20 best movies like The Element of Crime (1984)

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.

Laura and John, grieved by a terrible loss, meet in Venice, where John is in charge of the restoration of a church, two mysterious sisters, one of whom gives them a message sent from the afterlife.

Marc Schrader, a rookie cop caught red-handed with drugs in a police raid of an illegal rave, joins a homicide investigation conducted by Chief Inspector Minks. The victim is a naked young woman with the skin stripped off her back, killed as she staggered into traffic. As Schrader and Minks investigate the murder, the case is complicated by a finger found in the stomach of the victim. Forensic examination proves the finger belongs to Nobert Günzel, who was previously convicted of rape and assault. The police raid Günzel’s residence, and discover a blood-stained table with restraints and bits of human flesh in his basement. They also find video equipment and preserved, tattooed skin from the victim’s back. Soon, they found dead bodies buried in the garden. Günzel then goes missing.

Robert Hansen, 34, a young police officer from Copenhagen, is transferred against his will to the small town of Skarrild in Southern Jutland as a substitute Marshall. The transfer is Robert’s chance to start over. Whether he is allowed to return to his job in Copenhagen, all depends on how well he performs in this frontier town.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.

Tensions are high after a Danish freighter is captured and held for ransom by Somali pirates, leading to weeks of high-stakes negotiations – and an escalating potential for explosive violence.

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

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

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.

In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

Marie is a Toronto police officer. One evening, her husband Joshua and their son Nicky are brutally murdered in their car. Marie quickly links Pablo Molina, an Argentinian drug trafficker who she'd arrested a few months earlier, with the crime. In despair, Marie heads to Argentina on the tracks of the killer. A journey of revenge and a journey to come to terms with her loss.

When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man's murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.

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.

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.

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.

While treating a policewoman for smoking, hypnotherapist Michael Strother has a telepathic vision of a young girl floating beneath the surface of a stream. The escaped victim of a ritualistic serial killer, the girl has become mute, and Michael is called upon by Scotland Yard to unlock the secrets she holds in order to catch a man who believes he has discovered the key to immortality.

A serial killer, who drains his victims for blood is on the loose in London, the Police follow him to a house owned by an eccentric scientist.

Unemployed and unemployable, Tony is a sympathetic recluse with severe social problems, an addiction to VHS action films and a horrible moustache. Occasionally he snaps and murder is the result…

A wave of gruesome murders is sweeping Tokyo. The only connection is a bloody X carved into the neck of each of the victims. In each case, the murderer is found near the victim and remembers nothing of the crime. Detective Takabe and psychologist Sakuma are called in to figure out the connection, but their investigation goes nowhere...

Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.

The corrupt Lord Ambrose D'Arcy steals the life's work of the poor musical Professor Petry. In an attempt to stop the printing of music with D'Arcy's name on it, Petry breaks into the printing office and accidentally starts a fire, leaving him severely disfigured. Years later, Petry returns to terrorize a London opera house that is about to perform one of his stolen operas.

A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

When awkward teen Ronald Wilby accidentally kills a young girl whose sister rejected his affections, his overbearing mother decides to hide him from the law by creating a concealed room in their home for him to live.

Six young adults struggle with their personal demons while staying at a secluded mansion during a dark and stormy night where a seemingly innocent game of 'taboo' brings out their inter-most secrets which soon leads to murder.

When a father is forced to abruptly depart for work, he leaves his children, Aidan and Mia, at their holiday home in the care of his new girlfriend, Grace. Isolated and alone, a blizzard traps them inside the lodge as terrifying events summon specters from Grace's dark past.

A BBC adaptation of the Victorian "penny dreadful" tale of 18th century "demon barber" Sweeney Todd, of Fleet Street, who cuts the throats of unsuspecting clients in his London shop.

A drama centered around the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

The government cover-up of the causes behind a massive explosion in a futuristic UK metropolis spur photo journalist Jennifer Preston on to search for the truth and in the process blow open a paranormal phenomenon haunting the city.

