Movies Like The Emerald Forest (1985)

The Emerald Forest is a 1985 action, adventure, drama film from John Boorman with a MovieMagicScore of 6.6/10. Here are 20 similar films, ranked by real viewer ratings — starting with Jungle and Fire on the Amazon.

Action Adventure Drama

Jungle

2017

In 1981, an enthusiastic young adventurer follows his dreams into the Bolivian Amazon jungle with two friends and a guide with a mysterious past. Their journey quickly turns into a terrifying ordeal as the darkest elements of human nature and the deadliest threats of the wilderness lead to an all-out fight for survival.

6.7

MagicScore

Fire on the Amazon

1993

When a well-known environmental researcher is murdered in the Amazon jungle, an arrogant photojournalist joins forces with a beautiful young activist to find out who is responsible. Along they way, they fall in love as they discover the men responsible for the killing would be more than willing to murder again if it will keep them quiet.

3.4

MagicScore

Surviving Progress

2011

Humanity’s ascent is often measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress is actually spiraling us downwards, towards collapse? Ronald Wright, whose best-seller, “A Short History Of Progress” inspired “Surviving Progress”, shows how past civilizations were destroyed by “progress traps”—alluring technologies and belief systems that serve immediate needs, but ransom the future. As pressure on the world’s resources accelerates and financial elites bankrupt nations, can our globally-entwined civilization escape a final, catastrophic progress trap? With potent images and illuminating insights from thinkers who have probed our genes, our brains, and our social behaviour, this requiem to progress-as-usual also poses a challenge: to prove that making apes smarter isn’t an evolutionary dead-end.

7.3

MagicScore

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

1972

A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.

7.5

MagicScore

The Mission

1986

When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.

7.4

MagicScore

Medicine Man

1992

An eccentric scientist in the Amazon jungle rejects his research assistant for being a woman, but as bulldozers threaten their work on a potential cancer cure, they learn to collaborate and begin to fall in love.

6.0

MagicScore

The Lost City of Z

2017

A true-life drama in the 1920s, centering on British explorer Col. Percy Fawcett, who discovered evidence of a previously unknown, advanced civilization in the Amazon and disappeared whilst searching for it.

6.4

MagicScore

Green Mansions

1959

A young Venezuelan idealist flees his native land to escape a revolution. Hoping to find peace, he goes to the mountains and the forests of the Amazon. There he encounters Rima, the Bird Girl, an orphan living a life of nature, who is feared by a local jungle tribe.

5.9

MagicScore

The Green Inferno

2013

A group of student activists travel from New York City to the Amazon to save the rainforest. However, once they arrive in this vast green landscape, they soon discover that they are not alone… and that no good deed goes unpunished.

5.7

MagicScore

#10

Cannibal Holocaust

1980

A New York University professor returns from a rescue mission to the Amazon rainforest with the footage shot by a lost team of documentarians who were making a film about the area's local cannibal tribes.

6.3

MagicScore

#11

Embrace of the Serpent

2015

The epic story of the first contact, encounter, approach, betrayal and, eventually, life-transcending friendship, between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman, last survivor of his people, and two scientists that, over the course of 40 years, travel through the Amazon in search of a sacred plant that can heal them. Inspired by the journals of the first explorers of the Colombian Amazon, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes.

7.7

MagicScore

#12

Little Indian, Big City

1994

Stephen, an international trader, tracks down his ex-wife Patricia in some Amazonian backwater. He needs her consent to a divorce so that he can marry Charlotte. Unfortunately, he discovers a son he didn’t know he had – Mimi-Siku. The young jungle boy yearns to see Paris so Stephen reluctantly agrees to take him back home with him for a few days. How will Mimi-Siku react to life in the great metropolis?

6.0

MagicScore

#13

El Dorado

1988

The story of an expedition down the Orinoco and Amazon rivers in 1560 by Spanish soldiers searching for the fabled city of gold, El Dorado.

6.0

MagicScore

#14

Without a Trace

1983

English professor Susan Selky lives alone in a Brooklyn apartment with her young son, Alex. When Alex fails to return home from school one afternoon, a frantic Selky contacts the police. Detective Al Menetti, a father himself, takes an interest in the case that quickly turns into an obsession. As a devastated Selky struggles to come to terms with Alex's disappearance, Menetti steps out from behind the badge to continue investigating.

5.2

MagicScore

#15

The Settlers

2023

Chile, early 20th century. José Menéndez, a wealthy landowner, hires three horsemen to mark out the perimeter of his extensive property and open a route to the Atlantic Ocean across vast Patagonia.

6.7

MagicScore

#16

Fitzcarraldo

1982

Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.

7.6

MagicScore

#17

The Pearl Button

2015

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

6.9

MagicScore

#18

A Mother's Instinct

2015

When a woman’s son goes missing and the prime suspect is released due to lack of evidence, she and her teenage daughter decide to play vigilante.

4.8

MagicScore

#19

The Lost Children

2024

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

7.5

MagicScore

#20

Never Let Go

2015

Former FBI agent, now single mother Lisa Brennan, takes a holiday to escape an unhappy love affair and painful family memories. But in a heartbeat, she is not only faced with a daughter kidnapped by human traffickers, but also faces murder charges and must keep one step ahead of the foreign police.

5.7

MagicScore

Frequently asked

What are the best movies like The Emerald Forest?

The top films similar to The Emerald Forest by MovieMagicScore are Jungle (6.7), Fire on the Amazon (3.4), Surviving Progress (7.3). Each shares action/adventure/drama themes and is ranked by real viewer ratings, not critics or studios.

Is The Emerald Forest worth watching?

The Emerald Forest holds a MovieMagicScore of 6.6/10 from 253 viewer ratings.

What kind of movie is The Emerald Forest?

The Emerald Forest (1985) is a action, adventure, drama film directed by John Boorman, starring Powers Boothe, Charley Boorman, Meg Foster.

Where can I find more recommendations like The Emerald Forest?

Browse the full ranked list above, or explore more action recommendations on MovieMagicScore, where every list is ordered by genuine viewer ratings.

Keep exploring

Movies like Jungle Movies like Fire on the Amazon Movies like Surviving Progress Movies like Aguirre, the Wrath of God Movies like The Mission Movies like Medicine Man

About movies like The Emerald Forest

This ranked list pairs The Emerald Forest (1985), a action and adventure and drama film from John Boorman, with similar titles by genre, theme and cast overlap (fans of Powers Boothe take note). Unlike critic-driven sites, every position here is ordered by MovieMagicScore — a rating built only from real viewers, with no studio marketing or paid placement. Scores update as more people rate, so the list stays current.

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