Straw DogsMovies like Straw Dogs
- Key Features:
- Home invasion, Psychological thriller, Violence-high, Isolation, Escalating conflict, Outsider, Revenge, Masculinity, Small town, Mistrust, Betrayal, Survival, Man vs. man, Strangers, Mob mentality
- Tone:
- serious, gritty, suspense-driven
- Target Audience:
- Thriller enthusiasts, Psychological drama fans, Viewers interested in social commentary, Fans of suspenseful narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Tension → Dread
Straw Dogs

David Sumner, a mild-mannered academic from the United States, marries Amy, an Englishwoman. In order to escape a hectic stateside lifestyle, David and his wife relocate to the small town in rural Cornwall where Amy was raised. There, David is ostracized by the brutish men of the village, including Amy's old flame, Charlie. Eventually the taunts escalate.
Straw Dogs
A young couple moves to a quaint southern town. Soon their perfect getaway turns out to become a living hell when dark secrets and lethal passions spiral out of control.

Young urban couple Ed and Sarah are set to begin a new life when they move from London into an isolated borders Scottish farmhouse. After falling in love with the 19th century Castle Farm and seeing its potential as a fixer-upper they are anxious to get started on the renovations. In bed on their first night Sarah thinks she can hear noises in the darkness but Ed is disbelieving saying it’s her imagination playing tricks. Persisting in her fear they are not alone in the house, she forces Ed to investigate. When he doesn’t return after a scarily long period, she goes downstairs to investigate only to be confronted by a welcoming committee of masked intruders. As she desperately searches for Ed, a terrifying game of cat and mouse ensues with the mysterious assailants. But what do they want and what horrors do they have planned for the two newcomers?

A couple becomes lost in a massive storm and seek refuge at a nearby farmhouse, only to be captured by deranged killers.

Oona, a recent graduate in anthropology, has returned to her dead mother’s seaside cottage in southern England to prepare it for sale. Her arrival disturbs Mani, a wary vagrant who has been squatting on the property.

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.

Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.

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 wife and mother is consumed by the thought that her husband's co-worker is trying to win him away from her and their family.

Sam Bowden witnesses a rape committed by Max Cady and testifies against him. When released after 8 years in prison, Cady begins stalking Bowden and his family but is always clever enough not to violate the law.

A history professor and his wife entertain a young couple who are new to the university's faculty. As the drinks flow, secrets come to light, and the middle-aged couple unload onto their guests the full force of the bitterness, dysfunction, and animosity that defines their marriage.

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.

In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to find a place to heal. But someone — or something — from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her, and what begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears.

Three generations of the rowdy Cutler family live as outlaws in some of Britain's richest countryside – hunting hares, ram-raiding stately homes, and taunting the police. Struggling to retain a way of life fast becoming extinct, Chad Cutler ends up caught between his father's archaic principles and trying to do right by his kids, whilst the full force of the law is finally catching up with him.

In the 1980 French countryside, farmer Jojo and his ill-tempered wife Lulu hate each other, though their respective interests speak against divorce. The only thing that keeps the oppressed Jojo from murder is the threat of the guillotine...

The Munns, father John and sons Chris and Tim, recede to the woods of rural Georgia. Their life together is forever changed with the arrival of Uncle Deel, though the tragedy that follows forces troubled Chris to become a man.

Thousands of birds flock into a seaside town and terrorize the residents in a series of deadly attacks.

Antoine and Olga, a French couple, have been living in a small village in Galicia for a long time. They practice eco-responsible agriculture and restore abandoned houses to facilitate repopulation. Everything should be idyllic except for their opposition to a wind turbine project that creates a serious conflict with their neighbors. The tension will rise to the point of irreparability.

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.

Catherine Clare reluctantly trades life in 1980 Manhattan for a remote home in the tiny hamlet of Chosen, New York, after her husband George lands a job teaching art history at a small Hudson Valley college. Even as she does her best to transform the old dairy farm into a place where young daughter Franny will be happy, Catherine increasingly finds herself isolated and alone. She soon comes to sense a sinister darkness lurking both in the walls of the ramshackle property—and in her marriage to George.

