NoBadPicks

Movies Like Bates Motel

If you loved Bates Motel's Horror and 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

Ghost Stories
6.4

Ghost Stories

2018

Professor Philip Goodman devotes his life to exposing phony psychics and fraudulent supernatural shenanigans. His skepticism soon gets put to the test when he receives news of three chilling and inexplicable cases -- disturbing visions in an abandoned asylum, a car accident deep in the woods and the spirit of an unborn child. Even scarier -- each of the macabre stories seems to have a sinister connection to the professor's own life.

Short Cuts
7.2

Short Cuts

1993

Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.

The Mothman Prophecies
6.2

The Mothman Prophecies

2002

Reporter John Klein is plunged into a world of impossible terror and unthinkable chaos when fate draws him to a sleepy West Virginia town whose residents are being visited by a great winged shape that sows hideous nightmares and fevered visions.

The Haunting
7.1

The Haunting

1963

Dr. John Markway recruits three strangers for a sleep-disorder study at the eerie and isolated Hill House. It soon becomes clear his real interest lies in the mansion itself and its sinister history, as they are forced to confront the nature of its horror…

Spider
6.6

Spider

2002

A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood.

Love Liza
6.4

Love Liza

2002

Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to huffing gasoline fumes and remote control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.

A Man Called Otto
7.8

A Man Called Otto

2022

When a lively young family moves in next door, grumpy widower Otto Anderson meets his match in a quick-witted, pregnant woman named Marisol, leading to an unlikely friendship that turns his world upside down.

Psycho II
6.5

Psycho II

1983

Norman Bates is declared sane and released from the facility in which he was being held, despite the complaints of Lila Loomis, sister of his most famous victim. Is he really cured, or will he kill again?

More Movies Like Bates Motel

Elizabethtown
6.2

Elizabethtown

2005

Drew Baylor is fired after causing his shoe company to lose hundreds of millions of dollars. To make matters worse, he's also dumped by his girlfriend. On the verge of ending it all, Drew gets a new lease on life when he returns to his family's small Kentucky hometown after his father dies. Along the way, he meets a flight attendant with whom he falls in love.

Black Butterfly
6.2

Black Butterfly

2017

Paul is a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who picks up a drifter and offers him a place to stay. However, when the deranged stranger takes Paul hostage and forces him to write, their unhinged relationship brings buried secrets to light.

Just Like Heaven
7.0

Just Like Heaven

2005

Shortly after David Abbott moves into his new San Francisco digs, he has an unwelcome visitor on his hands: winsome Elizabeth Masterson, who asserts that the apartment is hers -- and promptly vanishes. When she starts appearing and disappearing at will, David thinks she's a ghost, while Elizabeth is convinced she's alive.

Stonehearst Asylum
6.9

Stonehearst Asylum

2014

An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.

The Double
6.5

The Double

2014

An awkward office drone becomes increasingly unhinged after a charismatic and confident look-alike takes a job at his workplace and seduces the woman he desires.

The Discovery
6.3

The Discovery

2017

In the near future, due to a breakthrough scientific discovery by Dr. Thomas Harbor, there is now definitive proof of an afterlife. While countless people have chosen suicide to reset their existence, others try to decide what it all means. Among them is Dr. Harbor's son Will, who has arrived at his father's isolated compound with a mysterious young woman named Isla. There, they discover the strange acolytes who help Dr. Harbor with his experiments.

Bringing Out the Dead
6.6

Bringing Out the Dead

1999

Once called "Father Frank" for his efforts to rescue lives, Frank Pierce sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired, calling in sick, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he couldn't help, yet cannot quit the job on his own.

A Ghost Story
7.1

A Ghost Story

2017

Recently deceased, a white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to console his bereft wife, only to find that in his spectral state he has become unstuck in time, forced to watch passively as the life he knew and the woman he loves slowly slip away.

Horns
6.3

Horns

2013

In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to strange horns sprouting from his temples.

Nightmare Alley
7.0

Nightmare Alley

2021

An ambitious carnival man with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words hooks up with a female psychologist who is even more dangerous than he is.

The Invisible Man
7.1

The Invisible Man

2020

When Cecilia's abusive ex takes his own life and leaves her his fortune, she suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of coincidences turn lethal, Cecilia works to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.

Grave Encounters
6.3

Grave Encounters

2011

A crew from a paranormal reality television show lock themselves in a haunted psychiatric hospital. They search for evidence of paranormal activity as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.

Why These Movies Are Similar

These recommendations share core qualities with Bates Motel (1987): Horror and 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 Bates Motel.

See full details for Bates Motel (1987)

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