HippopotamusMovies like Hippopotamus
- Key Features:
- Psychological thriller, Captivity, Amnesia, Stockholm syndrome, Mind games, Manipulation, Memory loss, Unreliable narrator, Mystery, Twist ending, Survival
- Tone:
- suspense-driven, restrained
- Target Audience:
- Thriller fans, Mystery lovers, Fans of psychological dramas, Viewers interested in character studies
- Emotional Arc:
- ['Confusion → Suspicion → Acceptance']
Hippopotamus

Ruby wakes from a bad dream to find herself in a real life nightmare. She's trapped in a basement, her legs are broken and she can't remember who she is or how she got there. Her kidnapper, Tom, tells her she will remain captive until she falls in love with him. Ruby is focused on trying to escape until Tom starts helping her to remember her past and she begins to question everything.
Hippopotamus
A woman wakes up in a river. Wounded and without memory, then races to elude mysterious followers and recover from amnesia.

Soo-jin, who lost her memories due to a horrible incident, starts suspecting her husband. She is confused between reality and illusion, truth and lies.

The story of a man who wakes up in bed suffering from memory loss after being in an accident, only to begin to suspect that his wife may not be his real wife and that a web of lies and deceit deepen inside the house where he soon finds himself a prisoner.

After welcoming her baby, Ruby, home, the tightly scripted world of lifestyle influencer Jo starts to unravel. As increasingly sinister happenings mount, Jo is plunged into a waking fever dream where everyone is a threat and nothing is what it seems.

A severely injured man and woman awake in an abandoned sanitarium only to discover that a sadistic caretaker holds the keys to their freedom and the horrific answers as to their true identity.

A photographer struggling with memory loss discovers her pictures may indicate something sinister is hitting close to home.

A young woman is returned home to her biological parents after living with her abductor for 17 years.

A man bumps into an old crush and becomes obsessed. After several failed attempts at winning her over, he kidnaps her and holds her captive underneath the animal shelter where he works.

After a young woman and her parents are murdered by a killer determined to wipe out the entire family, Detective Inspector Joona Linna works with a psychiatrist to hypnotize the son who narrowly escaped death in order to find the one surviving daughter before the murderer does.

A young man is found bruised, beaten and stumbling down a secluded road. As the police try to piece together what happened, the convoluted relationship between a young woman and her two suitors gradually emerges.

A woman wakes in a cryogenic chamber with no recollection of how she got there, and must find a way out before running out of air.

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.

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

Due to a near-fatal accident that has left her incapacitated and depleted of her long-term memory, a temporarily wheelchair-bound woman returns home after being abroad for six years accompanied by her bohemian boyfriend, the apparent cause of the accident. Unable to remember her family or her own childhood, she sets out, with the help of her boyfriend, to find the reason for her leaving all those years ago and quickly discovers her relatives may not be as loving as she’d thought

A young woman held in captivity discovers the realities of truth and lies in the outside world.

In the dead of night, Rebecca wakes in a decrepit precinct, accused of a hit-and-run. But a deadly scuffle reveals a sinister plot. With nowhere to turn, she must uncover the truth before it consumes her. But Rebecca harbors secrets darker than they know.

A woman trying to recover from a sexual attack is locked in a posh apartment with a corpse of the very man she's been dreaming would murder her. She tries to hang on to reality when objects around her seem to come to life.

Oxford PhD student Ana finds herself unable to build new memories, following an experiment to generate and travel through a wormhole. The story follows her increasingly desperate efforts to understand what happened, and to find out who—or what—is behind the rising horror in her life.

A rich man's daughter is held captive in an abandoned apartment by two former convicts who abducted her and hold her ransom in exchange for her father's money.

A man becomes obsessed with facts and events that have been collectively misremembered by thousands of people. Believing the phenomena to be the symptom of something larger, his obsession eventually leads him to question reality itself.

Lewis is an outwardly ordinary guy, but in reality he is hiding an obsession – revenge – against Cathy. Lewis kidnaps Cathy in broad daylight and takes her to his home, where he locks her in a soundproof cell and attempts to extract a dark secret from her past.

Eight years after the disappearance of Cassandra, some disturbing incidents seem to indicate that she's still alive. Police, parents and Cassandra herself, will try to unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

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.

