20 best movies like Donnie Darko (2001)

Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.

Plagued by a series of apocalyptic visions, a young husband and father questions whether to shelter his family from a coming storm, or from himself.

A set of six nested stories spanning time between the 19th century and a distant post-apocalyptic future. Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. Action, mystery and romance weave through the story as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero and a single act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution in the distant future. Based on the award winning novel by David Mitchell. Directed by Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis.

A gritty mind-bending thriller about three twenty-somethings who find themselves in an impossible time labyrinth, where each day they awaken to the same terrifying day as the preceding one.

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.

Taking place after alien crafts land around the world, an expert linguist is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat.

The story revolves around the passengers of a yachting trip in the Atlantic Ocean who, when struck by mysterious weather conditions, jump to another ship only to experience greater havoc on the open seas.

In the year 2035, convict James Cole reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to discover the origin of a deadly virus that wiped out nearly all of the earth's population and forced the survivors into underground communities. But when Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 instead of 1996, he's arrested and locked up in a mental hospital. There he meets psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly, and patient Jeffrey Goines, the son of a famous virus expert, who may hold the key to the mysterious rogue group, the Army of the 12 Monkeys, thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease.

Pol is a teenager with a seemingly calm life: he lives with his brother and is still in high school. However, Pol has a secret: Deerhoof, a cuddly teddy bear who thinks, moves around and with whom he shares his best moments. Life goes on as normal until the arrival of Ikari, an enigmatic student who seems to be hiding something. Pol is fascinated by his new classmate and attracted to the dark side he harbors. An inexplicable death and a series of strange events will transform the meek student's routine into a fantastic adventure which will take over their lives. Animals is a story of teenage love, of sacrifice, of the tragedy of two clashing worlds. A Tale in which the power of imagination blurs it´s borders with reality and where death turns out to be an ending as tempting as inevitable.

Foka hasn't turned seven yet. He lives with his parents and a teenage sister in a big country house. What is the universe of a child familiar only with the backyard of his own house in the Outer Moscow boroughs with no friends there? How the fragile world of a little boy will be affected by the complicated life of the elder teenage sister? Every night the boy is visited by a mysterious guest coming down from sister's gothic posters. The exciting conversations with the guest help Foka to understand the daily reality of his life - the parent's quarrels, the elder sister's hysterics, his first successes and failures in school. In this world of visions and adventures the boy will go through his growing up period. But where is the borderline between the world of night dreams and reality?

The hopes and dreams of four ambitious people are shattered when their drug addictions begin spiraling out of control. A look into addiction and how it overcomes the mind and body.

Brothers Mike and Jody join family friend Reggie to battle the Tall Man and his evil minions from another dimension, for the final time.

The Machinist is the story of Trevor Reznik, a lathe-operator who is dying of insomnia. In a machine shop, occupational hazards are bad enough under normal circumstances; yet for Trevor the risks are compounded by fatigue. Trevor has lost the ability to sleep. This is no ordinary insomnia...

Jess, age 18, and Moss, age 12 are second cousins in the dark-fire tobacco fields of rural Western Kentucky. Without immediate families that they can relate to, and lacking friends their own age, they only have each other. Over the course of a summer they venture on a journey exploring deep secrets and hopes of a future while being confronted with fears of isolation, abandonment and an unknown tomorrow.

A teenager finds himself transported to an island where he must help protect a group of orphans with special powers from creatures intent on destroying them.

No one seemed to care about Jamie Marks until after his death. Hoping to find the love and friendship he never had in life, Jamie’s ghost visits former classmate Adam McCormick, drawing him into the bleak world between the living and the dead.

Toby, a cynical advertising director finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth.

Shot in Spanish and localized for markets around the world, “Tini – El Gran Cambio de Violetta” is set to thrill fans with everything they loved about the worldwide Violetta phenomenon including strong musical elements with new and original tracks, exciting choreography, compelling storylines, and intriguing characters. All made bigger and better for the big screen. The film shows how taking the role in the TV series was a pivotal moment for Tini leading to a personal ‘coming of age story’ about the young actress. In a story that reflects the teen star’s own real life, Tini will leave behind the world depicted in Violetta, striking out alone and embarking on a brand new adventure over one endless summer that will define her as a person and see her emerge as a new artist.

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.

A psychological thriller about an eight year old boy named Cole Sear who believes he can see into the world of the dead. A child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe comes to Cole to help him deal with his problem, learning that he really can see ghosts of dead people.

