movielex
movie
L
ex

Movies like The Wave

Key Features:
Social experiment, Group dynamics, Conformity, Authoritarianism, Ideology, Mob mentality, Historical context, Political commentary, Loss of individuality, Peer pressure, Social control, Psychological manipulation
Tone:
serious, dramatic, suspense-driven
Target Audience:
Thoughtful viewers, Students of history, Those interested in social issues, Viewers interested in psychology
Emotional Arc:
Curiosity → Excitement → Dread

The Wave

1981-10-04
The Wave Poster - Find Similar Movies

A teacher conducts an experiment in an American high school where students learn how easy it is to be seduced by the same social forces which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Genres
Drama, Thriller, TV Movie
Cast
Bruce Davison, Lori Lethin, John Putch, Johnny Doran, Pasha Gray, Wesley Pfenning, Marc Copage, Robert DeLapp, Matthew Dunn, Michael Pasternak
Crew
Alexander Grasshoff
Rating
6.9(111 votes)
The WaveThe Wave
Select exactly what you are looking for


The Wave
The Wave(2008)
7.485

A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.



The Wave
The Wave(2019)
6.025

A man on the verge of a promotion takes a mysterious hallucinogenic drug that begins to tear down his reality and expose his life for what it really is.



The Experiment
6.386

20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.



The Teacher
6.8

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.



The Experiment
7.409

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.



The Perfect Teacher

A spoiled, selfish teenager becomes infatuated with her teacher. She befriends his daughter as a way of worming her way into the family, and sets about manipulating every aspect of his life.



The Brain
The Brain(1988)
5.175

Dr. Blake runs a TV show called "Independent Thinkers", which is sort of a Scientology-like self-help/religion program. But he's not making his audience think any more independently - with the help of an alien organism he calls The Brain, he's using brainwashing and mind control. The only thing that stands between them and world domination is a brilliant but troubled high school student with a penchant for pranks...



The Faculty
6.6

When some very creepy things start happening around school, the kids at Herrington High make the chilling discovery that confirms their worst suspicions: their teachers really are from another planet!



In the House
7.2

A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy’s intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.



The Signal
5.9

A horror film told in three parts, from three perspectives, in which a mysterious transmission that turns people into killers invades every cell phone, radio, and television.



Blame
Blame(2018)
6.578

A drama teacher's taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, sparking a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to "The Crucible".



The Servant
7.6

Indolent aristocrat Tony employs competent Barrett as his manservant and all seems to be going well until Barrett persuades Tony to hire his sister as a live-in maid.



Higher Power
5.1

When the Universe decides what it wants, it's pointless to resist. With his family's life at stake, Joseph Steadman finds himself the unwilling test subject of a maniacal scientist in a battle that could save the world – or destroy it.



The Hunt
The Hunt(2012)
8.095

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.



The Possession Experiment

When a student takes on a theology project, he taps into another side that had been hidden away from him.



Lesson of the Evil
6.6

Seiji Hasumi is a popular English teacher in a private high school. He is also a violent and sociopathic killer who concocts an extreme plan to deal with the rise of bullying and bad behavior among the student body.



Multiverse
6.632

Four brilliant university students are forced to confront themselves in terrifying ways when their Quantum Physics experiment leads to an entangled parallel existence that leaves them questioning who they are and what is real.



The Trigger Effect
5.7

A blackout leaves those affected to consider what is necessary, what is legal, and what is questionable, in order to survive in a predatory environment.



The Sect
The Sect(1991)
6.2

A spree of grisly murders is perpetrated in Frankfurt by a group of Satan worshippers. A lonely schoolteacher almost runs over an elderly man and takes him in, unbeknown to her the man has plans for her – plans that involve a permanent future with the Satanic cult.



The Steam Experiment
4.217

A deranged scientist locks 6 people in a steam room and threatens to turn up the heat if the local paper doesn't publish his story about global warming.



The Teacher
6.547

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.



Harrison Bergeron
6.7

"All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." This is the premise of the Showtime film adaption of Kurt Vonnegut's futuristic short story Harrison Bergeron. The film centers around a young man (Harrison) who is smarter than his peers, and is not affected by the usual "Handicapping" which is used to train all Americans so everyone is of equal intelligence.



The Conformist
7.6

A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.



