AfflictionMovies like Affliction
- Key Features:
- Small town, Police investigation, Mental deterioration, Family secrets, Violence-moderate, Paranoia, Conspiracy, Corruption, Psychological thriller, Tragedy, Dysfunctional family, Guilt, Isolation, Loss of control, Moral decay
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of psychological thrillers, Viewers interested in character studies, Those who appreciate dark and gritty narratives, Individuals interested in crime dramas
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Anxiety → Despair
Affliction

A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.
Affliction
Dr. Louis Creed and his wife, Rachel, move from Boston to Ludlow, in rural Maine, with their two young children. Hidden in the woods near the new family home, Ellie, their eldest daughter, discovers a mysterious cemetery where the pets of community members are buried.

A teacher lives a lonely life, all the while struggling over his son’s custody. His life slowly gets better as he finds love and receives good news from his son, but his new luck is about to be brutally shattered by an innocent little lie.

A reformed hunter becomes involved in a deadly game of cat and mouse when he and the local sheriff set out to track a vicious killer who may have kidnapped his daughter years ago.

When a mysterious animal attack leaves a mutilated body in the forest, a conservative small town detective must enlist the help of an eager wildlife specialist to uncover the dark and disturbing truth that threatens the town.

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town, patient and apparently thoughtful. Some people think he is a little slow and maybe boring, but that is the worst they say about him. But then nobody knows about what Lou calls his "sickness": He is a brilliant, but disturbed sociopathic sadist.

A bigoted junkie cop suffering from borderline personality disorder and drug addiction manipulates and hallucinates his way in a bid to secure promotion.

After getting hired to probe a suspicious death in the small town of Wander, a mentally unstable private investigator becomes convinced the case is linked to the same 'conspiracy cover up' that caused the death of his daughter.

When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.

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.

Terror grips a small mountain town as bodies are discovered after each full moon. Losing sleep, raising a teenage daughter, and caring for his ailing father, officer Marshall struggles to remind himself there's no such thing as werewolves.

In the peaceful Colorado town of Snowfield, something evil has wiped out the community. And now, it's up to a group of people to stop it, or at least get out of Snowfield alive.

A former mental patient's repressed anger reaches the boiling point, leading him to embark on a mission of revenge against the thugs who once subjected him to severe physical and mental trauma.

A minor train accident in rural Nebraska gradually unveils a mystery involving the town's reclusive bank clerk.

When young women begin to disappear across a small town, a police officer and a street-smart social worker follow clues to a remote pig farm and discover the local butcher has been bringing his work home.

In a suburban community, moms and dads, one after the other, mysteriously feel the irresistible impulse to attack and kill their own offspring.

The boredom of small town life is eating Bill Williamson alive. Feeling constrained and claustrophobic in the meaningless drudgery of everyday life and helpless against overwhelming global dissolution, Bill begins a descent into madness. His shockingly violent plan will shake the very foundations of society by painting the streets red with blood.

A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, he relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town PI.

Deputy Sheriff Joe "Deke" Deacon joins forces with Sgt. Jim Baxter to search for a serial killer who's terrorizing Los Angeles. As they track the culprit, Baxter is unaware that the investigation is dredging up echoes of Deke's past, uncovering disturbing secrets that could threaten more than his case.

Stranded in the remote countryside after wrecking their car, a couple seeking to start over discovers that there's no escape from the sins of their past.

When Holly’s dark secret is accidentally uncovered by her new emotionally unstable neighbor Tom, they are pulled into a violent confrontation with her father, who will do anything to keep the secret hidden.

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

A sheriff sees his state senate bid slide out onto the ice when his daughter begins to date the son of a charming but psychologically disturbed woman with whom the sheriff has engaged in a two-decade-long affair.

Freddy Heflin is the sheriff of a place everyone calls “Cop Land” — a small and seemingly peaceful town populated by the big city police officers he’s long admired. Yet something ugly is taking place behind the town’s peaceful facade. And when Freddy uncovers a massive, deadly conspiracy among these local residents, he is forced to take action and make a dangerous choice between protecting his idols and upholding the law.

