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Movies like The Whale

Key Features:
Redemption, Estranged family, Obesity, Guilt, Reconnection, Terminal illness, Family drama, Isolation, Regret, Teacher-student relationship, Self-destruction, Religious conflict, Grief, Communication breakdown, Body image, LGBTQ+, Confrontation, Vulnerability
Tone:
serious, dramatic, restrained
Target Audience:
Drama enthusiasts, Character-driven stories, Independent film viewers
Emotional Arc:
Despair → Hope → Acceptance

The Whale

2022-12-09
The Whale Poster - Find Similar Movies

A reclusive English teacher suffering from severe obesity attempts to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption.

Genres
Drama
Cast
Brendan Fraser, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Hong Chau, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan, Jacey Sink, Allison Altman, Lance Oppenheim, Grace Perkins
Crew
Darren Aronofsky, Samuel D. Hunter
Rating
7.794(4363 votes)
The WhaleThe Whale
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The Daughter
6.3

In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.



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.



Orca
Orca(1977)
6.2

After witnessing the killing of his mate and offspring at the hands of a reckless Irish captain, a vengeful killer whale rampages through the fisherman's Newfoundland harbor. Under pressure from the villagers, the captain, a female marine biologist, and an Indigenous tribalist venture after the great beast, who will meet them on its own turf.



The Lost Daughter
6.477

A woman's seaside vacation takes a dark turn when her obsession with a young mother forces her to confront secrets from her past.



Manchester by the Sea

After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised.



Detachment
7.617

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.



The Guitar
5.5

The life of a woman is transformed after she is diagnosed with a terminal disease, fired from her job and abandoned by her boyfriend. Given two months to live, she throws caution to the wind to pursue her dreams.



Seven Pounds
7.6

An IRS agent with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.



The Squid and the Whale

Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.



Fathers and Daughters

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.



The Sea of Trees
6.212

In Japan's Aokigahara Forest, a troubled teacher meets a mysterious lost stranger who takes him on a life-changing journey of love and redemption.



21 Grams
21 Grams(2003)
7.325

Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought together by a terrible accident that changes their lives.



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.



Free Willy: Escape from Pirate's Cove

After young Kirra leaves her Australian home to summer with her grandfather in South Africa, she soon discovers a baby orca stranded in the lagoon near her grandfather’s rundown seaside amusement park. She names the lonely whale Willy--and embarks on a great quest to lead the little guy back to his anxious pod.



Rust and Bone
7.159

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.



The Drowning
4.5

A psychiatrist faces his past, present and future when he finds himself involved in the treatment of a young man recently released from prison for a murder committed when the boy was just 11 years old.



Regretting You
7.1

Morgan Grant and her daughter Clara explore what's left behind after a devastating accident reveals a shocking betrayal and forces them to confront family secrets, redefine love, and rediscover each other.



Rachel, Rachel
6.538

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.



Infinitely Polar Bear
6.631

A manic-depressive mess of a father tries to win back his wife by attempting to take full responsibility of their two young, spirited daughters, who don't make the overwhelming task any easier.



In the Heart of the Sea

In the winter of 1820, the New England whaling ship Essex is assaulted by something no one could believe—a whale of mammoth size and will, and an almost human sense of vengeance.



Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre

An epic tale about a group of whale watchers, whose ship breaks down and they get picked up by a whale fisher vessel. The Fishbillies on the vessel has just gone bust, and everything goes out of control.



The Whales of August

Two aged sisters reflect on life and the past during a late summer day in Maine.



The Hunted
6.2

In the wilderness of British Columbia, two hunters are tracked and viciously murdered by Aaron Hallam. A former Special Operations instructor is approached and asked to apprehend Hallam—his former student—who has 'gone rogue' after suffering severe battle stress from his time in Kosovo.



Body
Body(2015)
6.2

A busy attorney, worried that his anorexic daughter Olga, who is still grieving her recently deceased mother, might try to harm herself, sends her to see a psychiatrist who's dealing with her own loss in an unusual way.



