Movies Like The Pen

If you liked The Pen (2025), a movie directed by Ethan McSweeny, here are 20 movies with a similar feel, based on TMDB's recommendations. Each one links to its cast, trailer and where it's streaming.

1
The Girl in the Book (2015)
★ 5.8/10
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
2
The Raven (1935)
★ 6.6/10
A brilliant but deranged neurosurgeon becomes obsessively fixated on a judge's daughter. With the help of an escaped criminal whose face he has surgically deformed, the mad man lures her, her father, and her fiancé to…
3
Saint Maud (2020)
★ 6.5/10
Having recently found God, self-effacing young nurse Maud arrives at a plush home to care for Amanda, a hedonistic dancer left frail from a chronic illness. When a chance encounter with a former colleague throws up…
4
Turtles All the Way Down (2024)
★ 7.2/10
17-year-old Aza Holmes tries be a good daughter, a good friend, and a good student, all while navigating an endless barrage of invasive, obsessive thoughts that she cannot control. When she reconnects with Davis, her…
5
The Unforgivable (2021)
★ 7.4/10
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
6
Strange Weather (2016)
★ 5.9/10
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
7
Wardriver (2026)
★ 7.4/10
He’s a Wardriver: a hacker who steals from banks, not people—until he’s noticed. Now the money turns violent, and the woman caught in it could save him or kill them both.
8
The Double (2014)
★ 6.5/10
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.
9
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
★ 7.6/10
A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every…
10
Helen (2009)
★ 6.5/10
On the outside, Helen has it all – a loving family and a successful career – but when her suppressed mental illness resurfaces, the world crumbles around her. Crippled by depression, Helen finds solace through her…
11
Hostile (2018)
★ 6/10
Juliette, a lone survivor of an apocalyptic era, fights to survive against hunger, thirst, a broken leg and strange disturbing creatures that only come out at nighttime.
12
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
★ 7.6/10
Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the…
13
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2022)
★ 6.4/10
A young woman with psychokinetic powers breaks out of a Louisiana asylum and makes her way to New Orleans, where she falls into the city’s netherworld of misfits and miscreants.
14
Obsession (2026)
★ 8.2/10
After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.
15
Before I Fall (2017)
★ 7/10
Samantha Kingston has everything. Then, everything changes. After one fateful night, she wakes up with no future at all. Trapped into reliving the same day over and over, she begins to question just how perfect her…
16
Call Me Crazy: A Five Film (2013)
★ 7/10
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
17
I Believe in Unicorns (2015)
★ 6.7/10
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
18
Curve (2016)
★ 6.8/10
Clinging to a smooth, curved surface high above a sentient abyss, a woman tries to cover the few feet back to safety without losing purchase and falling to her death.
19
The Crush (1993)
★ 6.7/10
A precocious and obsessive teenager develops a crush on a naive writer with harrowing consequences.
20
Joe Versus the Volcano (1990)
★ 5.8/10
Hypochondriac Joe Banks finds out he has six months to live, quits his dead end job, musters the courage to ask his co-worker out on a date, and is then hired to jump into a volcano by a mysterious visitor.