The mystery thriller has been a staple part of the pop culture diet for well over a century, with Netflix’s whodunnit sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery ranking as one of the year’s most hotly-anticipated releases proving that the genre is alive and well. There’s no shortage of cinematic options to choose from if you’re looking to scratch that particular itch, but very few of them will yield a better viewing experience than Alfred Hitchcok’s Rear Window.
Lauded as one of the best films ever made by one of the medium’s most accomplished and iconic directors, the slow-burning tale of voyeurism gone terrifyingly wrong endures as a stone-cold classic. Regularly appearing in lists seeking to rank the best motion pictures in history, Rear Window‘s legacy was cemented a long time ago, and yet it can still capture the imagination of audiences in 2022.
As per FlixPatrol, the slow-burning and intensely atmospheric tale of James Stewart’s wheelchair-bound photographer becoming increasingly convinced he’s accidentally witnessed a murder has been peeping onto the Google Play Movies global most-watched list, snooping on its neighbors to stake out a spot on the charts.
Thanks to some murky copyright issues, the broad strokes of the story appear to be open for reinterpretation seeing as 2007’s Shia LaBeouf vehicle Disturbia emerged victorious in two separate lawsuits after being accused of infringement by the Rear Window rights-holders.
Best stick with the original, though, because even 68 years later, it remains a masterclass in extracting the maximum amount of suspense from a concept that reads as fairly flimsy on paper.