Films and TV shows that feel like Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen

A chilling first-person confession from a killer inspired by the Starkweather murders, told in flat, unrepentant calm across an empty American plain.

1. Badlands (1973): Terrence Malick's film is directly based on the Starkweather–Fugate killings, with a similarly detached killer on the plains.
2. Natural Born Killers (1994): A lurid, satirical take on the murderous young couple on the road and the media that mythologizes them.
3. In Cold Blood (1967): Black-and-white Midwestern true-crime tragedy of killers on the run, ending in execution.
4. Bonnie and Clyde (1967): The archetypal outlaw-couple crime spree, romantic until it turns fatal.
5. Nebraska (2013): Alexander Payne's black-and-white drive across the bleak Great Plains shares the song's emptiness and place.
6. True Detective (2014): Season one's dark, confessional Southern gothic mood of violence and moral rot echoes the song's cold voice.
7. Fargo (1996): A snowy Midwestern crime story where ordinary, flat-voiced people commit senseless murder.
8. MINDHUNTER (2017): Calm interviews with real killers trying to understand the mind behind the violence, much like the song's narrator.