20 best movies like An Occasional Hell (1996)

A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.

Deadline is the story of the murder of an African American youth in rural Alabama that has gone uninvestigated, unsolved, and unpunished for almost twenty years. That changes when Nashville Times reporter Matt Harper (Steve Talley) meets an idealistic young blueblood bent on discovering the truth. Harper undertakes the investigation despite the opposition of his publisher, violent threats from mysterious forces, a break-up with his fiancée, and his father's cancer diagnosis.

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

Uncle John revolves around the struggle to keep a mysterious disappearance unsolved

Three friends head to the seafront for a drunken weekend, only to be imprisoned on the top floor of their holiday apartment by a malevolent paranormal force.

Rachel Watson, devastated by her recent divorce, spends her daily commute fantasizing about the seemingly perfect couple who live in a house that her train passes every day, until one morning she sees something shocking happen there and becomes entangled in the mystery that unfolds.

In 1916, a shadowy serial killer is targeting women with "afflictions". One night, during a thunderstorm, the mute Helen feels menaced.

This English-language adaptation of the Swedish novel by Stieg Larsson follows a disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist, as he investigates the disappearance of a weary patriarch's niece from 40 years ago. He is aided by the pierced, tattooed, punk computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander. As they work together in the investigation, Blomkvist and Salander uncover immense corruption beyond anything they have ever imagined.

Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer.

When a 12-year-old boy goes missing, lead investigator Greg Harper struggles to balance the pressure of the investigation and troubles with his wife, Jackie. Facing a recent affair, great strain is put on the family that slowly gnaws away at Jackie's grip on reality. But after a malicious presence manifests itself in their home and puts their son, Connor, in mortal danger, the cold, hard truth about evil in the Harper household is finally uncovered.

For some reason, this year's Nobel prize in literature has been awarded to the young author Andrew Craig, who seems to be more interested in women and drinking than writing. Another laureate is Dr. Max Stratman, the famous German-American physicist who comes to Stockholm with his young and beautiful niece Emily. The Foreign Department also gives him an assistant during his stay, Miss Andersson. Craig soon notices that Dr. Stratman is acting strangely. The second time they meet, Dr. Stratman does not even recognize him.

When Baton Rouge police detective Bud Carter busts contract killer Jesse Weiland, he convinces Jesse to become an informant and rat out the South's most powerful crime ring.

A traumatized, alcoholic Dan Torrance meets Abra, a kid who also has the ability to "shine." He tries to protect her from the True Knot, a cult whose goal is to feed off of people like them in order to remain immortal. Doctor Sleep is a sequel to Stephen King's 1977 novel "The Shining". Doctor Sleep is set several decades after the events of the first "Shining".

Gumshoe Philip Marlowe is hired by the oafish Moose Malloy to track down his former girlfriend. He's also hired to accompany an effeminate playboy buy back some jewels. When the exchange results in the playboy's murder, Marlowe can't leave the case alone, and soon discovers it's related to Malloy's. As he gets drawn deeper into a complex web of intrigue by a mysterious blonde, the detective finds his own life in increasing jeopardy.

A young promoter is accused of the murder of Vicky Lynn, a young actress he "discovered" as a waitress while out with ex-actor Robin Ray and gossip columnist Larry Evans.

Young lawyer Iris discovers that she has an older, autistic half-brother Ray, who is in prison for the atrocious murder of his neighbour and her five-year-old daughter. When she meets Ray he reminds her a lot of her own son Aron, who also is autistic, and she starts to believe that he is innocent.

When Mari Gilbert's daughter disappears, police inaction drives her own investigation into the gated Long Island community where Shannan was last seen. Her search brings attention to over a dozen murdered sex workers.

A darkly comic swamp noir story of two best friends set in the late 1980s. Based on the novels by Joe R. Lansdale, the series follows Hap Collins, an East Texas white boy with a weakness for Southern women, and Leonard Pine, a gay, black Vietnam vet with a hot temper.

With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

Marcus (Philip WInchester) wakes up in the middle of a cemetery half naked and has no idea how he got there. Urgent questions pound inside his head. "Where was I last night? Who was I with?" Marcus suffers from parasomnia, a rare sleep disorder which causes him to do things in his sleep which he cannot remember the next day. His situation takes a horrifying turn when Marcus wakes up covered in blood with a knife at his side. Then, the wife of his best friend is found stabbed to death. Marcus is terrified to put together the pieces - could he have murdered her in his sleep to hide a dark secret between them? Mysterious phone calls make Marcus believe someone is watching him. He investigates his own nocturnal activities, desperate to figure out what happens after he goes to sleep at night. His journey to discover the truth ends in a shocking discovery.

A dabbler-in-crime and his assistant hire an ex-police reporter to recover some stolen papers.

One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.

Innocent lives hang on the whim of an elusive psychopathic murderer whose strange riddles and impossible timelines force three people into a mission to end the game before one or all of them die.

Prime leader of a campaign against a big government project is killed in what appears to be a road accident. An IAS officer is ordered to probe the incident and the veils of falsehood begin to drop.

