20 best movies like The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992)

After a break-in at their house, a couple gets help from one of the cops that answered their call. He helps them install the security system, and begins dropping by on short notice and unofficial patrol, and spends a lot of time discussing the couple's problems with the wife. The husband begins wondering if they're getting too much help.

A detective falls for the man she's supposed to be investigating; dire complications follow.

A husband is on trial for the attempted murder of his wife, in what is seemingly an open/shut case for the ambitious district attorney trying to put him away. However, there are surprises for both around every corner, and, as a suspenseful game of cat-and-mouse is played out, each must manipulate and outwit the other.

Gunslinger Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is appointed by President Ulysses Grant to track down terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), a former Confederate officer determined on unleashing hell on earth. Jonah not only secures freedom by accepting this task, he also gets revenge on the man who slayed his wife and child. Megan Fox plays a prostitute as well as Jonah Hex's love interst in the film.

A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.

A computer specialist is sued for sexual harassment by a former lover turned boss who initiated the act forcefully, which threatens both his career and his personal life.

Kate and her brutish boyfriend Big Al sell handguns on the streets of New York. She's smart, stylish, and self-confident, but all that leaves her when Al, in a jealous and self-indulgent rage, beats her. Three friends encourage her recovery: Vic, a woman who would like to be Kate's lover; Reilly, who runs with Al but also is attracted to Kate and repulsed by Al's violence; and, Liz, the counselor assigned to Kate from a battered-women's program. Vic and Reilly talk about killing Al, Liz gives pep talks; Kate remains frightened. Will Al's menace and Kate's dependency hold sway?

Keen young Raymold Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.

After losing an acting role and his girlfriend, Jake Scully finally catches a break: he gets offered a gig house-sitting in the Hollywood Hills. While peering through the beautiful home's telescope one night, he spies a gorgeous blonde dancing in her window. But when he witnesses the girl's murder, it leads Scully through the netherworld of the adult entertainment industry on a search for answers -- with porn actress Holly Body as his guide.

Mick O'Brien is a young Chicago street thug torn between a life of petty crime and the love of his girlfriend. But when the heist of a local drug dealer goes tragically wrong Mick is sentenced to a brutal juvenile prison where violence is a rite of passage and respect is measured in vengeance.

After a painful breakup, Leah seems to meet the perfect guy. But she soon discovers his violent side that disrupts her life.

Samantha Holt had the perfect life with a handsome fiancée and a future that couldn’t look brighter. But an unexpected turn on a dark lonely road puts her on a collision course with Bruce Miller, a devoted family man who descends into madness when he loses everything he ever cared about. One year later, Bruce decides to give Samantha the punishment he believes she escaped. Samantha has struggled with her own demons since that fateful night, and Bruce will take her struggles to the edge when he implements a demented plan to teach her a twisted lesson that may cost her the ultimate price.

Survivors of a nuclear attack are grouped together for days in the basement of their apartment building, where fear and dwindling supplies wear away at their dynamic.

Julia moves in with her fiancé, David, but his ex-wife and her own haunting past join forces to rock her quiet suburban existence.

Former Hollywood star Reagan Pearce is kidnapped by two men connected to his past while on location in Louisiana. When he wakes up bound and chained in a rundown shack, he soon discovers the real motives of his captors and finds himself in the middle of a twisted scheme with little chance to survive. With no rescue in sight, Reagan must use every ounce of strength he has left to break free and get his revenge.

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.

Eight years after fleeing the Congo following his assassination of that country's minister of mining, former assassin Jim Terrier is back, suffering from PTSD and digging wells to atone for his violent past. After an attempt is made on his life, Terrier flies to London to find out who wants him dead -- and why. Terrier's search leads him to a reunion with Annie, a woman he once loved, who is now married to an oily businessman with dealings in Africa.

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 mentally disturbed young woman takes a job at a posh country club and falls in with a clique of wealthy college kids where she's taken under the wing of the clique's twisted leader, who harbors some dark secrets too terrifying to tell.

Three fraternal bank robbers languishing in jail, discover a profitable (if not dodgy) way to spend their time. Crime can most certainly pay, if you "know wot I mean?" However when sex and greed rear-up between the good crims and the bad cops, the consequences are both bizarre and fatal.

An entry-level employee at a powerful corporation finds himself occupying a corner office, but at a dangerous price: he must spy on his boss's old mentor to secure for him a multi-billion dollar advantage.

Sam Bowden witnesses a rape committed by Max Cady and testifies against him. When released after 8 years in prison, Cady begins stalking Bowden and his family but is always clever enough not to violate the law.

Bored with her marriage to burnt out poet turned corporate executive Thierry, Zandalee falls prey to an old friend of her husband, the manipulative and egotistical Johhny and becomes enmeshed in a sensual, passionate and destructive affair.

Battling insomnia and undiagnosed PTSD, a war veteran works nights as a projectionist at a decrepit theater. While struggling to adapt to civilian life, he soon finds himself tangled in an inescapable web of seduction, addiction, and violence.

