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 75%

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

Shutter Island (2010)

Fit 73%

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

World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
4

The Magdalene Sisters (2002)

Fit 69%

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

Three young Irish women struggle to maintain their spirits while they endure dehumanizing abuse as inmates of a Magdalene Sisters Asylum.
5

The Green Mile (1999)

Fit 68%

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.
6

Birdy (1984)

Fit 67%

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

Two young men are seriously affected by the Vietnam War. One of them has always been obsessed with birds - but now believes he really is a bird, and has been sent to a mental hospital. Can his friend help him pull through?
7

The Professor and the Madman (2019)

Fit 57%

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

Wake in Fright (1971)

Fit 52%

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

A young schoolteacher descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.
9

The Wonder (2022)

Fit 52%

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

Haunted by her past, a nurse travels from England to a remote Irish village in 1862 to investigate a young girl's supposedly miraculous fast.
10

The Outfit (1973)

Fit 35%

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

A two-bit criminal takes on the Mafia to avenge his brother's death. Earl Macklin is a small time criminal who is released from prison after an unsuccessful bank robbery only to discover that a pair of gunmen killed his brother.