control.

Similar in 78%

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Plot Summary:

Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo drive a red convertible across the Mojave desert to Las Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. As their consumption of drugs increases at an alarming rate, the stoned duo trash their hotel room and fear legal repercussions. Duke begins to drive back to L.A., but after an odd run-in with a cop, he returns to Sin City and continues his wild drug binge.

Similar in 78%

Trainspotting (1996)

Plot Summary:

Renton, deeply immersed in the Edinburgh drug scene, tries to clean up and get out, despite the allure of the drugs and influence of friends.

Similar in 75%

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Plot Summary:

A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Similar in 87%

American Psycho (2000)

Plot Summary:

A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies.

Similar in 83%

Black Swan (2010)

Plot Summary:

A ballet dancer wins the lead in "Swan Lake" and is perfect for the role of the delicate White Swan - Princess Odette - but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like Odile, the Black Swan.

Similar in 85%

The Fountain (2006)

Plot Summary:

Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.

Similar in 86%

21 Grams (2003)

Plot Summary:

This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré, Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack Jordan, an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame, none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our worlds irretrievably, forever.

Similar in 78%

Taxi Driver (1976)

Plot Summary:

A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process.

Similar in 87%

American History X (1998)

Plot Summary:

Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for killing two thugs who tried to break into/steal his truck. Through his brother, Danny Vineyard's narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.

Similar in 90%

Pi (1998)

Plot Summary:

The debut film from Darren Aronofsky in which a mathematical genius Maximilian Cohen discovers a link in the connection between numbers and reality and thus believes he can predict the future.

Similar in 88%

Detachment (2011)

Plot Summary:

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Similar in 90%

Magnolia (1999)

Plot Summary:

An epic mosaic of many interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.

Similar in 77%

Fight Club (1999)

Plot Summary:

A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.

Similar in 90%

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Plot Summary:

At Princeton University, John Nash struggles to make a worthwhile contribution to serve as his legacy to the world of mathematics. He finally makes a revolutionary breakthrough that will eventually earn him the Nobel Prize. After graduate school he turns to teaching, becoming romantically involved with his student Alicia. Meanwhile the government asks his help with breaking Soviet codes, which soon gets him involved in a terrifying conspiracy plot. Nash grows more and more paranoid until a discovery that turns his entire world upside down. Now it is only with Alicia's help that he will be able to recover his mental strength and regain his status as the great mathematician we know him as today.