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Movies like The World Made Straight

Key Features:
Appalachia, American Civil War, Small town, Violence, Rebellion, Escapism, Historical trauma, Community, Redemption, Secrets, Violence-high, Drug use
Tone:
serious, gritty, dramatic
Target Audience:
Indie film enthusiasts, Drama lovers, Those interested in historical themes, Viewers who appreciate character-driven stories
Emotional Arc:
Despair → Conflict → Acceptance

The World Made Straight

2015-01-09
The World Made Straight Poster - Find Similar Movies

In a rural Appalachian community haunted by the legacy of a Civil War massacre, a rebellious young man struggles to escape the violence that would bind him to the past.

Genres
Drama
Cast
Haley Joel Osment, Minka Kelly, Noah Wyle, Jeremy Irvine, Adelaide Clemens, Marcus Hester, Sandra Ellis Lafferty, Steve Earle, Stephen Gevedon, Tim Ware
Crew
David Burris, Shane Danielsen
Rating
5.509(55 votes)
The World Made StraightThe World Made Straight
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The World to Come

In 1856, two women forge a close connection despite their isolation on the American frontier.



Straight A's
5.2

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.



The Straight Story
7.722

A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver's license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.



Back Roads
5.804

A young man cares for his younger sisters after their mother is imprisoned for murdering their abusive father. When he strikes up an affair with a married woman, long-dormant family secrets bubble to the surface.



Straight Time
7.1

After being released on parole, a burglar attempts to go straight, get a regular job, and just go by the rules. He soon finds himself back in jail at the hands of a power-hungry parole officer.



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.



Straight Up
6.852

Todd is a hyper-articulate, obsessive compulsive gay twentysomething whose fear of dying alone leads him to a baffling conclusion: he might not be gay after all. When he meets Rory, a whip-smart struggling actress with her own set of insecurities, the two forge a relationship that’s all talk and no sex.



Jasper Jones
6.4

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.



Jug Face
Jug Face(2013)
5.2

When a supernatural pit worshipped by a remote community in the woods demands a new blood sacrifice, a young woman struggles to find a way to survive as the pit lashes out in anger.



Free State of Jones
6.768

In 1863, Mississippi farmer Newt Knight serves as a medic for the Confederate Army. Opposed to slavery, Knight would rather help the wounded than fight the Union. After his nephew dies in battle, Newt returns home to Jones County to safeguard his family but is soon branded an outlaw deserter. Forced to flee, he finds refuge with a group of runaway slaves hiding out in the swamps. Forging an alliance with the slaves and other farmers, Knight leads a rebellion that would forever change history.



Sommersby
Sommersby(1993)
6.346

Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.



Gutshot Straight
4.133

A professional poker player falls deep into underworld when he takes an unexpected wager from a mysterious high roller.



Outside In
6.162

An ex-con struggling to readjust to life in his small town forms an intense bond with his former high-school teacher.



Closet Monster
7.1

A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.



Hillbilly Elegy
6.7

An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.



Levity
Levity(2003)
6.1

Manuel Jordan is a man who is free after serving 23 years for killing a teenager during an attempted robbery. After nearly two decades of staring at his victim's face on a newspaper clipping in his cell, the newly paroled man seeks redemption. Instead, redemption—in the form of a mysterious minister and two needy women— finds him.



1922
1922(2017)
5.938

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



Josie
Josie(2018)
5.2

Everyone knows everyone in the southern town of Baymont. So when tattooed, sweet-talking Josie struts into town, heads turn. Striking up relationships with young punk Gator and loner Hank, she quickly becomes a hot topic of local gossip.



Brokeback Mountain
7.785

In 1960s Wyoming, two men develop a strong emotional and sexual relationship that endures as a lifelong connection complicating their lives as they get married and start families of their own.



Dream Boy
Dream Boy(2008)
6.07

The story of Nathan, a young teenager who tries to flourish in a romantic relationship with neighbour Roy. The two young men will have to face the brutal reality of the rural south of the United States in the late 1970s.



