The Heart Is Deceitful Above All ThingsMovies like The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
- Key Features:
- Dysfunctional family, Childhood trauma, Drug abuse, Poverty, Religious extremism, Mother-son relationship, Survival, Exploitation, Moral decay, Nudity-moderate, Violence-moderate
- Tone:
- gritty, serious, dramatic
- Target Audience:
- Viewers interested in social issues, Fans of dark dramas, Adults
- Emotional Arc:
- Innocence → Despair
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things

Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
Young lovers Sailor and Lula hit the road to start a new life together away from the wrath of Lula’s deranged, disapproving mother, who has hired a team of hitmen to cut the lovers’ surreal honeymoon short.

The story of a child star attempting to mend his relationship with his law-breaking, alcohol-abusing father over the course of a decade, loosely based on Shia LaBeouf’s life.

A young woman who is getting back on her feet after a mental breakdown, Carol Rivers discovers that her late uncle has left her a rundown nightclub. Carol decides to renovate the venue, but, in the process, uncovers dark secrets about the club and her dead relative. After a series of disturbing events, Carol becomes increasingly unstable, but she finds some measure of comfort in Sharpe, an enigmatic older detective.

A teenage con artist tricks a desperate mother into hiring her as a live-in companion for her autistic daughter.

Novalee Nation is a 17-year-old Tennessee transient who has to grow up in a hurry when she's left pregnant and abandoned by her boyfriend on a roadside, and takes refuge in the friendly aisles of Wal-Mart. Eventually, some eccentric but kindly strangers 'adopt' Novalee and her infant daughter, helping them buck the odds and build a new life.

As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again.

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

A small-time conman has his loyalties torn between his estranged mother and his new girlfriend, both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.

When reporter Jean Craddock interviews Bad Blake—an alcoholic, seen-better-days country music legend—they connect, and the hard-living crooner sees a possible saving grace in a life with Jean and her young son.

This loosely plotted coming-of-age tale follows the life of 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier as he stumbles his way over the burgeoning swell of adolescence in 1950s France. After having his first sexual experience with a prostitute and dodging the lips of a priest, Chevalier contracts a case of scarlet fever. When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother.

When her boyfriend is arrested for marijuana possession, Joleen Reedy and her 11-year-old daughter, Tara, take refuge with Joleen's aimless brother, James. Joleen soon runs off with a truck driver, and James is unable to meet his responsibilities. After Child Protective Services takes possession of Tara, James abducts her from a foster home, and the two travel from California to Utah, where his abusive father lives.

10-year-old Pixote endures torture, degradation, and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of its members are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old trans hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape and they start to make their living by a life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

Irene, a workaholic, is forced to re-evaluate her priorities after the suicide of her two best friends.

Child abuse, mental illness, and forbidden love converge in this mystery involving a mother and daughter who were thought to be living a fairy tale life that turned out to be a living nightmare.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.

Local rebellious teenager Clotaire falls for his schoolmate Jackie, but gang violence leads him to a darker destructive path. After years apart, the star-crossed lovers discover that every path they've taken leads them back together.

Caroline, a young waitress who seems to have bad taste in men, is on her way home one night when thugs attempt to rape her. Adam, the mysterious busboy who works at the same diner, helps fight off the assailants, and she begins a relationship with him -- but not all their fellow Minnesotans are happy for them. Meanwhile, the couple face their own difficulties when Caroline finds about Adam's past, including his unique health condition.

In a dazzling, dreamlike Las Vegas, longtime couple Hank and Frannie break up on their fifth anniversary and each pursue the fantasy of new love over one neon-soaked night—he with a free-spirited acrobat, she with a seductive musician. But as illusion and reality blur, both must decide whether passion or devotion truly defines the heart.

A sex-addicted con-man pays for his mother's hospital bills by playing on the sympathies of those who rescue him from choking to death.

A serial killer kidnaps a young boy after murdering his mother, then raises him to be his accomplice. After years in captivity, the boy must choose between escaping or following in his captor's bloody footprints.

A peculiar neighbor offers hope to a recent widow who is struggling to raise a teenager who is unpredictable and, sometimes, violent.

A poor young Belgian mother wants her petty thief of a boyfriend to be gainfully employed to raise their newborn child, but he has other ideas.

When a hopelessly romantic high school senior falls for a mysterious new classmate, it sets them both on an unexpected journey that teaches them about love, loss, and most importantly themselves.