The young woman, Marie, is an outsider in the small coastal community where she has grown up. The townspeople live in fear of her and not least her mother, who is wheelchair bound, suffering from a mysterious illness. When Marie discovers her body changing – long hair growing on her chest and back – she begins searching for answers concerning her family’s hidden past. Something that will have great consequences for herself and her family – and the choices she has to make.

Fiona Wagner, a journalism student, tracks a cold-blooded killer with the help of her detective father and a therapist.

A pharmaceutical company recruits a well-known scientist to help develop a vaccine against a deadly virus.

Seven strangers wake up on the deserted streets of London with no knowledge of how they got there. Before long someone -or something - is picking them off, one by one....

A sinful martial arts expert wants to start a new tranquil life, only to be hunted by a determined detective and his former master.

A detective probes the brutal murder of a woman in a red light district while a housewife hides her double life as a prostitute from her husband.

A psychic's ominous reading sends a man into a tailspin.

The plot follows Morris (Curran), a recluse with psychotic tendencies, whose life changes when his innocent daughter (Vickers) rescues one of his victims and befriends him. Jake (Hill), an ordinary businessman, soon realizes that he is stranded, and his presence in the house gradually reveals unexpected and dark mysteries from the past.

The town's leading citizen is a man victim of homicidal impulses beyond his control. He is being controlled by his wife who had left him for another man. She was involved in a car accident that has left her brain damaged and is kept in the basement, in secret, by Kessler's gardener.

While investigating the murder of her father by her blind younger brother, a young woman disturbs the vengeful spirit of Elizabeth Short, known in legend as "The Black Dahlia".

A disturbing portrait of contemporary youth culture where the lines between reality and fiction are blurred with often frightening results.

On the outskirts of the Civil War, a boy is sent north by a bounty hunter gang to retrieve a wanted man.

Lt. Dave Robicheaux, a detective in New Iberia, Louisiana, is trying to link the murder of a local hooker to New Orleans mobster Julie (Baby Feet) Balboni, who is co-producer of a Civil War film. At the same time, after Elrod Sykes, the star of the film, reports finding another corpse in the Atchafalaya Swamp near the movie set, Robicheaux starts another investigation, believing the corpse to be the remains of a black man who he saw being murdered 35 years before.

JIM TAHANA doesn't leave much of an impression when he passes you by. But look closer and you'll sense his hunger - the deep hunger of an insatiable American soul - always scanning to devour something - anything that might fill the searing, unexplained void within him. Jim obsesses over the hobby that has been part of his DNA since he was a young boy: grief tourism - the act of traveling with the intent to visit places of tragedy or disaster. Every year his week-long vacations from work are spent going to grief tourist locations in the lives of different serial killers he is fascinated with. This years obsession is Carl Marznap, a mass murder from New Orleans, Louisiana. But this trip is no ordinary vacation as Jim's rancid sexual impulses and weakening grip on reality deteriorate into a violent despair that will ultimately unlock an unspeakable secret festering within him, bringing The Grief Tourist to it's brutal and shocking finale...

A law student, who takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue, begins to discover clues that implicate him as the suspect of a series of murders.

The tragic death of a beautiful young girl starts a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse between hunter John Moon and the hardened backwater criminals out for his blood.

Follows the journey of a 90-year-old atheist and the quirky characters that inhabit his off-the-map desert town. He finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration.

Fifteen-year old John Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it. He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. Terrible impulses constantly tempt him, so for his own sake, and the safety of those around, he lives by rigid rules to keep himself “good” and “normal”. However, when a real monster shows up in his town he has to let his dark side out in order to stop it – but without his rules to keep him in check, he might be more dangerous than the monster he’s trying to kill.

Thirty years ago, in the sleepy community of Waterbury, a killer known as “The Executioner” murdered Sarah Bennett's parents. Now Sarah and her husband Dylan have returned to town, only to find herself the centerpiece in a series of horrifying murders centered around the seven deadly sins.

Fortitude is a place like nowhere else. Although surrounded by the savage beauty of the Arctic landscape, Fortitude is one of the safest towns on earth. There has never been a violent crime here. Until now. In such a close-knit community a murder touches everyone and the unsettling, mysterious horror of this crime threatens the future of the town itself.

Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.