Movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Name: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Released: 1975

10 films to watch after One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, ranked by how well they match its tone — not just its genre.

A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.

1

Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Fit 79%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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 thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.
2

Misery (1990)

Fit 70%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

After an accident, acclaimed novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by a nurse who claims to be his biggest fan. Her obsession takes a dark turn when she holds him captive in her remote Colorado home and forces him to write back to life the popular literary character he killed off.
3

The Green Mile (1999)

Fit 70%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
4

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Fit 64%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.
5

Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Fit 64%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Despondent over a painful estrangement from his daughter, trainer Frankie Dunn isn't prepared for boxer Maggie Fitzgerald to enter his life. But Maggie's determined to go pro and to convince Dunn and his cohort to help her.
6

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Fit 63%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.
7

The Professor and the Madman (2019)

Fit 60%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Professor James Murray begins work compiling words for the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary in the mid 19th century, and receives over 10,000 entries from a patient at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, Dr. William Minor.
8

Three Colors: Blue (1993)

Fit 53%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The wife of a famous composer survives a car accident that kills her husband and daughter. Now alone, she shakes off her old identity and explores her newfound freedom but finds that she is unbreakably bound to other humans, including her husband’s mistress, whose existence she never suspected.
9

Bad Education (2004)

Fit 50%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

When an old friend brings filmmaker Enrique Goded a semi-autobiographical script chronicling their adolescence, Enrique is forced to relive his youth spent at a Catholic boarding school. Weaving through past and present, the script follows a transvestite performer who reconnects with a grade school sweetheart. Spurred on by this chance encounter, the character reflects on her childhood sexual victimization and the trauma of closeting her sexual orientation.
10

Talk to Her (2002)

Fit 49%

Shares Drama with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Two men share an odd friendship while they care for two women who are both in deep comas.