About Cruel Intentions
Directed and written by Roger Kumble, Cruel Intentions stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon, and Selma Blair. It was released in the year 1999.
Cruel Intentions follows privileged teenager Sebastian who makes a deal with his step sister, Kathryn, that if he’s able to seduce Cecile, that Kathryn will have sex with Sebastian. If he fails then Kathryn gets Sebastian’s Jaguar XK140. Unfortunately, as Sebastian starts to seduce Cecile he begins to fall for her.
After a recent re-watch I put together this list of movies like Cruel Intentions. Have you ticked any off your bucket list?
17. Cruel Intentions 2 (2001)
Cruel Intentions 2 isn’t so much a sequel as it is a venom-soaked origin story, stitched together from the corpse of a failed Fox pilot (Manchester Prep). What we get is less polished thriller and more glossy soap opera dripping with prep school sin.
Sebastian Valmont (Robin Dunne) shows up at Manchester Prep still naïve enough to think love means something. But then he collides with Kathryn Merteuil (a pre–Oscar and super-young Amy Adams, already radiating cobra energy) – a master manipulator in pearls who lives for power, image, and destruction.
Sebastian falls for Danielle, the headmaster’s daughter, but Kathryn doesn’t tolerate innocence in her kingdom. With seduction, sabotage, and social warfare, she dismantles him piece by piece until nothing remains but the cold-hearted predator we recognise from Cruel Intentions.
By the curtain call, Danielle is gone, Sebastian’s soul has curdled, and Kathryn stands victorious as Manchester Prep’s reigning queen of cruelty. It’s less about romance and more about watching a serpent teach her prey to grow fangs. And make no mistake – Amy Adams absolutely steals the crown.
16. Hard Candy (2005)
Hard Candy is the cinematic equivalent of a razorblade hidden in a candy wrapper. What begins as the classic predator setup – a 30-something photographer charming a teenage girl in a coffee shop – quickly mutates into something far nastier.
Elliot Page’s Hayley walks into Jeff’s stylish lair like bait, but within minutes she’s laced his drink, tied him down, and begun dismantling his life with surgical precision. Every soft-spoken word is a scalpel, every accusation a hammer blow, and the sterile walls of his bachelor pad become an interrogation chamber dripping with dread.
From there, the film spirals into a suffocating game of cat-and-mouse where reality and manipulation blur. Hayley’s psychological torture escalates to the infamous castration scene – a moment so clinical and methodical it burns itself into your spine – while Jeff’s protests, denials, and desperation crumble under the weight of her control.
By the time she forces him to choose between public ruin or a rooftop plunge, the question isn’t whether Jeff is guilty – it’s whether Hayley’s vengeance makes her savior, sadist, or both. Hard Candy leaves you feeling raw, shaken, and questioning just how thin the line between justice and cruelty really is.
15. Unfaithful (2002)
Unfaithful isn’t just an adultery drama – it’s a time bomb ticking under the floorboards of suburban perfection. Edward (Richard Gere) and Connie Sumner (Diane Lane) have the house, the kid, the picture-frame marriage. But Connie wants more than beige comfort.
Enter Paul (Olivier Martinez), a French book dealer with smoldering eyes and an apartment that smells like sex and danger. One accidental run-in turns into an affair that’s less about love and more about feeding an addiction – every rendezvous another hit, every lie another thread snapping loose.
But passion doesn’t stay pretty. Edward finds out, and when husband finally meets lover, it doesn’t end with words – it ends with blood. A snow globe shatters, a life is snuffed out, and Edward covers it up with shaking hands. From there, Unfaithful stops being about desire and becomes about rot. Connie realizes what he’s done, and the two of them are left staring at the wreckage of their “perfect” life, bound together not by love, but by murder.
14. Consenting Adults (1992)
Consenting Adults takes the glossy sheen of suburban bliss and rips it open with a razor blade. Richard and Priscilla Parker (Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) are living the safe, beige version of the American Dream – until Eddy and Kay Otis (Kevin Spacey and Rebecca Miller) move in next door.
Eddy is the kind of neighbour who doesn’t just borrow sugar; he borrows your entire sense of morality. He’s slick, magnetic, and dangerous in ways Richard doesn’t clock until it’s far too late.
What starts as beers on the porch spirals into a proposal drenched in sleaze: wife-swapping. Richard takes the bait, thinking it’s a one-night brush with forbidden fruit. But then Kay ends up dead, Richard’s fingerprints are all over the scene, and the walls of suburbia start closing in. Eddy’s mask drops – revealing not a charming rogue but a full-blown sociopath who’s been puppeteering the entire affair just to ruin Richard’s life.
