A straightforward, simple-to-understand film can be enjoyable enough under the right circumstances; but every now then, cinephiles get an irresistible craving for a surreal, dreamlike experience that’ll not just leave them scratching their heads, but also end up proving to be an effectively disturbing experience. From David Lynch to Alejandro Jodorowsky, there are plenty of directors more than capable of scratching that itch.
Films that are able to fully envelop audiences in what feels like an unsettling dream — a nightmare, even — aren’t common, but when they do come around, they tend to be absolutely unforgettable. For variety’s sake, directors are limited to only one entry. These are the most disturbing dreamlike movies ever made, ranked by how unsettling they are.
10 ‘The Substance’ (2024)
Directed by Coralie Fargeat
A bloody (quite literally) spectacle that owes as much to David Cronenberg‘s body horror as it does to campy midnight movies from the olden days, Coralie Fargeat‘s The Substance is one of 2024’s most daring and unique offerings. It’s about a fading celebrity who decides to use a black-market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, more energetic, more attractive version of herself.
With its incredible performances (Demi Moore and Margeret Qualley in particular shining in some of the best work of both their careers), impressive visuals, and twisted sense of humor, The Substance is as hilarious as it is cringe-inducingly gory and deranged. As its story progresses, it starts becoming more bizarre, more Cronenbergian, and more nightmare-like. This culminates in a third act with enough blood in it to fill up a reservoir.
9 ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
After Full Metal Jacket, it took Stanley Kubrick a whopping twelve years to make his thirteenth feature, which would end up being his last. It was Eyes Wide Shut, and as far as epilogues to directors’ careers go, it doesn’t get much better than this. In it, a Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre night-long odyssey through the city, after his wife admits to having unfulfilled longings.
Despite how disturbing this psychological thriller is (to the point that it sometimes borders on being horror through and through), Eyes Wide Shut is one of the most rewatchable erotic thrillers of all time. Dreams and the dreamlike play an important thematic role in the story and its motifs. So, it’s no surprise that Kubrick was able to so effectively craft an atmosphere that makes viewers feel like they’re in a dream that’s too discomforting to be a regular dream, but too soothing to be a nightmare. It’s a unique feeling, to say the least, making Kubrick’s closing opus a spectacle to behold.
8 ‘The Holy Mountain’ (1973)
Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Of the many directors who have defined cinematic surrealism, there aren’t more than maybe one or two who have contributed more to this style of filmmaking than Chilean artist and auteur Alejandro Jodorowsky. He has made many exceptional yet mind-bending works over the course of his career, but none better than The Holy Mountain. It’s a fantasy adventure set in a corrupt, greedy world. There, an alchemist leads a team of colorful characters to the Holy Mountain, the only place where they can achieve enlightenment.
He has made many exceptional yet mind-bending works over the course of his career, but none better than
The Holy Mountain
.
Esoteric, deeply spiritual, and full of infinitely analyzable imagery and moments, The Holy Mountain is less like a movie to watch and more like an experience to be had. It mixes the typical unsettling aspect of Jodo’s style with surprisingly funny moments, delivering an absurdist philosophical treatise on society that’s pointless yet delightful to dissect.
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7 ‘The Sacrifice’ (1986)
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Despite his professional career spanning well over thirty years, Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky only ever made eight non-student feature films. It would certainly be lovely to live in a parallel reality where he made a dozen more, but as it stands, he’s one of few filmmakers with an absolutely flawless body of work. His last ouvre, The Sacrifice, brought it to a beautiful close. Inspired by the films of Ingmar Bergman (who Tarkovsky greatly admired), it’s a Swedish movie set at the dawn of World War III. There, a man searches for a way to restore world peace and finds that he must offer something in return.
It’s a philosophical masterwork that all lovers of arthouse cinema must watch at least once in their lives.
While it may not be Tarkovsky’s most accessible film (far from it, in fact), it’s a philosophical masterwork that all lovers of arthouse cinema must watch at least once in their lives. Its grim tone and the quasi-cynical themes of its second act make it the closest that the director ever came to making a horror film; but the third act, in typical Tarkovsky fashion, puts a hopeful ribbon on all the dreamlike, poetic darkness that came before.
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6 ‘Mandy’ (2018)
Directed by Panos Cosmatos
One of Nicolas Cage‘s best horror movies (of which there are many, particularly recent ones), Mandy is both absolutely horrifying and an awful lot of fun. Part dark fantasy splatter horror, part one-man army action thriller, it’s about a man whose wife is killed by a hippie cult and their demon-biker henchmen. This sends the man into a spiraling surreal rampage of blood-drenched violence.
