20 best movies like The Vanishing (1993)

A recently released ex-con gets involved in a fake kidnapping scheme that turns very real.

An alcoholic writer begins having visions apparently warning him of impending danger. After he delivers a lecture, he begins an affair with a woman from the audience. The visions intensify, however, and begin to threaten his relationship with the woman, since it may be her the visions are warning against.

A psychological thriller about a senior at one of America's most prestigious universities. Under enormous pressure to complete her thesis and earn a top job at one of the world's most competitive consulting firms, Katie is still coping with the sudden unexplained disappearance of her first love two years prior. As the investigation continues, Katie is forced to choose between past passions and new possibilities, even as new facts are uncovered.

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.

On a foggy day, Julia's six-year-old son Jens is called missing. Despite a thorough search, the boy is never found. Twenty years later, Julia’s father receives one of the shoes Jens was wearing the day he disappeared. Who sent it? Why? Is the boy still alive? This inexplicable act suddenly awakens a hope in Julia that she might see her son again… or that she could find his body and murderer. As she returns to her father’s island, she hears stories of the mythical Nils Kant – a murderer who once was the terror of the island. He is dead and buried for years, long before Julia’s son disappeared. But Julia’s father uncovers that his death and burial were only a fake. While on his tracks, Julia accepts the help and love of Lennart, a local police inspector. His dark and mysterious past brings him a lot closer to Jens’s disappearance that she might think…

An autistic boy witnesses his parents' double murder. Richard Dreyfuss as a controversial therapist, seeks to probe the child's mind in order to solve the case.

Two Supreme Court Justices have been assassinated. One lone law student has stumbled upon the truth. An investigative journalist wants her story. Everybody else wants her dead.

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 Ann Hecker is ending one relationship and possibly starting an important new one, while finding that some of the sexual exploits her patients relate are weighing on her. Turning to a married friend from her research days for guidance, she finds his help increasingly important when a female patient is murdered and it turns out that her new boyfriend was also seeing the dead woman.

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.

Charlie Cox should have stopped for gas in California. While he's on a cross-country trip with his teenage daughter, Joleen, his car hits empty in a creepy town in Nevada. With nary a drop of fuel to be found, Charlie and Joleen stop for the night at a dilapidated trailer park. There, Joleen catches the eye of two teenage boys, Jimmy and Pinky -- either of whom could be the serial killer currently terrorizing the town.

A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.

A British college professor, working in Russia, investigates certain mysteries surrounding the life and death of Joseph Stalin.

On a beautiful college campus, something ugly is about to be spread around. A bit of gossip that was told is starting to take a frightening turn. Who could it have offended and how far will the person on the other side of the gossip handle the embarrassing situation.

Years after his squad was ambushed during the Gulf War, Major Ben Marco finds himself having terrible nightmares. He begins to doubt that his fellow squad-mate Sergeant Raymond Shaw, now a vice-presidential candidate, is the hero he remembers him being. As Marco's doubts deepen, Shaw's political power grows, and, when Marco finds a mysterious implant embedded in his back, the memory of what really happened begins to return.

One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.

The e-cop Tom Beckwith has just quit his police job in order to study psychology. But his professor, Lauren Porter, is more interested in his criminology abilities than in his progress in psychology. Because of traumatic circumstances during her childhood she is suffering from schizophrenia, and it looks like her other ego has just killed somebody. So Tom Beckwith tries to help her by observing her, combining his professional abilities as an ex-cop and his recently gained knowledge of psychology.

This drama follows Inspector Kurt Wallander – a middle-aged everyman – as he struggles against a rising tide of violence in the apparently sleepy backwaters in and around Ystad in Skane, southern Sweden. Based on the international best-selling books by Henning Mankell.

Mary Walsh delivers boyfriend Kevin to a hospital for routine outpatient surgery. But when Mary returns to take him home, he's mysteriously vanished.

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.

An agoraphobic psychologist and a female detective must work together to take down a serial killer who copies serial killers from the past.

When the San Francisco Giants pay center-fielder, Bobby Rayburn $40 million to lead their team to the World Series, no one is happier or more supportive than #1 fan, Gil Renard. When Rayburn becomes mired in the worst slump of his career, the obsessed Renard decides to stop at nothing to help his idol regain his former glory—not even murder.

