Film

I Used to Be Darker

A quiet, observant film about displacement and fractured intimacy. A Northern Irish teenager arrives at her Baltimore relatives' house just as their marriage is collapsing, and everyone's forced to reckon with loneliness, desire, and the gap between who they are and who they want to be. It's patient and unglamorous—less a plot than a mood, less dramatic than deeply felt.

TMDb rating2.9

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Certain Women2016

Kelly Reichardt's triptych of quiet lives in rural Montana. Three women, three small ruptures. Like I Used to Be Darker, it trusts you to find the story in what people don't say, and it's hypnotic.

But Nothing visibly happens. If you need narrative momentum or a clear arc, this will feel like watching paint dry in real time.

Certain Women poster

Never Rarely Sometimes Always2020

Eliza Hittman's unsparing look at two teenagers navigating abortion access. Handheld, intimate, alive to shame and solidarity. Similar attentiveness to the texture of ordinary crisis and the strength required just to endure.

But It's deliberately bleak. The film has no reassuring moments, and some viewers find that relentless rather than moving.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always poster

Fish Tank2009

Andrea Arnold's debut about a volatile teenager in East London. Restless, sensual, and willing to sit with ugliness and yearning in the same frame. It has the same unsettled energy and refusal to make things easy.

But The protagonist is genuinely difficult to like. If you need to root for people, her constant aggression will exhaust you.

Fish Tank poster

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The Worst Person in the World2021

Both are about young people untethered from home, searching for traction in relationships that won't hold. But where I Used to Be Darker stays still, this one is restless and self-aware about its own search.

Joachim Trier's Oslo romance about a woman in her twenties cycling through selves and lovers. Formally inventive—it breaks its own rules, jumps perspectives, shifts genres—yet it's precisely as observant about loneliness and displacement as I Used to Be Darker, just in 4K color instead of grayscale restraint.

But It's Norwegian, and the subtitled dialogue is dense. Some viewers find the tonal shifts jarring rather than liberating.

The Worst Person in the World poster
More like this (7)

The Florida Project2017

Sean Baker following a six-year-old and her mother in a motel on the edge of Orlando. Luminous and devastating, capturing how children and adults experience the same crisis entirely differently. Quietly observant about survival and makeshift family.

But Some find the handheld style and loose narrative frustrating. There's also a gut-punch ending that leaves you nowhere to land.

The Florida Project poster

Krisha2016

Ari Aster's debut about addiction and family rupture in a Californian basement. Raw, unpolished, using non-actors and real locations. Feels lived-in rather than performed, much like I Used to Be Darker.

But The production design is deliberately ugly. Some viewers mistake cheapness for incompetence rather than intention.

Krisha poster

First Reformed2018

Paul Schrader's portrait of a pastor unraveling. Austere, morally rigorous, obsessed with small gestures and what they mean. Similar commitment to interior life over plot machinery.

But It's claustrophobic and punishing. The protagonist's spiral offers no comfort or catharsis, only honest darkness.

First Reformed poster

The Souvenir2019

Joanna Hogg's autobiographical film about a young art student and her toxic relationship. Formal, painterly, focused on memory's unreliability and the stories we tell ourselves. Emotionally precise in a way most films never attempt.

But The narrative is deliberately fragmented and elusive. If you want clarity about what happened or why, you won't find it.

The Souvenir poster

Lean on Pete2018

Kelly Reichardt again: a teenage boy, a racehorse, the American frontier as an idea that keeps failing him. Tender and sparse, alert to displacement and the things people need to feel less alone.

But It's episodic and deliberately slow. Some find the pacing inert rather than meditative.

Lean on Pete poster

Gerry2002

Both trust silence and the space between people more than plot. Both suggest that proximity to someone you love can coexist with radical separation.

Gus Van Sant's 100-minute film of two friends walking into the desert until one disappears. Shot in long takes with minimal dialogue, it's an anti-narrative about drift and unspoken connection. Hypnotic in a way that demands patience, but if you match its wavelength, it's devastating.

But Nothing happens. People complain that Van Sant is making a joke at the audience's expense. It's closer to an endurance test than entertainment.

Gerry poster

Aftersun2022

Both center on a young woman in a temporary family structure, trying to read the emotional truth beneath routine interactions. Both make estrangement beautiful.

Charlotte Wells's debut, a fractured memory of a father and daughter on holiday in Turkey. Shot on digital video that looks like recovered footage, it's about what we can't recover—gaps, distances, the things we wish we'd understood. Achingly precise about family as a place where you're always slightly unknown.

But It's formally experimental in ways some find alienating. The editing jumps; the timeline dissolves. You're never sure what year you're watching.

Aftersun poster

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