Big Stone Gap
5.852

A story centered around a transitional point in the life of Ave Maria Mulligan, the heart of her community in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.



1969
1969(1988)
5.6

Two rebellious youths, Ralph and Scott, find themselves struggling with adulthood as the Vietnam War rages. Feeling trapped in their small town, Scott battles with his conservative veteran father, Cliff, and Ralph deals with his desperately sexual mother, Ev. When tragic news arrives from overseas, the entire town, inspired by Ralph and Scott's antiwar efforts, reevaluates its attitude toward the war.



Joe
Joe(2014)
6.5

The rough-hewn boss of a lumber crew courts trouble when he steps in to protect the youngest member of his team from an abusive father.



Slow West
Slow West(2015)
6.7

In the Old West, a 17-year-old Scottish boy teams up with a mysterious gunman to find the woman with whom he is infatuated.



In a Better World
7.1

The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.



Wrong Turn
6

Jen and a group of friends set out to hike the Appalachian Trail. Despite warnings to stick to the trail, the hikers stray off course—and cross into land inhabited by The Foundation, a hidden community of mountain dwellers who use deadly means to protect their way of life.



Ironweed
Ironweed(1987)
6.308

An alcoholic drifter spends Halloween in his hometown of Albany, New York after returning there for the first time in decades.



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.



Jindabyne
Jindabyne(2006)
5.46

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.



Manderlay
Manderlay(2005)
6.9

In 1933, a young woman and her father discover an Alabama plantation whose inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Feeling a sense of duty to those behind the heavy gates, she stays to liberate the people and see them through their first harvest. With four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, she faces the daunting task of resurrecting the place known as Manderlay.



Family Life
7.2

A young woman, Janice, is living with her restrictive and conservative parents, who lead a dull working-class life and consider their daughter to be “misbehaving” whenever she’s trying to find her own way in life.



Burden
Burden(2018)
6.122

Ku Klux Klansman Mike Burden opens the Redneck Shop and KKK museum in historic Laurens, SC. He subsequently falls in love with a single mother and, under her influence, quits the Klan and is taken in by an African American Reverend.



What Josiah Saw
5.84

A family with buried secrets reunite at a farmhouse after two decades to pay for their past sins.



Wrong Turn
6.4

Chris crashes into a carload of other young people, and the group of stranded motorists is soon lost in the woods of West Virginia, where they're hunted by three cannibalistic mountain men who are grossly disfigured by generations of inbreeding.



Shane
Shane(1953)
7.4

A weary gunfighter attempts to settle down with a homestead family, but a smouldering settler and rancher conflict forces him to act.



Georgia Rule
5.977

Rebellious, uncontrollable teenager, Rachel is hauled off by her dysfunctional mother to spend the summer with her estranged grandmother, Georgia. Her journey will lead all three women to revelations of buried family secrets and an understanding that - regardless what happens - the ties that bind can never be broken.



News of the World
6.9

A Texan traveling across the wild West bringing the news of the world to local townspeople, agrees to help rescue a young girl who was kidnapped.



Jacknife
Jacknife(1989)
6.35

A conflict develops between a troubled Vietnam veteran and the sister he lives with when she becomes involved romantically with the army buddy who reminds him of the tragic battle they both survived.



Red Hill
Red Hill(2010)
6

Young police officer Shane Cooper's first day on duty, after relocating to the small town of Red Hill, rapidly turns into a nightmare. News of a prison break, involving convicted murderer Jimmy Conway, sends the local law enforcement officers - led by the town's ruling presence, Old Bill - into a panic and leads to a terrifying and bloody confrontation.



Them That Follow
4.965

A Pentecostal pastor, Lemuel Childs, and his believers handle venomous snakes to prove themselves before God. Lemuel’s daughter, Mara holds a secret that threatens to tear the church apart: her romantic past with a nonbeliever, Augie. As Mara’s wedding to a devoted follower looms, she must decide whether or not to trust the steely matriarch of their community, Hope, with her heart and life at stake.



