You might not know a Dolly Zoom by name, but you’ve definitely seen one, and it probably made your skin crawl. Alternately referred to as a Hitchcock shot, the Jaws effect, or the Vertigo shot, it’s a visual technique that scrambles the senses by zooming in on the subject at the frame’s center while physically pulling the camera in the opposite direction. Film nerds are already rolling their eyes at this rudimentary explanation, having memorized the examples featured in Goodfellas, The Shining, and any number of Spike Lee joints. Seldom overused, the trick tends to rear its nausea-inducing head when things start going south for our protagonist, somehow making him seem closely surveilled and impossibly alone at the very same time, all without uttering a syllable. And yes, historically speaking, the masculine pronoun is apt.

Whether writer/director Todd Haynes was ever particularly drawn to the plights of Henry Hill, Jack Torrance, or Martin Brody is anyone’s guess, but there’s little doubt that he knows what he’s doing by utilizing the move on Carol White. A trophy wife played by Julianne Moore in 1995’s Safe, Carol’s affluent, insulated life doesn’t come with the prepackaged anxiety that audiences feel while watching the exploits of mafia members and police detectives. Her call comes from inside the house, a stark contrast from decades’ worth of male counterparts, who are more prone to bring torment upon themselves. If the silver screen is to be believed, trouble tends to find women, and not the other way around, fastening its gaze on the fairer sex in a manner that mirrors society writ large, cornering them before they’ve had a chance to make the first move. That omnipresent feeling of being observed must be maddening, and while Haynes’ use of the Dolly Zoom is fairly unique in context, there are no shortage of flicks that are attuned to the struggle. So this April, it’s time to take a seat, pick up your magnifying glass, and see what happens when Women Wither Under the Microscope.

The gaudy 1987 Los Angeles where Safe lays its scene doesn’t initially scream ‘existential crisis,’ its massive homes and designer clothes forcing a misread from audience and characters alike. Even Carol seems satisfied, or at least placated, spending her days meeting friends for lunch, lording over the help at home, and sporting heedlessly neon attire at aerobics class. Like her preferred form of exercise, she’s going through the choreographed motions, a routine that’s thrown into disarray by a mysterious illness that keeps growing in stature. Despite being shepherded to one doctor after another by her droll businessman husband Greg (Xander Berkeley), the sickness remains unnamed, forcing Carol to look off the agreed-upon medicinal menu for both diagnosis and treatment.

Spoiling exactly what that looks like would rob Safe’s third act of its ability to surprise, but suffice to say Haynes must have access to a time machine, because his implicit skepticism of the MAHA movement arrived at least two decades early. It’s an enlivening bit of foresight, though the movie is far less interested in prophecy than sociology, introducing the language and iconography of cult as merely another social patch of land in which to plant one’s flag. Whether it’s Greg’s cabal of black-tie money men or Carol’s legion of diet-promoting pseudo friends, everyone is putting on airs, squeezing themselves into the mold of their choosing, and shaving off the eccentric bits that don’t properly fit the given parameters. When it comes to Carol’s sickness, which inhibits her stayed manner as much as her respiratory system, the brightest red flag isn’t physical deterioration, but the sudden sticking out from such rigidly defined packs. Somehow, the threatening white noise that haunts her every step is inaudible to anyone else, though at the rate it’s going, that blissful obliviousness isn’t long for this world.

Neither are we, if the news radio airwaves and billowing clouds of smog are to be believed, with Haynes setting up an oncoming apocalypse for which only our protagonist is bracing. Though it’s eventually concretized in the form of ecological panic, Safe’s ever-present sense of doom remains nebulous for the majority of the runtime, a private hell that’s designed Alex Nepomniaschy’s icy and invasive cinematography and David Bomba’s leering, over-stuffed production design. The more the lens obsesses over Carol, the more it seems to be crowding her out, a discomforting juxtaposition that clarifies her headspace more than words ever could. She may be subject to constant objectification, assigned the role of beauty incarnate, but that doesn’t mean anyone truly sees her, including herself.