Marty Mackenzie is an unsuccessful stage actor who takes an interest in private investigating. He takes a job working with Jack Potter, a crusty private eye. They both take a case in Beaver Ridge, a seedy small town where a murder is being planned against a rich gravel pit owner. Marty realizes that private investigating is not as it seemed to be.

Something lurks off the coast of Block Island, silently influencing the behavior of fisherman, Tom Lynch. After suffering a series of violent outbursts, he unknowingly puts his family in grave danger.

A police chief in northern France tries to solve a case where an old woman was brutally murdered on Christmas Eve. However, in a neighborhood rife with crime, everyone seems to be a suspect.

An evil is unleashed in a small town when a logging company sets up shop in the neighboring woods. Isolated and threatened, a mysterious force hidden within the trees outside the small town of Maiden Woods, strikes fear in the townspeople as Sheriff Paul Shields attempts to overcome the demons of his past while protecting those that he loves.

When the quiet and amiable Vann Siegert drifts into town, no one suspects the evil that lies beneath the surface. Despite his easy charm, Vann is merely a reflection of what those he encounters want him to be. Soon, as locals start to disappear, it becomes clear that an eerie subtraction is at work in the sleepy hamlet.

After a family tragedy, Chuck Wilson hopes to start a new life in Ashland Falls with his wife Maria and little sister Elizabeth, but he quickly discovers that the town has a dark history of being haunted by a ghostly woman who drives residents to suicide.

A modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.

During a bitter 1964 Massachusetts winter, young secretary Eileen becomes enchanted by Rebecca, the glamorous new counselor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret — throwing Eileen onto a sinister path.

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.

Jesse investigates the suspicious death of a young friend while the police force deals with the arrogant new police chief who is the son-in-law of a town councilman.

Clay is a young man in a small town who witnesses his friend, Earl, kill himself because of the ongoing affair that Clay was having with the man's wife, Amanda. Feeling guilty, Clay now resists the widow when she presses him to continue with the affair. Clay unknowingly befriends a serial killer named Lester Long who murders the widow in an attempt to "help" his "fishing buddy."

A dispossessed, violent man's life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Successively deprived of parents and homes and with few other ties, he descends to the level of a cave dweller and falls deeper into crime and degradation.

Townspeople of a small English village begin to die in a series of horrible accidents, and a Scotland Yard inspector arrives to investigate a mysterious local medium who records conversations with the dead.

The small city of Tarker's Mills is startled by a series of sadistic murders. The population fears the work of a maniac, but sightings of a mysterious, hairy creature soon spread. People lock themselves up at night, but there's one boy who's still outside…

After witnessing a bizarre, traumatic incident involving a patient, Dr. Rose Cotter starts experiencing frightening occurrences that she can't explain.

Two lifelong friends head up to an isolated Scottish Highlands village for a weekend hunting trip that descends into a never-ending nightmare as they attempt to cover up a horrific hunting accident.

The recently deceased Mona Dearly was many things: an abusive wife, a domineering mother, a loud-mouthed neighbor and a violent malcontent. So when her car and corpse are discovered in the Hudson River, police Chief Wyatt Rash immediately suspects murder rather than an accident. But, since the whole community of Verplanck, N.Y., shares a deep hatred for this unceasingly spiteful woman, Rash finds his murder investigation overwhelmed with potential suspects.

The Amish farming community of Painter’s Mill, Ohio, is shattered when a series of brutal murders leaves the town with a sense of frailty and loss of innocence. Among the most affected by the tragedy was Kate Burkholder, a young girl who survived the terror and, as a result, left the Amish life behind. Fifteen years later, Kate returns to Painter’s Mill as its Chief of Police. Certain she’s come to terms with her past, Kate’s renewed life in her hometown is shattered when a murder investigation triggers deep-seated emotions from her childhood and exposes a dark secret that could destroy her.

On his way to be executed, the vehicle containing notorious serial killer Jack Frost collides with a hazardous chemical truck, turning him into a snow covered mutant and unleashing him on the unsuspecting town of Snomonton.

A simple yet proud rancher conspires to murder his wife for financial gain, convincing his teenage son to participate.