Stillwater
6.6

Bill Baker, an American oil-rig roughneck from Oklahoma, travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison, who is in prison for a murder she claims she did not commit. Confronted with language barriers, cultural differences, and a complicated legal system, Bill builds a new life for himself in France as he makes it his personal mission to exonerate his daughter.



Gods and Monsters
6.935

It's 1957, and James Whale's heyday as the director of "Frankenstein," "Bride of Frankenstein" and "The Invisible Man" is long behind him. Retired and a semi-recluse, he lives his days accompanied only by images from his past. When his dour housekeeper, Hannah, hires a handsome young gardener, the flamboyant director and simple yard man develop an unlikely friendship, which will change them forever.



The Guardian
7.1

A high school swim champion with a troubled past enrolls in the U.S. Coast Guard's 'A' School, where legendary rescue swimmer Ben Randall teaches him some hard lessons about loss, love, and self-sacrifice.



Shrink
Shrink(2009)
6.186

Unable to cope with a recent personal tragedy, LA's top celebrity shrink turns into a pothead with no concern for his appearance and a creeping sense of his inability to help his patients.



The Unseen
5.7

A man, who years earlier mysteriously abandoned his family and isolated himself in a small northern town, returns for one last chance to reconnect with his troubled daughter. When she goes missing, he risks everything to find her, including exposing the fact that he is becoming invisible.



Some Girl(s)
5.139

On the eve of his wedding, a successful writer travels around the country to meet up with ex-lovers in an attempt to make amends for his wrongdoings.



Mozart and the Whale

A love story between two savants with Asperger's syndrome, a kind of autism, whose conditions sabotage their budding relationship.



Big Miracle
6.704

A small-town news reporter and a Greenpeace volunteer enlist the help of rival superpowers to save three majestic gray whales trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle.



The Lost Bus
7.135

A determined father risks everything to rescue a dedicated teacher and her students from a raging wildfire.



Aftersun
Aftersun(2022)
7.674

Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.



The Humbling
5.1

Following a breakdown and suicide attempt, an aging actor becomes involved with a much younger woman but soon finds that it's difficult to keep pace with her.



The Secret Life of Words

A solitary nurse bonds with a badly burned patient who survived an accident on an oil rig.



Prey
Prey(2019)
4.696

After being put on a supposedly uninhabited island as a form of behavioral rehabilitation, a high school senior finds that he's not alone on the island, and that getting discovered could be deadly.



The Deep End of the Ocean

A three-year-old boy disappears during his mother's high school reunion. Nine years later, by chance, he turns up in the town in which the family has just relocated.



The Edge
The Edge(1997)
6.8

The plane carrying wealthy Charles Morse crashes down in the Alaskan wilderness. Together with the two other passengers, photographer Robert and assistant Stephen, Charles devises a plan to help them reach civilization. However, his biggest obstacle might not be the elements, or even the Kodiak bear stalking them -- it could be Robert, whom Charles suspects is having an affair with his wife and would not mind seeing him dead.



Fish Tank
Fish Tank(2009)
6.9

Fifteen-year-old Mia is in a constant state of war with her family and the world around her. When she meets her party-girl mother’s charming new boyfriend Connor, she is amazed to find he returns her attention, and believes he might help her start to make sense of her life.



The Last Word
6.6

A retired businesswoman – who tries to control everything around her – decides to write her own obituary. A young journalist takes up the task of finding out the truth, and the result is a life-altering friendship.



Come to Daddy
5.942

After receiving a cryptic letter from his estranged father, Norval travels to his dad’s oceanfront home for what he hopes will be a positive experience. If only he’d known the dark truth about his old man beforehand.



Lola and the Sea
6.4

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...



The Bow
The Bow(2005)
6.89

On a fishing boat at sea, a 60-year old man has been raising a girl since she was a child. It is agreed that they will get married on her 17th birthday. They live a quiet and secluded life, renting the boat to day fishermen and practicing strange divination rites. Their life changes when a teenage student comes aboard.



The Beaver
6.4

Suffering from a severe case of depression, toy company CEO Walter Black begins using a beaver hand puppet to help him open up to his family. With his father seemingly going insane, adolescent son Porter pushes for his parents to get a divorce.