There’s a void at the center of Haynes’ sophomore feature, one that takes a captivating performer like Moore to hold our attention, which still wains periodically under the strain of such vaporous characterization. We’re as clueless as to Carol’s wants and needs as she is, and while it’s never explicitly stated, you get the feeling that comfort and luxury called her name before anything like a worldview was allowed to congeal. Moore’s facility with internal absence is marvelous, her lilting voice and vacuous eyes conveying the harsh realization that she’s forgotten to make herself into a living, breathing person, a rude awakening that’s highlighted in a pair of closing sequences. The first happens at a surprise birthday celebration, where her gratitude, relayed in one of the most cringe-worthy speeches ever committed to film, sounds beamed in from another planet on a shoddy wifi signal. The second comes while she’s still licking her wounds from the public faux pas, staring glassy-eyed into a mirror, repeating words that were shared with her by a fellow disease sufferer in the hopes that repetition makes them true: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Precisely who the ‘you’ is in that proclamation becomes harder to parse when you’ve accepted a life as little more than comely eye candy, the same arrangement that Kate Miller is reassessing at the opening of 1980’s Dressed to Kill. Trapped in a similarly sterile marriage, Angie Dickinson’s character is primed and ready to violate her wedding vows with the first man who accepts her advances, propositioning her psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Elliott (Michael Caine), before even ten minutes have gone by. His rejection stings, and not only for the unattended fire in her loins. Though Miller’s age is never disclosed, Dickinson was 48 at the time of filming, which is more than enough years of omnipresent ogling to become dependent on the casual lusty stare for validation. The male gaze that once fueled her every movement has turned in the opposite direction, but (un)luckily for her, that attention is about to make a comeback.

That’ll happen when you’re the female star of a movie directed by Brian De Palma, film history’s preeminent pervert. Voyeurism is his primary occupation, a truth that didn’t need the awe-inspiring gratuity of Dressed’s opening shower sequence to prove its validity. In fact, the nudity is only an entrée into the flick’s more titillating instances of supervision, which arrive at an art museum where Miller and a tall, dark stranger take turns playing cat and mouse, then again as she makes her escape from his apartment. Largely wordless, the scenes exist not only for De Palma to flex his considerable technical muscles, but also to flip Kate’s desire for prying eyes right on its head. Even in a project that unfolds like a playful, unambitious reimagining of Psycho, visibility is, as ever, a double-edged sword.

Which is probably as good a time as any to get into Kill’s gleeful capitulation to Trans Panic, which strays from the topic at hand but is too glaring to ignore. An edge lord before the term became popularized, De Palma couldn’t have known just how aggressive his provocations would look in the harsh light of 2026, but conflating gender dysphoria with an appetite for murder was touchy even 46 years ago. To explore this any further would be to ruin one of schlock cinema’s most enduring twists, though those who’re still behind on De Palma’s filmography might not take kindly to what’s hidden behind the curtain. It’s clearly meant satirically, as elucidated by all the campy dialogue and violence on display, but if there’s anything that our increased political stratification has recently taught us, it’s that folks will see what they want to see if it supports their paradigm.

Confirmation bias is powerful stuff, potent enough to turn a fumbling, aspirant socialite like Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) into an object of breathless obsession in writer/director Robert Altman’s 3 Women. While most of her health spa co-workers and lay-about neighbors won’t even give her the time of day, she’s the apple in the eye of one Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a fellow Texas-to-California transplant who’s somehow even more awkward than her unwitting mentor. A day’s worth of training under Millie’s wing is all it takes for our juvenile lead player to become completely ensorcelled, even moving into her one bedroom apartment at the first available opportunity. When your goal is to fully subsume another person, the extra living space isn’t really necessary. 

Make no mistake, that’s Pinky’s precise plan of action, though she’s hardly alone in that regard. Altman’s script, which was reportedly adapted directly from a dream he had one night, is filled to the brim with twinning, from literal womb partners Polly and Peggy (Leslie and Patricia Ann Hudson, respectively) to attached-at-the-hip coworkers Doris (Maysie Hoy) and Alcira (Belita Moreno). Outside of agreeing on the outsized influence of Ingmar Berman’s Persona, interpretations of 3 Women’s doubling exercise, as well as the film’s overall meaning, have varied from person to person since its 1977 release, but its attunement to the hungrier side of female friendships is unquestionable. In keeping with the two previously discussed films, Altman’s picture is steering toward a pivot point that would be cruel to unveil here, especially in light of its unique genesis. Yes, the ladies are still being watched with great scrutiny, only this time, it’s by each other.