Cutter's Way
6.472

Alex Cutter is a boozy, belligerent and deeply cynical Vietnam veteran whose encounter with a landmine during the war has left him minus an eye, a leg and an arm. When his drifter playboy friend Richard Bone is falsely accused of murder, Cutter sets out for revenge in his own inimitable style.



King Jack
King Jack(2015)
6.4

Growing up in a rural town filled with violent delinquents, Jack has learned to do what it takes to survive, despite having an oblivious mother and no father. After his aunt falls ill and a younger cousin comes to stay with him, the hardened 15-year-old discovers the importance of friendship, family, and looking for happiness even in the most desolate of circumstances.



Jesus' Son
6.264

A young man turns from drug addiction and petty crime to a life redeemed by a discovery of compassion.



Straight Talk
6

Honest and straightforward small-town Shirlee Kenyon chucks her boyfriend and heads for Chicago. Accidentally having to host a radio problem phone-in show, it is clear she is a natural and is hired on the spot. But the station insists she call herself Doctor, and as her popularity grows a local reporter starts digging for the truth. Problem is, the more he is around her the more he fancies her.



Joe
Joe(1970)
6.415

After murdering his daughter's drug-dealing boyfriend, a wealthy ad executive stumbles into a bar and strikes up an uneasy alliance with Joe Curran, a drunken bigot with a bloodlust who works at a local factory.



Old Joy
Old Joy(2006)
6.3

Soon to be a father, Mark feels the pressure of domestic responsibility closing in, so he is more than happy to accept when his old friend Kurt proposes a camping trip in the Oregon wilderness. During their time together, the men come to grips with the changes in their lives and the effect on their relationship.



Palo Alto
Palo Alto(2014)
6.1

A lack of parental guidance encourages teens in an affluent California town to rebel with substance abuse and casual sex.



Hick
Hick(2012)
5.708

A pistol-packing teen meets an unstable rebel and a cocaine-snorting drifter as she hitchhikes her way out West.



Love and Honor
6

When a young soldier in Vietnam gets dumped by his hometown girl, he and his best friend decide to go AWOL and return to the States to win her back.



George Washington
6.6

Set in the landscape of a rural southern town, "George Washington" is a stunning portrait of how a group of young kids come to grips with a hard world of choices and consequences. During an innocent game in an abandoned amusement park, a member of the group dies. Narrated by one of the children, the film follows the kids as they struggle to balance their own ambitions and relationships against a tragic lie.



Badland
Badland(2019)
6.1

Detective Matthias Breecher, hired to track down the worst of the Confederate war criminals, roams the Old West seeking justice. His resolve is tested when he meets a determined pioneer woman who is far more than she seems.



Rosewood
Rosewood(1997)
6.5

Spurred by a white woman's lie, vigilantes destroy a black Florida town and slay inhabitants in 1923.



Minding the Gap
7.7

Three young men bond together to escape volatile families in their Rust Belt hometown. As they face adult responsibilities, unexpected revelations threaten their decade-long friendship.



Home
Home(2021)
6.7

An ex-felon returns home from prison and must confront the demons of his past.



Jesus Revolution
6.752

In the 1970s, aimless teenager Greg Laurie searches for all the right things in all the wrong places until he meets Lonnie Frisbee, a charismatic hippie/street preacher. Together with local pastor Chuck Smith, they open the doors of a languishing church to an unexpected revival.



The Beach House
6.383

Cara Rudland thought she’d left her Southern roots and troubled family far behind, but returns to the scenic Lowcountry of her childhood summers after losing her job in Chicago. There, she reconnects with her mother Lovie, who has been caring for her young, pregnant friend Toy in her charming beach house.



Tom and Huck
5.243

A mischievous young boy, Tom Sawyer, witnesses a murder by the deadly Injun Joe. Tom becomes friends with Huckleberry Finn, a boy with no future and no family. Tom has to choose between honoring a friendship or honoring an oath because the town alcoholic is accused of the murder. Tom and Huck go through several adventures trying to retrieve evidence.



