Film

Everybody Knows

Name: Everybody Knows
Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Released: 2018
Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín, Eduard Fernández, Bárbara Lennie

A woman returns to her small Spanish hometown for a family wedding and finds herself tangled in a kidnapping that unearths decades of buried secrets. Asghar Farhadi's taut mystery excavates the gap between how people present themselves and who they actually are, driven by two magnetic leads and a mounting sense that everyone knows far more than they're saying.

TMDb rating

3.3

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow-burning family dramas where the dread builds through glances, old loyalties and the feeling that a small town remembers everything, with a thriller's pull underneath.

Skip it if you want brisk plotting or a clear sense of where things are going, since it lingers over reunions, wine-soaked dinners and silences for long stretches before it tightens.

What it asks of you: Settle in for over two hours at a deliberate pace, paying attention to who looks at whom, because the tension lives in small gestures rather than action set pieces.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

A Prophet2009

A masterclass in character transformation within institutional constraint. Tahar Rahim's rise through a prison hierarchy mirrors the moral compromises that define Farhadi's world—how circumstance corrodes integrity.

But French prison drama with subtitles, 2 hours 45 minutes, and an unflinching view of violence that some find punishing rather than enlightening.

The Invisible Guest2017

A Spanish thriller with the same clockwork precision as Everybody Knows: a man accused of murder must untangle a conspiracy where every character has motive and secrets. It twists with genuine ingenuity.

But The final reveal, while clever, leans toward neat puzzle-box satisfaction rather than the messy human truth Farhadi prizes.

The Secret in Their Eyes2009

An Argentine thriller about a retired detective pursuing a cold case through decades of political upheaval. It shares Farhadi's interest in how the past refuses to stay buried and how justice complicates everything.

But Dual timelines can feel fractured, and the emotional payoff asks patience that some viewers won't extend.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Everybody Knows

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Both films use secrets and false identity as instruments of survival, and both interrogate what a person owes their community when their continued existence depends on deception.

A woman assumes a man's identity to survive the 1880s frontier. Like Everybody Knows, it's obsessed with how we perform identity and what happens when the performance cracks—but it inverts the whole mechanism, asking what freedom costs.

But A Western with a feminist thesis, made for television by Maggie Greenwald. It's visually austere and structurally atypical, which thrills some viewers and loses others.

Things to Come2016

Isabelle Huppert as a philosophy teacher whose orderly life dissolves when her husband leaves. Like Everybody Knows, it's fascinated by the small betrayals that crack open a life, and the resilience that follows.

But Deliberately quiet and interior. If you came for plot momentum, this contemplative French film will feel glacial.

Amour2012

Michael Haneke's portrait of a long marriage confronting mortality. It has the same unflinching gaze at intimacy, secrets, and the gap between what we show the world and what happens behind closed doors.

But Devastating and austere. It's a film about ageing, illness, and death—not an evening of catharsis, but emotional depletion.

The Dinner2017

Two couples at a restaurant, peeling back the facades. It shares Farhadi's talent for using social performance as a lens into complicity, shame, and the lies families tell themselves to survive.

But Oren Moverman's adaptation feels stagey, and watching attractive people in crisis dining at length tests patience for some.

A Tale of Two Sisters2003

A Korean thriller about two sisters returning home, where reality fractures. Like Everybody Knows, it uses family secrets and women's vulnerability to unsettle everything the viewer assumes about the world.

But Slow-burn atmospheric horror. If you want forward momentum over mood, this will frustrate you.

The Past2013

Farhadi himself—an ex-husband returns to Paris to finalize his divorce and finds his presence triggers a cascade of lies and recriminations. It's a masterclass in how one person's arrival can detonate a household.

But If you haven't seen other Farhadi, this is a safer entry point, but it's structurally denser and less immediately gripping than Everybody Knows.

Insomnia2002

An American remake of a Scandinavian thriller: a detective pursuing a murder in an Alaskan town where daylight never ends. The atmosphere of being unable to escape mirrors Everybody Knows' suffocating small-town pressure cooker.

But A mid-tier Nolan before he became a household name, and it lacks the moral precision of its source material or Farhadi's depth.

The Handmaiden2016

Both explore how women use manipulation and alliance-building as their only real currency in systems designed to exploit them. Both ask: how much do we betray ourselves to survive?

Park Chan-wook's sensual Korean thriller about con artists, colonial occupation, and women navigating impossible choices in 1930s Korea. It has Farhadi's interest in performance and hidden lives, but erupts in visceral, darkly comic violence.

But At nearly two hours forty, it's dense with plot and mythology. The sexuality is explicit, and the tone lurches between heist caper and brutality in ways that feel mannered to some.

Happy as Lazzaro2018

Both films use a return or displacement to examine how communities hide exploitation and cruelty behind the facade of normalcy and tradition. Both ask what we're complicit in by staying silent.

Alice Rohrwacher's Italian fable about a peasant so pure-hearted he seems almost inhuman, and what happens when he's separated from the feudal world that defined him. It's magical realism meets sociology—funny, strange, and unexpectedly moving.

But The tone is whimsical and digressive. If you want linear narrative or psychological realism, this dreamlike film about innocence and exploitation will seem willfully oblique.