Film
The Blueberry Hunt
A tense Indian thriller about a recluse protecting his illegal marijuana plantation in its final days before harvest. Naseeruddin Shah commands the screen as a man watching everything—his crop, his boundaries, his grip on sanity—start to slip. It's intimate, paranoid, and deliberately paced, built on atmosphere and performance rather than action beats.
If you liked this
Udta Punjab2016
A raw, unflinching look at Punjab's drug crisis across multiple lives. Like The Blueberry Hunt, it's an Indian thriller that refuses to moralize, treating its subject with documentary-level seriousness and real anger about systemic failure.
But The tonal shifts between its four storylines can feel scattered, and some scenes trade subtlety for speechmaking. It's also genuinely bleak in ways that don't always land as cathartic.
Jai Bhim2021
Suriya gives a career-best performance as a lawyer methodically dismantling a corrupt system. Like Colonel, it's fueled by a protagonist's quiet, relentless focus—watching someone see clearly while the world resists that clarity.
But It's a courtroom procedural at heart, so stretches of it are exposition and cross-examination rather than drama. Nearly three hours, and it doesn't always justify the length.
Uski Kahani1966
Vidya Balan in a taut Hitchcockian thriller where every scene withholds information as weaponry. Both films use confined spaces and small casts to build pressure; both trust the audience to keep up without exposition.
But It's genre exercise rather than character study—perfectly constructed but cool where The Blueberry Hunt is intimate. Some plot mechanics are visible if you're looking for them.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Blueberry Hunt
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Satantango1994
Both films understand that watching someone's interior world collapse in real time is more compelling than any external plot. Both use isolation as both setting and mirror.
Béla Tarr's seven-and-a-half-hour masterpiece of moral dissolution in an abandoned settlement. Like The Blueberry Hunt, it's built on atmosphere, minimal plot, and the slow recognition that characters are trapped not by circumstance but by their own complicity. Hypnotic rather than thrilling.
But It's in black and white, Hungarian, and moves at the pace of memory. Most people will find it exhausting rather than rewarding; it demands a viewer's surrender, not participation.
More like this (7)
Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 12012
Anurag Kashyap's epic of crime and vendetta unfolds with Shakespearean scope but pulp momentum. It shares The Blueberry Hunt's deep investment in male psychology and its refusal to separate morality from survival.
But It's a four-hour commitment across two films with a sprawling cast and overlapping timelines. The violence is graphic and the register swings wildly between tragedy and dark comedy.
The Sunset Limited2011
Two men in a room, one train, one conversation. Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson in a philosophical thriller about despair and meaning. Like Colonel, it's about interiority—watching someone's interior world become the entire arena.
But It's essentially a filmed play with minimal plot movement. If you need incident or visual variety, it will feel claustrophobic in ways that aren't always rewarding.
Badlapur2015
Varun Dhawan as a man consumed by revenge, methodical and hollow. It's also about watching someone's obsession calcify into something barely human; both films understand that focus can become a kind of death.
But The second half relies on plot contrivances that creak under scrutiny. It's also darker in register than it perhaps intends—it can read as exploitative rather than tragic.
A Prophet2009
Jacques Audiard's masterpiece of a man navigating prison through will and intelligence. It shares The Blueberry Hunt's fascination with how isolation and constraint force clarity; both watch a protagonist strategize his survival.
But At two and a half hours it's a slow reveal, and the French prison system requires some patience to understand. Some viewers find the protagonist's trajectory morally murky in ways that alienate rather than compel.
Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl2020
Janhvi Kapoor in a true-story thriller about focus under pressure. It shares Colonel's interest in a protagonist's singular determination and the cost it extracts from those around them.
But It's a biopic with a Bollywood sheen that sometimes undercuts its own seriousness. The dramatic peaks feel earned but the valleys are predictable.
Come and See1985
Both films use a confined time frame (five days/weeks of war) and a single perspective to achieve claustrophobia and inevitability. Both refuse to explain their worlds; they simply show the cost of being in them.
Elem Klimov's Soviet masterpiece about a boy conscripted into war, shot with documentary brutality and a child's incomprehension. Like Colonel, it's about watching someone's understanding of the world disintegrate; unlike Colonel, it refuses mercy or distance.
But It is perhaps the most difficult war film ever made—graphically violent, spiritually exhausted, and genuinely traumatic. It's not entertainment; it's endurance.
Winter Light1963
Both center on a single protagonist in a restricted space, watching their internal scaffolding fail. Both understand that psychological thriller and existential drama are the same thing.
Bergman's chamber piece about a pastor's crisis of faith, shot in gray light with barely any plot. It's about watching someone recognize that their certainties are hollow—the same engine as Colonel, just spiritual instead of criminal.
But Bergman's minimalism will feel like nothing happening to most viewers. It's a film about the absence of comfort, and it offers none.
People
Cast
Naseeruddin ShahColonel
Vipin SharmaSett
Aahana KumraJaya
Vinay ForrtKiller 3
Directing
- Anup KurianDirector