Real life? Hard pass. I get that sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. The other eight hours? I’m in the land of dreams and nightmares! It’s awesome! It’s freaky! And it’s definitely more exiting than the mundane reality that we’re all subjected to in our waking lives! While dreaming isn’t always fun (sometimes it’s utterly terrifying) I can’t help but feel grateful that my brain has granted me a lifetime supply of original films that I can watch with my eyes closed. While most of us only get to experience a dream once, these ten films about dreams and nightmares can be watched over and over again! And best of all, you won’t forget them immediately once the credits roll! Sit back, relax, and get ready for what dreams may come – Hamlet style.
Paprika
Satoshi Kon’s entire body of work is all about dreams, from the paranoid nightmare-scapes of Perfect Blue to the memory lane musings of Millennium Actress. Paprika, however, is the director’s dreamiest film to date. In a not so distant sci-fi future, scientists have invented the DC Mini – a device that allows a user to entire people’s dreams. One of the heads of the research project has been using the device outside of office hours, making unsanctioned visits to psychiatric patients disguised as her dream-detective alter ego Paprika. While gallivanting through people’s brainscapes, Paprika stumbles across a dream parade made up of gods, monsters, and random household objects – looks like a pretty good time. After several DC Mini prototypes are stolen in the real world, the dream parade begins to invades the mind of others, with unexpectedly deadly consequences. Through a heady combination of whimsy and terror, Paprika leaves you feeling like you’ve just come down off a heroic dose of hallucinogens as the credits roll – which is what you’re here for.
Brazil
A surrealist cyberpunk dramedy by Monty Python alumnus Terry Gilliam, Brazil is the story of government bureaucrat Sam Lowry, who escapes from his dystopian reality with frequent dreams of flight and freedom. While soaring through the cityscape as a dream-angel, Sam spies a beautiful woman and falls instantly in love. While out running a real world errand, he’s shocked to see the woman in his waking hours – working as a truck driver. As Sam attempts to contact the woman, he accidentally gets wrapped up in a political rebellion waged by Archibald Tuttle – a heating engineer played by Robert De Niro. The film unfolds with expected level of Python-esque hilarity, but takes an unexpected turn towards tragedy as government forces begin to close in upon the two lovers. In the end, Brazil is a film about reality failing to live up to the characters’ dreams, and the consequences of dream-flying too close to the sun.
Dream Scenario
Dream Scenario is the story of Paul, a snobbish and egotistical biology professor at a local university. A just-above-average intellect with dreams of intellectual genius, Paul gains the recognition he craves after people across the world begin having dreams about him. Now an overnight celebrity, Paul finds himself enjoying the spotlight – until the dreams take a turn for the worse. As people’s dreams of Paul twist into nightmares, he goes from being adored and sought after to hated and shunned. It’s a strange and twisted film, the portrait of a man undone by the fame and fortune he so desperately craved. In the end, the film teaches that it’s not recognition from strangers that matters, but the love from those closest to you. The lesson might be lost on Paul, but hopefully not on anyone watching.
Inception
A blockbuster dream movie that changed the landscape of cinema, Christopher Nolan’s Inception is a heist movie about breaking into the most well guarded vault of all: the human mind. In a sci-fi future of competing corporations, “extractors” Dom and Arthur are tasked with entering the minds of others in order steal sensitive business secrets. Impressed by their efforts to invade his mind, one of their targets rehires the pair to perform an “inception” – the planting of an idea in a person’s subconscious that wasn’t there before. As Dom and Cobb dive deep into the mind of a target, they’re shocked to find that their mark’s subconscious is fighting back – trapping them in dreams within dreams within dreams. Equal parts head-scratching and heart pounding, Inception is a beloved psychological thriller whose ending is still hotly debated to this day.