By the bloody endgame, it’s neighbour versus neighbour in a fight where trust, sex, and murder are all just weapons. Consenting Adults isn’t a thriller so much as a cautionary tale: sometimes the guy next door isn’t friendly – he’s the devil in a leather jacket.
13. The Crush (1993)
The Crush isn’t a romance, it’s a cautionary tale with a switchblade tucked under a school uniform. Cary Elwes plays Nick Eliot, a young journalist renting the perfect suburban guest house – until he collides with Alicia Silverstone’s Darian, a 14-year-old Lolita with a smile like sunlight and intentions like poison.
What starts as harmless attention curdles into obsession, and before Nick can even blink, he’s neck-deep in the kind of psychosexual nightmare you can’t just walk away from. When Nick doesn’t play along, Darian flips the script. She torches his career, shatters his relationships, and frames him as the predator in her twisted game.
Every diary entry is a weapon, every pout a landmine, every act of revenge another nail in his coffin. By the climax, Nick is clawing his way out of a suburban hellscape built by a teenager with too much time, too much cunning, and not enough conscience.
The Crush is glossy ’90s pulp at its most vicious – a reminder that sometimes the most dangerous monster in the neighbourhood is the one who calls it love.
12. The Rules of Attraction (2002)
The Rules of Attraction isn’t your glossy college coming-of-age story – it’s a blood-stained mixtape of sex, nihilism, and broken toys circling the drain. James Van Der Beek ditches the Dawson smile to play Sean Bateman – little brother of American Psycho’s Patrick – a drug-dealing campus vampire who feeds on lust and leaves nothing but bruises.
He wants Lauren (Shannyn Sossamon), the self-styled virgin waiting for a boyfriend overseas. Meanwhile, Paul (Ian Somerhalder) wants Sean, Lauren dreams of a love that isn’t rotting, and the whole triangle is stitched together with booze, bad decisions, and the kind of cruelty that feels almost recreational.
This isn’t a story – it’s a collage of overdose parties, blackout hook-ups, suicide notes, and split-screen breakdowns. In fact, nobody gets what they want. Sean doesn’t win Lauren, Paul doesn’t win Sean, and Lauren’s romantic illusions shatter like a wine glass on the dorm floor.
By the final frame, all that’s left is the sneer of a film reminding you that connection is fleeting, sex is a weapon, and love is just another scam. The Rules of Attraction is Ellis’ playground of pretty corpses – a dark comedy where the punchline is always heartbreak.
11. Devil in the Flesh (1998)
Devil in the Flesh isn’t teenage romance – it’s a funeral dirge played on a cheerleader’s smile. Rose McGowan steps into Debbie Strand, a girl fresh from tragedy who doesn’t grieve, she sharpens.
Shipped off to her grandmother’s house, Debbie finds herself bored with small-town routine and zeroes in on her English teacher, Peter Rinaldi (Alex McArthur). He’s engaged, respectable, the perfect mark. While Debbie is a loaded weapon disguised as a schoolgirl.
What follows isn’t love – it’s demolition. Every glance is bait and every rejection fuels her obsession. She stalks, she manipulates, and when charm doesn’t work, bodies start to drop. Friends, rivals, anyone who dares block her path are swallowed by her wrath. By the time Peter realizes what’s happening, his fiancée is gone, his reputation is ash, and his world is collapsing under the weight of Debbie’s twisted devotion.
Devil in the Flesh is pure late-’90s pulp: a blood-red cautionary tale about lust, obsession, and how one girl’s crush can chew up an entire life and spit out the bones.
10. Swimfan (2002)
Swimfan is Fatal Attraction in a high school swimming pool, complete with teen melodrama and stalker venom. Ben Cronin (Jesse Bradford) is the golden boy – Stanford dreams, a loving girlfriend (Shiri Appleby), and a clean slate after a messy past. Then along comes Madison Bell (Erika Christensen), the kind of transfer student who doesn’t just turn heads, she detonates lives.
One reckless hook-up and Madison shifts from flirtation to fixation. There’s flowers on his doorstep, nude photos, cyberstalking (if you could call it that), drug test sabotage – basically every move designed to unravel Ben’s perfect swim-team world. When he tries to pull away, Madison escalates to murder, framing him for his rival’s death and dragging his name through every gutter in town.
The final act goes batshit crazy: Madison kidnaps Amy, chains her underwater, and dares Ben to save her. He does – using her own hairpin to break Amy free – but Madison drowns in the very pool that was supposed to be her stage.
Swimfan ends with the wreckage of obsession. It’s a cautionary tale dressed as teen pulp: one night of lust, followed by a lifetime of fallout, and a reminder that some crushes don’t fade – they kill.