A young woman seeking self-improvement enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist but, after a handful of intense sessions, discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.

After getting a car ride from an unknown man, Lisa wakes up in a tube. On her arm is strapped a bracelet with a countdown. She quickly understands that every 8 minutes, fire burns an occupied section. She has no choice but to crawl into safe sections to survive. To know why she’s there and how to get out, Lisa will have to face the memories of her dead daughter…

A woman's carefully constructed life is upended when an unwelcome shadow from her past returns, forcing her to confront the monster she's evaded for two decades.

Disgraced poet Ted Wallace is summoned to his friend's country manor to investigate a series of unexplained miracles.

A woman becomes very curious about one of her psychiatrist husband's inmates, a man who was found guilty in the murder and disfigurement of his former wife.

After reading an article about hypnotic regression, a woman whose maternal grandfather died when she was only three years old contacts the hypnotic subject named in the article believing that he is the reincarnation of her grandfather, and hoping that she can learn the truth about how he died.

The old and overcrowded penitentiaries are just a memory. Inmates now serve their sentence in a state of deep sleep that renders them harmless, and has drastically reduced recidivism. Until one day, a psychologist in charge of monitoring the mental state of inmates finds himself confronted with a prisoner over whom he's lost all control.

A young student is haunted by recurring dreams of her mother murdering her father, but her nightmare is just beginning as she tries to prove to her loved ones that she is not insane.

After being released from a mental hospital, a troubled young man tracks down an actress he once had sex with and forces her into captivity, determined to make her part of his life.

Five men wake up in a locked-down warehouse with no memory of who they are. They are forced to figure out who is good and who is bad to stay alive.

A psychiatric hospital patient pretends to be crazy. In charge of caring for this patient, a caregiver will begin to doubt the mental state of his "protégé".

A man awakens in a car wreck at the bottom of a steep cliff. He can't remember who he is or how he got there, but a report over the radio fills in some of the blanks, as it describes a violent bank robbery and names a perpetrator who happens to be sitting dead in the back seat.

The descendant of Elizabeth Bathory is abducted by a cult of self-proclaimed supermen who achieve this state of superiority by drinking from the "blood cows" kept at the "dairy farm", and they try to get her to join them.

A man steps out of a park fountain in Ho Chi Minh City with no recollection of who he is or where he came from. As he wanders through the city, piecing together clues to his past, he is relentlessly pursued by mysterious figures.

A young psychology student is drawn into the dark and fearful world of a diabolic and mysterious App that starts to terrorize her, distributing compromising photographs, videos and text messages about herself and delves deeper and deeper into her personal life, flawlessly exposing all of her deepest secrets.

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.

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.

Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?

The story of Joseph, a man plagued by violence and a rage that is driving him to self-destruction. As Joseph's life spirals into turmoil a chance of redemption appears in the form of Hannah, a Christian charity shop worker. Their relationship develops to reveal that Hannah is hiding a secret of her own with devastating results on both of their lives.

A young woman accepts a job on a property with a traumatic history. Upon her arrival, she soon realizes that the nightmares of her childhood are connected to the evil in the house.

When a young woman takes a trip down Rogue River, her car mysteriously disappears. Lost without transport or communication, she accepts the hospitality of a stranger who offers her shelter for the night at his cabin. With no other options available, she reluctantly accepts only to forever regret it. The ensuing hours yield nothing but torture, indescribable pain, and horrific agony. If you've seen Misery, you've seen nothing. This movie starts where horror films end and leaves viewers paralysed by fear and disgust.

A psychiatrist tries to put her life back together after a violent attack by seeking to repair the life of a new patient, but he has his own terrifying history.

A young woman's desperate search for her abducted boyfriend draws her into the infamous Colonia Dignidad, a sect nobody ever escaped from.

On the mysterious planet of Ash, Riya awakens to find her crew slaughtered. When a man named Brion arrives to rescue her, an ordeal of psychological and physical terror ensues while Riya and Brion must decide if they can trust one another to survive.

A young actress rehearsing for a play about human trafficking begins to relive terrifying scenes that may be dreams -- or an alternate reality.