A young boy ventures into the forest in search of mysterious creatures that eat sheep, in this delightfully creepy Scandinavian Gothic fable from Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen.

A group of students become trapped inside a mysterious cave where they discover time passes differently underground than on the surface.

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.

Mary Henry ends up the sole survivor of a fatal car accident through mysterious circumstances. Trying to put the incident behind her, she moves to Utah and takes a job as a church organist. But her fresh start is interrupted by visions of a fiendish man. As the visions begin to occur more frequently, Mary finds herself drawn to the deserted carnival on the outskirts of town. The strangely alluring carnival may hold the secret to her tragic past.

Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

On planet Perdide, an attack of giant hornets leaves Piel – a young boy – alone in a wrecked car with his dying father. A mayday message reaches their friend Jaffar, an adventurer travelling through space. On board Jaffar’s shuttle are the renegade Prince Matton, his fiancée, and Silbad who knows the planet Perdide well. Thus begins an incredible race across space to save Piel… René Laloux, the director of Fantastic Planet [La Planète sauvage], created Les Maîtres du temps, his penultimate animated feature film, in 1982. A huge hit in France at the time of its release, it combines Laloux’s famous imagination with that of animation designer Jean Giraud (aka Moebius). Les Maîtres du temps is a finely animated metaphysical rescue mission, previously seen in English-speaking countries as a dubbed version entitled Time Masters.

A socially awkward woman with a fondness for arts and crafts, horses, and supernatural crime shows finds her increasingly lucid dreams trickling into her waking life.

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek and filmmaker Sophie Fiennes reunites for this follow-up to their hit The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, using their interpretation of moving pictures to present a compelling cinematic journey into the heart of ideology – the dreams that shape our collective beliefs and practices.

The accidental unearthing of Satan’s earthly remains causes the children of a 17th-century English village to slowly convert into a coven of devil worshipers.

Nemo Nobody leads an ordinary existence with his wife and 3 children; one day, he wakes up as a mortal centenarian in the year 2092.

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.

A man descends into paranoia after trapping what he believes to be the devil in his basement, but things take a dark turn when his family unexpectedly arrive for Christmas.

A disgraced children’s puppeteer returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.

After a serial killer strangles several women with a necktie, London police identify a suspect—but he's the wrong man.

The story of a pair of children born within moments of India gaining independence from England, growing up in the country that is nothing like their parent's generation. A Canadian-British film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel of the same name.

Borgman is the central character of this dark, malevolent fable. Is he a dream or a demon, a twisted allegory or an all-too-real embodiment of our fears? Borgman is a sinister arrival in the sealed-off streets of modern suburbia. His presence unleashes a crowing gallery of distortion around the careful façade constructed by an arrogant, comfortable couple, their three children and nanny.

A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in France where the previous tenant committed suicide, and begins to suspect his landlord and neighbors are trying to subtly change him into the last tenant so that he too will kill himself.

About an orphaned child whose dreams - and nightmares - manifest physically as he sleeps.

Two siblings discover a supernatural escape from a troubled home, but find their bond tested when reality threatens to tear their family apart.

The classic Charles Dickens' Christmas ghost tale told in musical form.

A woman named Kit moves back to her parent's house, where she receives a mysterious invitation that would fulfill her childhood dreams.

Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.

Scientific whiz-kid Paul moves to a new town to study artificial intelligence at the local university. One of Paul's high-tech inventions is a growly-voiced robot named BeeBee, and one of his new friends is the lovely girl next door, Samantha. When tragic events take both BeeBee and Samantha from him, the boy genius desperately sets out to restore the love he lost — and, like a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, discovers too late that he has created a rampaging monster.

With only three weeks left in his three year contract, Sam Bell is getting anxious to finally return to Earth. He is the only occupant of a Moon-based manufacturing facility along with his computer and assistant, GERTY. When he has an accident however, he wakens to find that he is not alone.

A look inside an offbeat boarding school for young girls.

A teenager is stuck in a time loop that is not quite the same each time. She must uncover the truth but her actions have consequences for herself and others.

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

In Barrow, Alaska, teenagers Qalli and Aivaaq find their bond tested when a seal-hunting trip goes wrong, resulting in the death of their friend.

Drugdealer wants get out of the circle with his pregnant girlfriend and a time loop effect makes it more complicated.

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..