20 best movies like The Vanishing (1988)

A psychological thriller based on the concept of anamorphosis, a painting technique that manipulates the laws of perspective to create two competing images on a single canvas.

Samuel Salomon, a literature professor, has been off work for almost a year after the tragic death of his girlfriend. Samuel has been suffering from a recurring nightmare in which a woman is brutally murdered in a strange ritual. Suddenly, the same woman who appears every night in his dreams is found dead in exactly the same circumstances. Samuel sneaks into the crime scene and there he meets Rachel who has also dreamed about the murder. Together, they will do whatever they can to discover the identity of the mystery woman, entering a terrifying world controlled by the figures who have inspired artists throughout time: the Muses.

Víctor is a child who is found casually roaming by a country road. His mother, Patricia, a well-known lawyer specialist in media trails, realizes about it and she goes to the hospital, where explains to the police that Víctor is deaf, and he's unable to talk, speaking using sign language. In the police headquarter Víctor explains that he was kidnapped by a strange man when we was entering to the school. The police identifies a possible suspect named Charlie, a man with money troubles and an 8-months pregnant wife who can't explain where he was when Víctor was kidnapped from the school. Seeing the inability of the police to arrest Charlie after some failed attempts to meet Víctor, Patricia contacts Raúl, Patricia's former love interest and Víctor's father, to ask him that he or a friends of him threat seriously Charlie. But when is discovered that Víctor made a false identification, Patricia tries to stop Raúl, starting a chain of events which consequences will be out of control...

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.

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

Kat Connors is 17 years old when her perfect homemaker mother, Eve, disappears. Having lived for so long in an emotionally repressed household, she barely registers her mother's absence and certainly doesn't blame her doormat of a father, Brock, for the loss. But as time passes, Kat begins to come to grips with how deeply Eve's disappearance has affected her. Returning home on a break from college, she finds herself confronted with the truth about her mother's departure, and her own denial about the events surrounding it...

A 12 year old cold case is reopened when three teens are missing in an old abandoned road where a gruesome murder is left undiscovered for three decades.

A cross-country trip turns out to be a nightmare for a troubled couple.

Jill Parrish is trying to rebuild her life after surviving a terrifying kidnapping attempt. Though she is having a difficult time, she takes small steps toward normalcy by starting a new job and inviting her sister, Molly, to move in with her. Returning home from work one morning, Jill discovers that Molly has vanished, and she is certain that the same man who previously abducted her has returned for revenge.

Thrown naked into a desolate room with thirteen strangers, Tonya discovers that she is the final contestant in a deadly game. Restrained by lethal electronic collars, the players must utilize hints and tools from a box marked "pieces" to find both an exit and the reason for their abduction. One by one the players are eliminated as their "curfew" begins and the lights go out. With each dead body comes another clue, which they use to discover that one of them is the killer. The question is ... which one?

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.

When Keller Dover's daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?

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.

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 woman’s body disappears mysteriously from the morgue without a trace. Police inspector Jaime Peña investigates the strange occurrence with the help of Álex Ulloa, the widower of the missing woman.

In the middle of this amusing thriller is a relationship between two different types of females, one is a well know British author and the other is a sex-crazed French teen. The two get into some relationship trouble while living together in this film of psychological imagery and an erotic exploration of the female body.

A college professor wakes up to find his wife has not returned home, then struggles to understand her disappearance.

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.

Sara Novak is an introverted college student with a few skeletons in her closet. Shying away from classmates, she prefers to spend time with Vern, an older comic store owner who shares her passion for mind games and riddles. But when the riddles she solves lead to the deaths of those around her, she realizes the riddles are more than a simple game.....

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.

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 man with the ability to enter peoples' memories takes on the case of a brilliant, troubled sixteen-year-old girl to determine whether she is a sociopath or a victim of trauma.

Some of Sin City's most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with a few of its more reviled inhabitants.