9. Wild Things (1998)
Wild Things is swamp noir (if that’s a thing!) dipped in sweat, sex, and lies. It’s a fever dream where every smile hides a knife. Matt Dillon plays Sam Lombardo, a guidance counselor in Blue Bay whose life implodes when rich stupidly-hot brat Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards) and stupidly-hot outcast Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) accuse him of rape.
As a result, the town turns on him, his career’s torched, and the courtroom becomes a swampy coliseum of scandal. Then the first twist finally lands in a true ooh moment: the girls made it all up. Cue a fat settlement check and a collective gasp.
But that’s just the foreplay. The real game slithers out when we learn Sam, Kelly, and Suzie were in on it together, conning Kelly’s mega-rich family for millions. What follows is a carnival of betrayals. There’s champagne-soaked threesomes, alligator-infested bodies, and Detective Duquette (Kevin Bacon) circling like a shark who doesn’t realize he’s chum.
One by one, the players turn on each other until only Suzie remains. She’s revealed as the grand architect of every scheme who sails away with the money, the bodies buried, and a smirk sharp enough to cut glass.
Wild Things isn’t just a thriller, it’s a siren swamp song where sex is a weapon, trust is a footnote, and Neve Campbell walking off as the queen of the con is the absolute punchline.
8. Wicker Park (2004)
Wicker Park isn’t a love story – it’s a hall of mirrors where obsession dresses up as fate. Josh Hartnett’s Matthew is on the cusp of a shiny new life: high-paying job, respectable fiancée, future neatly plotted. Then he catches a glimpse of Lisa (Diane Kruger), the woman who once owned his heart before vanishing without a word. That single sighting shatters his stability like a wine glass dropped on concrete. He ditches his career, his fiancée and his sanity – chasing a ghost through the back alleys of Chicago.
But ghosts don’t haunt alone. Enter Alex (Rose Byrne), a stage actress with Lisa’s face on speed-dial and a psyche wired for obsession. She’s the phantom puppeteer, impersonating, sabotaging, and weaving Matthew’s life into a spiderweb of missed connections and broken truths. It’s pure evil as every moment Matthew thinks destiny is reuniting him with his lost love is revealed to be Alex pulling his strings.
When the masks finally fall, obsession drowns, and the real Lisa re-emerges – but not before Matthew and the audience have been dragged through a love story poisoned with deceit.
A tone that is accentuated by an equally haunting soundtrack, with artists like Mogwai, Danny Lohner (ex-Nine Inch Nails), Snow Patrol and Death Cab for Cutie contributing their more sombre tracks.
Wicker Park is Hitchcock by way of indie melancholy – a fever-dream romance where longing turns predatory, coincidence is a weapon, and the line between love and obsession is as thin as cigarette smoke in a Chicago bar.
7. Fear (1996)
Fear is the ’90s teen dream gone septic. It’s the kind of film that starts with puppy love and ends with blood on the walls. Reese Witherspoon’s Nicole is the suburban not-so-innocent teen: 16, restless, and ripe for danger.
Enter Mark Wahlberg’s David McCall, the older bad boy with a smile that could sell cigarettes and fists that tell a different story. One concert date and she’s hooked – it’s a romance that feels like rebellion.
But David doesn’t love; he consumes. Jealousy curdles into violence, protection mutates into possession, and Nicole learns too late that her prince is more wolf than knight. From tattoos carved into his chest to stalking her every move, David turns his obsession into a weapon.
By the time he and his crew lay siege to Nicole’s home, it’s no longer about young love – it’s survival horror in a cul-de-sac. The final rooftop brawl ends with David’s fall, but Fear lingers as a cautionary tale: don’t let your daughter date Mark Wahlberg.
6. Tart (2001)
Tart is the bastard child of Cruel Intentions and a bad hangover. It’s a prep-school fever dream where innocence doesn’t just fade, it gets eaten alive. Dominique Swain’s Cat Storm wants what every outsider craves: to belong.
Enter Bijou Phillips’ Grace Bailey, a queen bee with a trust fund soul and a heart sharpened into glass. Grace doesn’t befriend, she devours, dragging Cat into a world where sex, pills, and cruelty are just electives on the syllabus.
Cat clings to William (Brad Renfro), the brooding outsider dangling a promise of something real, but Manhattan’s elite doesn’t trade in real. They trade in betrayal, jealousy, and rot.
By the end, Cat’s illusions are gone, her heart cracked, and the prep-school fantasy is exposed as a snake pit lined with designer handbags. Tart isn’t a coming-of-age story – it’s a requiem for innocence, scored by the sound of rich kids eating each other alive.
