15 Best Movies Like Girl In The Basement You Need To See

Summary

• Movies like
  Girl in the Basement
  offer a chilling look at the mindset of abusive parents and abductors, with empathy for the trapped victim.
• Similar films, like
  Split
  and
  Run
  , delve into captivity and abuse themes, showcasing the disturbing depths individuals can sink into.
• The harrowing stories depicted in movies like
  Girl in the Basement
  , while fictional, are often based on true crime events that shock viewers.

This article discusses films with themes of abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence.

Movies like Girl in the Basement are often shocking and disturbing, as they are fictional retellings of harrowing true-crime stories. In the case of Girl in the Basement, it tells the disturbing tale of a young woman kidnapped and held captive by her father for over two decades. While there, he sexually abuses her and forces her to have seven children, the last of whom dies after childbirth. Part of Lifetime’s “Ripped from the Headlines” series, Girl in the Basement presents a harrowing scenario, and one that most viewers were horrified to learn was true.

Girl in the Basement is based on the true story of Austrian Josef Fritzl, although it changes the location to America, depicting the captivity of Sarah Cody (Stefanie Scott) by her father Don (Judd Nelson). As chilling as it is compelling, Girl in the Basement offers an unflinching look at the mindset of an abusive parent and abductor while depicting the plight of the trapped victim with empathy and deliberation. As disturbing as the film was, many movies like Girl in the Basement out there, and each one is just as heartwrenching, shocking, and difficult to digest.

Girl in the Basement
is available to stream on Hulu.

15 Berlin Syndrome (2017)

A Young Photographer Is Abducted By An Obsessed Teacher

Released in 2017, Berlin Syndrome is based on the book of the same name by Melanie Joosten. The story follows a young female photographer named Clare (Teresa Palmer) who meets a local English teacher while backpacking through Australia. The teacher, Andi (Max Riemelt), and Clare sleep together, and when the woman wakes up, she finds herself locked in, unable to get out. When Andi returns, he apologizes for forgetting to leave the key, and Clare goes out with him again.

Things get worse when Clare realizes that Andi will not let her go and demands her loyalty and love. The movie’s title is based on the term Stockholm Syndrome, where a person starts to accept their captor’s demands and eventually submits to the horrors of being kidnapped. Much like The Girl in the Basement, the film follows Clare as she finds some way to escape. Berlin Syndrome, shot in Australia and France, received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for several Australian film awards.

14 Chained (2012)

A Boy Is Kidnapped By A Serial Killer & Is Forced To Clean Up Murder Scenes

In The Girl in the Basement, a father abducts his own daughter and keeps her locked away in the basement while he sexually assaults her. In Chained, another horrific story is told as a serial killer murders a young mother and then spares her son. However, he kidnaps the boy and chains him up in his basement. While held captive, the boy is raised to believe the serial killer is his father and is also forced to clean up the blood mess after the killer brings the victims home and kills them.

What is horrifying about this movie is that the victim ends up in a very bad place in the end. In The Girl in the Basement, the woman escapes and goes on with her life as best she knows how. In Chained, the boy is raised to believe he is the heir apparent to the serial killer, and from the look of it, that might be what is next for the young man. Vincent D’Onofrio turns in a masterful role as the killer and Chained received positive reviews, although the ending soured some critics.

13 The Girl Next Door (2007)

A Woman Tortures & Murders Her Niece

The Girl Next Door is based on a true-crime case and is based on the book that Jack Ketchum wrote about the horrific event. In the real-life event, a single mother and heavy drinker named Ruth gained custody of her nieces Meg and Susan and then did the unthinkable. She tortured both young girls and allowed the neighborhood boys to come over and join in. They beat her, burned her, sexually assaulted her, and almost starved her to death. By the end, Meg was dead, and the police didn’t catch them until it was too late.

