Here are Cinephile Corner’s 10 recommendations for movies like Unabomber:
Dead Man’s Wire
Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire has the bones of a taut pressure cooker, a true-story hostage standoff that should play like a noose tightening. Bill Skarsgård is Tony Kiritsis, a lower-middle-class real estate developer turned live wire, convinced he has been cheated by mortgage banker Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). In a desperate bid for retribution, Tony rigs a shotgun to his own neck with the titular “dead man’s wire,” takes Richard hostage, and demands a fortune and an apology. The premise is instantly cinematic, and Van Sant clearly understands the pull of a community watching a crisis become entertainment, with public sympathy bending in unsettling directions when class resentment gets a face.
Knock at the Cabin
The concept behind Knock at the Cabin is fairly simple, as many of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies are. A couple and their daughter are at a remote cabin when a set of strangers sets upon their location. It’s made known to them that they must choose a sacrifice from their own family to prevent the apocalypse. Despite the well-mannered and caring demeanors of the intruders, they insist that this sacrifice must be made in order to save the world.
Woman of the Hour
Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut Woman of the Hour is a taut genre piece with a few thrilling plot threads that pull you along. It’s one of the better releases in 2024 under the Netflix brand. And although I prefer my serial killer movies to have a lot less style and window dressing than this, the 1970s aesthetic doesn’t entirely suffocate the story that the movie is trying to tell. Kendrick stars with a worthy leading performance, while Daniel Zovatto is eerily effective as the big bad opposite her.
Kimi
Kimi may be genre Soderbergh, but for him to pull this off only a year after No Sudden Move and stay operating during the COVID-19 pandemic is impressive. I’ve learned to just happily accept any Soderbergh projects and not take them for granted, and Kimi is another well above average outing from the director.
Zodiac
David Fincher’s Zodiac remains an undeniable classic since its 2007 release, standing as a pivotal moment in the director’s historic career. In this crime drama, Fincher navigates the web of the Zodiac killer’s decade-spanning reign of terror, creating an atmospheric and compelling story that has only grown in cultural significance and critical acclaim over the years.
Longlegs
Longlegs makes good on the promise of being a freaky horror tale that injects dread in every frame and through every nook and cranny possible. Director Oz Perkins, if for nothing else, continues to prove himself as a singular horror director, with a style that no soul could replicate and a thirst for the absurd, demented, and disturbed. Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood offer enough to have you engaged, and Perkins is talented enough behind the camera to keep things rolling.
The Whisper Man
Kinda exactly what you’d expect from a straight-to-streaming hybrid of The Silence of the Lambs and Prisoners, The Whisper Man is a movie that seems almost aggressively committed to being a tidy, dour serial-killer thriller without ever finding much of an identity of its own. Adam Scott gives an eerily similar performance to the one he gave in Hokum earlier this year, while Robert De Niro turns in a late-period performance that isn’t necessarily completely phoned in (he’s done much worse), but the morbidity of the script and tone suffocates any possibility for either of them to really leave much of a mark.
Juror #2
Warner Bros. initially sidelined Clint Eastwood‘s courtroom drama Juror #2. Despite critical acclaim for the 94-year-old director’s latest work, the studio only pursued an awards campaign after the film gained praise. The movie had a limited theatrical release by Warner Bros., a decision that was widely criticized. After watching Juror #2, I share the frustration of those who missed the chance to experience this procedural drama on the big screen.
A History of Violence
Leave it to David Cronenberg to deconstruct the mythical American hero with odd wit and clinical detail. A History of Violence looks like a small-town melodrama on the surface, then peels back skin to expose identity, impulse, and the stories we tell to survive. Viggo Mortensen gives one of his sharpest performances as Tom Stall, a soft-spoken diner owner whose quick, efficient dispatching of two spree killers turns him into a local legend and blows up the quiet life he has built with Edie, played with fierce tenderness by Maria Bello.
The Order
The Order may not offer anything particularly new by industry standards, but Justin Kurzel‘s direction keeps the film engaging and intriguing as the story unfolds. It’s well-made and interesting, even though it draws on themes and styles found in many similar movies. While some argue that Hollywood no longer makes films like it used to, The Order feels like it came from a different time.
READ MORE: Movies Like Knock at the Cabin, Movies Like The Whisper Man