Shy and reserved, Claire Decker, 30ish, is a part-time investigator for Social Services. Typically, she solves cases where senior citizens have died alone, leaving no indication of who must handle their estate. This time however, Claire is reluctantly drawn into a puzzling murder case. The local police have been unable to solve the horrific crime, or even decipher the victim's true identity. A beautiful and enigmatic young blond, known only as "The White Orchid," has been brutally murdered. As Claire is drawn deeper and more intimately into the dead woman's life, she finds herself taking dangerous chances and pushing personal and professional boundaries. As she gets closer to the truth, Claire must effectively become the charismatic "White Orchid" in order to solve the mysterious crime.

After Washington DC detective Alex Cross is told that a family member has been murdered, he vows to track down the killer. He soon discovers that she was not his first victim and that things are not what they seem.

In "An Amish Murder", the peaceful Amish farming community of Painter’s Mill, Ohio, is shattered when a series of brutal murders leaves the town with a sense of frailty and loss of innocence. Among the most affected by the tragedy was Kate Burkholder (Campbell), a young girl who survived the terror and, as a result, left the Amish life behind. Fifteen years later, Kate returns to Painter’s Mill as its Chief of Police. Certain she’s come to terms with her past, Kate’s renewed life in her hometown is shattered when a murder investigation triggers deep-seated emotions from her childhood and exposes a dark secret that could destroy her.

A reclusive surveillance expert is hired to spy on a mysterious blackmailer, who just may be a serial killer.

A visiting city reporter's assignment suddenly revolves around the murder trial of a local millionaire, whom he befriends.

A young journalist goes deep undercover within a mountain commune and becomes manipulated by a duplicitous cult leader.

A man receives a mysterious e-mail appearing to be from his wife, who was murdered years earlier. As he frantically tries to find out whether she's alive, he finds himself being implicated in her death.

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

A DEA agent investigates the disappearance of a legendary Army ranger drill sergeant and several of his cadets during a training exercise gone severely awry.

A tough police detective escapes from custody after being framed and arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, and must now find the real killer and prove his innocence.

A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect. After he gets a call from the killer urging him to try and figure out the game, he cooperates with police and a psychologist to try and catch the killer, but doubts linger about the grandmaster's innocence as the string of grisly murders continues.

A seasoned police detective and his partner have just uncovered a string of unusual murders that lead them to a serial killer, who believes that he is the descendant of Judas.

The discovery of a corpse threatens to unravel a bumbling local politician's campaign for governor of Colorado.

Dr. Taylor Biggs is haunted by a past that's not his own. A hallucinatory drug gives him the power to see visions of vicious crimes, visions made all that more disturbing when he discovers that the murderous memories may belong to the father he never knew . Biggs's mother, whose own failing memory makes her powerless to help him unravel his family history.

When a plot against a prominent Middle Eastern politician is uncovered, David Pollock, a professor of ancient hieroglyphics at Oxford University, is recruited to help expose the scheme. Pollock must find information believed to be in hieroglyphic code and must also contend with a mysterious man called Beshraavi. Meanwhile, Beshraavi's lover, Yasmin Azir, seems willing to aid Pollock -- but is she really on his side?

This sequel to the classic Chinatown finds private detective Jake Gittes still haunted from the events of the first film. Hired by a man to investigate his wife's infidelities, Jake once again finds himself involved in a complicated plot involving murder, oil, and even some ghosts from his past.

Johnny Scardino is working for blackmailers, photographing wealthy guys in seedy motels. One such assignment turns the wrong way and blackmailers die one by one. Is Johnny the next on the list?

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.

Erroll Babbage has spent his career tracking sex offenders and his unorthodox methods are nearly as brutal as the criminals he monitors. When he links one of his deranged parolees to the disappearance of a local girl, he and his new partner must scour the S&M underground to find her before it's too late.

Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.

The third installment of the “Law & Order” franchise takes viewers deep into the minds of its criminals while following the intense psychological approaches the Major Case Squad uses to solve its crimes.

On the afternoon of July 1, 1981, Los Angeles police responded to a distress call on Wonderland Avenue and discovered a grisly quadruple homicide. The police investigation that followed uncovered two versions of the events leading up to the brutal murders - both involving legendary porn actor John Holmes. You're about to experience both versions.

Novelist Catherine Tramell is once again in trouble with the law, and Scotland Yard appoints psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass to evaluate her. Though, like Detective Nick Curran before him, Glass is entranced by Tramell and lured into a seductive game.

When his SUV breaks down on a remote Southwestern road, Jeff Taylor lets his wife, Amy, hitch a ride with a trucker to get help. When she doesn't return, Jeff fixes his SUV and tracks down the trucker -- who tells the police he's never seen Amy. Johnathan Mostow's tense thriller then follows Jeff's desperate search for his wife, which eventually uncovers a small town's murderous secret.

General George S. Patton died in a car accident in 1945. However, now speculates that his death was actually a murder carefully prepared by his staff to cover a large theft of gold.

A dark comedy about four self-absorbed twenty-somethings who become entangled in an ominous mystery when a former college acquaintance suddenly disappears.