When 30-ish rich kid Lenny has to take care of 15-year-old David, who’s suffering from heart disease, it’s the beginning of a wild adventure. Lenny fearlessly breaks all the rules to fulfill his young friend’s every wish.

A seductive teen becomes vindictive when her boyfriend tries to end the relationship.

A widowed mother and her son change when a mysterious stranger enters their lives.

In a vibrant tapestry of love and longing, nine interconnected souls navigate romance and heartbreak in L.A., where passions collide and truths unfold, revealing that the heart's desires often lead us where we least expect.

Young Augusten Burroughs absorbs experiences that could make for a shocking memoir: the son of an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, he's handed off to his mother's therapist, Dr. Finch, and spends his adolescent years as a member of Finch's bizarre extended family.

A tale of love and violence when a man on his emotional last legs finds a savior seductively dancing in a run-down strip club. And a life most certainly headed off a cliff suddenly becomes redirected - as everything is now worth dying for.

Chronicles the powerful friendship between two young Black teenagers navigating the harrowing trials of reform school together in Florida.

A recovering gambling addict attempts to reconcile with his family and friends but finds trouble and temptation when caught between feelings for his ex-wife and her dangerous hoodlum boyfriend.

Freed after a lengthy term in a juvenile detention center, convicted child killer Jack Burridge finds work as a deliveryman and begins dating co-worker Michelle. While out on the road one day, Jack notices a distressed child, and, after reuniting the girl with her family, becomes a local celebrity. But when a local newspaper unearths his past, Jack must cope with the anger of citizens who fear for the safety of their children.

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.

After he and his first wife separate, journalist David Sheff struggles to help their teenage son, who goes from experimenting with drugs to becoming devastatingly addicted to methamphetamine.

After his father's death, a young man is introduced to a world of hedonism and depravity by his amoral mother.

A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.

A down-and-out Brooklyn detective is hired to track down a singer on an odyssey that will take him through the desperate streets of Harlem, the smoke-filled jazz clubs of New Orleans, and the swamps of Louisiana and its seedy underworld of voodoo.

When Krisha returns to her estranged family for Thanksgiving dinner, past demons threaten to ruin the festivities.

A young boy has lost his mother and is losing touch with his father and the world around him. Then he meets Hesher who manages to make his life even more chaotic.

After serving a prison term for her boyfriend, a streetwise, middle-aged moll named Gloria stands up against the mobs, which is complicated by a six-year-old urchin with a will of his own, whom she reluctantly takes under her wing after his family has been gunned down.

A transgender woman takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she had a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

A retelling of the biblical book of Hosea set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush of 1850.

The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.

Julian, who runs a Thai boxing club as a front organization for his family's drug smuggling operation, is forced by his mother Crystal to find and kill the individual responsible for his brother's recent death.

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

A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.

The film tells a story of a divorced couple trying to raise their young son. The story follows the boy for twelve years, from first grade at age 6 through 12th grade at age 17-18, and examines his relationship with his parents as he grows.

After Roberta Guaspari separates from her husband, she receives encouragement from her mother to take up a job of a music teacher at the Central Park East School in East Harlem.

Dean and Cindy live a quiet life in a modest neighborhood. They appear to have the world at their feet at the outset of the relationship. However, his lack of ambition and her retreat into self-absorption cause potentially irreversible cracks in their marriage.

Jacques is the curmudgeonly owner of a gritty New York dive bar that serves as home to a motley assortment of professional drinkers. Jacques is determinedly drinking and smoking himself to death when he meets Lucas, a homeless young man who has already given up on life. Determined to keep his legacy alive, Jacques deems Lucas is a fitting heir and takes him under his wing.

Evan values family above all else, and anyone who gets between him, his wife, and newborn son learns that the hard way. But when it comes to violent tendencies, it seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Cecilie and Joachim are about to get married when a freak car accident leaves Joachim disabled, throwing their lives into a spin. The driver of the other car, Marie, and her family don’t get off lightly, either. Her husband Niels works in the hospital where he meets Cecilie and falls madly in love with her.

A mother, unable to confront the heartbreak of her son leaving for college, delays his departure by making him sick. Unfortunately, she goes too far.

A promising up-and-coming country duo seek out the secluded mansion of their idol Harper Dutch, a former country music star and Nashville royalty turned recluse. What starts out as a friendly visit devolves into a twisted series of horrors forcing the friends to confront the lengths they will go to in pursuit of their dreams.