In the affluent, gated community of Camelot Gardens, bored wives indiscriminately sleep around while their unwitting husbands try desperately to climb the social ladder. Trent, a 21-year-old outsider who mows the neighborhood lawns, quietly observes the infidelities and hypocrisies of this overly privileged society. When Devon, a 10-year-old daughter from one family, forges a friendship with Trent, things suddenly get very complicated.

Young babysitter Amanda arrives at the Lloyd residence to spend the evening looking after their young son. Soon after the Lloyds leave, a series of frightening occurrences in the gloomy old house have Amanda's nerves on edge. The real terror begins, however, when the child's biological father appears after recently escaping from a nearby mental institution.

Man’s best friend becomes his worst nightmare when a horde of bloodthirsty wild dogs descends upon a family’s farmhouse in a fang-bearing fight for survival.

A same-sex couple move to a small town so they can enjoy a better quality of life and raise their 16 year-old daughter with the best social values. But nothing is as it seems in their picturesque neighbourhood. And when Malik sees the folks next door throwing a very strange party, something very shocking has got to give.

Professor David Ash exposes false spiritulists and mediums. He is invited to Edbrook to resolve the fears and torments within its secretive family. Soon after arriving Ash begins to doubt his own senses, and watching the strange behaviour of its residents does not make his task any easier. In time, he finds there's more to Edbrook than even he can debunk.

A rural roadside diner becomes the host of a maniacal killing spree – leaving a young waitress to clean up the mess. After hard-headed Nancy fires the staff at her dad’s diner, she decides to cover the last shift of the night by herself. Little does she know, she is far from alone. The day is coming back to haunt her and when things begin to spiral out of control, she must fight for her life over the course of one long night.

A white Bull Terrier named Baxter is given to an elderly woman by her daughter. As time passes, the dog develops aggressive and murderous behavior in order to be adopted by another family.

After a whirlwind romance with a wealthy widower, a naïve bride moves to his family estate but can't escape the haunting shadow of his late wife.

The Shadow Mountains, 1983. Red and Mandy lead a loving and peaceful existence; but when their pine-scented haven is savagely destroyed, Red is catapulted into a phantasmagoric journey filled with bloody vengeance and laced with fire.

A young husband and wife must fight to return home in a post-apocalyptic mid-western landscape ravaged by gangs.

Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate’s ancestral home in the country. Once there, Emily is plagued by horrifying visions and haunted by the ghosts inhabiting their isolated new home. When Nate’s behavior undergoes a strange and fearful metamorphosis, Emily fears she might be the latest target in a murderous tradition.

Strange cravings and hallucinations befall a young couple after seeking shelter in the home of an aging farmer and her peculiar son.

Henrietta and Junior farm a secluded piece of land that has been in Junior's family for generations, but their quiet life is thrown into turmoil when an uninvited stranger shows up at their door with a startling proposal. Will they risk their relationship & personal identity for a chance to survive in a new world?

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.

A strong-willed peasant girl is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line, but is left traumatised from her experiences.

A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.

When an injured wife-murderer takes refuge on a remote Lancashire farm, the farmer’s three children mistakenly believe him to be the Second Coming of Christ.

On their way to an afternoon on the lake, husband and wife Andrzej and Krystyna nearly run over a young hitchhiker. Inviting the young man onto the boat with them, Andrzej begins to subtly torment him; the hitchhiker responds by making overtures toward Krystyna. When the hitchhiker is accidentally knocked overboard, the husband's panic results in unexpected consequences.

A young couple moves into a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania. What they don't know is that there is an unseen presence in the house, and that it wants to take possession of the wife.

With his marriage fraying, Blake persuades his wife Charlotte to take a break from the city and visit his remote childhood home in rural Oregon. As they arrive at the farmhouse in the dead of night, they're attacked by an unseen animal and barricade themselves inside the home as the creature prowls the perimeter. But as the night stretches on, Blake begins to behave strangely, transforming into something unrecognizable.

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

A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.

It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Peggy is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?

Jackson and Helen are in love and about to have their first child when they move in with Jackson's mother, Martha, in order to take care of the family estate. But all is not well in this household. Martha is jealous of her son's affection for Helen, and, despite her Southern smile, she's starting to act strangely. As Helen tries to create a happy home life, Martha attempts to divide the family so that Jackson will become hers alone.

