Movies Like The Manhattan Project
If you loved The Manhattan Project's Science Fiction and Thriller storytelling, these films deliver a similar experience — carefully selected for tone, themes, and emotional depth. Each pick includes where to watch it right now.
★ Top Picks
The Signal
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.
The Quiet Earth
After a top-secret experiment misfires, a scientist may be the only man left alive in the world.
The Invisible Man
After experimenting on himself and becoming invisible, scientist Jack Griffin, now aggressive due to the drug's effects, seeks a way to reverse the experiment at any cost.
Toy Soldiers
After federal agents arrest a drug czar and put him on trial, the cartel leader's vicious son storms a prep school and takes its students hostage. They rebel against the armed intruders and try to take back their academy by any means necessary.
Blade Runner
In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.
The X-Files
Mulder and Scully, now taken off the FBI's X Files cases, must find a way to fight the shadowy elements of the government to find out the truth about a conspiracy that might mean the alien colonization of Earth.
I Am Number Four
A teenage fugitive with an incredible secret races to stay one step ahead of the mysterious forces seeking destroy him in this sci-fi action thriller. With three dead and one on the run, the race to find the elusive Number Four begins. Outwardly normal teen John Smith never gets too comfortable in the same identity, and along with his guardian, Henri, he is constantly moving from town to town. With each passing day, John gains a stronger grasp on his extraordinary new powers, and his bond to the beings that share his fantastic fate grows stronger.
Multiverse
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.
More Movies Like The Manhattan Project
WarGames
High school student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Department of Defense's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his friend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.
2073
Inspired by Chris Marker's iconic 1962 featurette La Jetée; the year is 2073—a not-so-distant dystopian future—and the setting is New San Francisco, the scorched-earth tech-dominant police state where democracy and personal freedom have been well and truly obliterated.
After the Dark
At an international school in Jakarta, a philosophy teacher challenges his class of twenty graduating seniors to choose which ten of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the event of a nuclear apocalypse.
My Science Project
His high school teacher issues an ultimatum: turn in a science project or flunk. So Mike Harlan scavenges a military base's junk pile for a suitable gizmo. He finds one... and unwittingly unleashes the awesome power and energy of the unknown. Twisted dimensions. Time warps. A fantastic realm where the past, present, and future collide in a whirling vortex of startling adventure and superlative special effects.
From Beyond
The Resonator, a powerful machine that can control the sixth sense, has killed its creator and sent his associate into an insane asylum. When a psychiatrist becomes determined to continue the experiment, she unwittingly opens the door to a hostile parallel universe.
Tau
Held captive in a futuristic smart house, a woman hopes to escape by befriending the A.I. program that controls the house.
Gossip
For a class project, three college students decide to invent an unfounded rumor about the most popular girl on campus. But as the rumor spreads, it begins to spiral out of control.
Critters 2
Three bounty hunters from space fly back to the town of Grovers Bend, hoping to save local residents from a new batch of Critter eggs.
The Peacemaker
When a train carrying atomic warheads mysteriously crashes in the former Soviet Union, a nuclear specialist discovers the accident is really part of a plot to cover up the theft of the weapons. Assigned to help her recover the missing bombs is a crack Special Forces Colonel.
The Saint
Simon Templar (The Saint), is a thief for hire, whose latest job to steal the secret process for cold fusion puts him at odds with a traitor bent on toppling the Russian government, as well as the woman who holds its secret.
Twilight's Last Gleaming
A renegade USAF general, Lawrence Dell, escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana and threatens to provoke World War 3 unless the President reveals details of a secret meeting held just after the start of the Vietnam War between Dell and the then President's most trusted advisors.
Prodigy
Jimmy is a committed child psychologist who uses his own playbook, but when he is brought in to work with Ellie, he is completely unprepared for his subject—a 9-year-old psychopathic genius with nothing to lose. As he begins to understand the extent of her capabilities and the fate that has been planned for her, he struggles to overcome her defenses before it is too late for them both.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Manhattan Project (1986): Science Fiction and Thriller themes, similar narrative structure, and comparable emotional depth. NoBadPicks uses a combination of TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface films most likely to resonate with fans of The Manhattan Project.
See full details for The Manhattan Project (1986)