A film that appeals to you on a quiet Sunday might feel different after a busy day. Use your current mood as a starting point for finding your next watch.
Pick the color you’re more drawn to in each pair, at this moment.
Answer the short follow-up questions about how you’re feeling.
Browse suggested films and their details to find a story you’d like to spend time with.
A film wants a couple of hours in one sitting, and that raises the stakes of picking one. Get an episode of television wrong and you have lost forty minutes. Get a film wrong and you have given away the evening. So people deliberate: three apps, two reviews, a trailer, a second opinion — and by the end of it the window in which anyone wanted to watch anything has quietly closed.
The deliberating rarely helps, because the question is impossible as posed. What is the best film? has no answer. What would suit the state I am actually in? is a much smaller question, and a handful of color choices is a fast way into it — fast enough that you are still in the mood to watch something by the time you have a suggestion.
One of the more durable puzzles in the study of entertainment is why anyone volunteers for a film they know will upset them. It happens constantly, and not only among people who are already low. The usual explanation is that certain films offer something other than pleasure: a sense of meaning, or the particular relief of watching a feeling you recognize given more room than your own life tends to give it.
Work on mood and cultural choice supports the idea that this runs in several directions at once. Across seven studies of preferences under varying economic conditions, lighter entertainment sometimes gained ground in harder times — people clearly do manage a mood through what they watch, just not by any rule you could write down.
Which is why a reading here is a starting point and not an instruction. A result that says you are low is no reason to be handed a comedy, if what you want tonight is a film that takes the weight seriously.
Taranify suggests films and shows you their details. It does not stream anything, and it is not a guide to what is on which service this week — availability moves by title, provider and country. Once something appeals, finding it is the next step, and usually a short one.
If more than one person is choosing, Watch together is the better tool. It opens a session, everyone takes the quiz, and the suggestions come from the group rather than from whoever reached the remote first.
Aggregate scores tell you what a great many people thought of a film in general. That is real information, and it is not the information you need, which is whether this film suits this evening. Plenty of films with unremarkable scores are exactly right at eleven on a Wednesday, and plenty of acknowledged masterpieces are a bad idea when you are tired.
The gap between those two questions is where most disappointing film nights come from. Something gets chosen because it is supposed to be good, and then nobody in the room is in the state that particular film asks for.
So the suggestions here are deliberately not ranked by acclaim. They are ranked by what might fit, which is a lower bar and, for one evening, a more useful one.
Bring your people together and find a movie from everyone’s mood.
The quiz asks you to pick colors you feel drawn to and answer questions about your mood. Taranify uses those responses to recommend films.
No. Taranify helps you discover films and provides links and details. Streaming availability depends on the title, provider, and country.
Yes. Open Watch together to create a session, invite other people, and get movie suggestions based on the group’s responses.
No. The quiz draws on films from across many decades rather than whatever arrived this month, so a result is as likely to be something from the seventies as something from last year.
No. Taranify is a discovery tool. It shows details and links; where you can actually watch a title depends on the film, the provider and your country.
Film details come from TMDB. Taranify uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
Yes. You can take the quiz and get recommendations without creating a Taranify account.
For each pair, choose the color you feel more drawn to at this moment. Go with your first instinct rather than your usual favorite color or the mood you want to have.
Use Regenerate to get more suggestions from the same quiz responses. If your mood has changed, start over and choose your colors again.