Film

Titane

Name: Titane
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Horror
Released: 2021
Cast: Vincent Lindon, Agathe Rousselle, Garance Marillier, Laïs Salameh, Mara Cissé

Julia Ducournau's Palme d'Or winner sits somewhere between horror, thriller and tender melodrama, following a woman with a metal plate in her skull whose body starts doing very strange things. It's shocking, absurd, gross, and unexpectedly moving all at once — not for weak stomachs, but for anyone curious about what cinema can still dare to do, it's unforgettable.

TMDb rating

6.3

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Raw2017

Ducournau's debut turns a vet student's carnivorous awakening into coming-of-age horror, sharing Titane's commitment to treating the body as something strange and alive. Same director, same nerve, slightly gentler entry point into her obsessions.

But Still graphic enough to test squeamish viewers, and its themes of appetite and self-control can feel thin stretched to feature length.

The Substance2024

Demi Moore stars in this gleefully grotesque body-horror satire about beauty, aging and self-destruction, matching Titane's willingness to let flesh do impossible, disgusting, symbolic things onscreen.

But The satire is broad and the final act tips fully into splatter, which some will find exhilarating and others exhausting.

Crash1996no page yet

Cronenberg's controversial adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel fuses car crashes with sexual desire, the clearest ancestor to Titane's metal-and-flesh obsessions. Cold, clinical, deliberately alienating, and genuinely strange.

But Deliberately anti-erotic and emotionally flat by design, which makes it a tough, joyless watch even by Cronenberg's standards.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Eyes Without a Face1960

Both films treat the body as something a parent's love can violate and remake, finding beauty inside body horror rather than just revulsion — Ducournau has cited this film as a direct influence.

Georges Franju's cold, lyrical horror about a surgeon father grafting new faces onto his disfigured daughter is the elegant ancestor of everything Titane does with skin, identity and monstrous parental love.

But Black-and-white, subtitled, and slow by modern standards — its horror is atmosphere and implication rather than shock.

Possessor2020

Brandon Cronenberg's assassin-thriller about body-hopping killers shares Titane's interest in identity as something unstable and violently contested, wrapped in nauseating, gorgeous visual effects.

But Grim, nihilistic and light on warmth — a technically dazzling film that keeps you at arm's length emotionally.

Under the Skin2014

Scarlett Johansson plays an alien wearing a human body like ill-fitting clothes, in a film as interested in bodily strangeness and silence as Titane is, just eerier and more meditative.

But Glacially slow and almost wordless — a mood piece rather than a story, which won't suit everyone's patience.

Videodrome1983

The original body-horror classic, where television and flesh fuse into something new and horrifying. Essential viewing for the genre Titane belongs to, and still deeply unsettling decades later.

But Its analog-era effects and paranoid media satire feel dated in ways that might distract from its ideas.

Climax2018

Gaspar Noé's dance-troupe-gone-wrong nightmare has the same sensory overload and willingness to abandon narrative logic for pure, disorienting feeling that Titane trades in.

But Deliberately disorienting camerawork and a punishing back half make this a genuinely uncomfortable, headache-inducing watch.

Swiss Army Man2016

A stranded man befriends a farting, multi-purpose corpse in this weirdly tender comedy that, like Titane, finds real feeling inside body-based absurdity most films wouldn't dare touch.

But The gross-out gags upfront might put off anyone expecting the sincerity that eventually takes over.

American Mary2013no page yet

A medical student turns to underground body-modification surgery in this scrappy Canadian horror, sharing Titane's fascination with the body as something to be redesigned rather than merely inhabited.

But Rougher around the edges technically and narratively than the others here — this is B-movie territory, unapologetically so.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man1989

Where Titane's flesh-metal fusion is one strand among several, Tetsuo makes it the whole film — the same body-becomes-machine idea stripped to its rawest, most industrial nightmare.

This feral Japanese cyberpunk nightmare, shot in scratchy black-and-white with an industrial soundtrack, turns a man's slow fusion with scrap metal into pure, screaming id — Titane's metal obsession taken to its most literal extreme.

But Barely narrative, aggressively abrasive, and only 67 minutes of pure sensory assault — this is an experience, not a story.

The Kid with a Bike2011no page yet

Vincent's claiming of a stranger as his lost son is Titane's emotional core; this film tells the same story of unearned, chosen parental love in bare realist form, with nothing supernatural to hide behind.

The Dardenne brothers' quiet, unsentimental drama about a hairdresser who unofficially takes in an abandoned boy strips away every genre trapping and asks the same question Titane hides inside its violence: what makes someone a parent?

But No horror, no shock value, no metal — just patient, handheld realism that some will find slow after Titane's extremity.