Five films that feel like fever dreams
You just watched a film that left you feeling unsettled, feeling slightly violated, and like you’ve been on a journey you’re not sure you wanted to go on. You’re left with a sour taste in your mouth, and everything in your world feels distorted and slightly more disturbing. It’s almost as though you had a bad dream, except you were awake the whole time.
There are many directors who have been praised for replicating the mysterious worlds we visit in our sleep. While David Lynch is the obvious master of this genre, many others have created similarly disorienting stories that blur the line between reality and fantasy, often with dark themes that point towards the character’s dissatisfaction with everyday life.
From the fast-paced chaos of Spirited Away to the jarring coldness of Donnie Darko, there is entire genre of nightmarish films that conjure a familiar kind of darkness, one that often plagues our subconscious minds and sometimes seeps into reality.
So without a doubt, here are five films that feel like bad dreams…
Five films that feel like bad dreams:
Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009)
There is perhaps no medium as impressive as stop-motion filmmaking, with animators going to painstaking lengths to bring life to lifeless objects and create innovative ways of concocting a world, whether using painted popcorn for the trees or cellophane for smoke. But the strengths of the medium perhaps work best when in support of mystical and otherworldly stories, with Coraline being a perfect example of the nightmarish ethereality created through this style.
Do not be fooled, while it was marketed as a children’s film, Coraline is a genuinely haunting allegory based around the old fable, ‘be careful what you wish for’, following a young girl called Coraline who discovers an alternate version of her life in which all her deepest desires are bought to life. Selick blurs the line between our sleeping and waking lives, creating a feast for the senses through swoon-worthy visuals and that blend beauty and brutality, creating a creepy spectacle that burrows deep into your mind like a bad dream.
Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
There is nobody more synonymous with the art of dream-like filmmaking than David Lynch, and while some might describe Mulholland Drive as his most nightmarish work of art, I would argue that Inland Empire is the epitome of this style. Even without considering those terrifying jump scares, it is perhaps the most surreal from his body of work due to the non-linear story structure and the audience’s inability to discern between real-life and performance.
Nikki is consumed by her performance, trapped in a web of identities, narratives and alternate realities, simultaneously embodying the pain and suffering of other women who have been treated as disposable by Hollywood. You could argue that Lynch is pointing towards the idea that there is no such thing as acting – everything is equally real, even dreams, characters and stories. They all exist together, just on different planes of existence, and acting allows people to break down these walls and travel between worlds. It just happens to be that for some, it destroys you entirely, leaving you in a maze of memories in which you can’t discern between your own and those of other people.
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
Jean Cocteau was perhaps the pioneer of surrealist filmmaking, with his 1950 film Orpheus challenging everything that had ever been seen on screen. Based on the tale of Orphée and Eurydice, it follows a poet who ventures into the underworld after falling in love with death, creating a dark and absorbing tale about the relationship between life, love and mortality.
There are breathtaking moments that transcend some of the practical effects seen today, with shots in which the poet walks through a fluid-like mirror in order to reach the underworld or glides along walls as he battles for a way to cheat death and be forever united with his love. It’s a chilling and bewildering film that feels somewhat akin to one of your most visceral nightmares, trapping you in a dark world that you cannot wake up from.
Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell, 2018)
Under the Silver Lake is a criminally underrated film, following a young and disillusioned young man who falls in love with his next-door neighbour. After she suddenly goes missing, he embarks on a strange odyssey through Los Angeles to find her, discovering a murky scandal beneath the city that shatters his grasp on reality.
It’s a disorienting and dizzying quest that takes Sam all over the city, with the director revelling in the superficiality of the city and how this has seeped into the main character’s own mindset, with his mission eventually highlighting his own vapid belief system and attitude towards women as he loses himself completely.
Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
There is nothing more nightmarish than loving someone who won’t love you back, a pain that Alain Resnais captures through his indescribable masterpiece, Last Year at Marienbad. The story takes place in a deserted chateau as a man recounts the memories of a lost love, desperately searching for fragments of her wherever he goes and trying to hold onto the time they spent together.
Resnais broke the rules of conventional film structure, creating a disjointed editing style and unnerving score that gets under your skin and conveys the desperation of someone who is unable to move on. It creates a mood of stagnancy and rot as he slowly becomes frozen in his memories, with the truth of their love slipping between the walls of this decaying mansion, with the audience being unsure if we’re seeing real life or an illusion, a person or a statue, a dream or a nightmare…
