With a deep dive into its titular antihero’s fractured psyche and hardly any connections to the larger Marvel universe, Moon Knight has emerged as one of the MCU’s most exciting Disney+ shows to date. Stylistically and thematically, Moon Knight has positioned itself as Marvel’s first full-blown psychological thriller. It evokes the unnerving thrills of such classics as Fight Club, Shutter Island, and even An American Werewolf in London.
In the week-long wait between each Moon Knight episode, these disturbing psychological thrillers will fill the void with splintered minds and harrowing plot twists.
Split (2016)
Oscar Isaac has been praised for playing two entirely distinctive personalities in Moon Knight. In M. Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror gem Split, James McAvoy played a character with 24 different personalities.
Set in the Unbreakable universe, Split stars modern-day “scream queen” Anya Taylor-Joy as a young woman who gets abducted by Kevin Wendell Crumb. Watching McAvoy rotate through the character’s personas is a discomforting delight, while Taylor-Joy anchors the movie with an easy-to-root-for moral compass.
Primal Fear (1996)
Released to critical acclaim in 1996, Primal Fear is the perfect intersection between a legal drama and a psychological thriller. It starts off as a genuinely compelling law procedural about an intriguing antihero, but it also has a harrowing twist up its sleeve.
Richard Gere stars as a defense attorney famous for taking on controversial high-profile clients. Edward Norton (in his movie debut) plays an altar boy accused of murder who insists he’s innocent. Like Moon Knight, this altar boy has two separate personalities: Aaron, a mild-mannered kid who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Roy, a violent psychopath (very similar to Steven and Marc).
Black Swan (2010)
Darren Aronofsky received the best reviews of his career for his stunning psychological thriller Black Swan. Natalie Portman won a much-deserved Oscar for her portrayal of a ballerina who’s tormented by her doppelgänger.
There are no rooftop fight scenes or blood-soaked shootouts in Black Swan, but its focus on the fractured mindset of its protagonist evokes Steven’s convoluted psychological journey in Moon Knight.
Memento (2000)
In Moon Knight, Steven suffers from a kind of amnesia because he can’t remember what he did after Marc has taken control of his brain. This is similar to the amnesiac protagonist of the movie that put Christopher Nolan on the map, 2000’s Memento.
Memento doesn’t revolve around a vigilante with godly superpowers like Moon Knight. Guy Pearce plays a man with short-term memory loss who tries to track down his wife’s murderer.
Taxi Driver (1976)
Martin Scorsese’s neo-noir masterpiece Taxi Driver stars Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, a mentally disturbed war veteran who takes the law into his own hands. It’s a New Hollywood-era take on the familiar vigilante thriller.
In the comics, Marc Spector has a third personality that hasn’t yet appeared in the Disney+ series. Jake Lockley drives a cab, much like Travis, so he can keep tabs on the criminal underworld.
Strangers On A Train (1951)
If Steven and Marc each had their own bodies, they’d look something like Guy and Bruno from the classic Hitchcock noir Strangers on a Train. This duo similarly captures the dichotomy of an average joe and the charming sociopath who ropes him into a murderous scheme.
What many imitators of Strangers on a Train miss is that only one of the two characters was onboard with the plan to commit each other’s murders. That’s the most compelling hook in the Hitchcock original.
Midsommar (2019)
Unlike most of Marvel’s Disney+ shows, Moon Knight isn’t focused on building toward an “Agatha All Along”/“He Who Remains”-style reveal of the big bad. It’s actually forging a real relationship between its hero and villain. Ethan Hawke gives a suitably creepy turn as cult leader Arthur Harrow, but there are much creepier cult leaders to be found in non-Disney properties.
Ari Aster’s sophomore feature Midsommar stars Florence Pugh (known to Marvel fans as Yelena Belova) as a young woman stuck in a toxic relationship as she reels from a murder-suicide that killed her entire family. Once the couple goes to a mysterious Swedish commune and takes psychedelic drugs, the movie devolves into a deeply disturbing trip as a murderous cult sinks its hooks into them.
An American Werewolf In London (1981)
One of the greatest comedy-horror hybrids ever made, John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London is as much of a psychological thriller as a werewolf movie. In the haunting opening scene, two American tourists are attacked by a werewolf in the foggy English countryside.
The one who survives the attack is plagued by visions of his undead friend imploring him to take his own life before the next full moon turns him into a werewolf and he dooms others to the same fate. This dynamic is similar to Steven’s conversations with Marc through his own reflection in Moon Knight.
Shutter Island (2010)
A few decades after making cinema history with Taxi Driver, Scorsese returned to the psychological thriller genre with 2010’s Shutter Island. Much like Steven in Moon Knight, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Shutter Island protagonist is just as baffled as the audience.
His reality crumbles around him as his mental disorder slowly begins to unravel. This is reminiscent of Moon Knight opening from Steven’s perspective and gradually revealing Marc as the story progressed.
Fight Club (1999)
Moon Knight has been described as Marvel’s take on Fight Club. Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s novel of the same name, Fight Club stars a perfectly matched Edward Norton and Brad Pitt as two sides of the same coin.
Like David Fincher’s bonkers neo-noir gem, Moon Knight is a zany, high-energy psycho-noir about a regular guy in a dead-end job whose mind gets taken over by a violent anarchist bent on leaving a trail of chaos and destruction in his wake.
