Film

Personal Shopper

Name: Personal Shopper
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Released: 2016
Cast: Kristen Stewart, Lars Eidinger, Sigrid Bouaziz, Anders Danielsen Lie, Ty Olwin

Drama

Olivier Assayas's cryptic thriller follows a personal shopper in Paris stalked by mysterious texts while grieving her dead twin brother. It's a film that moves like a ghost story—elliptical, withheld, almost deliberately frustrating. For patient viewers who love atmosphere over plot and don't mind ambiguity, it's hypnotic. For everyone else, it's maddening.

TMDb rating

3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow-burn ghost stories where the dread lives in silence, text messages and empty rooms, and you're happy to let an unsettling mood do the work of answers.

Skip it if you want the supernatural to be explained or the pace to pick up; long stretches of quiet, lingering shots and a lot of phone-screen tension may feel like waiting rather than building.

What it asks of you: Around 106 minutes of patient attention, with a hushed, deliberate rhythm, and it rewards you for watching closely rather than for following a tidy plot.

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

If you liked this

Mulholland Drive2001

David Lynch's Los Angeles noir is similarly fragmented and dreamlike, following a woman through a mystery that unravels into something stranger. If you loved Personal Shopper's refusal to explain itself, this goes even further.

But It's nearly three hours, deliberately opaque, and the ending clarifies almost nothing. Some people call it a masterpiece; others call it a con.

A Ghost Story2017

David Lowery's meditation on grief and haunting shares Personal Shopper's obsession with death, memory, and the invisible. Both films treat the supernatural as a metaphor for loss that won't leave you alone.

But Very slow. The famous scene involves watching a woman eat a pie for several minutes. If you need external conflict, look elsewhere.

The Double Life of Véronique1991

Kieslowski's mystery of duality and parallel lives in Europe has the same hushed intensity and visual poetry. Both films are more interested in mood and suggestion than exposition.

But Cryptic to the point of obscurity, with almost no dialogue explaining what's happening. Requires patience and a willingness to sit with confusion.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Personal Shopper

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Phantasm1979

Both are ghost stories about obsession and loss told as thrillers that don't quite believe in their own genre. Both ask what it means to be haunted.

Don Coscarelli's wildly inventive low-budget horror film is also about a young person obsessed with death in a strange city, also told through fragments and dream logic. The Tall Man haunting is grief made monstrous—exactly what Personal Shopper does without the horror movie syntax.

But It's proudly, unapologetically weird and low-budget. The plot barely coheres. If you watch Personal Shopper for sophisticated Parisian ennui, this will feel like a different planet.

Stalker1979

Tarkovsky's sci-fi meditation moves at a glacial pace through a mysterious zone. Like Personal Shopper, it trusts silence and looks to find meaning in what's unsaid.

But Nearly three hours of people walking slowly through mist. Not a thriller in any conventional sense. You will check the time.

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's film is pure atmosphere—a love story told almost entirely through colour, glances, and what's left unsaid. Like Personal Shopper, it's more interested in feeling than plot.

But Deliberately paced. Nothing happens in the way you expect. Some find it romantic; others find it tedious.

The Girlfriend Experience2009

Soderbergh's film with real escort Chelsea makes documentary and fiction bleed together, creating the same unsettling ambiguity about what's real. Both films obsess over performance and surfaces.

But It's a portrait of transactional relationships with minimal warmth. The minimalist approach feels cold rather than intimate to many viewers.

The Passenger1975

Michelangelo Antonioni's mystery of a man who assumes a stranger's identity shares Personal Shopper's glacial pacing and fascination with why people vanish into other lives.

But Episodic and aimless. The famous seven-minute ending shot will test your patience. Not designed to satisfy.

Under the Skin2014

Jonathan Glazel's alien-disguised-as-woman film creates unease through withholding information and letting silence do the work. Both films treat their central mysteries as something felt rather than solved.

But Minimal plot, minimal dialogue, minimal sense that you understand what you're watching. Long passages of barely comprehensible sound design.

Happy as Lazzaro2018

Both films make the invisible visible—death, time, mystery—by simply refusing to acknowledge the boundary between the material and the supernatural. Both end by asking if you saw a ghost or just someone you misunderstood.

Alice Rohrwacher's strange, magical-realist film about a peasant who doesn't age moves between centuries with the same refusal to explain itself. Like Personal Shopper, it trusts you to sit with the inexplicable.

But It's Italian, subtitled, and abandons conventional narrative about halfway through. The tone shifts into something dreamlike and folkloric, which will lose viewers expecting linear storytelling.

Chungking Express1994

Both films make you feel the weight of presence and absence simultaneously. Both treat the city as a character that doesn't care about the person moving through it.

Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong love story is fragmentary, steeped in loneliness, and moves like a ghost through a city. It's about connection that barely happens and people missing each other by inches—the same isolation that haunts Personal Shopper.

But It's stylistically maximalist where Personal Shopper is austere. If you want the same emotional effect as Personal Shopper but through completely different means—colour-saturated, energetic, almost relentlessly romantic—this risks feeling like the opposite rather than a companion.