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The Conversation poster

Movies that feel likeThe Conversation (1974)

A paranoid, secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.

If you loved The Conversation, the closest films we have are Blow Out (1981), Chinatown (1974) and Gone Baby Gone (2007). All three share The Conversation's gritty and twisty feel, which is what we rank on before quality.

Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Cutter's Way (1981).

🍅 94% Rotten Tomatoes★ 7.7 IMDb ↗TMDB ↗dir. Francis Ford Coppolagrittycontemplativetwistyparanoidlonely
10 of 12 streaming nowHBO Max · Amazon Prime Video · Paramount Plus Premium

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If The Conversation hit the spot, these will too

Blow Out poster
Blow Out
1981 · dir. Brian De Palma
🍅 88%★ 7.4crime · mystery · thrillerPrime Video

Common ground in both: audio tape and paranoia

The difference: Takes it somewhere less contemplative than The Conversation does

While recording sound effects for a slasher flick, Jack Terry stumbles upon a real-life horror: a car careening off a bridge and into a river. Jack jumps into the water and fishes out Sally from the car, but the other passenger is already dead — a governor intending to run for president. As Jack does some investigating of his tapes, and starts a perilous romance with Sally, he enters a tangled web of conspiracy that might leave him dead.

Chinatown poster
Chinatown
1974 · dir. Roman Polanski
🍅 98%★ 8.1crime · mystery · thriller

One thread runs through both: conspiracy

The difference: Trades the stillness of The Conversation for an angle of its own

Private eye Jake Gittes lives off of the murky moral climate of sunbaked, pre-World War II Southern California. Hired by a beautiful socialite to investigate her husband's extra-marital affair, Gittes is swept into a maelstrom of double dealings and deadly deceits, uncovering a web of personal and political scandals that come crashing together.

Gone Baby Gone poster
Gone Baby Gone
2007 · dir. Ben Affleck
🍅 94%★ 7.6crime · drama · mysteryParamount+

Both keep coming back to the same thing: conspiracy

The difference: 33 years apart, and the 2000s show

When 4 year old Amanda McCready disappears from her home and the police make little headway in solving the case, the girl's aunt, Beatrice McCready hires two private detectives, Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro. The detectives freely admit that they have little experience with this type of case, but the family wants them for two reasons—they're not cops and they know the tough neighborhood in which they all live.

The Man Who Knew Too Much poster
The Man Who Knew Too Much
1956 · dir. Alfred Hitchcock
🍅 89%★ 7.4thriller · mystery · drama

Common ground: spy

The difference: Leans harder into thriller than The Conversation does

An American doctor and his wife, a former singing star, witness a murder while vacationing in Morocco, and are drawn into a twisting plot of international intrigue when their young son is kidnapped.

Three Days of the Condor poster
Three Days of the Condor
1975 · dir. Sydney Pollack
🍅 88%★ 7.4thriller · mystery

Both are built on the same subject: spy

When bookish CIA researcher Joe Turner finds all his co-workers dead, he, together with a woman he has kidnapped, must work together to outwit those responsible until he determines who he can really trust.

Cutter's Way poster
Cutter's Way
1981 · dir. Ivan Passer
🍅 92%★ 6.8drama · mystery · thriller

Gritty and contemplative in the same breath

Alex Cutter is a boozy, belligerent and deeply cynical Vietnam veteran whose encounter with a landmine during the war has left him minus an eye, a leg and an arm. When his drifter playboy friend Richard Bone is falsely accused of murder, Cutter sets out for revenge in his own inimitable style.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death poster
Let's Scare Jessica to Death
1971 · dir. John D. Hancock
🍅 50%★ 6.4horror · mystery · drama

The same preoccupation in both: isolation

The difference: The critics' underdog of the pair

Newly released from a mental ward, Jessica hopes to return to life the way it was before her nervous breakdown. But when Jessica moves to a country house with her husband and a close friend, she finds a mysterious girl living in there. Jessica's terror and paranoia resurface as evil forces surround her.

Secret Window poster
Secret Window
2004 · dir. David Koepp
🍅 46%★ 6.5mystery · thriller

Both are built on the same subject: isolation

Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.

The Last Wave poster
The Last Wave
1977 · dir. Peter Weir
🍅 78%★ 6.9drama · mystery · fantasyMax

Both are built on the same subject: paranoia

A Sydney lawyer defends five Aboriginal people in a ritualised taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing truths about himself and premonitions.

To Kill a Mockingbird poster
To Kill a Mockingbird
1962 · dir. Robert Mulligan
🍅 93%★ 8.2drama

Drama with a pulse of loneliness, in both cases

Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.

Soylent Green poster
Soylent Green
1973 · dir. Richard Fleischer
🍅 73%★ 7science fiction · crime · mystery

Both land twists and paranoia at once

In the year 2022, overcrowding, pollution, and resource depletion have reduced society’s leaders to finding food for the teeming masses. The answer is Soylent Green.

In the Heat of the Night poster
In the Heat of the Night
1967 · dir. Norman Jewison
🍅 96%★ 7.9crime · drama · mystery

Crime built on grit, twice over

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces with Gillespie to track down the real killer. Their investigation takes them through every social level of the town, with Tibbs making enemies as well as unlikely friends as he hunts for the truth.

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The best-reviewed films that share The Conversation’s defining feeling.