Film archivist David and his wife are perfectly happy or so he believes. When a looming secret shatters their marriage at the same time as a turn-of-the-century film reel he is studying reveals their house to be the site of a 1902 multiple-murder, David begins to unravel, and the house’s eerie history threatens to repeat itself. Dripping with tension and chilling to the core, this visceral Irish ghost story is a visually arresting and genuinely shocking journey into the darkness within.

The story of a woman who is slowly losing her sight whilst trying to investigate the mysterious death of her twin sister.

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.

A young woman doctor discovers something sinister going on in her hospital. Relatively healthy patients are having 'complications' during simple operations and ending up in comas. The patients are then shipped off to an institute that looks after them. The young doctor suspects there is more to this than meets the eye.

Trainees in the FBI's psychological profiling program must put their training into practice when they discover a killer in their midst.

Paris, December. A conductor of a choir is found mysteriously murdered, with burst eardrums. Lionel Kasdan, a police inspertor the verge of retirement, and Frank Salek, an official of Interpol, embark together on a hunt for the killer, and also to a secret organization specializing in kidnapping children.

Heli must try and protect his young family when his 12-year-old sister inadvertently involves them in the brutal drug world. He must battle against the drug cartel that have been angered as well as the corrupt police force.

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

Based on the true story of double killings occurring in Rochester, NY during the 80’s and the troubled police officer determined to solve them, with or without the help of her department

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.

A high-priced call girl is forced to depend on a reluctant private eye when she is stalked by a psychopath.

A woman is being watched in her apartment by a stranger, who also calls and torments her. A cat-and-mouse game begins.

Boston is being terrorized by a series of seemingly random murders of women. Based on the true story, the film follows the investigators path through several leads before introducing the Strangler as a character. It is seen almost exclusively from the point of view of the investigators who have very few clues to build a case upon.

A couple and their 12-year-old son move into a giant house for the summer. Things start acting strange almost immediately. It seems that every time some gets hurt on the grounds the beat-up house seems to repair itself.

In honor of his birthday, San Francisco banker Nicholas Van Orton, a financial genius and a coldhearted loner, receives an unusual present from his younger brother, Conrad -- a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game. In nearly a nanosecond, Nicholas finds himself consumed by a dangerous set of ever-changing rules, unable to distinguish where the charade ends and reality begins.

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.

A US Army colonel in France tries to track down an escaped sex maniac.

Lee Blanchard and Bucky Bleichert are former boxers-turned-cops in 1940s Los Angeles and, when an aspiring young actress turns up dead, Blanchard and Bleichert must grapple with corruption, narcissism, stag films and family madness as they pursue 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.

David Norton is used to being in control. As a best-selling author, he decides the fate of his characters, their lives and their deaths. But what happens when his fictional world becomes all too real?

The Spanish deep South, 1980. A series of brutal murders of adolescent girls in a remote and forgotten town bring together two disparate characters - both detectives in the homicide division - to investigate the cases. With deep divisions in their ideology, detectives Juan and Pedro must put aside their differences if they are to successfully hunt down a killer who for years has terrorized a community in the shadow of a general disregard for women rooted in a misogynistic past.

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.

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.

Khalid, is entrusted with the task of eliminating Kabir, a former soldier turned rogue, as he engages in an epic battle with his mentor who had taught him everything.

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

When hitchhiker Jack rescues Véronique from a road rage altercation, the twosome decide to travel together for safety’s sake after learning a serial killer is cutting a murderous swathe through the region. Tired and hungry, they decide against their better judgment to take up an offer to stay the night at a mysterious elderly couple’s mansion…

After a car crash, a criminal psychologist (Halle Berry) comes to, only to find that she's a patient in the same mental institution that currently employs her. It seems she's been accused of murdering her husband -- but she has no memory of committing the crime. As she tries to regain her memory and convince her co-workers of her innocence, a vengeful spirit uses her as an earthly pawn, which further convinces everyone of her guilt.