Single White Female (1992)
Directed by Barbet Schroeder
Having recently split from her fiancé, Allison Jones welcomes new roommate Hedra Carlson. The young women quickly form a bond, but soon Allison begins to notice not all’s well with her new tenant.
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What critics compared Single White Female to
A film that tries to evoke the themes and exaggerated fun of classics like Basic Instinct or Single White Female, but doesn’t achieve the necessary bite or reticent performances to succeed.
There are echoes of Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Single White Female, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle in its glossy surfaces, sexual tension, and escalating paranoia.
…turns Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney into modern-day Davis and Crawford, like something out of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? mashed up with a ’90s-style female thriller like Single White Female, or Hand That Rocks the Cradle, but teetering on the edge of cinematic insanity.
For a vibe reading, think: Single White Female; The Hand That Rocks the Cradle; The Crush; Sleeping With the Enemy; Poison Ivy; Body Heat; Fatal Attraction; and so on.
You know the ones, flicks like Basic Instinct (1992), Single White Female (1992), Poison Ivy (1992) and Sliver (1993).
SINGLE WHITE FEMALE…
There’s also more than a dollop of trashy, early 1990s thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and Single White Female (1992).
There are elements of Single White Female to be found in how much she initially copes with Blake Lively’s Emily, and watching her performance, it’s difficult to argue with.
Is Stephanie a dauntless amateur sleuth on her friend's trail or a Single White Female eager to steal Emily's glitzy life?
Sleuthing gives Stephanie a focus – as she blossoms, her wardrobe is more defined and refined, without becoming too Single White Female.
It doesn’t help that Kendrick’s portrayal of Stephanie, in part because the script isn’t ever able to get a handle on her, veers from feeling sincere to being sarcastic to approaching Single White Female status.
From the trailer you would think, this movie is a Single White Female meets Gone Girl type of missing/kidnapping murder mystery and who knows who did it.
The scenes of conflict between two women in a confined setting recall several other movies, including Robert Altman’s 3 Women, Barbet Schroeder’s Single White Female (a more melodramatic variant on the same theme), and even Ingmar Bergman’s classic Persona.
The switch in vocal intensity and her incredible physical contortions (and those rubbery facial expressions) earn her a spot in the loopy ladies of terror “hall of fame”, right next to Glen Close as Alex of FATAL ATTRACTION and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Hedy in SINGLE WHITE FEMALE.
Later, Caden will fly to Berlin to track down his daughter, Olive (Sadie Goldstein), who's fallen into the clutches of his wife's scary best friend, Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh, hilariously riffing on the scary-best-friend role she's specialized in ever since Single White Female).
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That's the superficial starting point of The Gift, the directorial debut of actor Joel Edgerton, who takes the cuckoo-in-the-nest thriller template – which became ubiquitous in the early '90s with films like Pacific Heights, Unlawful Entry, Single White Female and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – and, by introducing psychological depth and a streak of social conscience, fashions an intriguing morality tale.
The "platonic friendship" brand of fatal attraction thriller is typically reserved for films with female leads (think Single White Female or The Roommate ), so the "male-on-male" obsession in The Gift is an interesting twist on the formula.
It's also a throwback to the sub-genre sometimes known as the "intimacy thriller", which flourished in the late 1980s and early '90s, the era of Fatal Attraction, Single White Female and Cape Fear.
To describe much more of the plot would be to rob the viewer of one of The Gift’s many pleasures—its constant ability to surprise—but suffice it to say: Edgerton begins by hitting all of the beats familiar to fans of Fatal Attraction, Single White Female and their countless imitators, but it becomes obvious early on that he’s not going to play by their rules.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
Directed by Andrew Dominik
Characters
As played by Casey Affleck in the performance of his career, Ford is less Mr. Smithers from "The Simpsons" and more Jennifer Jason Leigh from "Single White Female".
It's "Rear Window" crossed with a soap opera, a throwback to "Single White Female"-style preposterous thrillers, a light ripoff of satirical psychodrama "Gone Girl" and a lurid slice of faux-forbidden post-ironic exploitationist crap a la "Fifty Shades of Grey."
There’s also a palpable Single White Female vibe to the way in which Maggie begins to emulate Alma’s dress sense, her mannerisms…
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“Warcraft’s” relationship to the “Lord of the Rings” franchise falls somewhere between hoping to invoke it and wanting to “Single White Female” it.
M3GAN will draw obvious comparisons to the Chucky series, as well as Annabelle , but it actually shares more DNA with Single White Female and Fatal Attraction .