Heaven Knows What (2015) poster
2015 · drama · crime

Heaven Knows What

Directed by Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie1h 37m2015
ElsewhereIMDb6.810kRT89%Metacritic75
  • heavy
  • brisk
  • extreme
  • bleak
  • cold
Movie DNA

Heavy, kinetic, extreme drama / crime, grounded in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

A young heroin addict roams the streets of New York to panhandle and get her next fix, while her unstable boyfriend drifts in and out of her life at random.

Our read · Heaven Knows What (2015) reads as a heavy, kinetic, grounded drama · crime entry — extreme in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Heaven Knows What

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want raw vérité addiction drama that grabs you from the opening minutes.

ends devastatingit will wreck yougrabs you earlygrips from the openattention 5/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-updrug usesuicide themegraphic violence

Skip it tonightYou need hope tonight or cannot sit with heroin despair and self-harm.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”

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