A suburban family is torn apart when fourteen-year-old Annie meets her first boyfriend online. After months of communicating via online chat and phone, Annie discovers her friend is not who he originally claimed to be. Shocked into disbelief, her parents are shattered by their daughter's actions and struggle to support her as she comes to terms with what has happened to her once innocent life.

Two brothers barely scrape by as their father continues to gamble and drink away the money they do bring home. They hatch a plan for a robbery but at what price?

Nancy becomes increasingly convinced she was kidnapped as a child. When she meets a couple whose daughter went missing thirty years ago, reasonable doubts give way to willful belief.

Algeria, the 1930s. Younes is nine years old when he is put in his uncle's care in Oran. Rebaptized Jonas, he grows up among the Rio Salado youths, with whom he becomes friends. Emilie is one of the gang; everyone is in love with her. A great love story develops between Jonas and Emilie, which is soon unsettled by the conflicts troubling the country.

After the murder of his beloved wife, a man in search of redemption is set adrift in a world where nothing is as it seems. On his journey, he befriends slacker Jimmy "The Finn", becomes involved in rescuing his neighbor Colette from her own demons, and gets entangled in a web of deceit full of unexpected twists and turns.

Ann, a frustrated wife, enters into counseling due to a troubled marriage. Unbeknownst to her, her husband John has begun an affair with her sister. When John’s best friend Graham arrives, his penchant for interviewing women about their sex lives forever changes John and Ann’s rocky marriage.

While exploring the neighboring woods, 13-year-old John discovers an unfinished bunker — a deep hole in the ground. Seemingly without provocation, he drugs his affluent parents and older sister and drags their unconscious bodies into the bunker, where he holds them captive. As they anxiously wait for John to free them from the hole, the boy returns home, where he can finally do what he wants.

Follows a young boy who runs away from home in the search of his estranged mother.

When Scott and Teresa LeRette learn that their son Austin is both autistic and has brittle bone disease, they initially worry for their son’s future. But with Scott’s growing faith and Austin’s incredible spirit, they become 'unbreakable', finding joy, gratitude, and courage even in the most trying times.

A slightly dystopian vision of LA, we follow three disaffected teenagers, Jessie, Calvin and Nicky, all victims of extreme childhoods, running supreme hedonistic riot as they try to work out a way in life.

A young boy stays with his aunt and uncle, and befriends his cousin who's the same age. But his cousin begins showing increasing signs of psychotic behavior.

Jess, a newly separated mother and nurse, moves into her old family farmhouse with Tyler, her teenage daughter, and Owen, her eight-year-old son. One night, the family dog senses something in the woods and runs off to find it. He returns a couple of days later and attacks Owen, savagely biting him before Jess is able to intervene. Owen is rushed to the hospital. His condition worsens, and no one can figure out why... until Jess discovers a disturbing cure...

Somewhere in the bleak Italian Alps is an isolated boarding school for troubled boys of the ultra privileged. 17-year old Giulio is sent there by his mother and finds himself instantly at odds with both his peers and the staff until the arrival of the eccentric Eduordo. The pair bond over their mutual desire for escape, which they eventually do, and run away to a nightclub in the middle of the woods. There they meet Elena, a young prostitute whose destiny will be unforgettably linked to theirs. For the boys, the night is full of freedom, disturbing experiences, and secrets. But what they discover about their experiences, and their school, may be the biggest secret of all.

Hoping to earn his mother's respect, a young hustler-turned-businessman tries to open a brothel with his two useless buddies.

The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.

A runaway orphan, young Sonora, persists in a menial job mucking stables in Doc Carver's travelling stunt show. Her great wish is to become a death-defying "diving girl," but Doc refuses her pleas. Undaunted, Sonora's gutsy resolve finally convinces him to give her a break. On the brink of stardom, however, a cruel twist of fate threatens to destroy her dream.

Reserved yoga instructor May's peaceful, clean-living life is thrown out of balance by the arrival of her long-lost sister Shiva, a street-smart yet naive young woman trapped in an abusive relationship. May feels compelled to rescue the hapless Shiva, but she finds herself increasingly drawn out of her sedate world and deeper into Shiva's chaotic one.

Desperate to be free from her drunken, unloving mother Diane, the beautiful, scheming young Mini seduces her stepfather Martin and soon convinces him to join her in a sadistic scheme to have Diane declared insane. But their conspiracy soon escalates to murder and when John Garson, a young detective starts investigating, Martin and Mini begin to turn on each other.

A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.

