69%User score 69 percent
Basic Instinct
1992 · Thriller · Mystery
User Score
2.3K votes
You can't prepare for where the truth will take you.
A small, seemingly innocuous plastic reel of film leads surveillance specialist Tom Welles down an increasingly dark and frightening path. With the help of the streetwise Max, he relentlessly follows a bizarre trail of evidence to determine the fate of a complete stranger. As his work turns into obsession, he drifts farther and farther away from his wife, family and simple life as a small-town PI.
Recommendations based on this film
Wuchak
April 29, 2018
Into the perverse underworld of smut, S&M and snuff films RELEASED IN 1999 and directed by Joel Schumacher, "8MM" chronicles events when a private investigator (Nicolas Cage) is hired by an aged wealthy woman whose husband recently passed away. A snuff film was found in his safe and she wants to see if the girl in the movie (Jenny Powell) really died or not. Amy Morton appears as the girl’s mother while Joaquin Phoen…
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March 9, 2019
8MM probably only got greenlit due to the success of Se7en. Like Se7en, 8MM explores the existence of people who are simply pure evil while the main character wants to know why they are like this. 8MM doesn't provide many answers but it also isn't thematically complex. It follows a standard whodunit plot. While Nicolas Cage gives a solid performance, there are times where he takes us out of the story with his signatu…
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Andre Gonzales
March 17, 2023
Another one of Nicholas Cage's crazy movies. Like all the rest of his movies, this one was good too.
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GenerationofSwine
September 5, 2023
Joel Schumacher does it again. Look into how this film was made, what went into it, the intended directors, the intended stars, the intended budget. It started as a low budget "Dark and Gritty" film that was going to be "hand held" and star Russel Crowe and be directed by David Fincher... that would probably have worked. Look at the release date, 1999, when audiences welcomed low budget movies done well. Back in the…
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