The Privilege
5.2

A wealthy teen and his friends attending an elite private school uncover a dark conspiracy while looking into a series of strange supernatural events.



Kill Theory
5.318

While celebrating a graduation at a secluded vacation home, a group of college students find themselves targeted by a sadistic killer who forces them to play a deadly game of killing one another in order to survive.



The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, Stanford's Professor Philip Zimbardo conducts a controversial psychology experiment in which college students pretend to be either prisoners or guards, but the proceedings soon get out of hand. Based on a true story.



Involuntary
6.5

In several unrelated stories, the consequences of putting one's foot down – or failing to do so – are explored.



The Damned
6.232

An American tourist and a troubled young woman are chased by her gang leader brother to a top secret British government facility that conducts experiments on children.



The Tale
The Tale(2018)
7.061

An investigation into one woman’s memory as she‘s forced to re-examine her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.



The Lesson
4.176

Two schoolboy delinquents learn a lesson that they will never forget when a teacher at the end of his tether decides to abduct them.



The Thinning
6.7

In a post-apocalyptic future where population control is dictated by a high-school aptitude test, two students discover the test is smoke and mirrors hiding a larger conspiracy.



The Teachers' Lounge
7.237

When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.



F
F(2010)
6.106

A group of teachers must defend themselves from a gang of murderous kids when their school comes under siege after hours.



The Final
The Final(2010)
6

A group of high school outcasts get revenge on the students that torment them.



The Belko Experiment
6.169

A group of eighty American workers are locked in their office and ordered by an unknown voice to participate in a twisted game.



School's Out
5.827

A few days before the baccalaureate, a high school student decides to settle accounts with the most cowardly teacher in the school.



The Silent Revolution

Stalinstadt, East Germany, 1956. While the Hungarian uprising against Soviets is taking place, teenage members of a classroom of the local school perform a seemingly harmless act that causes unexpected consequences.



Dirty Teacher
5.809

When a high school senior discovers her teacher is seducing her boyfriend, events turn deadly after the teacher tries to cover it up.



Dread
Dread(2009)
5.5

Three college students set out to document what other people dread the most. However, one of the three turns out to secretly be a sadistic psychopath who uses this knowledge to gruesomely torture the subjects.



The Good Neighbor
6.208

Two high school filmmakers decide to create the illusion of a haunting on an unsuspecting neighbor.



The Class
The Class(2008)
7

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.



Waves
Waves(2019)
7.358

A controlling father’s attempts to ensure that his two children succeed in high school backfire after his son experiences a career-ending sports injury. Their familial bonds are eventually placed under severe strain by an unexpected tragedy.



The Tutor
The Tutor(2023)
6.1

When a professional tutor takes a job at a remote manor, he soon finds himself battling his disturbed student’s obsessions, which threaten to expose his darkest secrets and unravel his carefully crafted persona.



The Wave
The Wave(2015)
6.7

Although theorised, no one is really ready when a mountain pass above the scenic and narrow Geiranger fjord in Norway collapses and creates a tsunami over 300 feet high. A geologist is one of those caught in the middle of it.



Vanishing Waves
5.9

Lucas is a scientist who works near the European experimental project that focus on advanced ‘human neuron research’. The project is to transfer neuron information from one human mind to another. Lukas is chosen to connect his mind with a comatose woman he named Aurora.



500 MPH Storm
5.392

When an energy experiment goes haywire, a rash of massive hurricanes rips across North America. A high school science teacher must get his family to safety before the hurricanes merge, creating a "hypercane" with the power to wipe the US off the map.



The Good Teacher
6.345

Julien, a young teacher, is wrongfully accused of sexual misconduct by a teenage girl from his class. As he faces mounting pressures from the girl’s older brother and her classmates, the situation spirals out of control. Allegations spread, the entire school is thrown into turmoil, and the teacher has to fight to clear his name.



Freedom Writers
7.9

A young teacher inspires her class of at-risk students to learn tolerance, apply themselves, and pursue education beyond high school.



The In Crowd
4.527

A mentally disturbed young woman takes a job at a posh country club and falls in with a clique of wealthy college kids where she's taken under the wing of the clique's twisted leader, who harbors some dark secrets too terrifying to tell.



Breaking the Waves
7.493

In a small, conservative Scottish village, an oilman is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when he urges her to have sex with another.



