20 best movies like The Machinist (2004)

A traumatized Vietnam war veteran finds out that his post-war life isn't what he believes it to be when he's attacked by horned creatures in the subway and his dead son comes to visit him...

Walter Sparrow is an animal control officer that becomes obsessed with a mysterious book that seems to be based on his own life. As soon as he opens the book, he notices strange parallels between what he reads and what he's experienced. But now he's worried that a fictional murder might materialize.

Once a known counterculture figure, June E. Leigh now lives in self-imposed exile in her South Bronx apartment during the incendiary '77 Summer of Sam. When an unseen tormentor begins exploiting June's weaknesses, her insular universe begins to unravel.

Kafka, an insurance worker gets embroiled in an underground group after a co-worker is murdered. The underground group is responsible for bombings all over town, attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society. He eventually penetrates the secret organization and must confront them.

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.

An insurance investigator begins discovering that the impact a horror writer's books have on his fans is more than inspirational.

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.

An alcoholic becomes involved in a fellow A.A. member's plan to kidnap her young son from the boy's wealthy grandfather.

A woman wakes up every day, remembering nothing as a result of a traumatic accident in her past. One day, new terrifying truths emerge that force her to question everyone around her.

Anna returns home after spending time in a psychiatric facility following her mother's tragic death and discovers that her mother's former nurse, Rachel, has moved into their house and become engaged to her father. Soon after she learns this shocking news, Anna is visited by her mother's ghost, who warns her that Rachel has evil intentions.

Captivated by the lure of sudden wealth, the quiet rural lives of two brothers erupt into conflicts of greed, paranoia and distrust when over $4 million in cash is discovered at the remote site of a downed small airplane. Their simple plan to retain the money while avoiding detection opens a Pandora's box when the fear of getting caught triggers panicked behavior and leads to virulent consequences

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 mild-mannered college professor discovers a look-alike actor and delves into the other man's private affairs.

Hunter, a newly pregnant housewife, finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. As her husband and his family tighten their control over her life, she must confront the dark secret behind her new obsession.

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.

Psychiatrist Sam Foster has a new patient, Henry Letham, who claims to be suicidal. In trying to diagnose him, Sam visits Henry's prior therapist and also finds Henry's mother -- even though Henry has said that he murdered both of his parents. As reality starts to contradict fact, Sam spirals into an unstable mental state. Then he finds a clue as to how and when Henry may try to kill himself, and races to try to stop him.

A mentally unhinged factory worker must decide whether to listen to his talking cat and become a killer, or follow his dog's advice to keep striving for normalcy.

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.

Suspecting that people around him are turning into evil creatures, a troubled man questions whether to protect his only friend from an impending war, or from himself.

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.

When Lou Bloom, desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Aiding him in his effort is Nina, a TV-news veteran.

Brad has committed murder and barricaded himself inside his house. With the help of his friends and neighbours, the cops piece together the strange tale of how this nice young man arrived at such a dark place.

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.

A lonely waitress with a tragic past, Agnes rooms in a run-down motel, living in fear of her abusive, recently paroled ex-husband. But when Agnes begins a tentative romance with Peter, an eccentric, nervous drifter, she starts to feel hopeful again - until the first bugs arrive...

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.

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.

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgangers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.

Freddie is an inept bank clerk with no future. His only hobby is collecting butterflies, which gives him a feeling of power and control that is otherwise totally missing from his life. He comes into a large sum of money, and buys himself a country house. Still unable to make himself at ease socially, he starts to plan on acquiring a girl friend - in the same manner as he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house to be a collecting jar, and stalks his victim over several days.

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

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.

Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.

In Roman Polanski's first English-language film, beautiful young manicurist Carole suffers from androphobia (the pathological fear of interaction with men). When her sister and roommate, Helen, leaves their London flat to go on an Italian holiday with her married boyfriend, Carole withdraws into her apartment. She begins to experience frightful hallucinations, her fear gradually mutating into madness.

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 Harvard Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

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.

Six short stories that explore the extremities of human behavior involving people in distress.

It took Anna 10 years to recover from the death of her husband, Sean, but now she's on the verge of marrying her boyfriend, Joseph, and finally moving on. However, on the night of her engagement party, a young boy named Sean turns up, saying he is her dead husband reincarnated. At first she ignores the child, but his knowledge of her former husband's life is uncanny, leading her to believe that he might be telling the truth.

Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.

A young Western woman is recruited by the Mossad to go undercover in Tehran where she becomes entangled in a complex triangle with her handler and her subject.

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.

Elliot, a successful gynecologist, works at the same practice as his identical twin, Beverly. Elliot is attracted to many of his patients and has affairs with them. When he inevitably loses interest, he will give the woman over to Beverly, the meeker of the two, without the woman knowing the difference. Beverly falls hard for one of the patients, Claire, but when she inadvertently deceives him, he slips into a state of madness.

A virtuous monk descends to the depths of sin and depravity after Satan sends an unholy temptress to lead him astray.

In the near future, due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor, there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

An awkward office drone becomes increasingly unhinged after a charismatic and confident look-alike takes a job at his workplace and seduces the woman he desires.

Paul is a U.S. truck driver working in Iraq. After an attack by a group of Iraqis he wakes to find he is buried alive inside a coffin. With only a lighter and a cell phone it's a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap.

48 hours in the life of a burnt-out paramedic. Once called Father Frank for his efforts to rescue lives, Frank sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired, calling in sick, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he couldn't help, yet cannot quit the job on his own.

A woman is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear.

Publisher, Will Atenton quits a lucrative job in New York to relocate his wife, Libby and their daughters to a quaint town in New England. However, as they settle into their home the Atentons discover that a woman and her children were murdered there, and the surviving husband is the town's prime suspect. With help from a neighbor who was close to the murdered family, Will pieces together a horrifying chain of events.