Straightheads
5.2

There is instant chemistry between Alice (Gillian Anderson), a businesswoman, and Adam (Danny Dyer), a younger working-class man who installs a security system in her London apartment. She takes him to a party in the country, and they end up making love. But the night turns horrific when they encounter three thugs who maim Adam and rape Alice. The incident turns them into fearful recluses until Alice spots the leader of their attackers (Anthony Calf) -- and the two victims plot a brutal revenge.



Akron
Akron(2015)
7.2

Benny, a college freshman at the University of Akron, Ohio meets and falls for fellow freshman Christopher at a football game. With the support of their families and friends they embark on a new relationship. But a tragic event in the past involving their mothers soon comes to light and threatens to tear them apart.



Run of the Arrow

When the South loses the war, Confederate veteran O'Meara goes West, joins the Sioux, takes a wife and refuses to be an American but he must choose a side when the Sioux go to war against the U.S. Army.



God Bless the Broken Road

The story of a young mother who loses her husband in Afghanistan and struggles to raise their young daughter in his absence.



Seven Days War
6.494

In the town of Saima, when summer is about to begin, a group of six high school students intend to live a secret adventure by spending seven carefree days in a ruined mining facility.



Lawless
Lawless(2012)
7.06

In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, the lookout. Though the local police have taken bribes and left the brothers alone, a violent war erupts when a sadistic lawman from Chicago arrives and tries to shut down the Bondurants operation.



Red Right Hand
6.7

Cash is trying to live a quiet, honest life in a small Appalachian town. When a vicious crime boss forces him back into her services, he soon learns he's capable of anything -- even killing -- to protect his family and his home.



Open Range
7.22

A former gunslinger is forced to take up arms again when he and his cattle crew are threatened by a corrupt lawman.



Lean on Pete
6.949

Charley Thompson, a teenager living with his single father, gets a summer job working for horse trainer Del Montgomery. Bonding with an aging racehorse named Lean on Pete, Charley is horrified to learn he is bound for slaughter, and so he steals the horse, and the duo embark on an odyssey across the new American frontier.



Americana
Americana(2025)
6.5

When a rare Lakota Ghost Shirt falls into the black market in a small town in South Dakota, the lives of local outsiders and outcasts violently intertwine.



Offspring
Offspring(2009)
5

The local sheriff of Dead River, Maine, thought he had killed them off ten years ago -- a primitive, cave-dwelling tribe of cannibalistic savages. But somehow the clan survived. To breed. To hunt. To kill and eat. And now the peaceful residents of this isolated town are fighting for their lives...



Katie Says Goodbye
6.581

A kindhearted seventeen-year-old in the American Southwest turns to prostitution to fulfill her dream of a new life in San Francisco.



Over the Edge
7.1

A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada.



Safe Haven
7.234

A young woman with a mysterious past lands in Southport, North Carolina where her bond with a widower forces her to confront the dark secret that haunts her.



Rust Creek
6.293

When an overachieving college senior makes a wrong turn, her road trip becomes a life-changing fight for survival in rural Kentucky.



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.



Spiral
Spiral(2019)
5.8

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.



Sweet Virginia
5.9

A former rodeo star, now a motel manager, meets a young man who is responsible for the violence that suddenly has seized his small town.



Mudbound
Mudbound(2017)
7.374

In the post–World War II South, two families are pitted against a barbaric social hierarchy and an unrelenting landscape as they simultaneously fight the battle at home and the battle abroad.



Gator
Gator(1976)
5.104

After his release from prison, notorious ex-con and moonshine distiller Gator McKlusky moves in with his father in a cabin in the Okefenokee Swamp. His bootlegging plans are cut short, however, when a federal agent tells McKlusky that he will lose custody of his 9-year-old daughter unless he helps bring down local crime lord Bama McCall. McKlusky enlists the help of reporter Aggie Maybank and a few local eccentrics to bring down McCall's empire.



