Film
Don't Look Now
A hallucinatory grief thriller disguised as horror, set in a crumbling, off-season Venice where a mourning couple's psychic warnings and déjà vu build an atmosphere of pure dread rather than jump scares. Nicolas Roeg's fractured editing turns memory and premonition into the same substance. It's slow, sensuous, unsettling — for people who want their horror cerebral, ambiguous, and possibly heartbreaking rather than explained.
If you liked this
Rosemary's Baby1968
Polanski's own masterclass in paranoia and unresolved dread — a young wife slowly realises the horror around her might be real, might be grief, might be both, and the film never tips its hand until it's too late.
But The pacing is deliberately glacial and the payoff, decades on, is common knowledge — the surprise is gone even if the dread isn't.
Hereditary2018
Ari Aster channels the same slow-building horror of mourning into a modern family tragedy, where grief curdles into something occult and unstoppable, with visuals as painterly as Roeg's Venice.
But It's considerably more graphic and punishing than Don't Look Now — this one wants to leave you shaken, not just unsettled.
The Wicker Man1973
Made the same year, this is folk horror's answer to the same dread — a rational man undone by a world that operates on rules he refuses to believe, ending in one of horror's great gut-punches.
But The tone swings between comic and horrifying in a way that can feel dated rather than deliberate.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Kwaidan1965
Same premise of premonition and unfinished business with the dead, but told through an entirely different cinematic tradition — anthology structure, Japanese formalism, decades earlier — proving the dread of Roeg's film has ancestors far outside horror's usual borders.
Four Japanese ghost stories told with theatrical, painted-set formalism — grief, broken promises, and the dead returning to collect what's owed, all rendered in colours as deliberate as Roeg's reds.
But Nearly three hours, subtitled, and paced like a folk tale rather than a thriller — this asks for patience Don't Look Now never does.
More like this (8)
The Innocents1961
A gorgeously shot, deeply ambiguous ghost story about a governess who may or may not be seeing spirits — the same refusal to confirm or deny the supernatural that makes Don't Look Now so haunting.
But Black and white, mannered, and very much of its period — patience required for its slow reveal.
Picnic at Hanging Rock1975
An eerie Australian mystery that trades answers for atmosphere, following the same principle that some disappearances, like some deaths, don't need explaining to devastate you.
But If you need resolution, this will frustrate you — it's built entirely around the unexplained.
The Others2001
A more accessible, mainstream ghost story with a genuinely satisfying final-act rug-pull, and the same fog-bound, curtained dread of a house — or a mind — hiding something.
But Once you know the twist it loses a lot of its power on rewatch.
Antichrist2009
Von Trier takes grief, sex, and horror and fuses them even more nakedly than Roeg did, following a couple retreating into the woods after loss and unraveling entirely.
But It's extreme — sexually graphic and violent in ways that go far beyond anything in Don't Look Now.
Repulsion1965
Polanski's claustrophobic study of a mind disintegrating in an empty apartment shares the same sense of dread seeping out of ordinary rooms and objects.
But There's no supernatural ambiguity here — it's straightforwardly about mental collapse, which some will find less eerie and more distressing.
A Dark Song2016no page yet
A quiet, low-budget film about a grieving mother undertaking a genuine occult ritual to speak to her dead son — sincere, slow, and surprisingly moving rather than schlocky.
But It's a small independent film with limited scares — closer to a two-hander drama than horror.
Truly Madly Deeply1991
Takes the identical setup — a bereaved partner contacted from beyond grief's edge — and inverts the register completely, replacing dread with warmth to show how thin the line is between ghost story and love story.
A grieving woman's dead partner returns to comfort her, not haunt her — the tenderest possible version of the exact premise Don't Look Now turns into dread.
But It's a gentle, funny, very British romance — anyone expecting horror will be watching the wrong film entirely.
Dead Again1991no page yet
Same engine — visions of the past intruding on the present, threatening a marriage — rebuilt as a big, shiny, unashamedly commercial thriller, showing how the idea survives a total change of costume.
A glossy Hollywood noir thriller about past lives bleeding into the present, with a hypnotist, a mystery, and a twist that plays the psychic-warning idea for pulpy, entertaining thrills.
But It's melodramatic studio filmmaking through and through — none of the art-house restraint or genuine unease of Don't Look Now.
People
Cast
Donald SutherlandJohn Baxter
Julie ChristieLaura Baxter
Hilary MasonHeather
Massimo SeratoBishop Barbarrigo
Clelia MataniaWendy
Renato ScarpaInspector Longhi
Giorgio TrestiniWorkman
Leopoldo TriesteHotel Manager
David TreeAnthony Babbage- Ann RyeMandy Babbage
- Nicholas SalterJohnny Baxter
- Sharon WilliamsChristine Baxter
Directing
- Francesco CinieriAssistant Director
- Nicolas RoegDirector
Writing
- Allan ScottScreenplay
- Chris BryantScreenplay
- Daphne du MaurierShort Story
Production
- Frederick MullerAssociate Producer
- Miriam BrickmanCasting
- Ugo MariottiCasting
- Anthony B. UngerExecutive Producer
- Peter KatzProducer
- Franco CodutiUnit Manager
Recommended by
Stir of Echoes, Rosemary's Baby, The Innocents, Vertigo, Hereditary, The Shining, Dead of Night, Medium, Carnival of Souls, Deep Red, Antichrist, Night of the Demon