Since her childhood, Jessica has been haunted by recurrent nightmares whose meaning escapes her. This peculiarity has led her to study the psychophysiology of dreams and to follow a therapy with Sean, her mentor and boyfriend, to try and understand the origin of her nightmares. Following the death of her maternal grandmother she hardly knew, Jessica reluctantly returns to the family home. Jessica then begins to wander in a nightmarish world inhabited by twisted versions of her family members. She gradually improves her skills as a lucid dreamer and investigates to solve the mystery that gnaws her and haunts the family home...

Snatched off the street and held for ransom, a bound and gagged woman uses her limited powers to derail her two masked abductors' carefully laid plans.

Following some trauma in her past that has since been repressed, a young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a string of brutal murders, where he also runs across the name "Tomie." How are the two connected?

A passionate holiday romance leads to an obsessive relationship when an Australian photojournalist wakes one morning in an abandoned Berlin apartment and is unable to leave.

The 19 years old Thomas wakes up in a hospital after three years in a coma. He doesn't remember anything. The psychologist Anna tells him that his family has been murdered and that he is the only survivor of the massacre while his sister Laura is still missing.

A young Austrian girl is kidnapped and held in captivity for eight years. Based on the real-life case of Natascha Kampusch.

A lone drifter suffering from partial memory loss accepts a job to look after a psychologically troubled woman in an abandoned house on an isolated island.

An amnesiac must reach back into his mind for memories that will help him save the love of his life before a virus completely takes over.

Two fugitives land in hot water when they take a hostage who poses a threat to their well-being.

An Oxford 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.

A once-abused woman devotes herself to ridding victims of their domestic abusers while hunting down the one she must kill to be truly free.

Traumatized since childhood by her brother's accidental death, Danika Merrick hallucinates a bank robbery and quits her job. Despite support from her three children and loving husband, Danika continues to experience unnerving visions. She seeks help from therapist Evelyn Harris but pervasive reports of violent incidents involving children make Danika fear for her own family, and she grows increasingly paranoid, worrying she may be going insane.

Held captive in a futuristic smart house, a woman hopes to escape by befriending the A.I. program that controls the house.

The mother of a missing child takes in a lost girl she finds in the woods, but soon begins to wonder if she is even human.

A deformed hunchback kidnaps a bride and holds her hostage while his connection to her and his targets is revealed in a series of flashbacks that unfold as he starts seeking revenge.

A pandemic strikes the world. What does quarantine do to a lonely woman's mind? Follow her from sense to insanity. No filters. Just you, her, and her more and more twisted mind.

In a shadowy world stitched from nightmares, a young woman's harrowing journey in a seedy hotel unveils her traumatic past. Haunted by violence and stalked through desolate streets, her psyche unravels as she confronts an abusive husband and unsettling memories.

Sara wakes from a coma to a life she doesn't remember; a fragile, slippery reality that spirals into a nightmare where nothing is as it seems.

After a young woman is kidnapped, her captors soon come to realize that in fact they may be the ones in danger and this young woman has a dark secret inside her.

While on a class observation trip at a local mental hospital, young psychology major Abby Jones, has a chilling encounter with high-risk patient, Harmon Porter. She returns home for an evening of normal study with her two roommates unaware of the darkness she’s awakened within him.

While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that's dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls' boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game.

When Simon awakens in the hospital after surviving a near-fatal accident, amnesia has erased the last two years from his memory. He learns that his brother was killed, he has married a woman he doesn't remember and he's haunted by strange visions of the woman he loved.

ACP Antony Moses is on the verge of uncovering his friend’s murderer when an accident leaves him with partial memory loss. Reassigned to the same case, he must retrace his own forgotten steps to uncover a truth more shocking than he imagined.

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.

The thing that waits under your bed, hides in the closet, stalks your dreams… is waiting for you. At least Emma Wright knew that at the age of 7 when she was wrongly accused of murdering her sister. Emma knew it was the Stickman. After years of isolation she finally has her demons under control and is released.

Carter, who awakens two months into a deadly pandemic originating from the DMZ that has already devastated US and North Korea. He who has no recollections of his past finds a mysterious device in his head, and a lethal bomb in his mouth. A voice in his ears gives him orders to avoid getting killed and he's thrown into a mysterious operation while the CIA and North Korean coup chase him close.

Abraham and his female friend Álex have a close relationship; they share both secrets and fears. When Abraham starts going out with Anchi, he begins to distance himself from Álex, who gradually dives into a living hell where she encounters strange apparitions, nightmarish visions and extreme situations.