A guy gets more than he bargained for after entering into an affair with the wife of an investment banker. Soon, a suspicious death and substantial life insurance policy embroil him in a scandal.

A passionate filmmaker creating a film based upon a true crime casts an unknown mysterious young woman bearing a disturbing resemblance to the femme fatale in the story. Unsuspectingly, he finds himself drawn into a complex web of haunting intrigue: he becomes obsessed with the woman, the crime, her possibly notorious past, and the disturbing complexity between art and truth. From the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to Verona, Rome, and London, new truths are revealed and clues to other crimes and passions, darker and even more complex, are uncovered.

The rivalry between the manipulative boss of an advertising agency and her talented protégée escalates from stealing credit to public humiliation to murder.

Juliet, a beautiful doctor, has found the perfect New York apartment to start a new life after separating from her husband. It's got spacious rooms, a spectacular view, and a handy, handsome landlord. But there are secrets behind every wall and terror in every room as Juliet gets the unnerving feeling that she is not alone.

A woman framed for her husband's murder suspects he is still alive; as she has already been tried for the crime, she can't be re-prosecuted if she finds and kills him.

A 16 year old girl takes up with a charming young man who quickly shows his colors when he beats a friend simply for walking with her and then goes totally ballistic after she tries to break up with him.

A young short-con grifter suffers both injury and the displeasure of reuniting with his criminal mother, all the while dating an unpredictable young lady.

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy’s intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.

Parole officer Jack Mabry has only a few weeks left before retirement and wishes to finish out the cases he's been assigned. One such case is that of Gerald 'Stone' Creeson, a convicted arsonist who is up for parole. Jack is initially reluctant to indulge Stone in the coarse banter he wishes to pursue and feels little sympathy for the prisoner's pleads for an early release. Seeing little hope in convincing Jack himself, Stone arranges for his wife to seduce the officer, but motives and intentions steadily blur amidst the passions and buried secrets of the corrupted players in this deadly game of deception.

While doing a friend a favor and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery.

A wife and mother is consumed by the thought that her husband's co-worker is trying to win him away from her and their family.

In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman convinces her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.

A big time drug dealer Victor Rosa is looking to get out of the game and sees his chance with a big deal with a new friend who happens to be a Wall St. stockbroker. Thinking this will be his chance to go out on top Victor soon finds out that he has been double crossed and his last option is to get revenge.

After his wife is assaulted, a husband enlists the services of a vigilante group to help him settle the score.

Newlywed Jennifer is brutally attacked at a dark rest stop. While healing from her injuries, she can’t recall anything from her past, including the ordeal. Her husband, Russell , is just thankful she’s alive and eager to get her home. As he reintroduces her to their secluded mountain estate, Detective Page pursues Jennifer’s assailant — his own daughter went missing and was never found. The same fate now awaits Jennifer, unless someone realizes that her loving caretaker is actually her captor.

A husband and wife try to reinvigorate their relationship but their lives are threatened by a "friend" from the husband's past who holds a horrifying secret about him, sending their world into a tailspin.

The seemingly random killings of an assassin puzzle her former lover, a wealthy Greek crime boss whose organization is jeopardized by his love for her, and the detective following her rising body count

A young woman fakes her own death in an attempt to escape her nightmarish marriage, but discovers it is impossible to elude her controlling husband.

Veteran Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan is a man haunted by his failure to save President Kennedy while serving protection detail in Dallas. Thirty years later, a man calling himself "Booth" threatens the life of the current President, forcing Horrigan to come back to protection detail to confront the ghosts from his past.

A series of mysterious accidents at a food company lead a manager to suspect his impressive new temporary secretary.

Jackie Brown is a flight attendant who gets caught in the middle of smuggling cash into the country for her gunrunner boss. When the cops try to use Jackie to get to her boss, she hatches a plan—with help from a bail bondsman—to keep the money for herself. Based on Elmore Leonard's novel “Rum Punch”.

In the futuristic action thriller Looper, time travel will be invented but it will be illegal and only available on the black market. When the mob wants to get rid of someone, they will send their target 30 years into the past where a looper, a hired gun, like Joe is waiting to mop up. Joe is getting rich and life is good until the day the mob decides to close the loop, sending back Joe's future self for assassination.

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.

A young novelist, Richard Harland, meets beautiful Ellen Berent on a train where they fall in love and are soon married. When tragedies take first his handicapped young brother, then his unborn son from him, Harland gradually realises that his wife's insane jealousy may be the cause of the tragedies in his life. Yet another shock awaits them all, as Ellen's emotions become uncontrollable.

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.

When Andrew Briggman—a young soldier in the US invasion of Afghanistan—witnesses other recruits killing innocent civilians under the direction of a sadistic Sergeant, he considers reporting them to higher-ups. However, the heavily-armed and increasingly-violent platoon becomes suspicious that someone in their ranks has turned on them, and Andrew begins to fear that he'll be the next target.