Film

Honour

Honour is a tense thriller about a young woman marked for death by her own family and the determined bounty hunter hired to find her. It's a raw, uncomfortable film that refuses to look away from the violence embedded in the concept of honour. For viewers ready to confront a real and difficult subject without flinching.

TMDb rating2.8

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Kes1970

Ken Loach's portrait of a working-class boy in northern England who discovers agency through training a hawk. A film of quiet dignity about someone society has nearly written off—finding freedom in an unexpected place.

But It's deliberately unglamorous and deliberately quiet. The ending offers no uplift, which can feel relentless depending on your mood. Very much a product of its era.

Kes poster

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's haunting sci-fi thriller uses Scotland's landscape as a character and builds dread through what you don't see rather than what you do. Scarlett Johansson in a role that requires her to be the predator and the observed.

But It's deliberately opaque about meaning and plot. Long stretches have almost no dialogue. If you need narrative clarity or conventional pacing, walk away now.

Under the Skin poster

Fish Tank2009

Andrea Arnold's visceral drama about a young woman in south London desperate for a different life. Electrifying, angry, and it finds both humour and heartbreak in desperation and the spaces between possibilities.

But It's bleak and contains scenes of violence that aren't softened. The ending is deliberately ambiguous. Very much a portrait of poverty and abuse rather than an escape story.

Fish Tank poster

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Mustang2015

Both centre on young women trapped by family structures that weaponize the concept of honour. Mustang is about the slow suffocation of patriarchy; Honour is about its explosive violence.

Deniz Gamze Ergüven's debut about five orphaned sisters imprisoned in their house by their uncle after a single transgression. It's a film about female agency and constraint told with visual poetry, rage, and unexpected humour. The same core conflict—a young woman's freedom versus family honour—but filtered through femininity and solidarity rather than violence.

But It's a Turkish-language film and subtitled. The setting is claustrophobic by design. Some viewers find its magical touches make the horror feel less grounded than Honour's realism.

Mustang poster
More like this (7)

The Wrestler2008

Darren Aronofsky's portrait of a man destroying himself for the thing he loves, told with rawness and compassion. Mickey Rourke's performance is devastating; the film treats its subject with absolute dignity.

But It's a film about decline and body horror. There's a particular scene involving his body that many find unwatchable. Unrelentingly grim about what ambition costs people.

The Wrestler poster

Nocturnal Animals2016

Tom Ford's revenge thriller wrapped in a frame story about art and abandonment. Two interlocking narratives that comment on each other, gorgeously shot, with real teeth beneath its elegant surface.

But It's a film about art and violence that sometimes prioritizes looking beautiful over feeling urgent. The pacing in the second half stutters. Some find its morality muddled.

Nocturnal Animals poster

A Prophet2009

Jacques Audiard's masterpiece about a young man's education inside a French prison. It's a bildungsroman about power, survival, and transformation, tense and utterly absorbing from start to finish.

But It's long and it requires patience. Violence is casual and frequent. The moral universe is one where everyone is complicit and nobody is innocent—which can feel exhausting.

A Prophet poster

Burning2018

Lee Chang-dong's slowburn mystery about class, jealousy, and male rage in contemporary South Korea. It withholds information with such control that it becomes almost unbearably tense. Magnificent cinema.

But It's three hours of deliberate, glacial pacing. It answers almost no questions. If you need clarity about what happens or what it means, you'll leave frustrated.

Burning poster

Starred Up2014

David Mackenzie's prison drama about a violent young man forced to confront his father in the same facility. Claustrophobic, visceral, and surprisingly tender beneath the brutality.

But It's set in prison, which means constant threat and violence. The dialogue is often indecipherable if you're not attuned to the accent and idiom. Not an easy watch.

Starred Up poster

ICHI2008

Both films are about decent people trapped in systems of obligation and violence they didn't choose. Both suggest that complicity often begins with a single act of acceptance.

Takeshi Kitano's film about a blind masseuse who is drawn into the yakuza underworld through protection and debt. It's a slow-burn character study about how violence colonizes the lives of people trying to stay uninvolved.

But It's in Japanese with subtitles. Kitano's direction is indirect and meditative; almost nothing happens quickly. The violence when it comes is sudden and shocking.

ICHI poster

The Act of Killing2012

Both grapple with how violence gets justified through appeals to custom, honour, or necessity. Both ask: what happens when a community collectively agrees that someone deserves to die?

Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary asks Indonesian death squad leaders to reconstruct their mass murders as musical theatre. It's a philosophical excavation of how violence becomes normalized and how perpetrators rationalize atrocity. Absolutely necessary cinema.

But It's a documentary and deeply uncomfortable. Watching perpetrators enjoy themselves while describing genocide is genuinely traumatic. At 159 minutes, it's a commitment. Some find the filmmaking technique distracting.

The Act of Killing poster

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