10 Off-Putting Movies About Invading Someone's Privacy (2024)

May December has been called one of Natalie Portman's best movies, which comes as no surprise. Though it's about many things overall, the movie functions well as an intriguing meditation on what it means to embody someone else's persona, the moral implications of portraying a real story on the screen, and the intrusiveness of an actor who researches someone else to get into character. Tonally, it can be very off-putting to those who value their personal space.

Given that May December has been nominated for the upcoming Oscar ceremony, it's interesting to look at how this film and others approach the notion of invading someone else's privacy. People are social beings, so following someone's every move or sound can often mean keeping track of what several others are doing as well. Some of the best films that explore this theme portray voyeurism and intrusion as everything from heroic to morally ambiguous to devastatingly inhumane. These movies depict the invasion of privacy with unsettling accuracy, resulting in off-putting viewing experiences that discomfort as much as they entertain.

10 'May December' (2023)

Director: Todd Haynes

May December's voyeurism may not take the form of a crime, but it arises from one. In the 90s, a woman in her mid-thirties named Gracie (Julianne Moore) is caught having an affair with a thirteen-year-old boy. More than two decades after the scandal, the couple is married and sending their kids off to college. Actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) is set to play Gracie in a film and receives permission to shadow her for research.

As such, Elizabeth asks very personal questions. She interviews Gracie's husband (Charles Melton), her ex-husband at the time of the affair, her old defense lawyer, and even has very awkward dinners with Gracie's family. May December relies on eerie, campy dialogue to tell its discomforting story, and the actors thankfully do remarkable work. In one of 2024's biggest Oscar snubs, May December didn't pick up any nominations for Portman, Moore, or Melton's performances. At least it got a Best Original Screenplay nomination, which is very much deserved.

May December

R

Drama

Release Date

December 1, 2023

Cast

Julianne Moore , Natalie Portman , Andrea Frankle , Charles Melton

Runtime

117 minutes

Watch on Netflix

9 'Rear Window' (1954)

Director: Alfred Hitchco*ck

One of Alfred Hitchco*ck's best movies, Rear Window is about a photographer (James Stewart) who has broken his leg and decides to observe his neighbors through his window. After a while, he becomes convinced that a man that he's been spying on has murdered his wife. Based on the short story "It Had to Be Murder" by Cornell Woolrich, this is considered by many to be one of the most suspenseful thrillers of all time.

Unsurprisingly, Rear Window was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Hitchco*ck had already been around for a few decades and established himself as one of the greats, yet this film was only his third in color. Rear Window is so intense that it's been parodied a million times since its 1954 release, and Stewart would go on to work with Hitchco*ck on two more classics: Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

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Rear Window

PG

Mystery

Thriller

Release Date

September 1, 1954

Cast

James Stewart , Grace Kelly , Wendell Corey , Thelma Ritter , Raymond Burr

Runtime

112 minutes

Rent on Amazon

8 'Funny Games' (1997)

Director: Michael Haneke

Funny Games is about two sad*stic teenage boys who torment a family of three for fun. There is no real character development, no real plot except that the family tries to escape, and it all takes place in a lake house. In that sense, this film immerses its audience in this very unsettling and frustrating situation with arguably little subtext. After a point, the audience may wonder: why keep watching? Well, that's the point. This psychological horror is very meta, calling attention to itself as entertainment and suggesting the viewer is complicit by spending money to watch.

Michael Haneke is among his generation's most polarizing directors, and Funny Games is his most contentious effort. It's hyper-violent, cruel to the point of being sad*stic, and incredibly frustrating, with a now-infamous scene that lives in infamy for its sheer ruthlessness. Funny Games is not for the weak of stomach and stands as a stellar, profoundly disturbing example of the home invasion movie.

Funny Games (1997)

Not Rated

Thriller

Crime

Drama

Release Date

March 11, 1998

Cast

Susanne Lothar , Ulrich Mühe , Arno Frisch , Frank Giering

Runtime

108 minutes

Watch on Max

7 'Nightcrawler' (2014)

Director: Dan Gilroy

Dan Gilroy's debut, Nightcrawler, is about an amateur freelance cameraman (creepily played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who takes graphic footage of injured people's wounds so that he can sell it to a news station. He's not the only person who does this, but his ruthless drive to make money soon makes him one of the best. This satire is inspired by such 70s classics as Network and Taxi Driver but puts its own spin on how people consume media by focusing on our desire for real-world violence over information.

The news often focuses on shootings, fires, car accidents, and so on, and Nightcrawler asks the viewer when these kinds of stories become exploitative, as well as why some kinds of stories are more valued than others. Perhaps more than anything else, though, it's a frank look at a man who will do anything to get ahead. As RogerEbert.com states, the film shows "how a man who presents as 'normal,' even 'likable' and 'motivated' and 'capable,' can be evil, and seduce us into being evil, too."

Nightcrawler

R

Crime

Drama

Thriller

Release Date

October 31, 2014

Cast

Jake Gyllenhaal , Michael Papajohn , Marco Rodríguez , Bill Paxton , James Huang , Kent Shocknek , Rene Russo

Runtime

117 minutes

Watch on Starz

6 'The Conversation' (1974)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola squeezed a Palme d'Or winner in between the first two Godfather films, and it's called The Conversation. A highly skilled professional wiretapper is paid to listen to a conversation, and he likes to keep the work separate from the why. But his career has hurt people before, and it may hurt someone again. With a heavy conscience in conflict with a passion for his craft, this middle-aged man struggles with privacy issues of his own as well.

