Movies Like The Small Town
If you loved The Small Town'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

Return to Peyton Place
Residents of the small town of Peyton Place aren't pleased when they realize they're the characters in local writer Allison MacKenzie's controversial first novel. A sequel to the hit 1957 film.

Julian Po
Christian Slater is a stranger who comes to a small town. The local citizens think he's up to no good. After bothering him for a while, he blurts out in frustration, that he is there to kill himself.

Some Came Running
A former novelist returns to his small Midwest town after serving in the Army during WWII, to the chagrin of his social-climbing brother, and becomes close with an easy-going professional gambler and torn between two very different women.

Judy & Punch
In the anarchic town of Seaside, nowhere near the sea, puppeteers Judy and Punch are trying to resurrect their marionette show. The show is a hit due to Judy's superior puppeteering but Punch's driving ambition and penchant for whisky lead to an inevitable tragedy that Judy must avenge.

Beautiful Girls
During a snowy winter in the small fictional town of Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts, a group of lifelong buddies hang out, drink and struggle to connect with the women who affect their decisions, dreams and desires.

Inferno
Eddie Lomax is a drifter who has been in a suicidal funk since the death of his close friend Johnny. Riding his motorcycle into a small desert town where Johnny once lived, Lomax is confronted by a gang of toughs, who beat him and steal his bike. However, Lomax is not a man to take an injustice lying down, and soon he begins exacting a violent revenge on the men who stole his motorcycle, with local handyman Jubal Early lending a hand and several area ladies offering aid and comfort.

Affliction
A small town policeman must investigate a suspicious hunting accident. The investigation and other events result in him slowly disintegrating mentally.

The Fugitive Kind
Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins, arrives at a small town and gets a job in a store run by Lady Torrence. Her husband, Jabe M. Torrance, is dying of cancer. Val is pursued by Carol Cutere, the enigmatic local tramp-of-good-family.
More Movies Like The Small Town

Stargirl
An unassuming high schooler finds himself inexplicably drawn to the free-spirited new girl, whose unconventional ways change how they see themselves…and their world.

Waitress
A small town waitress stuck in a lousy marriage finds love when an exciting out-of-towner enters her life.

Float
Waverly thought she had her future figured out: she’d start her medical residency in Toronto after a summer visit to her parents in Taipei. When her plans suddenly change, she makes an impulsive detour to a small Canadian town where she meets local lifeguard Blake. After he saves her from nearly drowning at a beach party, Blake offers to teach Waverly to swim, and as the lessons continue, the two unexpectedly find themselves falling in love.

A Tale of Three Sisters
A stagnant and gloomy village in the 1980s. Reyhan, Nurhan, and Havva, three sisters were sent to town as 'besleme' (foster child and maid). Since they fail their foster parents for different reasons, they are sent back to their father's house in their poor village. Deprived of their dreams of a better life, they try to hold on to each other.

Girl in the Box
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.

Housekeeping
In the Pacific Northwest during the 1950s, two young sisters whose mother has abandoned them wind up living with their Aunt Sylvie, whose views of the world and its conventions don't quite live up to most people's expectations.

Snow Angels
Waitress Annie has separated from her suicidal alcoholic husband, Glenn. Glenn has become an evangelical Christian, but his erratic attempts at getting back into Annie's life have alarmed her. High school student Arthur works at Annie's restaurant, growing closer to a new kid in town, Lila, after class. When Glenn and Annie's daughter go missing, the whole town searches for her, as he increasingly spirals out of control.

Fatima
In 1917, outside the parish of Fátima, Portugal, a 10-year-old girl and her two younger cousins witness multiple visitations of the Virgin Mary, who tells them that only prayer and suffering will bring an end to World War I. As secularist government officials and Church leaders try to force the children to recant their story, word of the sighting spreads across the country, inspiring religious pilgrims to flock to the site in hopes of witnessing a miracle..

The Best of Me
A pair of former high school sweethearts reunite after many years when they return to visit their small hometown.

Sunshine State
A woman and her new husband returns to her hometown roots in coastal northern Florida, and must deal with family, business, and encroaching real estate development.

Vizontele
The story takes place in the small town of Hakkari in Turkey at the beginning of the '70s. The time has come to bring technology to that small town. The first Television (called Visiontele by the citizens) arrives and the chaos begins.

I Saw the Sun
In the southeast region of Turkey, the Kurdish family of Altun lives in a small mountainside village plagued by a 25-year war that makes their daily lives a hellish struggle. As the war intensifies, the family is forced to migrate west to the city of Istanbul.
Why These Movies Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with The Small Town (1997): 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 Small Town.
See full details for The Small Town (1997)