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Needful Things

Needful Things

Drama · Horror · 1993

A mysterious new shop opens in a small town which always seems to stock the deepest desires of each shopper, with a price far heavier than expected.

Movie details

Needful Things

“Buy now. Pay later.”

1993 Drama · Horror 2h 1m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.3 / 10

29.7K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

33 %

Tomatometer

Metacritic

43 / 100

Metascore

TMDB

6.3 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A mysterious new shop opens in a small town which always seems to stock the deepest desires of each shopper, with a price far heavier than expected.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over Needful Things?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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The Dark Half

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Sleepy Hollow

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El Dorado

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Where it lives

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Streaming availability data supplied by JustWatch.

Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Fraser Clarke Heston

Written by

W.D. Richter

Max von Sydow

Max von Sydow

Leland Gaunt

Ed Harris

Ed Harris

Sheriff Alan Pangborn

Bonnie Bedelia

Bonnie Bedelia

Polly Chalmers

J.T. Walsh

J.T. Walsh

Danforth Keeton III

Valri Bromfield

Valri Bromfield

Wilma Jerzyk

Ray McKinnon

Ray McKinnon

Deputy Norris Ridgewick

Lisa Blount

Lisa Blount

Cora Rusk

Court is in session

Put Needful Things on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.