The English Teacher

Small-town Pennsylvania schoolteacher Linda Sinclair balances her staid home life with an incredible passion for her subject. Then a former star pupil reenters her life after failing as a playwright in New York City. Seeing in his script the inspiration that she has always longed to instill in her students, this dyed-in-the-wool romantic enlists the help of long-suffering drama teacher Carl to mount the work as the high school’s next and riskiest production.



The Student
6.4

A high school student becomes convinced that the world is lost to evil and begins to challenge the morals and beliefs of the adults surrounding him.



The Shadow Effect

A young man's life is turned upside down when his violent dreams begin to blend with reality.



Dead Poets Society
8.3

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.



The Hearse
5.186

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



Mirror Mirror
5.1

Shy teenager Megan moves to a new town with her widowed mother and quickly becomes the most unpopular girl in high school. But when she starts to communicate with a mysterious mirror, her tormentors begin to meet with a horrifying series of 'accidents'. Is the mirror a reflection of Megan's own inner demons... or has she unwittingly opened the doorway of the damned?



Steve
Steve(2025)
6.335

Over one intense day, the devoted head teacher of a last-chance reform school strives to keep his students in line while facing pressures of his own.



The V Word
4.856

Two curious teenage boys break into an old mortuary looking for thrills, only to find themselves stalked by a former teacher who is a very real vampire looking to increase the ranks of the undead.



Storytelling
6.5

College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.



A Teacher
A Teacher(2013)
4.495

Diana Watts, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, is in the midst of an affair with one of her students, Eric Tull. As the reality of their situation forces itself upon them, Diana puts the relationship on hold. It’s only a matter of time before she gives in again to her desire; this time even more recklessly than before.



The White Ribbon
7.48

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.



The Nightmare
6.37

After a massive party one evening, 17-year-old Tina begins experiencing nightmares in which she is haunted by an unusual creature.



Pretty Persuasion
5.8

A 15-year-old girl incites chaos among her friends and a media frenzy when she accuses her drama teacher of sexual harassment.



The Puppet Masters
5.75

The Earth is invaded by alien parasites—AKA 'slugs'—that ride on people's backs and control their minds.



The Barber
5.621

Eugene is a small town barber, beloved by the local community, but hiding a deadly secret. John is hunting for a serial killer not to expose him but to learn the business! They form a twisted bond and turn the town upside down as Eugene teaches John to kill.



The Evil
The Evil(1978)
5.742

Shortly after moving into a dark, brooding mansion, a psychologist and his co-workers are terrorized by a horrible evil being.



Cry_Wolf
Cry_Wolf(2005)
5.8

After a local woman is murdered, a group of teenage liars create a warning e-mail of a serial killer named “The Wolf”, coming on the next full moon. The teens describe each death method The Wolf uses, but when the described victims actually do start turning up dead, suddenly no one knows where the lies end and the truth begins.



The Platform
6.968

A slab of food descends down a vertical facility. The residents above eat heartily, leaving those below starving and desperate. A rebellion is imminent.



The Show
The Show(2017)
5.7

An unsettling look at reality television, where a disturbing game show has its contestants ending their lives for the public's enjoyment.



Marionette
6.3

A therapist loses her grip on reality when a ten-year-old boy claims he can control her future.



The Awakening
6.382

In post–War England, a writer and sometime-ghost hunter investigates a reported haunting at a boys boarding school.



The Slap
The Slap(1974)
6.6

A Parisian teacher loses his cool when his teenage daughter tells him she plans to drop out of school and move in with her boyfriend.



Not My Type
6.208

Clement, a young philosophy teacher, is sent to Arras for a year. He meets Jennifer, a pretty hair stylist, and the two freely share their hearts and bodies as they try to overcome the cultural and social divide between them.



Absent
Absent(2011)
6

Sebastiano teaches high school gym classes and coaches swimming. He’s got a job, a girlfriend, and a pretty normal life. But as young Martin starts to infiltrate Sebastiano’s life, his world will get turned upside down. Eerie from the first frame, this Hitchcockian thriller portrays sexual obsession with terrifying realism.



The Blob
The Blob(1988)
6.8

In Arborville, California, three high school students try to protect their hometown from a gelatinous alien life form that engulfs everything it touches.



The Signal
6

On a road trip, Nic and two friends are drawn to an isolated area by a computer genius. When everything suddenly goes dark, Nic regains consciousness – only to find himself in a waking nightmare.