Ella Blake, a stop-motion animator struggling to control her demons after the loss of her overbearing mother, embarks upon the creation of a film that becomes the battleground for her sanity. As Ella’s mind starts to fracture, the characters in her project take on a life of their own.

A young woman with a severely troubled past signs up for an extreme haunt called Perdition. She believes that putting herself through Perdition's nightmarish trials will help her exorcise her internal traumas, but has no way of knowing just how shocking her ordeal will be-or what dark secrets buried in her psyche will emerge.

When Billie finds herself reliving different versions of the same first date, she must break out of a series of loops created by her manipulative ex-girlfriend.

Two young missionaries are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by a diabolical Mr. Reed, becoming ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

Alex, an assassin-for-hire, finds that he's become a target after he refuses to complete a job for a dangerous criminal organization. With the crime syndicate and FBI in hot pursuit, Alex has the skills to stay ahead, except for one thing: he is struggling with severe memory loss, affecting his every move. Alex must question his every action and whom he can ultimately trust.

After being abducted and taken to a desolate house, a girl sets out to rescue her friend and escape from their malicious kidnapper.

Minnesota, 1990. Detective Bruce Kenner investigates the case of young Angela, who accuses her father, John Gray, of an unspeakable crime. When John unexpectedly and without recollection admits guilt, renowned psychologist Dr. Raines is brought in to help him relive his memories and what they discover unmasks a horrifying nationwide mystery.

After an attack renders her blind, Ellen withdraws from the world to recover. But soon she plunges into paranoia, unable to convince anyone that her assailant has returned to terrorize her by hiding in plain sight.

A detective becomes entangled in a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program while investigating a string of reality-bending crimes.

An unnamed doctor has always had everything he's ever wanted, but that has only made him develop more extreme and depraved needs. He kidnaps a young couple in the prime of their life together and forces them into a game of torment that slowly extinguishes their hopes for survival.

A woman is sent to a mental institution after stabbing her classmate in an attempt to conjure an evil spirit called, Mercy Black. Fifteen years later she's released, and must save her nephew, who has become obsessed with the phenomenon.

28-year-old medicine student Malina wakes up disoriented in a locked trunk and realizes, to her horror, that she is missing more than just her memory of what happened. With her phone as the only link to the outside world, the intelligent young woman wages a desperate fight for survival while the vehicle races relentlessly toward a terrible secret.

A renowned health supplement company, run by a ruthless businesswoman, is selecting and abducting young women as part of an experiment bio-hacking babies’ DNA to enable her clients to reverse the aging process. When Mia goes to investigate, she finds herself trapped, branded and tortured in a grim underground facility. Familiar faces start to appear, and she realises that she is not alone in this. Can she somehow find inner strength and escape from the nightmare?

Successful author Veronica finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind-bending mystery before it's too late.

A woman suddenly disappears. Her fiance then sets out to find her and, in the process, uncovers layers of dark hidden secrets.

After losing his wife and his memory in a car accident, a single father undergoes an experimental treatment that causes him to question who he really is.

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.

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

A man becomes involved in a memory manipulation operation to try and regain lost memories. He thinks the exercise may help repair his failed marriage, but accidentally ends up with the mind of a serial killer.

Right before her wedding, a young woman finds herself abducted and held for ransom. As the initial days pass, she begins to develop a strange bond with her kidnapper.

Director Michael Winnick's chilling tale stars James Marsters as Jack, one of eight captives who awaken in an abandoned asylum not knowing who they are or why they are together. They discover that they've been used in an experiment to erase disturbing memories, but instead, a murderous creature has been unleashed. Reaching out from the shadows, the monster hunts the eight strangers as they race to escape the asylum.

Six people, each of them is on the road to self-destruction. They wake up in cells in a surreal facility, without knowing how they got there or why.

A seemingly innocent man is abducted by a notorious L.A. serial killer, who forces his victims to switch roles with him so that he can enact his own capture, torture and murder.

It's ten years after the kidnapping of Martin Bristol. Taken from a backyard swing at his home at the age of six, he is forced to witness unspeakable crimes of a deranged madman. For years, Martin's whereabouts have remained a mystery...until now.
