10 Best Movies Set In Georgia, Ranked

The great state of Georgia has been home to an impressive number of film productions, including a number of Marvel Studios movies, but only a very small percentage of those are actually set in Georgia. Instead, the Atlanta streets frequently play the role of New York or Washington D.C., and its wild spaces can be used to represent just about anywhere. (Seriously, the state has the Appalachian mountains, rolling foothills, wide-open farmland, and even rocky beaches.) 

But what about those movies that actually take place in the beautiful, complicated Peach State? Films as diverse and wonderful as “Magic Mike XXL” and “Days of Thunder” all have great stretches set in Georgia, but some films go even further and really represent a little slice of the state with most of their runtime. Whether it’s Clint Eastwood’s genteel Savannah true crime murder mystery “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” having an aca-awesome time with college acapella performers in Atlanta in “Pitch Perfect,” or Sam Raimi’s small-town supernatural horror mystery “The Gift,” the best movies set in Georgia help show all the things the state has to offer. 

(And no, there are no Tyler Perry films here. Go watch the “Atlanta” episode “Work Ethic!” for a surreal understanding as to why. Now that’s Georgia.)  

Sam Raimi’s 2000 supernatural thriller “The Gift” is a nasty little movie with an incredible cast, co-written by Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson. Based loosely on the experiences of Thornton’s mother, psychic Virginia Thornton Faulkner, and set in the fictional town of Brixton, Georgia, “The Gift” shows the sinister side of the smallest towns in the south. The psychic in “The Gift” is named Annie (Cate Blanchett), and she uses her abilities to help solve a small-town murder. As Annie learns more and more about her neighbors, she also unravels some of the town’s nastiest secrets. 

“The Gift” works perfectly as a kind of sleazy Southern noir, though it unfortunately is pretty wildly underrated. It did pretty poorly at the box office and got very mediocre reviews, but maybe time will finally be kind to this gritty thriller. After all, it also stars Keanu Reeves as an abusive murder suspect, Katie Holmes as a promiscuous local woman, Greg Kinnear as a school principal, and J.K. Simmons as the town sheriff, and it’s primed for re-discovery. 

Over the years, the state of Georgia has offered a variety of tax credits and incentives for movies and shows to film there. This has led to some interesting international collaborations filmed in the state, and the bonkers 1979 Italian sci-fi horror movie “The Visitor” is easily one of the wildest. Outside of some sequences set in a kind of nowhere-land, “The Visitor” takes place in Atlanta, where a young girl has developed psychokinetic powers. It turns out that she’s essentially going to be the mother of the antichrist when she grows up, and the movie centers around her own mother, Barbara (Joanne Nail), trying to prevent that from happening. 

“The Visitor” is a bonkers “The Exorcist” rip-off of sorts that has to be admired for its sheer audacity and incredible cast, with turns by Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, and Shelley Winters. Not only that, but Franco Nero (the original Django of spaghetti western cinema fame) has an uncredited role as a Christ-like figure who helps explain things at the beginning and end of the movie. 

Not only is the film set in Atlanta with plenty of shots of Atlanta landmarks, but controversial Atlanta radio personality Neal Boortz also plays a small role in the film, representing at least a small, odd part of city. 

The 2001 Marc Forster film “Monster’s Ball” is a nasty piece of work that follows racist, hateful former death row executioner Hank (Billy Bob Thornton) as he develops a relationship with the widow of a man he executed, Leticia (Halle Berry). Both Hank and Leticia are abusive towards their children, with Hank’s cruelty proving too much after he beats his son (Heath Ledger, who apparently really took a beating) and the son commits suicide. Hank and Leticia eventually find comfort in one another, and determine that they might just be okay in the end, together. 

While there are some major issues with “Monster’s Ball” failing Leticia because the writers and director were white men, Berry’s performance is phenomenal. She truly brings the character to life, and ended up making Oscar history as the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for Actress in a Leading Role. (Sadly, as of January 2025, she is still the only Black woman to win that award.) 

“Monster’s Ball” takes a hard look at some of the darker, more painful corners of the Peach state, and while it’s not perfect, those central performances from Berry, Thornton, and Ledger elevate it to something worth discussing. 