In Country
5.6

Samantha Hughes, a teenaged Kentucky girl, never knew her father, who died in Vietnam before her birth. Samantha lives with her uncle Emmett, who also served in Vietnam. Emmett hangs around with Tom, Earl, and Pete, three other Vietnam vets who, like Emmett, all have problems of one kind or another that relate to their war experiences. Samantha becomes obsessed with finding out about her father.



Bomb City
Bomb City(2017)
7.109

An ongoing feud between punk rockers and a more affluent clique in a small Texas town leads to a hate crime.



Young Adult
5.8

A divorced writer from the Midwest returns to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, who's now married with a family.



A Perfect World
7.5

A kidnapped boy strikes up a friendship with his captor: an escaped convict on the run from the law, headed by an honorable U.S. Marshal.



High Plains Drifter

A gunfighting stranger comes to the small settlement of Lago. After gunning down three gunmen who tried to kill him, the townsfolk decide to hire the Stranger to hold off three outlaws who are on their way.



Small Town Crime
6.366

Mike Kendall, a disgraced ex-cop, is fighting a losing battle with the bottle. When he finds a woman left for dead at the side of a road, Kendall turns private eye to track down her killers, taking one last shot at redemption.



Man of the West
6.6

Heading east to Fort Worth to hire a schoolteacher for his frontier town home, Link Jones is stranded with singer Billie Ellis and gambler Sam Beasley when their train is held up. For shelter, Jones leads them to his nearby former home, where he was brought up an outlaw. Finding the gang still living in the shack, Jones pretends to be ready to return to a life crime.



Main Street
4.554

From the once thriving tobacco warehouses, to the current run-down and closed shops of Five Points, a diverse group of residents and their respective life changes when outsider Gus Leroy brings something new and potentially dangerous into their quiet town.



Wise Blood
6.3

A Southerner--young, poor, ambitious but uneducated--determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.



Serena
Serena(2014)
5.585

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.



Boy A
Boy A(2008)
7.109

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.



Fireworks
Fireworks(2023)
7.454

The troubled relationship between Gianni and Nino, set in the narrow-minded and prejudicial Sicily of 1982.



A Map of the World

School nurse Alice Goodwin lives with her husband and two daughters on a dairy farm in a small Wisconsin community. After an accident on her property involving a friend's child, the town turns against her and Alice finds herself fighting charges of child abuse.



Friendly Persuasion
6.688

The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It's not easy for them to meet the rules of their religion in everyday life but when Southern troops pass the area they are in real trouble. Should they fight, despite their peaceful attitude?



Deliverance
7.31

Intent on seeing the Cahulawassee River before it's turned into one huge lake, outdoor fanatic Lewis Medlock takes his friends on a river-rafting trip they'll never forget into the dangerous American back-country.



The Starling Girl
6.3

17-year-old Jem Starling struggles with her place within her Christian fundamentalist community. But everything changes when her magnetic youth pastor Owen returns to their church.



God's Own Country
7.7

A young farmer in rural Yorkshire numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker.



Felon
Felon(2008)
7.1

A family man convicted of killing an intruder must cope with life afterward in the violent penal system.



Gridlock'd
6.7

After a friend overdoses, Spoon and Stretch decide to kick their drug habits and attempt to enroll in a government detox program. Their efforts are hampered by seemingly endless red tape, as they are shuffled from one office to another while being chased by drug dealers and the police.



Women Talking
6.86

A group of women in an isolated religious colony struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony's men.



Fierce People
6.1

A massage therapist looking to overcome her addictions and reconnect with her son, whose father is an anthropologist in South America studying the Yanomani people, moves in with a wealthy ex-client in New Jersey.



Shenandoah
6.9

Charlie Anderson, a farmer in Shenandoah, Virginia, finds himself and his family in the middle of the Civil War he wants nothing to do with. When his youngest boy is taken prisoner by the North, the Civil War is forced upon him.

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