The movie, directed by Gregory M. Wilson, is a very hard watch. It follows the story pretty accurately and shows the slow torture and abuse that Meg had to endure before she finally succumbs to the horrors. The story is also told in a flashback format from the point of view of one of the boys who tried to help her escape unsuccessfully. Both The Girl Next Door and The Girl in the Basement tell terrifying and horrible stories about the abuse of children by the people who were supposed to protect them.

12 The Lovely Bones (2009)

A Girl’s Ghost Can’t Leave After Her Rape & Murder

The Lovely Bones is a supernatural take on a story like The Girl in the Basement. However, in this case, the girl doesn’t get to escape after years of sexual abuse. Instead, her abuser kills her after he assaults her and leaves her where no one can find her. This leaves her parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) devastated and unwilling to let her go. That is the problem, too, as the girl is still there as a ghost.

Saoirse Ronan plays Susie, the murdered girl, who has to find a way to contact the living to help them move on before she can. The movie is based on the heartbreaking novel by Alice Sebold, and it sees Susie trying to find a way to contact her living parents – or her sister, who senses something is there – to lead them to her body so they can finally let go and move on with their lives. This is one of Peter Jackson’s smaller, more personal movies, and earned Stanley Tucci a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

11 Hide And Seek (2005)

A Girl Faces Terrors When She & Her Father Move Into A New Home

Hide and Seek is a 2005 thriller that plays as a film about a father who will do anything to protect his daughter. Robert De Niro plays a man who moves into a new home with his daughter (Dakota Fanning). However, soon, strange things start to happen, and dead bodies start to begin piling up. Both father and daughter seem to reach out for help, but it isn’t until the twist ending that viewers realize the movie is playing a different game and the killer is not who anyone could have expected.

The movie also has several alternate endings that show how the events affected young Emily, as she turned out to be messed up in all but one of the endings. The movie is similar to The Girl in the Basement because both take a young girl who was supposed to be able to trust her father and then put them in terrible spots. In both cases, they realized their trust was betrayed all along. While it didn’t get the best reviews, it remains a spooky and mind-twisting thriller with a great performance by Fanning.

10 Split (2016)

M. Night Shyamalan’s Shocking Kidnapping Movie

Writer and director M. Night Shyamalan achieved a return to form with his twisty thriller Split. The second installment in the Unbreakable trilogy, the movie holds a familiar premise to Girl in the Basement, with three teenagers kidnapped and held in an underground complex by a mentally unstable stranger. The abductor, Kevin Wendell Crumb, (James McAvoy), is revealed to have dissociative identity disorder (DID), housing 24 distinct personalities within his mind.

One of the imprisoned, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy), seeks to escape by maneuvering the different personalities to her end. While its inventive premise is compelling, Split has been criticized for its portrayal of people with DID, who tend to be non-violent. However, it’s this criticism that also makes it similar to Girl in the Basement. Kevin’s treatment of his captors is truly shocking, although they — thankfully — aren’t held hostage for anywhere near as long as Sara is held captive by Don. Equally thankfully, Split isn’t based on a true story.

Split
is currently available to stream on Netflix.

9 Run (2020)

A Chilling Look At Munchausen’s By Proxy

A thriller from the sharp team behind Missing and Searching, Run depicts the story of a teenage girl who begins to suspect her overbearing mother is harboring a dark secret. The film maintains an incredible momentum, and it’s gratifying to watch the wheelchair-using Chloe (Kiera Allen) improvise her way out of increasingly steep odds using only her wits. Clocking in at a tight 90 minutes, Run is a powerhouse of tension and control, boasting an 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a deeply unnerving performance from Sarah Paulson as Chloe’s mom.

Just like Girl in the Basement, Run is a chilling depiction of the inversion of everything a caring parent should be. Just like Don, Sarah Paulson’s Diane hurts her child in some of the worst ways possible (though a twist reveals their relationship may not be all that it seems in Run, whereas Don is Sara’s biological father in Girl in the Basement). Where they differ is that Run isn’t based on a true story, though it does delve into the harrowing reality of Munchausen’s by Proxy, a condition that causes adults to make children in their care deliberately ill.