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 young promoter is accused of the murder of Vicky Lynn, a young actress he "discovered" as a waitress while out with ex-actor Robin Ray and gossip columnist Larry Evans.

A newspaper photographer, Jean, researches the lurid and sensational axe murder of two women in 1873 as an editorial tie-in with a brutal modern double murder. She discovers a cache of papers that appear to give an account of the murders by an eyewitness.

A stranger in the increasingly strange city of San Francisco, Japanese crime novelist Aki is unsure of precisely what role she has to play in a real-life murder mystery involving ambiguous MacGuffins and amorphous identities. Unfolding in lonely places such as bookshops and hotel bars, Dave Boyle's moody thriller uncovers exhilarating new takes on genre conventions. Consequently, it's an alluring l'homme fatal who supplies Aki with the breadcrumb trail of clues that entices her into a labyrinthine plot of sinister dealings. In turn, the aging sheriff (veteran character actor Pepe Serna, fantastic in a rare leading role), who should rightfully be riding to her rescue, proves to be equally out of his depth. The game is afoot, the chase is exhilarating and the stakes are perilously high in this inspired neo-noir.

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.

Brought together at their childhood home over their dying mother, an estranged family is thrust into a deadly fight for their own survival.

As investigative reporter Ward Jansen and his partner Yardley Acheman chase a sensational, career-making story with the help of Ward's younger brother Jack and sultry death-row groupie Charlotte Bless, the pair tries to prove violent swamp-dweller Hillary Van Wetter was framed for the murder of a corrupt local sheriff.

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.

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.

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.

Dan Merrick comes out from a shattering car accident with amnesia. He finds that he is married to Judith who is trying to help him start his life again. He keeps getting flashbacks about events and places that he can't remember. He meets pet shop owner and part time private detective Gus Klein who is supposedly done some work for him prior to the accident. Klein helps Merrick to find out more...

Ray Liotta stars as a medical examiner who has been acquitted for his wife's murder but many still question his innocence. Obsessed with finding his wife's killer, a possible solution presents itself in an experimental serum designed by a neurobiology Linda Fiorentino which has the ability to transfer memories from one person to another, but not without consequences. Liotta driven to solve the case injects himself with the serum, bringing him closer and closer to finding her killer but bringing him closer to death.

Set within a dystopian world that is a collision between technology and humanity, "Reboot" touches upon many of the current social and political concerns that arise from becoming more and more intertwined with the virtual. In contemporary Los Angeles, a young female hacker (Stat) awakens from unconsciousness to find an iPhone glued to her hand and a mysterious countdown ticking away on the display. Suffering from head trauma, and with little recollection of who she is or what is happening, Stat races against time to figure out what the code means, and what unknown event the pending zero-hour will bring.

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

A young journalist goes deep undercover within a mountain commune and becomes manipulated by a duplicitous cult leader.

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.

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.

Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.

Mourning the accidental death of his wife and having just moved to New York with his young son, laconic police psychologist Cal Jamison is reluctantly drawn into a series of grisly, ritualistic murders involving the immolation of two youths.

Bobby Earl is facing the electric chair for the murder of a young girl. Eight years after the crime he calls in Paul Armstrong, a professor of law, to help prove his innocence. Armstrong quickly uncovers some overlooked evidence to present to the local police, but they aren't interested - Bobby was their killer.

Emily Parker is haunted by visions of a woman from the past soon after receiving an antique engagement ring from her fiancé.

Henry Petosa and Freddy Ace are twins who were separated being babies, and they do not know each other. Henry was adopted by a honest man, while Freddy becomes a gangster. Henry is very shy and has a lot of mental troubles. The film melts the two stories by a young writer who discovers that they were sons of an european noble and they own a large inheritance.

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

A hotel cabana boy falls for the wife of a powerful politico. But when she confesses to the affair, her husband determines to end it forever.

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 an attack leaves him in limbo -- invisible to the living and also near death -- a teenager discovers the only person who might be able help him is his attacker.

Handsome, unflappable U.S. Congressman Stephen Collins is the future of his political party: an honorable appointee who serves as the chairman of a committee overseeing defense spending. All eyes are upon the rising star to be his party's contender for the upcoming presidential race. Until his research assistant/mistress is brutally murdered and buried secrets come tumbling out.