Prosperous professional couple Mike and Christine are settling in for a standard evening of wine, TV and low-level marital hostility when a ring on their doorbell changes everything. Turns out their son Sebastian is in a little trouble with some local boys, who are quite prepared to camp out and wait for him to get home ... the resulting culture-clash chamber drama is raw, revealing and nerve-splittingly tense.

A couple try to repair their damaged union in an Italian vacation paradise. Then they discover the owner's intentions.

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.

Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at The-College-on-the-Hill, husband to Babette, and father to four children/stepchildren, is torn asunder by a chemical spill from a rail car that releases an "Airborne Toxic Event" forcing Jack to confront his biggest fear - his own mortality.

Returning from vacation, the Miller family find their home has been broken into. After cleaning up the mess they continue with their lives, shaking off the feeling of being violated. But little do they know the nightmare has just begun.

A violent electrical storm topples power lines into the rain soaked earth that is home for an aggressive breed of worms. The high voltage causes the worms to mutate into larger, hostile hordes of man-eating worms that lie in wait for the residents of Fly Creek.

Happily married Michael and Karen Carr call the police after Karen is held at knife point during a failed robbery attempt in their home. Before long, one of the responding officers, Officer Pete Davis, helps arrange the installation of a new security system, taking extra interest in the couple's case. As a result, the grateful Carrs invite him to stay for dinner and they strike up an unexpected friendship. However, as the lonely policeman develops an intense fixation on Karen, his take on friendship develops into a dangerous obsession soon becoming the Carrs' worst nightmare.

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.

Lucía and her son live isolated from society in a flat place where there’s practically no life. The small family unit formed by mother and son hardly ever receives visitors, and their goal is to lead a quiet existence. At first they succeed, but the appearance of a mysterious, violent creature that starts stalking their small house will put the relationship that unites them to the test.

A very gentle middle-aged man is married, but when he falls in love with another woman, he decides that to divorce his wife would humiliate her too much – so instead he decides to kill her.

Two honeymooners rescue a mysterious car crash survivor in the Las Vegas desert. But their decision to save the man becomes increasingly regrettable when he turns on them, forcing the newlyweds to do the unthinkable.

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 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 bickering couple driving cross-country pick up a murderous hitchhiker who threatens to kill them unless they take him to a sanctuary. In return he agrees to split some bank loot he has on him.

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

In the town of Cutter, most people keep to themselves. But when John comes home to find his girlfriend missing, he sneaks into his neighbor's house, finding his girlfriend and several other kidnapped people tied up in the basement. When the neighbor come home, John is forced to get out of the house alive and lead the group to safety.

A couple's relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

A writer secludes himself in the mountains and falls in lust with local Berta. After realizing the oddities of the rural community the author starts to question the lines between reality and fiction.

After a 4 a.m. knock at the door and haunting voices, Kristen McKay and James Hoyt’s remote getaway becomes a psychological night of terror as three masked strangers invade. Now they must go far beyond what they thought themselves capable of if they hope to survive.

On an isolated English farm in 1657, Fanny lives a quiet life with her oppressive husband John and their young son. One day their life is rocked with the arrival of young couple Thomas and Rebecca who claim to have been robbed and need a place to stay. But are these strangers really who they say they are?

When a young couple goes to a remote wooded lake for a romantic getaway, their quiet weekend is shattered by an aggressive group of local kids. Rowdiness quickly turns to rage as the teens terrorize the couple in unimaginable ways, and a weekend outing becomes a bloody battle for survival.

Roger Cobb, a divorced horror novelist coming to terms with the disappearance of his young son, inherits an old mansion home to malevolent supernatural residents.

A political activist is convinced that her guest is a man who once tortured her for the government.

Anna suffers from agoraphobia so crippling that when a trio of criminals break into her house, she cannot bring herself to flee. But what the intruders don't realize is that agoraphobia is not her only psychosis.

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."

In the midst of a civil war, a pair of former violinists in a tempestuous marriage oversee a farm on a rural island. In spite of their best efforts to escape their homeland, the war impinges on every aspect of their lives.

While driving, an estranged couple's car is hit twice. A sheriff takes them to a motel where they hear disturbing noises from a room, realizing they're part of a deadly game.