Unable to cope with his military father's sudden death in combat, quick-tempered teen, Conor, starts getting into serious trouble. During an intense lacrosse camp, his father's old friend challenges Conor to get his life on track and become a man.

A boy in New York is taken in by a wealthy family after his mother is killed in a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In a rush of panic, he steals 'The Goldfinch', a painting that eventually draws him into a world of crime.

A young woman becomes aware of a conspiracy to enable the Devil to walk the Earth in human form. To defeat the prophesy, she must convince a respected New York crime journalist, who is devoid of faith, that he is in fact the target of the conspiracy.

Agnese and Stefano are profoundly different. She is only seventeen, lives with her mother – a harsh and devoted woman – is a regular church-goer and is about to take a vow of chastity to last until marriage. He is twenty-five, has a violent temper and a difficult past behind. He works as a warden in a car park that borders a Roma camp. Their unexpected meeting engenders a true sentiment, made of little stolen moments and mutual help.

A tragic story about Anna who dreams of one thing only: making it as an actress. She moves from Sweden to Copenhagen to pursue her dream. But fate has something else in store for her. Though she struggles to give her 4-month-old daughter a good start in life, she ultimately fails to unite her dream of acting with a safe and loving environment for her child, culminating in a desperate act that has fatal consequences for Anna and her daughter.

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

Inspired by a true story, this film tells the shocking tale of a mother and daughter who are nothing like they seem, their tumultuous relationship ending in a brutal murder.

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 arrival of a newborn girl causes the gradual disintegration of the Cairn family; particularly for 9-year-old Joshua, an eccentric boy whose proper upbringing and refined tastes both take a sinister turn.

After losing their spouses in a plane crash, an internal affairs cop and a congresswoman find each other's keys in each other's loved ones' possessions and discover that the two were having an affair.

Dwight and his sister Jessie reach a crossroads over what to do about their little brother Thomas, a sickly child with a mysterious affliction.

A conservative church-choir director moves from Texas to San Francisco to run her deceased gay son's drag club.

In a desperate attempt to reunite his broken family, a young taxi driver becomes entangled in the criminal underworld.

Because he's the oldest, Jake has been the man of the house, since his parents divorce. When Mom starts seeing Sam, who always seems to be trying some new way to get rich quick, and declares he's the man of the house now, Jake puts up with it. Until he discovers Sam's illegal activities.

Charlie is a troublesome 18-year-old who breaks out of a youth drug treatment clinic, but when he returns home to Los Angeles, he's given an intervention by his parents and forced to go to an adult rehab. There, he meets a beautiful but troubled girl, Eva, and is forced to battle with drugs, elusive love and divided parents.

Teenagers Rose and Bennett were in love, and then a car crash claimed Bennett's life. He left behind a grieving mother, father and younger brother, and Rose was left all alone. She has no family to turn to for support, so when she finds out she's pregnant, she winds up at the Brewer's door. She needs their help, and although they can't quite admit it, they each need her so they can begin to heal.

Pressured by his late mother's ghost to return home to the family he abandoned, a former addict grabs a bag of pills and a sack of marijuana and hits the road to Shreveport.

After serving time in prison, former drug addict Sherry Swanson returns home to reclaim her young daughter from family members who have been raising the child. Sherry's family, especially her sister-in-law, doubt Sherry's ability to be a good mother, and Sherry finds her resolve to stay clean slowly weakening.

A poet falls in love with an art student, who gravitates to his bohemian lifestyle — and his love of heroin. Hooked as much on one another as they are on the drug, their relationship alternates between states of oblivion, self-destruction, and despair.

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.

A mother lives quietly with her son. One day, a girl is brutally killed, and the boy is charged with the murder. Now, it's his mother's mission to prove him innocent.

An undocumented immigrant finds a human heart in one of the toilets of the west London hotel where he works with other undocumented immigrants.

James, down on his luck and desperate for some quick cash, agrees to drive a small truck across country. He soon realizes that he's made a huge mistake and has inadvertently become involved in a dangerous human trafficking ring. The unlikely hero risks it all to shut down the trafficking ring and save the woman he is falling in love with.

In lawless storm ravaged New Orleans, eleaguered Detective Sean Riley is trying to cope with the death of his young son and the abandonment of his wife. Facing a probable suspension from the department, Riley is teamed with a young homicide Detective, Will Ganz, to help solve a series of brutal murders that have plunged the city into a major gang war. The two quickly realize there is something far more sinister going on than either could have ever imagined.