5. Jade (1995)
Imagine if Basic Instinct got wasted, stole The French Connection’s car keys, and decided to go joyriding through San Francisco’s elite sex dungeons. That’s Jade – William Friedkin’s glossy, gutter-stained neo-noir about how lust and power make for a spectacularly ugly cocktail.
A high-profile art collector ends up dead in his mansion, surrounded by kink trophies and scandalous photos. Enter Assistant District Attorney David Corelli (David Caruso, still wearing his NYPD Blue smolder), who quickly discovers that the murder scene isn’t just a crime – it’s an invitation to the city’s dirtiest secret club. The deeper he digs, the more it starts to look like the guest list includes San Francisco’s most powerful politicians and socialites.
But this isn’t just another whodunit. It’s a slow seduction into paranoia. Corelli’s investigation leads straight to Dr. Trina Gavin (Linda Fiorentino at her velvet-dagger best) – a brilliant psychologist, his ex-lover, and the wife of his friend Matt (Chazz Palminteri). She might also be “Jade,” a shadowy femme fatale rumored to blackmail rich men with their own desires. Every clue feels like a taunt, every truth wrapped in another layer of deceit and perfume.
Friedkin paints Jade like a fever dream of moral rot. Think soft lighting, sharp tailoring, and car chases that tear through fog and concrete like a confession gone wrong. Eszterhas’ script drips with sex and scandal, but Friedkin twists it into something darker: a world where the line between predator and victim blurs, and everyone’s soul is up for auction.
By the end, no one’s innocent. Corelli’s idealism gets chewed up by the system, Trina’s guilt becomes a Rorschach test, and the whole city feels like it’s sweating through its own hypocrisy.
Jade isn’t about a who killed whom – it’s about how corruption wears a silk dress and how every good man secretly wants to dance with the devil. It’s the kind of movie that smells like cold champagne, gunpowder, and bad decisions.
4. Fatal Attraction (1987)
If Basic Instinct was sex as power, Fatal Attraction was sex as punishment – the glossy, gut-punch thriller that turned every elevator flirtation into a death wish. Directed by Adrian Lyne and powered by Michael Douglas’ corporate sleaze-charm, this is the film that made America collectively whisper, “Maybe fidelity isn’t such a bad idea.”
Dan Gallagher (Douglas) has it all – corner office, suburban dream home, wife Beth (Anne Archer) who radiates patience, and the kind of calm that begs to be destroyed. Enter Alex Forrest (Glenn Close), a publishing exec with the energy of a ticking time bomb wrapped in silk. One weekend of reckless lust, and suddenly Dan’s perfect life is bleeding from every angle.
At first, it’s passion. Then it’s phone calls. Then it’s blood on the doorstep. Alex doesn’t just want Dan’s attention – she wants his existence. The infamous bunny boiler scene isn’t just shock value; it’s a manifesto. Love, to Alex, is possession. Desire, to Dan, is denial. The collision is pure madness.
Lyne shoots it like an erotic fever dream – every frame slick with neon sweat and guilt. Glenn Close doesn’t play Alex as “the crazy other woman.” She plays her as grief incarnate, the embodiment of male irresponsibility coming home with a knife in its hand.
By the time the bathroom finale explodes into violence and catharsis, you realise Fatal Attraction isn’t a thriller at all. It’s a morality play drenched in perfume and panic. A cautionary tale for every smug man who thought consequences were beneath him.
3. Gone Girl (2014)
If love is a battlefield, then Gone Girl is what happens when both sides start dropping nukes. David Fincher’s razor-edged psychological thriller takes the glossy façade of suburban marriage and rips it apart like wrapping paper hiding a corpse. It’s sexy, cruel, and smarter than anyone in the room – a cold, calculating symphony of deceit where every smile hides a knife.
Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is the kind of guy who coasts through life on half-charms and beer breath. His wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) – the golden girl of Manhattan turned reluctant small-town trophy – goes missing on their fifth anniversary. The living room’s trashed, the blood’s mopped up just enough, and the media’s ready to turn the whole thing into a murder-mystery circus. One week later, Nick’s the most hated man in America, and every talk show host wants his head on a stick.
And then comes the twist – the kind that sucker-punches the entire audience. Amy’s not dead. She’s alive, thriving, and watching her masterpiece unfold from a roadside motel. Turns out, she’s the architect of her own disappearance, orchestrating a frame job so meticulous it makes Hitchcock look lazy. Her husband cheated, and instead of therapy, she went for performance art with a body count.