Police Chief Jesse Stone's relationship with his ex-wife worsens, and he fears he's relapsing into alcoholism. To get his mind off his problems, Jesse begins working on the unsolved murder of a bank teller shot during a robbery. Also, his investigation of an alleged rape draws him into conflict with the town council — which hopes to preserve Paradise's reputation as an ideal seaside resort.

In a small American coal town living in the shadow of a recent mining accident, the disappearance of a teenage boy draws three people together—a surviving miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive, and a local boy—in a web of secrets.

In a quiet little French town, two detectives are tasked with investigating the brutal rape and murder of a preteen girl.

The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.

Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife.

A dicey murder investigation. A fuming best friend. A chaotic living situation. Village police officer Franz Eberhofer has a lot on his plate right now.

A drama focused on the friendship between a high-functioning autistic woman and a man who is traumatized after a fatal car accident.

The military attempts to contain a manmade virus causing death and permanent insanity in those infected, as it overtakes a small Pennsylvania town.

An alcoholic drifter must battle withdrawal and psychotic rednecks after he becomes the target of a deranged sporting event.

A group of residents begins to suspect that their strange neighbor might be hiding something dark.

A series of gruesome accidents plague a small American farming community in the summer of 1935, encircling two identical twin brothers and their family.

After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.

Addie Moore and Louis Waters, a widow and widower, have lived next to each other for years. The pair have almost no relationship, but that all changes when Addie tries to make a connection with her neighbour.

A sheriff investigating the disappearance of a young girl from a small island discovers there's a larger mystery to solve among the island's secretive, neo-pagan community.

Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!

Liz McAdams is haunted by the memories of a tornado that destroyed her home 25 years ago. Now a professional storm tracker, she and her family are in danger once again as another devastating twister rapidly gains momentum. Caught in the path of destruction, Liz and her estranged husband struggle to save those they love...

Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.

The two tradesmen Ib and Edward are tired of their lifeless marriages and dream of living the good life from the stash of money they've earned moonlighting for years. After a huge fight with their wives the two men get drunk and hire a Russian contract killer to do a hit on their spouses. But they have badly underestimated their wives, and this becomes the start of an absurd journey where Ib and Edward to their own horror end at the top of a kill list.

A grieving couple retreats to their cabin 'Eden' in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage. But nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

A married man's one-night stand comes back to haunt him when that lover begins to stalk him and his family.

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.

Over the course of several years beginning in the 1950s, a man and his oddball family run hotels in New England and Vienna, as unexpected events change their lives forever.

After a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy, a mysterious Thanksgiving-inspired killer terrorizes Plymouth, Massachusetts - the birthplace of the holiday. Picking off residents one by one, what begins as random revenge killings are soon revealed to be part of a larger, sinister holiday plan.

A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.

A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.

Mabel Longhetti, desperate and lonely, is married to a Los Angeles municipal construction worker, Nick. Increasingly unstable, especially in the company of others, she craves happiness, but her extremely volatile behavior convinces Nick that she poses a danger to their family and decides to commit her to an institution for six months. Alone with a trio of kids to raise on his own, he awaits her return, which holds more than a few surprises.

A man investigates the grisly crimes that occurred in a former insane asylum, unsettling the locals who all seem to have something to hide.

Christy returns to her hometown years after a car accident that disfigured her older sister. Haunted by the accident in which she was the driver, she learns that her worst nightmares have either come true ... or are about to.

A census-taker is sent to investigate why a certain small town has had the same population -- 436 residents -- for the last 100 years.

An obsessive, insubordinate homicide cop is convinced a serial killer is loose in the Hollywood area and disobeys orders in order to catch him.

When a willful young man tries to venture beyond his sequestered Pennsylvania hamlet, his actions set off a chain of chilling incidents that will alter the community forever.

The residents of a small town discover that something more sinister than killer wolves is lurking in the backwoods: first the wolves start turning up dead...then people.