The King
The King(2006)
6

A motiveless malignancy? Elvis leaves the Navy and heads for Texas where he contacts his father, whom he's never met, the pastor at a Christian community church. Pastor Dave tells Elvis to stay away and, without telling his family that Elvis is his son from a pre-conversion liaison, tells them to have nothing to do with him. But Elvis has already connected with Malerie, the pastor's 16-year old daughter. Elvis embarks on the seduction of Malerie, while Dave examines his conscience and comes to a new conclusion. Can anyone get right with the Lord? Does the Lord hear?



The Sum of Us
6.732

A widowed father has to deal with two complex issues: while he is searching for "Miss Right," his son, who is in his 20s and gay, is searching for "Mr. Right."



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 Father
8.1

A man refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages and, as he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.



Candy
Candy(2006)
7.13

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 Menu
The Menu(2022)
7.171

A young couple travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.



The Secret
6

Husband, wife, and daughter have moved from Boston to Williamstown. At 16, Samantha treats her mother shabbily, but when the two of them are in a horrific car crash, the mother wills Sam to live, somehow losing her own life while her spirit enters Sam.



#Blue_Whale
6.3

Rebellious schoolgirl Dana grieves for her younger sister, a once-happy kid who suddenly stepped in front of a train. Desperate to learn what happened, she explores her sister's online history, discovering a sinister social-media game.



The Monster
5.536

A mother and her 10-year old daughter are trapped in a forest. There is something in this forest. Something unlike anything they have heard before. Something that lurks in the darkness and it’s coming after them.



The Doctor
6.432

Jack McKee is a doctor with it all: he's successful, he's rich, and he has no problems.... until he is diagnosed with throat cancer. Now that he has seen medicine, hospitals, and doctors from a patient's perspective, he realises that there is more to being a doctor than surgery and prescriptions.



Ondine
Ondine(2010)
6.385

On the coast of Cork, Syracuse is a divorced fisherman who has stopped drinking. His precocious daughter Annie has failing kidneys. One day, he finds a nearly-drowned young woman in his net; she calls herself Ondine and wants no one to see her. He puts her up in an isolated cottage that was his mother's. Annie discovers Ondine's presence and believes she is a selkie, a seal that turns human while on land. Syracuse is afraid to hope again.



A Single Shot
5.7

The tragic death of a beautiful young girl starts a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse between hunter John Moon and the hardened backwater criminals out for his blood.



Jack & Sarah
6.718

Jack always lands on his feet. He lands on his feet when he marries the beautiful Sarah. He lands on his feet when he buys a luxurious new home. However, when Sarah goes into labour, he takes a tumble down the stairs and lands on his head. When he comes around he discovers he is the proud father of a baby girl, but deficient in the spouse department to the tune of 1.



Mass
Mass(2021)
7.4

Two couples meet for a painful and raw conversation in the aftermath of a violent tragedy.



Poseidon
Poseidon(2006)
5.868

A packed cruise ship traveling the Atlantic is hit and overturned by a massive wave, compelling the passengers to begin a dramatic fight for their lives.



The Wrestler
7.5

Aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson is long past his prime but still ready and rarin' to go on the pro-wrestling circuit. After a particularly brutal beating, however, Randy hangs up his tights, pursues a serious relationship with a long-in-the-tooth stripper, and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. But he can't resist the lure of the ring and readies himself for a comeback.



The Tracey Fragments

Tracey Berkowitz, 15, a self-described normal girl, loses her 9-year old brother, Sonny. In flashbacks and fragments, we meet her overbearing parents and the sweet, clueless Sonny. We watch Tracey navigate high school, friendless, picked on and teased. She develops a thing for Billy Zero, a new student, imagining he's her boyfriend. We see the day she loses Sonny and we watch her try to find him.



The Ticket
5.64

A blind man who regains his vision finds himself becoming metaphorically blinded by his obsession for the superficial.



The Lie
The Lie(2018)
6.36

A father and daughter are on their way to dance camp when they spot the girl's best friend on the side of the road. When they stop to offer the friend a ride, their good intentions soon result in terrible consequences.