Fincher paints Rosamund Pike’s character as the ghost of every “Cool Girl” expectation – beautiful, accommodating, and completely fabricated. When her scheme collapses, she pivots like a sociopathic chameleon, seducing her rich ex-boyfriend (Neil Patrick Harris) before slaughtering him in a crimson-soaked crescendo of liberation.
When Amy finally drags herself home, soaked in another man’s blood and grinning for the cameras, the horror isn’t over – it’s domesticated. She spins a new lie about being kidnapped, manipulates Nick into staying, and traps him in a marriage that’s now half soap opera, half hostage situation.
Gone Girl is a manifesto wrapped in crime scene tape. A dark fairy tale where love curdles, the media salivates, and perfection is just a prettier form of madness.
2. Basic Instinct (1992)
When Basic Instinct hit theatres in ‘92, it didn’t just break taboos – it set them on fire, smoked a cigarette over the ashes, and asked if you were still watching. Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller is a razorblade wrapped in silk – a film that stares you dead in the eye while asking if you’re turned on or terrified (spoiler: it’s both).
Michael Douglas plays Detective Nick Curran, a cop with more baggage than a Qantas carousel. When a rock star gets murdered mid-thrust, the trail of blood leads straight to Catherine Tramell – Sharon Stone in her most legendary form. She’s an author, an heiress, and possibly a sociopath with a body sculpted by Greek tragedy and a mind that eats men for breakfast.
From the second she lights that cigarette and casually uncrosses her legs in that interrogation scene, Catherine owns the screen. The cops think they’re interrogating her; really, she’s performing for them. Every word drips control. Every smirk says:
“I’m guilty – but you’ll still want me.”
Nick spirals into her orbit like a moth drunk on danger. Their sex scenes are violence disguised as intimacy – a ballet of power, sweat, and self-destruction. Every time you think he’s got her figured out, she writes a new chapter and kills another fantasy. Verhoeven shoots it all like a fever dream – white marble, cold light, and tension so tight it’s practically erotic itself.
By the time the credits roll, the question of who did it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Catherine won. She’s the apex predator in stilettos, the embodiment of male paranoia, and the cinematic answer to “what if desire was a weapon?” That final shot — the ice pick under the bed, gleaming like a secret – isn’t closure. It’s a wink.
Basic Instinct isn’t a movie about murder. It’s about seduction as warfare. It’s the moment lust and death make eye contact and decide to slow dance. Sharon Stone didn’t just play Catherine Tramell – she became every man’s wet nightmare and every woman’s power fantasy rolled into one unflinching stare.
1. American Beauty (1999)
If the ’90s were the decade of shiny surfaces, American Beauty was the film that took a sledgehammer to them. Sam Mendes’ directorial debut isn’t just a suburban drama – it’s a requiem for the American Dream, a slow-motion implosion of white-picket fantasies wrapped in sarcasm, sex, and plastic perfection.
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is the ghost of middle-class America before he’s even dead – a corporate drone counting down his life in coffee breaks and meaningless meetings. His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is the picture of self-help toxicity: a realtor obsessed with appearances, trimming roses while her marriage rots underneath. Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) hates them both on principle. And honestly, who can blame her?
Then comes the spark. Lester sees Angela (Mena Suvari) – his daughter’s best friend – twirling under gym lights like some kind of teenage fever dream, and suddenly he’s reborn through a midlife crisis dressed as sexual awakening. He quits his job, buys the car of his youth, starts lifting weights in the garage, and smokes weed with Ricky (Wes Bentley) – the creepy-next-door philosopher who films dead birds and floating plastic bags like they’re gospel.
Meanwhile, Carolyn’s out cheating her way through motivational real estate seminars, and Ricky’s dad, Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper), stalks through the neighborhood like repression with a buzzcut. Every scene drips with rot camouflaged as order – dinner tables become battlegrounds, smiles become weapons, and the white fence becomes a cage.
What makes American Beauty sting isn’t just the voyeurism – it’s the honesty. It tells you, flat out, that every pursuit of “happiness” in suburbia is just panic management dressed in khakis. Mendes shoots it like a eulogy to normalcy: slow, sensual, and soaked in melancholy light.
By the time Lester finally sees the truth – that beauty isn’t youth or control, but the raw, messy miracle of being alive – it’s too late. One act of misplaced compassion, one bullet, and the whole façade collapses. But he dies smiling, and that’s the kicker: enlightenment comes only after you stop trying to own it.
American Beauty isn’t about freedom. It’s about the cost of pretending you already have it. A story of roses, repression, and redemption – blooming beautifully right before the rot sets in.
What did you think of this list of movies like Cruel Intentions?
Do any of these movies remind you of Cruel Intentions? Do you own any of them on DVD or VHS? Let us know in the comments.
