Best movies like The Absent

On the outskirts of Birmingham and the margins of society the Billingham family perform extreme rituals and break social taboos as they muddle through a life decided by factors beyond their control. At times shocking and laced with an unsettling humor, three episodes unfold as a powerful evocation of the experience of growing up in a Black Country council flat.

When ex-con artist Harry claims that a secret treasure is hidden inside Candleshoe, an English estate, he creates an elaborate plan to find and steal the prize. By convincing a girl named Casey to impersonate the estate owner's long-lost granddaughter, Harry hopes to uncover the treasure's location. But when Casey has a change of heart, she must follow the clues and find the treasure, in order to save Candleshoe and stop Harry before it is too late.

On the outside, Sarah Miles appears to have it all: her husband is charming and successful and their daughter Megan is bright and engaging. Having put her once successful career as a published poet on hold to raise Megan, Sarah now shares her writing on her poetry blog. But there's a terrible truth lurking behind the doors of her suburban mansion… despite his polished persona, Sarah's husband is controlling, manipulative, and abusive. Isolated and desperate to escape her marriage, Sarah welcomes the newfound attention of one of her devoted fans, a bookish young woman named Lee Maxson. But as Sarah gets closer to Lee, she begins to discover that she’s found an ever more dangerous companion. Stars Cassandra Scerbo, Alex Paxton-Beesley, Scott Gibson.

As the real estate market is in a downward spiral, beautiful young realtor Lauren Baker gets the listing of a lifetime: a mansion on Chicago's exclusive Gold Coast has fallen into her lap and she is able to quickly find a cash buyer for the brother and sister who are selling their parents' estate. When the vendors turn out to be imposters and the real owners turn up murdered, Lauren realizes that she has fallen victim to a scam as well as a cover up to a murder. Lauren is determined to find out who deceived her and why.

Ana, an eight-year-old girl living in Madrid with her grandmother and two sisters, mourns the death of her mother.

Three restless slum boys are turned to a life of petty thievery, but when one of them expresses a hopeful desire to become a bullfighter, the others pool their energies to pull one big heist in order to finance their pal's dream.

Elisa has not seen her father Luis for nine years, but she receives a telegram from her sister Isabel in a moment of crisis of her marriage with Antonio telling that her father is ill and she decides to travel to the countryside of Madrid with Isabel and her brother-in-law Julián and their two children to visit Luis for his birthday. Elisa decides to stay with his father when her sister returns to Madrid with her family and she gets closer to Luis, understanding why he left her mother years ago. Later she tells him that Antonio cheated her with her best friend Sophie and their relationship has ended. When Antonio unexpectedly arrives in the house, Elisa takes a decision about her life.

While Montreal is in the throes of a string of kidnappings targeting young boys, ten-year-old Felix is finishing his school year in the seemingly quiet suburb where he lives. A sensitive boy with a vivid imagination, Felix is afraid of everything. Little by little, his imaginary demons begin to mirror those of the truly disturbing world around him.

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

Salva working as security guard in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Madrid. There he meets Leo, a girl who makes a living collecting cardboard. Gradually Salva be falling in love for the young, but the life of Leo holds a dark past.

Lucía, a club dancer on the run, takes refuge in a sinister building on the outskirts of Madrid where her sister Rocío lives with her daughter Alba.

Cristina is the perfect secretary. She helps her boss to get an important contract with an holand businessman. He goes to Madrid to get married with a spanish girl similar to Cristina, but she hesitates between the foreign and Lorenzo, her co-worker.

Grieving after the death of her young son Joseph, novelist Betty Fisher enters a dark depression. Hoping to bring her out of it, her mother Margot arranges to kidnap another child, Jose, to replace the son Betty lost. Although she knows it's wrong, Betty accepts Jose as her new son. Meanwhile, Jose's mother Carole is looking for her son with the help of her boyfriend Francois and some of his criminal cohorts.

Twenty years ago Danny Summer found his father hanging from the rafters on Christmas Eve. Ever since that night he has been plotting revenge. When Brian Hartwell moves into Jessica Michael's guesthouse, she has no idea that her new tenant has a deadly agenda to go with his new identity. Her daughter Laura doesn't trust him from the beginning but can't convince her mother that there's more to "The Perfect Tenant" than meets the eye.

A young woman is hired by a wealthy but sinister man to tutor his two children at the family's isolated estate. When the woman gets there, she finds that the two children are not quite what they seem to be--in fact, they are possessed by the spirits of the evil Quint and his lover.

Kate and her daughter Beth live alone in an isolated farmhouse in the woods, but when Kate slowly begins to suspect that something sinister is happening, her motherly instincts are put to the test.

Madrid, Spain, 1975; shortly after the end of the Franco dictatorship. Six months after the mysterious death of his lover, a prestigious tailor, a married woman visits the office of the young Germán Areta, a former police officer turned private detective, to request his professional services.

