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Movies that feel like The Abyss (2023)

If you loved The Abyss, the closest films we have are Furie (2019), Merantau (2009) and Mother's Day (2023). All three share The Abyss' tense and kinetic feel, which is what we rank on before quality. 9 of the 12 picks below are included with a subscription right now on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and ARROW and others, checked against today's data.

As the Swedish town of Kiruna sinks, Frigga finds herself torn between her family and her job as security chief at the world's largest underground mine.

5.3 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Richard Holmtensecontemplativekinetic
Stream it:Netflix

When is The Abyss streaming? →

If The Abyss hit the spot, these will too

Furie poster
Furie
2019 · dir. Le Van Kiet
🍅 95%6.3action · drama · thriller

The same mix in both: tension, then stillness

When a little girl is kidnapped by a trafficking ring, they soon find they messed with the wrong child. Her mother, a notorious former gang leader, is close on their trail and will go to any lengths to bring her child home.

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Merantau poster
Merantau
2009 · dir. Gareth Evans
6.7action · drama · thriller

Kinetic thriller, and it commits to that

In Minangkabau, West Sumatera, Yuda a skilled practitioner of Silat Harimau is in the final preparations to begin his "Merantau" a century's old rites-of-passage to be carried out by the community's young men that will see him leave the comforts of his idyllic farming village and make a name for himself in the bustling city of Jakarta.

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Mother's Day poster
Mother's Day
2023 · dir. Mateusz Rakowicz
5.3thriller · action

Action built on tension, twice over

The difference: Not nearly as contemplative as The Abyss

Nina, a former NATO special operations agent living in hiding, has to use all her deadly skills to rescue her son who has been kidnapped by ruthless gangsters. Finding Max is a double opportunity for her. A chance to feel the adrenaline rush again, and an opportunity to get back into the life of the son she had to abandon years ago.

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Don poster
Don
2006 · dir. Farhan Akhtar
7.2action · drama · thriller

Drama with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

DCP DeSilva sees a way to bring to justice the feared head of a criminal empire by recruiting a man named Vijay, who looks exactly like the crime boss. The ruse works too well, and soon Vijay finds his life in danger when DeSilva, the only one who knows his true identity, dies.

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Soulcatcher poster
Soulcatcher
2023 · dir. Daniel Markowicz
3.7action · thriller

Both lean on momentum more than on thriller

A military contractor hired to seize a weapon that turns people into savage killers seeks revenge when his brother falls victim to the device.

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Darkland: The Return poster
Darkland: The Return
2023 · dir. Fenar Ahmad
6.3thriller · action

Tense action in both cases

Seven years ago, Zaid went to war against the Copenhagen underworld to avenge his dead brother. His identity as a respected doctor of cardiology and life as a family man is but a fading dream, and in prison Zaid suffers the loss of his son Noah, whom he barely knows. When a police agent approaches Zaid and offers him a deal to be released in exchange for infiltrating the Copenhagen underworld, he sees his chance to reclaim the remnants of the family life he left behind. But everything has a price, and Zaid realizes that he has now seriously endangered his son's life. After all, once you become part of the underworld, is there any way out?

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Metro poster
Metro
2013 · dir. Anton Megerdichev
6.4action · thriller

Both lean on momentum more than on drama

Terror strikes the underground train system in Moscow in the form of a flood from a collapsed tunnel. The film follows a diverse group of Moscow citizens who find themselves trapped in the city’s underground rail network, their train derailed and virtually crushed after an aging tunnel collapses. Amongst this band of survivors is softly spoken surgeon Andrey (Sergei Puskepalis), whose wife is having an affair with the conceited businessman Vlad (Anatoly Beliy). Fate brings these two men together on the same doomed train, but there is little time to resolve their differences, as the tunnel begins to quickly fill with water, forcing them to work together with the others and find a way back to the surface.

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Haywire poster
Haywire
2011 · dir. Steven Soderbergh
🍅 80%5.8action · thriller · drama

Thriller with a pulse of stillness, in both cases

A black ops soldier seeks payback after she is betrayed and left for dead.

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Road House poster
Road House
2024 · dir. Doug Liman
6.2action · thriller · drama

Drama approached the same way

Ex-UFC fighter Dalton takes a job as a bouncer at a Florida Keys roadhouse, only to discover that this paradise is not all it seems.

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The Coldest Game poster
The Coldest Game
2019 · dir. Łukasz Kośmicki
🍅 17%6.2drama · thriller

Cut from the same thriller cloth

Warsaw, Poland, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. Josh Mansky, a troubled math genius and former US chess champion, is recruited to hold a dangerous public match against the Soviet champion, while playing the deadly game of espionage hidden in the darkest shadows of a hostile territory.

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Kill Boksoon poster
Kill Boksoon
2023 · dir. Byun Sung-hyun
🍅 79%6.6action · drama · thriller

Both are action through and through

The difference: Leans harder into crime than The Abyss does

At work, she's a renowned assassin. At home, she's a single mom to a teenage daughter. Killing? That's easy. It's parenting that's the hard part.

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Breaking Surface poster
Breaking Surface
2020 · dir. Joachim Hedén
🍅 100%6.1drama · thriller

The drama is handled with the same confidence

Two Swedish/Norwegian half sisters go on a winter diving trip in Northern Norway, when they get trapped after a rockslide.

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The best-reviewed films that share The Abyss’ defining feeling.