Run
is available to stream on Hulu.

8 Don’t Breathe (2016)

A Man Tortures Three People Who Break Into His Home

Don’t Breathe follows a trio of young thieves who break into the house of a visually impaired man, only to discover he is a ruthless killing machine with a horrifying secret. This tense film focuses on the darkness lurking in the suburbs, displaying endless wellsprings of twisted creativity as it transforms the seemingly ordinary home into a palace of horrors. The film was a great success, both critically and commercially, garnering an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes and spawning a sequel, Don’t Breathe 2, that saw Stephen Lang return as the brutal killer.

The incestuous themes of
Girl in the Basement
are thankfully absent from
Don’t Breathe,
though Stephen Lang’s Nordstrom has an equally disturbing holding cell in the cellar of his home, just like Don.

While the plots of both movies are quite different, Don’t Breathe is a movie like Girl in the Basement thanks to its unflinching realism, and its depiction of just how far into depravity some individuals are capable of sinking. The incestuous themes of Girl in the Basement are thankfully absent from Don’t Breathe, though Stephen Lang’s Nordstrom has an equally disturbing holding cell in the cellar of his home, just like Don. There are also similar moments of sexual assault and forced pregnancy, and they’re just as difficult to sit through as Girl in the Basement at points.

7 Abducted: The Carlina White Story (2012)

Another Movie From Lifetime’s ‘Ripped From The Headlines’ Banner

Another “Ripped from the Headlines” Lifetime movie, Abducted: The Carlina White Story follows a young woman who solves her own kidnapping and reunites with her family after being taken from a hospital 23 years prior. The film faithfully depicts the abduction story and successfully handles the sensational subject matter with grace and nuance. As to be expected given that they’re both from the same series and based on true stories, there are many similarities between Abducted: The Carlina White Story and Girl in the Basement.

The film is elevated from standard Lifetime movie fare by a strong central performance from Keke Palmer as Carlina White. Palmer powerfully conveys the complex emotions caught up in the discovery that her loving mother is a kidnapper. For this reason, Abducted: The Carlina White Story regularly appears on lists of best Lifetime true stories.

6 The Black Phone (2022)

A Disturbing Abduction Horror With Supernatural Elements

Imbuing the classic abduction story with a supernatural twist, Scott Derrickson’s The Black Phone follows a young boy, Finney (Mason Thames), who is kidnapped and held in a basement by a mask-donning villain known only as “The Grabber” (Ethan Hawke). Finney’s only hope lies in the solitary black phone residing in the basement, from which he hears the guiding voices of the Grabber’s past victims.

While
The Black Phone
doesn’t contain the harrowing elements such as Don being Sara’s father, or the gratuitious levels of sexual assault, it is nevertheless disturbing in its own way.

Like Girl in the Basement, The Black Phone proves utterly engrossing as it tracks its protagonist’s captivity and numerous escape attempts. The supernatural premise offers some genuine scares, as does Hawke in his unsettling performance as the Grabber. The original story was written by Joe Hill, the son of legendary horror author Stephen King. While The Black Phone doesn’t contain the harrowing elements such as Don being Sara’s father, or the gratuitious levels of sexual assault, it is nevertheless disturbing in its own way — especially for viewers with children of their own.

5 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

The World Of Cloverfield Becomes A Claustrophobic Thriller

When it comes to movies like Girl in the Basement, the sci-fi Cloverfield franchise doesn’t seem like the most obviously similar. However, the 2016 sequel to Cloverfield, 10 Cloverfield Lane, captures much of the claustrophobia and tension of Sara’s situation in Girl in the Basement, both because of the setting and because of the chilling antagonist (Howard, played to perfection by John Goodman). When Michelle wakes up at 10 Cloverfield Lane, two men tell her there has been a massive attack on the United States, and they cannot leave the underground bunker.