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

Complete strangers stranded at a remote desert motel during a raging storm soon find themselves the target of a deranged murderer. As their numbers thin out, the travelers begin to turn on each other, as each tries to figure out who the killer is.

In an effort to repair their relationship, a couple books a vacation in the countryside for themselves and their daughter. What starts as a perfect retreat begins to fall apart as one loses their grip on reality, and a sinister force tries to tear them apart.

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.

On a small town college campus, a philosophy professor in existential crisis gives his life new purpose when he enters into a relationship with his student.

When a sheriff arrests a writer, a family, a couple, and a hitchiker and throws them in a jail cell in the deserted town of Desperation, they must fight for their lives.

Two dogs, Rowf and Snitter, struggle to survive in the countryside after escaping from an animal research laboratory. They are pursued by search parties and then the military after rumors spread that they could be carrying the bubonic plague.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

Police sergeant Neil Howie is called to an island village in search of a missing girl whom the locals claim never existed. The investigation is further complicated as Howie’s religious views clash with those of the island’s residents.

Awaking from a coma to discover his wife has been killed in a car accident, Ben's world may as well have come to an end. A few weeks later, Ben's out of hospital and, attempting to start a new life, he moves home and is befriended by a beautiful young neighbour Charlotte. His life may be turning around but all is not what it seems and, haunted by visions of his dead wife, Ben starts to lose his grip on reality.

A policeman takes his family on a holiday, and after almost hitting a wild hog, the car won't start. They get hike with a guy scrutinizing his pretty wife. Shortly after, she disappears.

In a time of starvation, a survivalist lives off a small plot of land hidden deep in forest. When two women seeking food and shelter discover his farm, he finds his existence threatened.

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.

Sportswriter Andy Farmer moves with his schoolteacher wife Elizabeth to the country in order to write a novel in relative seclusion. Of course, seclusion is the last thing the Farmers find in the small, eccentric town, where disaster awaits them at every turn.

A psychotic young man returns to his old neighborhood after release from prison. He seeks out the woman he previously tried to rape and the man who protected her, with twisted ideas of love for her and hate for him.

Somewhere in the middle of the English countryside a former judge and a group of former prison warders, including his lover, run their own prison for young women who have not been held properly to account for their crimes. Here they mete out their own form of justice and ensure that the girls never return to their old ways.

A woman escapes from the man who is about to rape her, but leaves her purse behind. Afraid that her attacker might come after her, she goes to the police, but with no proof of the incident, they can do nothing. In fact, the man does use the information in her bag and comes to her apartment with the intent of rape, but she sprays him in the face with insect repellent, and then holds him captive. She is then faced with deciding whether to go to the police who might not believe her and release him, or to kill him.

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.

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.

When a gloomy, God-fearing island community is rocked by the assault of an infant, a psychiatrist is called in to examine Dorothy Mills, the teenager accused of the crime. Despite the villagers' hostility to her inquiry, she soon comes to suspect that Dorothy suffers from multiple personality disorder...

A young man, convinced he's a vampire, goes to live with his elderly and hostile cousin in a small Pennsylvanian town, where he tries to suppress his bloodlust.

When a deadly airborne virus threatens to wipe out the northeastern United States, teacher Elliot Moore and his wife Alma flee from contaminated cities into the countryside in a fight to discover the truth. Is it terrorism, the accidental release of some toxic military bio weapon -- or something even more sinister?

An Australian couple takes a sailing trip in the Pacific to get over the recent loss of their son. While on the open sea, they come across a sinking ship with one survivor who is not at all what he seems.

Susan Morrow receives a book manuscript from her ex-husband – a man she left 20 years earlier – asking for her opinion of his writing. As she reads, she is drawn into the fictional life of Tony Hastings, a mathematics professor whose family vacation turns violent.

Laura, traumatized by an abusive relationship, runs away from her former husband with her seven-year-old son Cody. But in their new, idyllic and remote sanctuary, they find they have another, bigger and more terrifying monster to deal with…

Drama critic Larry Mackay, his wife Kate and their four sons move from their crowded Manhattan apartment to an old house in the country. While housewife Kate settles into suburban life, Larry continues to enjoy the theater and party scene of New York.

A man who loves games and theater invites his wife's lover to meet him, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results.