Saint Maud
Directed by Rose Glass, Saint Maud is the story of an ER nurse who was left traumatized after a patient died in her care. After embracing hardcore Catholicism and renaming herself “Maud,” the woman begins working as a private nurse for an aging former dancer. As Maud dives deeper into her newfound faith, she begins experiencing visions that hint at a spiritual reality beyond our own. But are these visions being granted to her by a divine power? Or are they products of her increasingly lonely and meaning-seeking mind? It’s easy to mistake Saint Maud for a parable about the dangers of religious fundamentalism, but at its core its a mediation on trauma – and the nightmarish effects it has on a mind that has nowhere else to turn for comfort.
A Nightmare On Elm Street
A thing of horror movie beauty, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street is one of the most freakiest dream films ever created. A group of teenagers find themselves haunted by a knife-handed, burn-scared killer named Freddy Krueger, who invades their minds when they go to sleep. The teens are horrified to discover that is Freddy is able to kill a sleeper in their dreams, they die in real life as well. The result is a hallucinatory gore fest featuring some of the most mind bending, stomach turning murders in horror movie history. Freddy is a monster that is impossible to escape, one that visits you at your most vulnerable, and shows no mercy. Featuring hair-raising bathtub hauntings and literal geysers of blood, this film will haunt your dreams forever.
Mulholland Drive
Like Satoshi Kon, David Lynch’s entire oeuvre touches on dreams and nightmares, and Mulholland Drive stands at the pinnacle. After surviving a murder attempt and a car crash, an amnesiac woman befriends an aspiring actress after aimlessly wandering the streets of Los Angeles. Able to recall nothing but the fact that she’s in danger, the woman and her newfound bestie attempt to piece together the clues of her life – two of which are a key and lump of cash found in the woman’s purse. The film wears together seemingly unrelated scenes featuring a menagerie of mysterious figures, unfolding with a dream logic that makes the film’s surrealist plot up for interpretation. Visually stunning, narratively mind-boggling, emotionally disturbing, Mulholland Drive is Lynch at his best.
Jacob’s Ladder
Directed by Adrian Lyne, Jacob’s Ladder is the story of Vietnam veteran Jacob Singer who, after being bayonetted in the chest in combat, awakens in a New York City subway car with no memory how he got there – as one does. As Jacob attempts to establish some degree of normalcy in his newly normal life, his mundane reality is subtly invaded nightmarish visions – split second flashes of alien and demonic horrors. As Jacob’s world slowly collapses all around him, he begins to suspect that perhaps he’s not in the waking world at all. Perhaps he’s in some realm beyond? It sure isn’t Heaven. Maybe Hell? Purgatory? A traumatized part of his own mind? Who’s to say? Hopefully someone, Jacob really needs an answer.
Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
When I started Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, I expected Jim Carrey’s character to make me laugh, but I was in for a rude, ball my eyes out awakening. Carrey plays Joel Barish, a man heartbroken to discover that his ex-girlfriend Clementine has undergone an experimental procedure to have her memories of their relationship erased. Unable to bear the pain, Joel submits himself to the same procedure, reliving his memories of Clementine in the process. As Joel re-experiences his relationship, he becomes emotionally connected once more. Not to real Clementine, but the one in his head. It’s the story of a man rekindling an old flame in his mind, part dream, part memory, part fantasy. Woefully romantic, throughly devastating, deeply profound – it’s one of the best movies ever made.
The Wizard of Oz
C’mon, what did you expect? Aside from being one of the most signifiant pieces of cinema like, ever, The Wizard of Oz is the most iconic dream film ever made. After a twister rocks her black and white Great Depression world, a red-shoed little girl reawaken to find herself definitely not in Kansas anymore. Dorothy’s surrealist, technicolor quest to return home with the help of an emotionally stunted robot, a timid zoo animal, and a scarecrow who dreams acquiring of student loan debt is a thing of silver screen beauty. Profoundly impactful, infinitely charming, canonically queer, The Wizard of Oz is what cinematic dreams are made of – flying monkeys included.
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