It’s a tense, enigmatic film in which Michelle searches for the truth behind the supposed attack while navigating the charged, dangerous dynamic between herself, fellow survivor Emmett, and the bunker’s unstable owner, Howard. Winstead’s Michelle is intrepid and instantly likable, but Goodman’s powerful performance makes this thriller crackle with sinister energy. It barely connects to other Cloverfield movies, but it does resonate well with viewers seeking a similar (if notably less distressing) movie to Girl in the Basement.

4 Mommie Dearest (1981)

A Classic Abduction Story Starring Faye Dunaway

Like Girl in the Basement, Mommie Dearest is a harrowing true story of parental abuse. Based on the bestselling memoir by Christina Crawford, the film relates the history of her years of abuse, control, and manipulation by her movie star mother, Joan Crawford. The film was polarizing upon its release, due to its unrelentingly dark tone and the over-the-top acting of its star, Faye Dunaway. However, Mommie Dearest holds up today as a cult classic due to its heightened camp style and Dunaway’s memorable performance.

While the scenario of
Mommie Dearest
has clear similarities to
Girl in the Basement,
the two are remarkably different in tone.

While the scenario of Mommie Dearest has clear similarities to Girl in the Basement, the two are remarkably different in tone. Mommie Dearest was originally marketed as being a down-to-earth retelling of the notorious book, the levels of melodrama in the performance actually led Paramount to retool their marketing strategy, presenting it instead as — shocking as it seems, given the subject matter — an intensely dark comedy. This is a notable difference to Girl in the Basement, though the levels of abuse in Mommie Dearest are also considerably less intense.

3 Panic Room (2002)

David Fincher’s Movie About A Home Invasion

A home invasion film from thriller master David Fincher, Panic Room sees a mother and daughter seek refuge from three intruders by hiding in the titular part of their home. Unfortunately, what the thieves want is in that very panic room. While Girl in the Basement is about getting out, Panic Room is about keeping in, but both strike the same chord of fear by investigating the invasion of evil into the home.

This taut thriller is helped by an all-star cast including Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and a young Kristen Stewart. Panic Room has none of the themes of parental abuse that many movies like Girl in the Basement do, but it taps into the same nailbiting claustrophobia by turning the central character’s home — a place where they should be their safest — into a prison and potential tomb.

2 Misery (1990)

Based On Stephen King’s Classic Novel

Based on the bestselling book by Stephen King, Misery is considered a classic of the captive thriller genre follows the story of novelist Paul Sheldon (James Caan), who is rescued from a car wreck by an avid fan named Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). However, while recovering from his wounds in the woman’s remote home, Sheldon begins to fear the passionate heights of her obsession. There are many incredibly shocking scenes throughout Misery, most notably the “hobbling” moment where Annie breaks Paul’s ankles with a sledgehammer to prevent his escape.

Much like Girl in the Basement, Misery provides a chilling portrait of the psychology of a captor caught up in feelings of love, wrath, and possession. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her iconic performance. It’s in the similarities between Don and Annie that Misery stands out among movies like Girl in the Basement. Both are presented as unyieldingly psychotic, and on first viewing it’s genuinely terrifying to watch them, as there’s little to indicate that either character has a limit on how much torment they’re willing to inflict on their captives.

1 Room (2015)

Room Is Also Based On The True Story Behind Girl In The Basement

Based on the same story that inspired Girl in the Basement, 2015’s Room is a powerful drama from the perspective of Jack, a young boy whose mother gives birth to him while trapped in the basement of the man who abducted her. The story follows their escape, Jack’s first interaction with the real world, and his attempts at understanding his mother’s trauma.

Thoughtful, beautiful, and often tense, Room is a potent examination of innocence, isolation, and the consequences of captivity. Brie Larson took home the Oscar for Best Actress Oscar for her performance. While both movies are based on the harrowing true story of Joseph and Elisabeth Fritzl, Room looks at events from a markedly different perspective, focusing more on the aftermath of the capture rather than the captor’s crimes. However, despite this key difference, Room remains one of the most similar movies to Girl in the Basement released so far.