Perhaps it's not surprising that this movie has a few actors who would appear in other Coppola classics of the 70s: John Cazale, Robert Duvall, and Harrison Ford. The star is undoubtedly Gene Hackman, though, who gives a uniquely introverted and paranoid performance. Many regard it as one of the best 1970s Best Picture nominees that didn't win, but The Conversation is also definitely one of the tensest and most thought-provoking.

The Conversation

PG

Drama

Crime

Mystery

Thriller

Release Date

April 7, 1974

Cast

Gene Hackman , John Cazale , Allen Garfield , Frederic Forrest , Cindy Williams , Michael Higgins

Runtime

113 mins

Watch on Netflix

5 'The Lives of Others' (2007)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Similar to The Conversation, The Lives of Others is about a man who listens to people for a living. Only this is historical fiction, based on how the Stasi secret police turned East Germany into a police state while it was under Communist rule. This film takes place mostly in the 80s, as one Stasi officer (played brilliantly by Ulrich Muehe) bugs the entire apartment of a playwright and his actress-partner. But the more he listens for signs of treachery, the more his conscience kicks in.

The very notion that such surveillance existed for so long, to the point where East Germany had hundreds of thousands of spies, is terrifying in itself, but there are more subtle details that are just as troubling. For instance, the conflicted Stasi officer can't tell anyone about his guilt, as they might think he's a traitor. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, The Lives of Others presents a chilling, sobering look at surveillance and the damages it inflicts on the psyche of the person doing the listening.

The Lives of Others (2006)

R

Drama

Mystery

Thriller

Release Date

March 30, 2007

Cast

Ulrich Mühe , Martina Gedeck , Sebastian Koch , Ulrich Tukur

Runtime

137 minutes

Rent on Apple TV

4 'Three Colors: Red' (1994)

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski co-wrote and directed the seminal and influential trilogyThree Colors to end his career. Signifying the colors of the French flag, Blue, White, and Red remain highly influential in modern cinema. The last, Red, is about a French model called Valentine (Irène Jacob), who accidentally hits a dog with her car as she fiddles with the radio. She gets the dog treated and tracks down the owner, a retired judge (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who she discovers is spying on a neighbor.

The two form an unlikely and random friendship, and yet there is a distance to the world that both of these characters share. There is a quiet, cerebral, and powerful undercurrent of emotion throughout. It's hard to describe, but there is a subtle strangeness to the almost plotless Three Colors: Red and many viewers may find it disconcerting in its approach.

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3 'The Truman Show' (1998)

Director: Peter Weir

The Truman Show is about a man (Jim Carrey) whose entire life has been a reality television show without his knowledge. There may be light, but there is no sun. Truman has never even been outside of his town, actually a massive Hollywood set, and the movie highlights just how far studio executives are willing to go to exploit their actors for better ratings. Of course, it also aims at audiences who would somehow rather watch a man's disturbingly contrived life than go outside themselves.

What a prediction of today's social media age, in which so many people are constantly recounting the minutiae of their everyday lives in real time that it feels like you're almost always watching others or permitting others to watch you. In the late 90s, this satirical classic would have been aimed more at the oxymoronic genre known as "reality television,"—but it's also one of the great films about the flaws of fame. One can even think of child actors who were born and raised in show biz, and The Truman Show's insights convey truths about the industry, the audience, and what it can feel like to be a star.

The Truman Show

PG

Drama

Comedy

Sci-Fi

Release Date

June 4, 1998

Director

Peter Weir

Cast

Jim Carrey , Laura Linney , Noah Emmerich , Natascha McElhone , Holland Taylor , Brian Delate

Runtime

103

Watch on Paramount+

2 'Mother!' (2017)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Most Darren Aronofsky fans know him for such experimental psychological thrillers as Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, but nothing can prepare them for the extended biblical nightmare that is Mother! Set in a secluded home, the plot is a nightmare of escalating chaos. It starts with just one house guest who overstays his welcome, followed by one more. Soon enough, however, the wife of the household (Jennifer Lawrence) becomes overwhelmed as her home is swarmed with too many people for too many reasons to keep track of.

Mother! is ruthless and unflinching, often too disturbing and frustrating to bear, and with so many different possible interpretations that, put simply, one can think of it as a terrifying allegory for that destructive and indefinable essence of humanity itself. If Mulholland Drive is considered David Lynch's magnum opus, then Mother! is probably Aronofsky's. It may sound like a stupid title at first, but holy moly—what would be the proper title for a film like this, anyway?

Mother! (2017)

R

Drama

Documentary

Horror

Mystery

Release Date

September 13, 2017

Cast

Jennifer Lawrence , Javier Bardem , Ed Harris , Michelle Pfeiffer , Domhnall Gleeson , Brian Gleeson

Runtime

115

Rent on Amazon

1 '1984' (1984)

Director: Michael Radford

Based on George Orwell's harrowing dystopian novel, director Michael Radford's 1984 embraces both the title and the year (as it was shot and released in 1984). It was not the first adaptation of Orwell's classic, and it wouldn't be the last, but it might be the best. The repressive totalitarian state that everyone lives under is very much realized, and it's definitely unnerving to watch Winston get scolded over not stretching far enough during what amounts to a community-wide Zoom meeting before such interactions were normal.

One is always being watched, as there are both visible and hidden cameras on the walls. The helicopter that peers into Winston's room is haunting every time it appears, suggesting even the cameras' constant surveillance isn't enough. Legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins impressively captures the gray squalor most people live in, as well as the idyllic beauty in those green fields: a literal and spiritual freedom that cannot be attained under a government that causes such paranoia and despair.

Watch on Tubi

NEXT: 10 Movies About Surveillance that Aren't Spy Films, Ranked by Rotten Tomatoes