Earthquake Bird (2019)

The easy labelling of Wash Westmoreland’s twisty adaptation of Susanna Jones’ novel as Hitchcockian may be praise too far, but Netflix’s Earthquake Bird is a tense, bilingual, multi-layered drama.

From the first frame, Alicia Vikander’s stranger in a foreign land is clearly a broken soul, travelling the crowded streets and subways of Tokyo in bleak isolation. When she becomes involved with creepy street photographer Teiji (Naoki Kobayashi), and they try to wheedle out each other’s many secrets, you’re wondering if this is another Michael Powell Peeping Tom, or a darkly subdued Basic Instinct.