When it comes to the actors of classic Hollywood, there are few men who could handle dramatic roles quite like Gregory Peck. But few pushed him to stare evil in the face quite like “Cape Fear,” J. Lee Thompson’s 1962 thriller based on the 1957 John D. MacDonald novel “The Executioners.” While Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake starring Nick Nolte and Robert De Niro has become more famous in the years since, the original “Cape Fear” is a disturbing film that feels ahead of its time. 

“Cape Fear” stars Peck as Sam Bowden, a lawyer who is stalked by ex-convict Max Cady (Robert Mitchum). Cady blames Bowden for helping to get him convicted eight years prior, and now he’ll stop at nothing to hurt Bowden and his family. “Cape Fear” is one mean movie with terrific lead performances, and Mitchum is quite scary as Cady, drawing on his experience playing a serial killer in the exquisitely unsettling “Night of the Hunter” to make Cady seem truly capable of anything. 

There was one small problem with the movie’s setting and filming locations of Savannah, Georgia: Mitchum had once served on a chain gang there as a teenager before escaping and riding freight trains out to California. That meant that he was extremely on edge while filming in Georgia, and reportedly demanded that some of his scenes be shot elsewhere. This is why parts of “Cape Fear” were actually filmed in California, mimicking Georgia. Ironic, given how often the reverse is the case!

The state of Georgia has a tumultuous, difficult history as one of the states that joined the Confederacy in order to fight for the continued use of slave labor. The impacts of slavery in Georgia can still be felt today through racial disparity and generational trauma, which makes recommending the 1939 classic “Gone With the Wind” a little difficult. After all, it’s the story of a wealthy white family who own a cotton plantation at the start of the Civil War, and they are portrayed as heroic despite having slaves. The depiction of Black characters is also deeply frustrating, making them seem like simpletons and reinforcing negative, racist stereotypes, but it’s also integral to understanding how some Georgians view the world. 

When viewed within its proper context as a deeply biased glimpse of the past, “Gone With the Wind” is a beautifully produced and acted film, with stellar performances by Clark Gable as the dashing Rhett Butler and Vivien Leigh as heroine Scarlett O’Hara. It follows O’Hara and her family as they lose everything during the Civil War and then try to rebuild during Reconstruction, as O’Hara tries to get Butler to marry her. It’s old fashioned Southern drama that’s deeply controversial, but also immaculately made on a production level, and there’s something about its combination of great and terrible that feels deeply true to Georgia itself.

Another great Georgian film that requires the viewer to set aside some real-life ickiness is Clint Eastwood’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” It stars alleged sex pest Kevin Spacey as wealthy Jim Williams, who is accused of murdering his lover, a male sex worker. The movie is based on a true story, first detailed in the book of the same name by John Berendt, and Eastwood did everything in his ability to bring the city of Savannah alive in his cinematic vision. The acting is mixed (John Cusack as a fictionalized stand-in for Berendt is quite good, while Spacey is a mess) and some of the real people play themselves, including late transgender performer The Lady Chablis. Though screenwriter John Lee Hancock took some liberties with the story itself, the authenticity of Savannah remains intact, with some truly beautiful scenes shot on location throughout the coastal city. 

The book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” is an in-depth look at genteel society in Savannah and just how easily it can unravel, and Eastwood’s film is a faithful enough adaptation to make it one of the better films set in Georgia. 

For those looking for something a bit more contemporary and less stuffy, there’s always Jason Moore’s 2012 film “Pitch Perfect,” which is set at the fictional Barden University in Atlanta, Georgia. While Atlanta is known for music, a capella seemed a bit of a stretch. But “Pitch Perfect” kicked off a whole franchise that led to three movies and a streaming series — and it’s a total blast. Anna Kendrick stars as Beca, an aspiring music producer in her freshman year at Barden who ends up joining one of the school’s competitive a capella singing teams. (It’s apparently a thing. It’s like glee club but for people who really know how to harmonize.) She makes a diverse and hilarious group of new friends, the Barden Bellas, and they end up taking their instrument-free musical skills all the way to the national finals. 

“Pitch Perfect” is incredibly rewatchable. Not only does it have a fantastic soundtrack with some truly inspired a capella mash-ups of songs like Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” and even Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” (from the John Hughes classic “The Breakfast Club”), but it’s also really freaking funny. This is a movie so fun that we tracked the 45 most underrated, weird, and fun moments in the flick, because there’s just that much to love.

