Film

In the Cut

Jane Campion's volatile thriller tracks a lonely writing professor into an affair with a homicide detective while a serial killer prowls her New York neighborhood. Sensual and claustrophobic, it pulses with psychological unease and moral ambiguity. For viewers who crave art-house tension and aren't afraid of sex, violence, and the messy collision between desire and danger.

TMDb rating2.6

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like psychological thrillers where desire and dread blur, and you'll happily sit with a heroine whose judgment is shaky and whose world feels unsafe up close.

Skip it if you want a crime story that moves briskly toward answers; here the investigation is a backdrop to a woman's unraveling, and the explicit sex scenes may feel uncomfortable.

What it asks of you: Expect a slow, close, often unsettling pace, long stretches of mood, and steady attention to one unreliable point of view.

If you liked this

Body Heat1981

A calculating erotic thriller where attraction and manipulation blur until you can't separate victim from perpetrator. Kathleen Turner and William Hurt ignite the screen, and the plot twists cut deep.

But Explicit in ways that matter to the story, not window-dressing. Some find it dated; others find that part of its power.

Body Heat poster

Mulholland Drive2001

David Lynch's Los Angeles nightmare where desire, delusion, and identity fracture into haunting poetry. Naomi Watts delivers a performance that splits your heart. Hypnotic and unresolvable.

But Deliberately cryptic and long. If you need a film to explain itself, this will frustrate you.

Mulholland Drive poster

Klute1971

Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland circle each other in a slow-burn noir where trust dissolves like everything else. Tense, unglamorous, psychologically acute. The sex scenes matter.

But 1970s pacing asks patience. The case plot feels secondary to the character study, which some find thin.

Klute poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from In the Cut

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Night Listener2006

Both center on isolated New Yorkers made vulnerable by obsession with a stranger; both use intimacy as a trap and proximity as a threat.

Patrick Stettner's underrated chamber piece isolates a radio personality (Robin Williams, subdued and believable) obsessed with an unseen caller. Like In the Cut, it's about proximity to danger, the erotics of voice, and whether you can truly know anyone. Psychological rather than violent, but equally unsettling.

But Quiet and talky with a deliberately ambiguous ending. Needs a particular patience and tolerance for unresolution.

The Night Listener poster
More like this (8)

Basic Instinct1992

Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone in Verhoeven's pulpy, impossible-to-look-away thriller. It's a guilty pleasure that knows exactly what it is: smart trash with real stakes and darker implications than it admits.

But The 90s sleaze-factor lands differently now. Some see provocation where others see nastiness.

Basic Instinct poster

The Long Good Friday1980

Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren in a coiled, intelligent gangster film where violence erupts from loyalty and pride. Taut dialogue, genuine threat, and a finale that devastates.

But British crime film from the 80s means accents and a particular sensibility. The pacing is slow-burn, not propulsive.

The Long Good Friday poster

Brick2006

Rian Johnson remixes noir into a high school setting where the style never feels gimmicky and the emotional stakes snap. Morally complex, darkly witty, and structurally elegant.

But The conceit can read as precious if you're not in the mood. Some find the teenage noir posture exhausting.

Brick poster

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's unsettling sci-fi drift follows a creature seducing men in Glasgow. Alien, hypnotic, and sexually threatening in ways that linger. Scarlett Johansson's most interesting performance.

But Slow, oblique, and sparse on dialogue or plot. If you need narrative clarity and forward momentum, this will feel like punishment.

Under the Skin poster

The Killer2023

David Fincher's glacial thriller follows a hitman's unraveling after a job goes wrong. Meticulous, darkly funny, and possessed of an odd intimacy. Michael Fassbender's dead-eyed professionalism is chilling.

But Deliberately paced and philosophical rather than propulsive. Some find Fincher's detachment cold rather than elegant.

The Killer poster

Dressed to Kill1980

Brian De Palma's operatic thriller pairs Michael Caine with a nasty, surprising crime. It's audacious, sexual, and unafraid to be trashy in service of genuine suspense.

But High artificiality and obvious Hitchcock mimicry. The gender politics are queasy and dated in ways that grate.

Dressed to Kill poster

Possession1981

Both use eroticism and murder as metaphors for psychological disintegration; both make relationships feel dangerous and strange.

Andrzej Żuławski's hallucinatory breakup horror is graphic, bewildering, and genuinely alien. Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill tear through a film that feels like watching a mind fracture. Bizarre, sexual, and utterly singular. Not a thriller, but equally disturbing.

But Surreal and grotesque to the point of incoherence. If you need narrative sense, you'll find this maddening rather than profound.

Possession poster

The Woodsman2004

Both films interrogate the moral weight of proximity—how close we allow ourselves to get to people we suspect might destroy us, and why we do it anyway.

Todd Solondz puts Kevin Bacon as a released pedophile trying to reintegrate into society. Unflinching, humanizing without absolving, it's about perception, threat, and who we fear. Morally acute and almost unbearably tense in its refusal to reassure.

But The subject matter is radioactive. It's not exploitation, but it demands a viewer prepared for genuine discomfort with no catharsis.

The Woodsman poster

People

Cast

Directing

Writing

Production

Recommended by