Nim's Island
5.9

A young girl inhabits an isolated island with her scientist father and communicates with a reclusive author of the novel she's reading.



Eden
Eden(2025)
6.731

A group of disillusioned outsiders abandon modern society in search of a new beginning. Settling on a remote, uninhabited island, their utopian dream quickly unravels as they discover that the greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other.



Moby Dick
Moby Dick(1956)
7.1

In 1841, young Ishmael signs up for service aboard the Pequod, a whaler sailing out of New Bedford. The ship is under the command of Captain Ahab, a strict disciplinarian who exhorts his men to find Moby Dick, the great white whale. Ahab lost his leg to that creature and is desperate for revenge. As the crew soon learns, he will stop at nothing to gain satisfaction.



Dad
Dad(1989)
6.385

A busy executive learns during a meeting that his mother may be dying and rushes home to her side. He ends up being his father's caretaker and becomes closer to him than ever before. Estranged from his own son, the executive comes to realize what has been missing in his own life.



Old
Old(2021)
6.3

A group of families on a tropical holiday discover that the secluded beach where they are staying is somehow causing them to age rapidly – reducing their entire lives into a single day.



Still Alice
7.471

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, is a renowned linguistics professor who starts to forget words. When she receives a devastating diagnosis, Alice and her family find their bonds tested.



Serenity
Serenity(2019)
5.4

The quiet life of Baker Dill, a fishing boat captain who lives on the isolated Plymouth Island, where he spends his days obsessed with capturing an elusive tuna while fighting his personal demons, is interrupted when someone from his past comes to him searching for help.



The United States of Leland

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



Margaret
Margaret(2011)
6.3

17-year-old Lisa feels certain that she inadvertently played a role in causing a traffic accident that claimed a woman's life. In her attempts to set things right, she meets with opposition at every step. Torn apart with frustration, she begins emotionally brutalizing her family, her friends, her teachers, and, most of all, herself. She has been confronted quite unexpectedly with a basic truth: that her youthful ideals are on a collision course with the realities and compromises of the adult world.



Smashed
Smashed(2012)
6.471

Kate and Charlie like to have a good time. Their marriage thrives on a shared fondness for music, laughter… and getting smashed. When Kate’s partying spirals into hard-core asocial behavior, compromising her job as an elementary schoolteacher, something’s got to give. But change isn’t exactly a cakewalk. Sobriety means she will have to confront the lies she’s been spinning at work, her troubling relationship with her mother, and the nature of her bond with Charlie.



Free Willy 3: The Rescue

Willy the whale is back, this time threatened by illegal whalers making money off sushi. Jesse, now 16, has taken a job on an orca-researching ship, along with old friend Randolph and a sarcastic scientist, Drew. On the whaler's ship is captain John Wesley and his son, Max, who isn't really pleased about his father's job, but doesn't have the gut to say so. Along the way, Willy reunites with Jesse.



Fatherhood
7.508

A widowed new dad copes with doubts, fears, heartache and dirty diapers as he sets out to raise his daughter on his own. Inspired by a true story.



Don't Make Me Go
6.96

A terminally ill man and his teenage daughter embark on a road trip from California to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion. While there, he secretly hopes she can reunite with the mother who left them long ago.



To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday

David loves his wife, Gillian. Unfortunately, she died two years ago. David deals with his grief by continuing his romance with Gillian during walks with her "ghost" on the beach at night. While David lives in the past, other family problems crop up in the present in the real world....



The Horse Whisperer
6.898

The mother of a severely traumatized daughter enlists the aid of a unique horse trainer to help the girl's equally injured horse.



Destroyer
Destroyer(2018)
5.885

When Erin Bell was a young cop, she was given an undercover assignment that ended badly and destroyed her life. Years later, she must face her demons in order to make peace with her past.



The Silencing
6.426

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



After the Hunt
6.042

A college professor finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues, and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light.



Enormous
Enormous(2020)
5

It takes him suddenly at 40 years: Frédéric wants a baby, Claire never wanted one and they agreed on that. He commits the unforgivable and makes a child behind her back. Claire turns into a whale and Frédéric becomes a doting father.



