Film

Promising Young Woman

Candy-coloured on the outside, furious underneath, this is a revenge thriller that keeps changing disguises — rom-com meet-cute one scene, home-invasion dread the next. Carey Mulligan is magnetic and faintly terrifying as the woman running the long con, and the film never lets you settle into one genre or one comfortable feeling. Best for viewers who want their popcorn thriller to leave a bruise.

TMDb rating7.4

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Gone Girl2014

Same appetite for a woman weaponising the world's assumptions about her, wrapped in a glossy, ice-cold puzzle-box thriller with real bite and dark wit.

But Colder and more clinical — it's fascinated by spectacle and control rather than grief or reckoning.

Gone Girl poster

Fleabag2016

Trauma disguised as comedy, delivered straight to camera with devastating British timing — the same trick of making you laugh right up until it wrecks you.

But No crime plot or thriller mechanics — this is character study, not genre suspense.

Fleabag poster

Sharp Objects2018

A slow-burn Southern gothic about a damaged woman circling old wounds, gorgeously shot and genuinely unsettling in its patience.

But Glacially paced and relentlessly bleak — there's little of the dark comedy to leaven it.

Sharp Objects poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Peeping Tom1960

Promising Young Woman turns the camera on the men who prey on women; Peeping Tom put us inside that gaze first — the same question about watching as violence, sixty years earlier.

Michael Powell's technicolor thriller puts you inside a predator's viewfinder decades before anyone thought to interrogate the camera's own complicity in violence against women.

But Stiff, theatrical performances and stately pacing that will feel like a different cinematic language entirely.

Peeping Tom poster
More like this (8)

I Care a Lot2021no page yet

A gleefully nasty satire about a predatory woman using the system's own rules against it — stylish, mean, and very funny in a similarly bruising way.

But Its heroine is closer to villain than avenger — less moral clarity, more scorched-earth cynicism.

The Assistant2020

A quiet, devastating portrait of institutional complicity in abuse, told through one assistant's mounting unease rather than confrontation.

But Almost plotless by design — it asks for patience with dread instead of payoff.

The Assistant poster

Big Little Lies2017

Glamorous suburban women hiding rage and abuse behind perfect houses, building to a reckoning that feels earned and satisfying.

But Leans soapier across its run, and later seasons dilute the sharpness of the first.

Big Little Lies poster

Kill Bill: Vol. 12003

The iconic template — a woman working methodically through a list of people who wronged her, staged with operatic, blood-soaked style.

But Pure genre spectacle with no interest in social commentary — comic-book violence, not satire.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 poster

Unbelievable2019

Based on a true case, this miniseries is procedural and quietly furious about who gets believed — precise, devastating, and ultimately hopeful.

But No stylistic flourish or dark comedy — it's sober, patient, and emotionally heavy throughout.

Unbelievable poster

Thoroughbreds2018

Two teenage girls plot a murder with the same deadpan, tonally slippery control — unsettling, darkly funny, hard to shake.

But Colder and more detached — it's curious about psychology rather than righteous anger.

Thoroughbreds poster

Audrie & Daisy2016

Trade the candy-colored revenge fantasy for the unedited reality it's answering — same fury, same subject, no script to soften it.

A documentary following real teenage assault survivors through small-town cover-ups and vicious social-media fallout — unbearably close to the world this film only gestures at.

But No fictional catharsis or clever plotting, just grief and institutional failure sitting there, unresolved.

Audrie & Daisy poster

Ms .451981

Strip away the wit and the production sheen and this is what's underneath — the genre's raw origin, showing exactly what Promising Young Woman is styling into satire.

A grimy, low-budget rape-revenge classic where a mute seamstress turns hunter across 1980s New York — the blunt, angry ancestor of the genre PYW dresses in pastel.

But Cheap exploitation-cinema roughness and a nastier, unironic tone that modern polish has trained us out of.

Ms .45 poster

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