Film

Black Widow

Name: Black Widow
Genre: Thriller
Released: 1987
Cast: Debra Winger, Theresa Russell, Sami Frey, Dennis Hopper, Nicol Williamson

Other titles called Black Widow: the 2021 film.

A taut 1987 thriller where an FBI agent hunts a suspected black widow murderer by going undercover to catch her in the act. Debra Winger and Theresa Russell circle each other with intelligence and menace. It's a cat-and-mouse game played in expensive hotels and yachts, fuelled by obsession and the question of whether you can ever truly know another person.

TMDb rating

3.1

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Rebecca1940

Hitchcock's masterpiece about a woman haunted by her husband's dead first wife. The obsession, the unseen rival, the question of innocence—all the DNA of Black Widow, but with gothic atmosphere.

But It's slow-burn Gothic rather than thriller, and the mystery resolves through exposition rather than action.

Betrayal1983

Spy thriller with Ben Kingsley and art-film sensibility. Betrayal accumulates quietly; you watch alliances shift and trust evaporate. Intimate and tense in ways most thrillers aren't.

But It's cerebral and talky, with no action sequences, and the pacing assumes you're paying absolute attention.

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Ingrid Bergman as a woman systematically made to doubt her own mind by her husband. The ultimate thriller about not knowing who to trust—least of all yourself.

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