Cage is absolutely phenomenal in the lead role, throwing all subtlety out the window like only he knows how. And yet, there’s also a surprisingly strong emotional core to Mandy, which tugs at the heartstrings in ways that not many contemporary horror films do. The whole thing feels like a dreamlike romance turned into a gory descent into hell and then a nightmarish climb out of it. It’s disturbing, it’s over-the-top, and it’s impossible to forget.
5 ‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)
Directed by Richard Kelly
One of the most important cult movies of the 2000s, Donnie Darko revitalized the midnight film scene at the turn of the century. It’s a love letter to teenhood and teen movies, telling the story of a troubled young man who, after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, starts being plagued by visions of a man in a rabbit suit warning him about the impending end of the world.
Like the best cult classics, Donnie Darko is both dreamlike and unsettling, both campy and intelligently crafted. It’s one of the best films about alternate universes, using its virtually incomprehensible time travel elements as the basis for a story about maturity, sacrifice, and love. Despite its atmosphere mostly feeling like a bad dream, it’s not one that fans ever want to wake up from.
4 ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ (2020)
Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Charlie Kaufman may just be the greatest screenwriter working today, thanks to his unsettling yet richly philosophical narratives about neurotic characters learning lots of valuable lessons about human fragility and cynical existentialism. He’s also an outstanding director, as it turns out, as proved by his most recent outing in that role: I’m Thinking of Ending Things, about a young woman traveling with her new boyfriend to his parents’ secluded farm. Upon arriving, she starts questioning everything she thought she knew about him and herself.
Kaufman changed just enough things about Iain Reid‘s book of the same name (which the film is based on) to conserve its deeply disturbing atmosphere, yet also add plenty of the signature Kaufman spice that fans know and love. With its outstanding performances, unique visuals, and excellent script, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a phenomenal psychological thriller. There are a lot of themes of identity, death, and the passage of time to examine, but as per usual with the writer-director’s work, trying to pinpoint exactly what everything means is missing the point (and the fun) of the bizarre narrative.
3 ‘Possession’ (1981)
Directed by Andrzej Żuławski
Andrzej Żuławski was one of the best filmmakers in Poland’s history, and his best and most popular work is easily the supernatural horror drama Possession, one of the best movies about… well, possession. It’s about a woman who starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after unexpectedly asking her husband for a divorce. As suspicions of infidelity start to surge, something far more sinister soon proves to be the truth.
Something feels off about every character, every camera movement, every story beat in Possession. Everything makes just enough sense to keep viewers engaged, but is just strange enough to make the whole thing feel like a subtle nightmare. With a powerful blend of genres and one of the best female lead performances of all time by Isabelle Adjani, this is an exceptional story about separation, both marital and otherwise. It may be one of the most disquieting films ever made, but it’s certainly worth the journey.
2 ‘Mulholland Dr.’ (2001)
Directed by David Lynch
David Lynch is a legend of every field he’s ever worked in. A legend of arthouse cinema, a legend of cinematic surrealism, and a legend of movies in general. There can be much debate regarding what his best film is, but there’s one that’s a rather easy answer: Mulholland Dr., about a Hollywood hopeful joining an amnesiac woman in search for clues about her condition all around Los Angeles.
As Lynch keeps adding more and more surreal twists to the story, what starts out looking and feeling like a cheesy Hallmark showbiz drama soon starts becoming a dark, mysterious, absolutely brilliant psychological thriller filled to the brim with meaning and symbolism. It’s easily one of the director’s scariest works, but its balance between every element in his arsenal — horror, comedy, eroticism, surrealism, and the likes — is beyond flawless.
1 ‘Persona’ (1966)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
The greatest filmmaker who ever came out of Sweden, the iconic Ingmar Bergman was one of the greatest poets in the history of arthouse cinema. His work is depressing, sure, but also full of beauty and love for the human condition. His best movie may be Persona, which also happens to easily be his weirdest. In it, a nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are slowly melding together.
There’s no point in trying to interpret Persona and put its meaning into words. That’s not what Bergman ever intended with it, and it’s not what makes it one of the greatest foreign arthouse films of all time. Instead, it’s easier — and far more enjoyable — to let oneself be enveloped by its dreamlike tone, to revel in its unsettling moments, and to find deep philosophical richness in its themes of identity. That’s what makes it such a brilliant masterwork.