If men have anything actionable to do within the movie’s woozy, bewildering expanse, it’s relegated to clumsy philandering and tossed-off professional chiding, though neither impacts the plot in a meaningful way. They’re more like a structuring absence, proving that the telescope never truly goes away, even when studious males finally train their scrutiny on something else. The reasons are myriad, ranging from beauty standards to envy and patriarchy to unspoken competition, but the results remain the same, at least until 3 Women’s elliptical conclusion. It’s a headscratcher of the highest order, though you don’t need a deeper understanding to see that the members of the titular trio are more fully themselves once they’ve collapsed into each other, forming an impermeable barrier from the jealous retinas waiting just outside of their newfound home.

Would that it were so simple for Danielle (Rachel Sennott), the eye of the storm that writer/director Emma Seligman cooks up in her 2021 debut feature Shiva Baby. The film’s all-in-one-day, (almost) single-location trappings ensure that our college senior protagonist is persistently monitored, the simplicity of the set-up only flinging open the doors to all shades of viewership. While trepidatiously taking part in the eponymous mourning ceremony, Danielle doesn’t just weather the stares of her older, married sugar daddy Max (Danny Deferrari), but also her meddling, over-eager parents (Polly Draper and Fred Melamed), a jilted, pot-stirring former flame Maya (Molly Gordon), and the Judaism writ large. That’s a lot for anyone to handle on a lone afternoon of performative grief, let alone someone who couldn’t get their ducks in a row if they were tied together with string.

A poster child for hot messes everyone, Danielle is certainly the victim of her own floundering, opportunistic ways, but the societal vice grip that’s pinching her from all sides surely isn’t helping. By turning the house into a fishbowl for her main player’s failings, Seligman’s ups the claustrophobic ante on a subgenre that already prides itself on packing ‘em in like sardines, each terse, elusive conversation bleeding into the next the moment Danielle looks over her shoulder. Opting out of narrative table setting altogether, Shiva drops the audience directly into its nail-biting comedy of manners, testing heart rates for nearly every moment of its mercifully brief 77 minute runtime. You laugh through the pain, but even those trickles of nervous mirth need Gordon to get the ball rolling. She’s a greek chorus by way of manic pixie dream girl, dryly commenting on the action from a place of tickled remove, shit eating grin as immovable as her come hither eyes. Truth be told, there’s not much of a character there, but her implied empathy is just about the only thing here that soothes. After all, she knows the score precisely.

Having also grown up within the Jewish faith, Maya understands Danielle’s troubles as only a fellow insider could, and they’re not of the guilt-and-salvation variety. The religion itself isn’t in the crosshairs here so much as the microcosm it creates, wherein everyone knows everyone, gossip fills the air like flecks of dust, and older generations freely punch down on any underachieving youngster within earshot. Here, again, Seligman inserts a thinly-drawn character as a means of cinching her point, this time in the form of Max’s gentile wife Kim (Dianna Agron). She’s kind and open, if a little stiff from obvious nerves, but that doesn’t stop her fellow attendees, particularly the women, from offering her only their coldest regards before immediately sniping behind her back. Not that she would ever seek it, but Kim would never be granted access into their inner circle by simple virtue of who and what she is, just as Danielle could never escape the exact same space. The walls are towering and treacherous, but once you’re here, you’re family, whether you like it or not.

Danielle’s bisexuality is not, as her haughty mother Debbie (Polly Draper) suggests, merely rebellion against an established, pre-determined order, but the stolen moments with Maya do offer some solace from all the rubbernecking. Having your every gesture chronicled and judged would have anyone looking for an escape hatch, arriving at a two-pronged commonality across all four films. Carol, Kate, Millie and Danielle all have their fingers hovering over the eject button, and while some press down with more tenacity than others, they all find themselves subject to a fresh flock of onlookers. There’s a long cinematic history of men having had enough and striking out on their own, but at least in these four instances, women on screen are doomed to swap out one set of social parameters for another. The results range from disastrous (Dressed to Kill) to wearily hopeful (3 Women) to mournful (Safe) to open-ended (Shiva Baby), but one thing is certain; once you’re under the microscope, all you can do is reposition. Escape is futile.