Film

Match Point

Woody Allen trades Manhattan neurosis for London drawing rooms in this cool, glossy thriller about a tennis pro who marries into money and falls for someone far more dangerous. It moves like a seduction before quietly becoming a study in luck, guilt and getting away with things. Elegant, unhurried, and colder than it first appears — for anyone who likes their romance laced with dread.

TMDb rating7.4

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Crimes and Misdemeanors1989

Woody Allen's own earlier meditation on getting away with murder — funnier, more philosophical, and paired with a comic subplot about whether ethics matter at all.

But The comic parallel plot might feel like tonal whiplash if you want unbroken dread.

Crimes and Misdemeanors poster

The Talented Mr. Ripley1999

Another charming outsider talks his way into wealth and love and is willing to kill to keep it, with Highsmith's cool amorality and gorgeous Mediterranean surfaces.

But Ripley is far more calculating and self-aware than Chris; less ambiguous about his own guilt.

The Talented Mr. Ripley poster

Saltburn2023

A nastier, more modern take on class envy among the English elite, with the same queasy fascination for wealth's beautiful surfaces concealing rot underneath.

But Far more explicit and deliberately shocking; none of Match Point's icy restraint.

Saltburn poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Strangers on a Train1951

Both open on a tennis court and turn on the same idea — that luck, not virtue, decides who gets caught, literalised in Allen's ball hovering on the net.

Hitchcock's tennis pro gets pulled into a murder pact built entirely on chance encounters — the terrifying idea that one coincidence can rewrite a life.

But Broader melodrama and a far campier villain than anything in Match Point.

Strangers on a Train poster
More like this (8)

A Place in the Sun1951

The Hollywood grandfather of ambition-turned-murder — a poor man drawn into a rich fiancée's world while an inconvenient lover threatens to ruin everything.

But Melodramatic by today's standards, with a far less morally ambiguous universe.

A Place in the Sun poster

Body Heat1981

Sweaty, seductive neo-noir about desire pushing an ordinary man toward murder, with the same fatalistic sense that lust and greed are hard to tell apart.

But Pulpier and twistier, more interested in plot mechanics than quiet psychological erosion.

Body Heat poster

Gone Girl2014

A marriage curdles into calculation and cover-up, sharing Match Point's interest in how ordinary people justify extraordinary deceit to themselves.

But Much more plot-driven and twisty; less interested in slow moral drift than in shocks.

Gone Girl poster

Fatal Attraction1987

The affair-turned-nightmare template, obsession curdling into violence while a comfortable domestic life hangs in the balance.

But Broader and more melodramatic, built for visceral shock rather than cool unease.

Fatal Attraction poster

Blue Jasmine2013no page yet

Another Woody Allen study of a life built on denial and self-deception — this time you watch the collapse rather than the crime.

But No thriller mechanics at all; it's a sad, unflinching character study instead.

Chinatown1974

The gold standard for stories where the wealthy get away with everything and the person chasing the truth ends up worse for trying.

But Total cynicism, a more convoluted plot, and a very different era and pace.

Chinatown poster

The Staircase2022

Swaps Allen's tidy fictional cover-up for a real one that never tidies itself — the same moral vertigo, stripped of a screenwriter's control.

A real husband under suspicion for his wife's death, filmed across years, refusing to resolve into certainty — the same unbearable question Match Point asks about guilt and consequence.

But Slow and procedural, and true, with none of the fictional shaping that makes Match Point's ending land like a gut-punch.

The Staircase poster

Wild Things1998

Same recipe — desire, class, a killing that might go unpunished — cooked at maximum trash instead of Allen's minimalist simmer.

A trashy Florida noir where sex, money and murder braid together with gleeful, twisty shamelessness — the same ingredients played for pulp instead of dread.

But Deliberately silly and over-plotted, closer to a guilty-pleasure thriller than Allen's chilly control.

Wild Things poster

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The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Rope, Wild Things, Saltburn, Six Degrees of Separation, The Blue Angel, Closer, Unfaithful, A Place in the Sun, Strangers on a Train, Eyes Wide Shut, Crimes and Misdemeanors