In 1989, six year old Martin Bristoll was kidnapped from his backyard swing in Minersville Pennsylvania. Graham Sutter, a psychotic recluse, kept Martin imprisoned on his derelict pig farm, forcing him to witness and participate in unspeakable horrors. Chosen at random, his victim's screams were drowned out by the rural countryside. For five years, Martin's whereabouts have remained a mystery, until 17 year old Allison Miller comes to live with her Uncle, Jonathan. While exploring her new surroundings, Allison discovers things aren't quite right at the farmhouse down the road. Her curiosity disturbs a hornet's nest of evil and despair that once torn open, can never be closed.

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.

After the Creed family's cat is accidentally killed, a friendly neighbor advises its burial in a mysterious nearby cemetery.

A withdrawn young man, Leland Fitzgerald is imprisoned for the murder of a mentally disabled boy, who also happened to be the brother of his girlfriend, Becky. As the community struggles to deal with the killing, Pearl Madison, a teacher at the prison, decides to write about Leland's case. Meanwhile, others affected by the murder, including Becky and her sister, Julie, must contend with their own problems.

After a series of gory murders commited by mobs of townspeople against visiting tourists, the corpses appear to be coming back to life and living normally as locals in the small town.

A young woman is invited by her girlfriend, who lives in an English country mansion, to stay there with her. The estate, however, isn't quite what it seems--and neither is the friend who issued the invitation.

In the grim Alaskan winter, a naturalist hunts for wolves blamed for killing a local boy, but he soon finds himself swept into a chilling mystery.

After a plane crash, a young therapist, Claire, is assigned by her mentor to counsel the flight's five survivors. When they share their recollections of the incident -- which some say include an explosion that the airline claims never happened -- Claire is intrigued by Eric, the most secretive of the passengers.

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

An aging, booze-addled father takes a trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim what he believes to be a million-dollar sweepstakes prize.

A troubled woman living in an isolated community finds herself pulled between the control of her oppressive family and the allure of a secretive outsider suspected of a series of brutal murders.

A Minnesota police officer crosses paths with a committed and tireless vigilante as he follows the trail of a ruthless predator responsible for several abductions and murders.

After several years of living with a cult, Martha finally escapes and calls her estranged sister, Lucy, for help. Martha finds herself at the quiet Connecticut home Lucy shares with her new husband, Ted, but the memories of what she experienced in the cult make peace hard to find. As flashbacks continue to torment her, Martha fails to shake a terrible sense of dread, especially in regard to the cult's manipulative leader.

Insurance investigator Abraham Holt travels to a tiny town in rural Minnesota to look into a particularly unusual insurance claim stemming from a horrific car accident. As Holt examines the scene of the wreck, it all seems a bit too perfect. And when he interviews Isold Mcbride and her shifty husband, Fred -- the impoverished beneficiaries of the massive, recently initiated life-insurance policy -- he begins to suspect that something is amiss.

A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.

The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.

When a husband and wife move to a small town, a home invasion leaves the wife traumatized and suspicious that those around her might not be who they seem.

After a violent storm, a dense cloud of mist envelops a small Maine town, trapping David Drayton and his five-year-old son in a local grocery store with other local residents. They soon discover that the mist conceals deadly horrors that threaten their lives, and worse, their sanity.

Rachel, a rookie cop, is about to begin her first night shift in a neglected police station in a Scottish, backwater town. The kind of place where the tide has gone out and stranded a motley bunch of the aimless, the forgotten, the bitter-and-twisted who all think that, really, they deserve to be somewhere else. They all think they're there by accident and that, with a little luck, life is going to get better. Wrong, on both counts. Six is about to arrive - and All Hell Will Break Loose!

After seven months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at Bill Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Jason Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.

A socially awkward veterinary assistant with a lazy eye and obsession with perfection descends into depravity after developing a crush on a boy with perfect hands.

A policeman from Stockholm come to Norrbotten in Sweden, to join his brother, now when their father is dead. While there he starts to work on a long-running case where reindeers have been poached and soon discovers that his brother is involved...

A schoolteacher moves into her deceased aunt’s house in a small Californian town, and is harassed by unfriendly locals and a mysterious hearse.

A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a low-caste girl is found raped and murdered, she is pulled into the investigation under the wing of charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.
