Thematic and narrative similarities with Lars von Trier's Antichrist have also been observed, [80] with Antichrist's cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, commenting that he has watched Don't Look Now more times than any other film. The BBC cut it altogether when Don't Look Now premiered on UK television, causing a flood of complaints from viewers. With the help of her fellow females, Laura takes steps to grow, while John is literally and figuratively left behind.

In the 2007 stage play of Don't Look Now, written by Nell Leyshon and directed by Lucy Bailey, the play made a conscious effort to bypass the film and be a faithful adaptation of du Maurier's short story, but it did however retain the iconic red mac from the film as worn by the elusive childlike figure. The intimacy of the scene led to rumours that Christie and Sutherland had unsimulated sex which have persisted for years and that outtakes from the scene were doing the rounds in screening rooms. In a vision of the future, John sees the sighted twin and her sister with his wife on the boat going back into Venice. Shirley Jackson’s 1949 collection, “The Lottery” and Other Stories, is an eerie group of stories set in a world where nothing is at it seems.When John goes to the police station to report her missing, he agrees with the police officer that Laura has been “suffering the aftereffects of shock” and that she may be so stressed from the blind sister’s visions of Christine that she could have had “a sudden attack of amnesia. The opening scene (in which he and Laura conjecture about the nationalities and sexual orientation of the sisters) is merely a game, but one in which they (albeit laughingly) try to discern everything they can about this strange pair of women: “You know what it is,” John tells Laura, “they’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop.

The aural match cut following Christine's death from Laura's scream to the screech of a drill is reminiscent of a cut in The 39 Steps, when a woman's scream cuts to the whistle of a steam train. Consider what you know about the couple, and create biographies for them that include where they were born, what they studied in school, what they were like as children and young adults, and how they met. When he thinks that Laura has disappeared, John begins to believe that the sisters have tricked her into getting off the plane. It has led to some critics re-evaluating their original opinions of it: Roger Ebert, nearly thirty years after his original review, stated that he had come to an "accommodation" with his reservations about what he termed the "admitted weakness of the denouement". When Laura follows one of the women into the bathroom to see if she is really a he, the one left at the table stares at John but doesn’t acknowledge John’s smiles.

The Belgium set thriller, In Bruges, starring Colin Farrell, includes a number of explicit references; [87] director Martin McDonagh said that the "Venice of Don't Look Now" was the template for the depiction of Bruges in his film, [88] and the film includes numerous thematic similarities, including one character stating that the film she is working on is a " pastiche of Don't Look Now". In the title story—Jackson’s most famous work and some say one of the scariest stories of the twentieth century—a small town conducts a frightening and terrible yearly ritual. The story was made into a suspense movie a few years after it was published and has remained one of du Maurier’s best-known tales.

The film is renowned for its innovative editing style, recurring motifs and themes, and for a controversial sex scene that was explicit by the standards of contemporary mainstream cinema. The Venice locations included the Hotel Gabrielli Sandwirth—the lobby and exteriors standing in for the film's fictional Europa Hotel, although the Baxters' suite was located at the Bauer Grunwald (which better accommodated the cameras)—and the San Nicolò dei Mendicoli (the Church of St. Rebecca, her most famous and well-considered novel, was published in 1938 and received Britain’s National Book Award. John is tired of Laura’s depression over the loss of their child and hopes that they can “pick up on the familiar routine of jokes shared on holiday and at home… [and] life will become as it was before.Her voice, for the first time since they had come away, took on the old bubbling quality he loved, and the worried frown between her brows had vanished. Bart reiterated Warren Beatty's discontent, noting that Beatty had contacted him to complain about what he perceived to be Roeg's exploitation of Christie, and insisting that he be allowed to help edit the film. When the police officer tells John that “there will be some satisfactory explanation” for Laura’s reappearance on the canal boat, John says nothing but thinks, “All very well… but in heaven’s name, what?

Also imagine what kind of work John and Laura do at the time of the story and what kind of life they have in England. At the time of its initial release, Don't Look Now was generally well received by critics, [41] although some criticised it for being "arty and mechanical". Christie commented that "people didn't do scenes like that in those days", and that she found the scenes difficult to film: "There were no available examples, no role models . The officer responds, “We hope to have the murderer under lock and key very soon,” pointing to just a few hours later, when John will mistakenly bolt the door to a room where he is trapped with the murderer and will hear the police just outside the door.

Laura (who has not yet learned of Christine’s presence and is therefore still, like John, prone to explain away any oddities she encounters) adds, “They’re a couple of pathetic old retired schoolmistresses on holiday, who’ve saved up all their lives to visit Venice. Here is an instance in which a supposed caretaker is the one in need of care, a theme that is repeated in this story a number of times. John, however, cannot fathom a mind so at ease with the unexplainable and a heart that counters grief in a manner so different from his own, which is why he immediately begins discounting the sister’s vision as a ruse: “Give them half a chance and they would have got money out of Laura—anything.