Movies Like The River
If you loved The River's Drama 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 Secret: Dare to Dream
A widow with three children hires a handyman to fix her house during a major storm. When not doing home repairs, he shares his philosophy of believing in the power of the universe to deliver what we want.
The Safety of Objects
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Bastard Out of Carolina
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
That Evening Sun
An aging Tennessee farmer returns to his homestead and must confront a family betrayal, the reappearance of an old enemy, and the loss of his farm.
Come Sunday
Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius
The story of golf icon and legend, Bobby Jones, who retired from competition at the tender age of 28.
Fast Girls
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
The Girl Who Believes in Miracles
When Sara hears a preacher say faith can move mountains, she starts praying. Suddenly people in her town are mysteriously healed! But fame soon takes its toll – can Sara’s family save her before it’s too late?
More Movies Like The River
Hunting Season
When a reclusive survivalist and his daughter rescue a mysterious, wounded woman from a river, they become entangled in a deadly web of violence and revenge, forcing them to confront a brutal criminal to survive.
TalhotBlond
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
El Chicano
A pair of twin brothers from East L.A. choose to live their lives differently and end up on opposite sides of the law.
Wild River
A young bureaucrat for the Tennessee Valley Authority goes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of a stubborn octogenarian from her home on an island in the river, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.
40 Acres
Hailey Freeman and her family are the last descendants of African American farmers who settled in rural Canada after the Civil War. In a famine-decimated near future, they now struggle to safeguard their farm, as they make one last stand against a vicious militia hell-bent on taking their 40 Acres.
An Autumn Romance
When librarian Taylor Harris suddenly loses her job, she decides to visit her brother in a small town in Montana. There, she gets involved in the fight to help save her brother's hotel from tycoon Joel Sheenan, who wants to renovate it.
Flash of Genius
In this David vs. Goliath drama based on a true story, college professor Robert Kearns goes up against the giants of the auto industry when they fail to give him credit for inventing intermittent windshield wipers. Kearns doggedly pursues recognition for his invention, as well as the much-deserved financial rewards for the sake of his wife and six kids.
Origin
While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience.
Hardball
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
Iron Jawed Angels
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
The Enforcer
A noir thriller set in Miami, the film follows an enforcer who discovers his femme fatale boss has branched out into cyber sex trafficking, putting a young runaway he’s befriended at risk. He sacrifices everything to save the young girl from the deadly organization he’s spent his life building.
Supercross
Faced with the suspicious death of their father, two brothers must motivate one another to get back on their bikes and take the Las Vegas Motocross Championships by storm.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The River (1984): Drama 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 River.
See full details for The River (1984)