Club Zero
Club Zero(2023)
5.784

Miss Novak joins the staff of an international boarding school to teach a conscious eating class and forms a strong bond with five students that eventually takes a dangerous turn.



Hurricane Bianca
6.07

A teacher from New York moves to a small town in Texas, gets fired for being gay, and returns disguised in drag to get revenge on the people who were nasty to him.



The Fly
The Fly(1986)
7.4

When Seth Brundle makes a huge scientific and technological breakthrough in teleportation, he decides to test it on himself. Unbeknownst to him, a common housefly manages to get inside the device and the two become one.



Soft & Quiet
6.428

Taking place in real time, elementary school teacher Emily organizes a mixer of like-minded women, but an altercation between a woman from Emily’s past and the group leads to a volatile chain of events.



An Affair
An Affair(2018)
5.4

A newly appointed teacher finds herself being followed, and soon discovers that one of her own students is obsessed with her.



The Bunker
6.114

A student moves in with a family that lives in an underground house in the middle of the forest, far from civilization. His hopes of peace and quiet are soon shattered, when it becomes apparent that both the parents and their son have a screw loose.



High School
7.262

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.



The Last Wave
6.7

A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal Persons in a ritualised taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing truths about himself and premonitions.



Senseless
Senseless(1998)
6.2

A student gets his senses enhanced by an experimental drug. But abuse is not an option.



The Post
The Post(2017)
7.005

A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events.



The Substitute
5.568

6th Grade gets a new substitute teacher. She wants to train the class for an international competition in Paris. But something isn't right. How is she able read kids' minds? Why is she so mean? And how does she manage to convince everyone's parents she is so great when the whole class knows she is really an alien?



Devil in the Flesh
5.555

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.



Ignorance Is Bliss
5.9

Ernesto and Filippo, two high school teachers, couldn’t be more different: Filippo is a cheerful liberal who is constantly online. Handsome and youthful, he is a serial seducer on the social networks. Ernesto, instead is a stern conservative, rigorously computerless. He is probably the last person around who still has a first-generation cell phone and his teaching methods are very traditional. They used to be best friends but an unresolved fight kept them far apart, until the day fate intervened and they found themselves teaching at the same school. Their opposite viewpoints will soon and inevitably lead to a new clash. The internet will force them to deal with their past, which resurfaces in the shape of Nina, a young woman who conducts an experiment on them: Filippo must try to leave the world of Internet and Ernesto must try to enter it.



The 5th Wave
5.939

16-year-old Cassie Sullivan tries to survive in a world devastated by the waves of an alien invasion that has already decimated the population and knocked mankind back to the Stone Age.



The Marco Effect
5.8

When a homeless Romani boy is arrested at the Danish border for possession of a missing public servant's passport, police inspector Carl Mørck and Department Q are tasked with finding the connection.



Suicide Club
6.462

When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer to this mystery, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.



Crime Wave
5.785

Leyre lives a quiet and comfortable life which ends abruptly when an act of rage of her teenage son leads her to protect him by any means necessary.



The Jacket
6.9

A military veteran goes on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death and is left with questions that could save his life and those he loves.



Dangerous Minds
7

Former Marine Louanne Johnson lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.



Apt Pupil
Apt Pupil(1998)
6.5

One day in 1984, Todd Bowden, a brilliant high school boy fascinated by the history of Nazism, stumbles across an old man whose appearance resembles that of Kurt Dussander, a wanted Nazi war criminal. A month later, Todd decides to knock on his door.



The Professor
6.843

A world-weary college professor is given a life-changing diagnosis and decides to throw all pretense and conventions to the wind and live his life as boldly and freely as possible with a biting sense of humor, a reckless streak and a touch of madness.



The Fog
The Fog(2005)
4.558

Trapped within an eerie mist, the residents of Antonio Bay have become the unwitting victims of a horrifying vengeance. One hundred years earlier, a ship carrying lepers was purposely lured onto the rocky coastline and sank, drowning all aboard. Now they're back – long-dead mariners who've waited a century for their revenge.



Derren Brown: Pushed to the Edge

Derren Brown investigates the power of social compliance by persuading an unwitting member of the public into believing that they have pushed someone to their death.

AboutPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceContact Us