Victor works in a real estate agency in the well-known Chueca neighborhood of Madrid. He hides a terrible secret: he makes apartments available for sale by murdering the old ladies owners that live in them. Then, refurbishes and decorates the apartments to sell them to gay couples with high purchasing power. His ultimate objective is to transform Chueca into a kind of London Soho area.

Jack Palance stars as a self-serving, abusive boor who becomes stranded (along with his two children) by a thunderstorm, forcing them to take shelter in an isolated country estate owned by a group of mysterious and wealthy old dowagers. Seeing a golden opportunity, Palance soon turns to plundering their estate, but his plans collide with the secret activities of a Satanic snake-cult who carry out ritual sacrifices in the attic.

An American journalist who moves to Paris for her husband's job and raises a family there. As she tries to figure out how to balance her family and career — and battle the feelings that she is failing at both — she observes her French neighbors and friends to uncover the secrets behind parenting astonishingly well-behaved French children. She learns, however, that everyone, no matter how perfect they might appear, has their own problems.

A school closes due to heavy debt which brings the children into action by doing naughty deeds so as to persuade the real estate agency to reopen the school, and since this didn't work, they kidnap the school's owner in order to be heard.

José is a happily married executive, with children, a flat in Madrid and a house in the suburbs. It's Friday and the weekend seems to follow the usual pattern: football match with mates, travel to the mountains and family visit. Nevertheless, José feels no motivated by his routine, he no longer distinguishes leisure from their obligations, all of which result in an unexpected final decision by his attentive wife.

During a stormy night in the Scottish Highlands, two criminal brothers on the run seek refuge in a desolate farmhouse. But after taking the resident family captive, they find the house holds even darker secrets of its own.

A 12-year-old girl becomes jealous when her adoptive father develops a budding relationship with a woman and her teenage son.

Daniele is a young man from Sant’Erasmo, an island on the edges of the Venice Lagoon. He lives on his wits, isolated even from his peer group who are busy exploring an existence of pleasure-seeking expressed in the cult of the barchino (motorboat). This obsession focuses on the building of ever more powerful engines to transform the little lagoon launches into dangerously fast racing boats. Daniele too dreams of a record-breaking barchino, one that will take him to the top of the leader board, but everything he does to further his dream and win respect from the others turns out to be tragically counterproductive. The decline that erodes the relationships, environment and habits of a rootless generation is observed from the timeless perspective of the Venetian landscape and its island outskirts: the point of no return is a foolish, vestigial tale of male initiation. Violent and destined to fail, it explodes dragging the ghost city along on a psychedelic shipwreck.

In Game of LIfe, a children's soccer team is the common link for a multi-layered story giving a candid look into the intersecting lives of five families living in Los Angeles. Game of LIfe examines the complexities of racial and class divisions, and reveals that despite the fragile volatility of human relationships, family is what holds us together and unites us all.

A group of friends rent an isolated lake house owned by a fitness obsessed man with mysterious intentions.

14-year-old Leigh lives with her neglectful father on the outskirts of Brighton. She’s a talented gymnast, training hard for her first competition. When an older half-brother appears at her house one night, Leigh’s lonely existence is altered.

A badly abused girl of 6 is saved from having to be admitted to an institution by a dedicated Special Education teacher whose class she's been placed in until there is an opening in the hospital. In that time they form a strong bond and the child begins to heal. The teacher begins to think an institution is not what this child needs.

In a quiet southern town, several lives are changed forever when an isolated mute with a dark secret is admitted to a mental institution.

Adolescent Hector faces a major lifestyle change after moving into his aunt's flat in a blue-collar suburb of Madrid.

After a family moves into an old Victorian home, they discover a chest in the attic containing antiques tainted by a malevolent spirit. As the antiques slowly possess each family member, the spirit grows stronger, hellbent on kidnapping the children.

When a couple buys a scenic mountain retreat from a deceased woman's estate, her abusive son becomes vengeful about being uprooted from the only home he's ever known. Now, facing eviction, the son holds a grudge against the new owners and their children.

After a whirlwind courtship and marriage, a young woman, Audrey, relocates with her husband, Xander, to his hometown after the death of Xander's father. Immediately, Audrey begins to suspect that there may be more to her father-in-law's death than a simple accident, and Xander's sexy, seductress of a stepmother, Marlena, may hold the key.

One morning just like any other in Madrid, two perfect strangers, Sara and Jaime, are just two more people standing on an underground platform. A man falls onto the tracks as the train pulls up. For everyone there, it´s a tragic accident. But not for Sara. Horrified, she believes she saw Jaime push the victim onto the tracks. She decides to blackmail the killer. The hunter and her prey become involved in a perverse and increasingly intimate relationship, at a distance.