Film

Tickled

A journalist's puff piece about competitive tickling videos turns into a rabbit hole of legal threats, hired goons, and a shadowy figure with seemingly bottomless money and a fixation on humiliating young men on camera. It's funny at first, then genuinely unsettling — a true story that keeps getting stranger the harder Farrier pulls at it. Watch it for the whiplash.

TMDb rating7.2

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Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer2019

Amateur internet sleuths chase an anonymous tormentor across continents, and the deeper they go the more it costs them personally — the same escalating dread as watching Farrier get in over his head.

But It's genuinely disturbing true crime, not comic-tinged strangeness; the violence at its centre is real and upsetting.

Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer poster

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst2015

A filmmaker gets dangerously close to a wealthy, possibly murderous subject who seems delighted by the attention. The power imbalance between documentarian and monied eccentric feels very familiar.

But Six episodes is a longer commitment, and the pacing is deliberate rather than propulsive.

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst poster

Three Identical Strangers2018

Starts as a feel-good curiosity and pivots hard into something disturbing about power, secrecy, and people who think they're allowed to control other people's lives from a distance.

But The tonal swerve is severe — some viewers feel ambushed by how dark it gets.

Three Identical Strangers poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Grey Gardens1976

This is the ancestor of Farrier's whole approach: a camera let in close to someone's private weirdness, and the queasy question of who's really in control of the footage.

The Maysles brothers get extraordinary, uncomfortable access to two eccentric recluses in a decaying mansion, and never quite resolve whether they're documenting or exploiting them.

But No plot, no danger, no thriller mechanics — just prolonged, intimate strangeness that some find mesmerising and others find a chore.

Grey Gardens poster
More like this (8)

Wild Wild Country2018

A charismatic leader, a devoted inner circle, and an outside world that keeps getting menaced for asking questions — the same slow reveal of money and control behind a strange facade.

But Six hours is a big ask, and it demands patience for a slow-burn structure.

Wild Wild Country poster

Icarus2017

A director sets out to make a small personal film and accidentally uncovers a state-level conspiracy — the pleasure of watching a story completely outgrow its own premise.

But The back half turns into dense geopolitical explainer, a different rhythm than the personal, jokey opening.

Icarus poster

The Imposter2012

A stranger-than-fiction true story told with real dramatic craft, full of people who should have asked more questions and didn't. It never explains itself before it's ready to.

But Some of its reenactment techniques feel manipulative in retrospect, love-it-or-hate-it stylistically.

The Imposter poster

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief2015

Journalists and defectors face intimidation for simply asking questions of a wealthy, litigious organisation with something to hide — the institutional-menace energy will feel very familiar.

But It's heavier and more overtly political than Tickled's tabloid-strange tone.

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief poster

Catfish2010

An online mystery that starts as a curiosity and becomes an uncomfortable character study of loneliness and deception, with the filmmakers stumbling further in than they meant to.

But Its authenticity has long been debated, which can undercut the experience if you go in skeptical.

Catfish poster

Finders Keepers2014

A genuinely bizarre real dispute — over a mummified leg, no less — played for both dark comedy and real pathos, with the same instinct for finding humanity inside the absurd.

But It's a smaller, quieter film than Tickled's mounting paranoia; the stakes never feel dangerous.

Finders Keepers poster

Zodiac2007

Same engine as Tickled dressed as a fictional thriller: a man pulled past reason into pursuing an anonymous, taunting adversary who seems to enjoy being chased.

Fincher's meticulous true-crime procedural about men who cannot let go of an unsolvable mystery, even as it wrecks their careers, marriages, and sense of proportion.

But It's long, cold, and deliberately anticlimactic — a film about obsession that refuses to reward the obsessive viewer with closure.

Zodiac poster

Casting JonBenet2017

Like Tickled, it's less interested in solving its mystery than in what our compulsive fascination with a strange story reveals about us as watchers.

A formally strange true-crime documentary that auditions actors to play figures in a notorious case, using their conflicting theories to expose America's appetite for lurid speculation.

But It's more art installation than narrative — deliberately unresolved, and openly uninterested in giving you answers.

Casting JonBenet poster

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