Lullaby
Lullaby(2014)
6.1

Estranged from his family, Jonathan (Hedlund) discovers his father has decided to take himself off life support in forty-eight hours’ time. During this intensely condensed period, a lifetime of drama plays out. Robert (Jenkins) fights a zero sum game to reclaim all that his illness stole from his family. A debate rages on patients’ rights and what it truly means to be free. Jonathan reconciles with his father, reconnects with his mother (Archer), sister (Brown-Findlay), and his love (Adams) and reclaims his voice through two unlikely catalysts – a young, wise-beyond-her-years patient (Barden) and a no-nonsense nurse (Hudson). Through this intensely life affirming prism, an unexpected and powerful journey of love, laughter, and forgiveness unfolds.



The River Why
5.2

A young man abandons his family for a solitary life of fly-fishing. His goal was to find his own way in the fishing world and thereby find himself and love.



Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken

Ruby Gillman, a sweet and awkward high school student, discovers she's a direct descendant of the warrior kraken queens. The kraken are sworn to protect the oceans of the world against the vain, power-hungry mermaids. Destined to inherit the throne from her commanding grandmother, Ruby must use her newfound powers to protect those she loves most.



Honey Boy
Honey Boy(2019)
7.045

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.



The Ballad of Jack and Rose

Jack Slavin is an environmentalist with a heart condition who lives with his daughter, Rose, on an isolated island. While Jack fights against developers who wish to build in the area, he also craves more contact with other people. When he invites his girlfriend, Kathleen, and her sons, Rodney and Thaddius, to move in, Rose is upset. The complicated family dynamics makes things difficult for everyone in the house.



The Dark
The Dark(2005)
5.697

In an attempt to pull her family together, Adèlle travels with her young daughter Sarah to Wales to visit her father. The morning after they arrive, Sarah mysteriously vanishes in the ocean. Not long after, a little girl bearing a striking resemblance to their missing daughter reveals that she has retuned from the dead — and that Sarah has been taken to the Welsh underworld.



Abzurdah
Abzurdah(2015)
6.481

A disenfranchised 16-year-old girl connects to an older man on the internet and after a brief one-sided affair descends into obsession and anorexia.



The Fisher King
7.298

Two troubled men face their terrible destinies and events of their past as they join together on a mission to find the Holy Grail and thus to save themselves.



The Dry
The Dry(2021)
6.821

Aaron Falk returns to his drought-stricken hometown to attend a tragic funeral. But his return opens a decades-old wound - the unsolved death of a teenage girl.



The Beast
The Beast(2020)
6.144

To rescue his daughter, an unstable Special Forces veteran unleashes his inner beast as he pursues her kidnappers — and soon becomes a suspect himself.



Maggie
Maggie(2015)
5.4

There's a deadly zombie epidemic threatening humanity, but Wade, a small-town farmer and family man, refuses to accept defeat even when his daughter Maggie becomes infected. As Maggie's condition worsens and the authorities seek to eradicate those with the virus, Wade is pushed to the limits in an effort to protect her. Joely Richardson co-stars in this post-apocalyptic thriller.



Prisoner's Daughter
6.143

Released from prison with terminal cancer, Max tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter and the grandson he’s never known. When his daughter’s abusive, drug-addicted ex-husband reappears, Max’s violent past comes back to haunt them all.



The Apology
5.937

Twenty years after the disappearance of her daughter, a recovering alcoholic is preparing to host her family's Christmas celebration when her estranged ex-brother-in-law arrives unannounced, bearing nostalgic gifts and a heavy secret.



Babel
Babel(2006)
7.167

Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.



The Master
7.112

Freddie, a volatile, heavy-drinking veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds some semblance of a family when he stumbles onto the ship of Lancaster Dodd, the charismatic leader of a new "religion" he forms after World War II.



Big Fish
Big Fish(2003)
7.752

Throughout his life Edward Bloom has always been a man of big appetites, enormous passions and tall tales. In his later years, he remains a huge mystery to his son, William. Now, to get to know the real man, Will begins piecing together a true picture of his father from flashbacks of his amazing adventures.

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