Edgar Wright’s car-chase heist thriller “Baby Driver” wasn’t originally set in Atlanta, but when he realized it would be filming there he completely rewrote things to incorporate the city into the script a bit more. That means that there are Atlanta landmarks everywhere, like Goodfella’s Pizza and the Candler Building, making the movie’s several car chases into a nice taste of the city’s streets and architecture. “Baby Driver” doesn’t stay accurate to Atlanta geography, but it still feels like a nice little fantasy version of the city where there is almost no traffic at all and people in downtown Atlanta speak with southern drawls. 

“Baby Driver” is kind of a throwback with a simplified story and characters that allow the action and car chases themselves to be the stars, and it’s a lot of fast-paced fun. Ansel Elgort stars as Baby, an enigmatic getaway driver obsessed with music, and the cast is great, with great turns by Jaime Foxx, Jon Hamm, Lily James, Jon Bernthal, and Eiza González. The previously aforementioned disgrace Kevin Spacey also stars as the film’s villain, but since he’s the baddie, it’s kind of ignorable.

“The Shape of Water” director Guillermo del Toro praised “Baby Driver” for all of the great films it evoked, and it was a mid-budget miracle at the box office. It’s a bummer that there isn’t more Atlanta music on the (admittedly fantastic) soundtrack, but at least there’s a Run the Jewels track featuring Big Boi (and Killer Mike and Big Boi also have cameos). One day we’ll have an Atlanta movie set to Outkast, Ludacris, and Childish Gambino. One day…

Clint Eastwood’s directorial output has been hit-or-miss over the years, but when he’s good, he’s great, and his 2024 courtroom drama “Juror #2” is truly fantastic. Our review praises the film for taking a rather contrived premise and elevating it to something more through careful filmmaking and powerful performances. Set in Savannah, Georgia, “Juror #2” follows recovering alcoholic Justin Kemp (a terrific, haunted Nicholas Hoult) after he is selected for jury duty and realizes that he was responsible for the death at the center of the investigation. He had been sober at the time but had gone to a bar in a fit of temptation. On the way home he hit what he thought was a deer, but turned out to be a young woman who died, and now her abusive boyfriend (Gabriel Basso) is on trial for her murder. 

“Juror #2” is anchored by its truly impressive performances from not only Hoult but Toni Collette as the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, J.K. Simmons as a fellow juror, Chris Messina as the defendant’s lawyer, and Cedric Yarbrough as another fellow juror that regularly challenges Justin. The story goes to some interesting and unexpected places before its conclusion and forces the audience to think about the justice system without providing any easy answers. It’s the most mature, complex thing Eastwood has made in decades, and its Savannah setting makes it all the more special.

Like most of the films on this list, Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” is not without controversy. Based on the 1982 novel by Alice Walker, “The Color Purple” is the story of young queer woman Celie Harris (Whoopi Goldberg), who lives in rural Hartwell, Georgia in the early part of the 20th century. Over the course of her life we see the strong relationships she forms with other women, including her sister Nettie (Akosua Busia), love interest and friend Shug (Margaret Avery), and the assertive Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), and it’s really a shame that the storyteller behind the camera wasn’t a queer Black woman. That means there are issues how “The Color Purple” handles race and especially Celie’s queerness, but Spielberg’s film is a beautifully shot, immaculately acted story set in rural Georgia that gives a rose-tinted look at life there a century ago. 

“The Color Purple” was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, though it lost to Sydney Pollack’s “Out of Africa,” starring Robert Redford. While it didn’t win any Oscars, it has had an incredible legacy, launching the careers of Goldberg, Winfrey, and Danny Glover, and helping convince Spielberg that he could handle serious historical drama, which eventually led to his multi-Oscar winning “Schindler’s List.” There’s also a Broadway musical that was made into a movie in 2023, though it has its own problems. 

There are lots of amazing creatives in Georgia just dying to get their work on the big screen, and hopefully we’ll get to see more authentic stories in the years to come and update this list a bit. For now, we’ll just have to appreciate that we’ve gotten some of that on TV, at the very least. “Atlanta” and “Squidbillies,” anyone?