Movies to F--- With Your Mind
 

The only reason its dashed out is because the school server blocks pages with swears... damn them. Still, I really love movies that truly mess with your mind. Stuff like Donnie Darko, Identity, The Cell, Memento. What are some other really excellent movies that screw with your head at the end.

"It's absurd.
The search for God is absurd?
It is if everyone dies alone.
Does that scare you?
I don't want to be alone."

EDIT: If you shake your head in absolute amazement while or after seeing a movie, it's a mind fuck!

How about the Usual Suspects? I'm not sure if that qualifies, but at the end I was surprised- and that made the movie.

Jacob's Ladder, Bad Timing: A Sensual Obsession and (for some) The Crying Game,

I think there is a sigificant difference between movies that fuck with one's perception of reality:

IE: Donnie Darko, Identity, The Cell, Memento

...and those that simply have a surprise twist at the end:

IE: The Sixth Sense, Usual Suspects, The Crying Game

Those in the frist group are more "systemically" twisted in that the whole fabric of the movie is off centre. Where as those in the second group just poke you right at the very end.

Closet Land fits the criteria. Alan Rickman and Madeleine Stowe are the entire cast of the film. Check it out if you haven't already.

What a great topic. I love running into Donnie Darko fans. Have you seen the new Director's Cut. It's great - totally goes into the Time Travel book more. It's available now on DVD.

One of my favorites in this category would be Dream With the Fishes. A real tripped out flick, neat indie pick - about how you use the time you have. Check it out.

I don't know if Thin Red Line qualifies, but i think it does, as it messes with your head on sort of a medatative level. Another favorite of mine...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The timeline order in the movie fucks up your shit.

I dont know if its the same thing you're talking about, but Magnolia really messed with me

The Piano Teacher, but probably not in the same way y'all are talking.

Sexymama and I just looked at each other for a minute after that movie ended.

How could I have forgotten Existenz?

I'm so fired.

Pi! Pi! Pi!

Total mindfuck!

Sleuth. Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine at the top of their games.

Dead Again. Wild twist at the end.

I (heart) Huckabee's is fun stuff... exesentailism and so on and so forth. Give 'er a gander.

I (heart) Huckabee's is fun stuff... Existentialism and so on and so forth. Give 'er a gander. Plus the line up of actors and actresses are just superb.

Well, how about David Lynch? Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive.

All of those mess with pretty much every lobe of your brain, including the reptilian ones . . . .

I'll just throw this one out there:

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels


Learning that Spoiler: Janet was conning them from the start floored me the first time I saw that movie. And the movie gains so much value when you know the ending. One of my favorites.

Damn, beat me to it. And yes, total mindfuck would be the title given to it.

Agree on Jacob's Ladder (and some others above). One freaky movie.

These are not neccessarily fucked up movies (although some are), but they have fucked up twists:
Frailty
Psycho
Fight Club
Seven
Swimming Pool
Vanilla Sky
Primal Fear
Angel Heart
Arlington Road
No Way Out
Matchstick Men
The Game
The Life of David Gale
12 Monkeys

I would like to throw Saw into the mix... I dont want to spoil anything but it got me big time!

Ratbastid: Glad to see I'm not the only one that loves Sleuth. That movie is phenomenal, and quite the mind screw.

Being John Malkovich was always up there for me on that scale, as was Cube. Most of the others I can think of are already listed here.

Oh, and of course, who can forget The Wall. :)

Oh man The Wall for sure. Even sober. Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas messes with my head as well.

Good movie. Finally saw it about 2 years ago. I LOVE that house in the movie. I'd love to live there (with all the toys and stuff included, of course).

I always saw Saw as more of a suprise ending than a total mind-fuck. I mean, while the whole conecpt of the movie was a bit twisted, it didn't quite mess with your preception like Donnie Darko and Memento.

While Requiem For a Dream may not have a "twist" or surprise ending, it definitely makes you think wtf?

Matchstick Men is a great movie! That girl, she's in White Olander as well ( i believe), is an amazing actress. Especially for her age.

The Game is great too. I saw it a few years ago, I loved it but my mom had to watch it like 3 times and she was still confused as all hell.

I love movies that make you really, /really/ think. Did anyone mention 21 Grams yet? That's a great trippy movie. Lost in Translation really makes you look at things differently. Cant forget The Virgin Suicides too.

Alot of the movies we're mentioning are released in the US by Focus Features, they make alot of indie-feel raw movies. At least recently. Check their website: http://www.focusfeatures.com/home.php

Requiem always makes me think "DAMN. I will never do anything more than pot"

They should show that movie in high school Health Classes. Requiem; My Anti-Drug

Yes, you beat me to it. I agree its not a surprise what ends up happening, but from the beginning of the film the tension and overall badness of what these people are doing to themselves keeps growing and growing until the viewer feels like breaking under the pressure. Not a "feel-good" movie in the least. (But I like it!)

Usual Suspects, definitely. As retsuki03 says, the ending had me thinking for about an hour after I had finished the movie. It was superbly put together.

Matchstick Men, of course, has the same type of ending. The relatively tame plot really opened up with the ending and gave a whole lot more depth to the characters.

Pi, yes! One of my favourite movies of all time.

Disappointed to see that only one person has thought of Cube :( It's pretty ridiculous, but if you don't like gore, I don't recommend it.

Lastly, I once watched The 25th Hour while I was really tired and it tripped me out, I don't know why, hahaha.

I liked Cube but it didn't really mess with my mind...

That was a good movie too. She was also in Big Fish as Ewan McGregor's future wife.

Frailty, The Game, 12 Monkeys... yeah mind fucks. Magnolia was just one of those movies that makes you realize that you are no longer sitting in your chair... and you are in a sitting position in the middle of your living room.

The Crying Game... Not a mind fuck... just really really "weird"...

Dark City! How can I forget Dark City!

I'd have to agree, even though I suggested it, that The Crying Game isn't a mind fuck for most, but when it came out it was definately a mind fuck for many.


La Jetee (which is what 12 Monkeys was based on) was a good mind fuck...

Arlington Road was a good film, not a mind fuck for the viewer as much as a mind fuck for the characters.... It makes you squirm as a result.

Requiem is the best mind fuck IMO. Spun fucks with your head but the ending is pretty weak. Darko is great and for some reason Seven always fucks with me.. I remember the first time I saw it .. I just sat there open jawed when the box was opened.

I was thinking about saying that, but I don't see that many movies, and I thought I'd be laughed at for picking it. Thanks for going first!
Then there's Hypercube. Oof. The only WTF about it was wondering why I spent the time watching it.

la jetee is a great great film.

cassavetes' "opening night" does quite a job on your brain as well.

Excactly! Cube itself wasn't a real good mind fuck. It only made sure that you were not aware of what was happening. But it was a good movie. MUCH BETTER than Hypercube.

Hypercube is that most odious of specimens... the sequel created to capitalize on the success of the first film.

You should note that the writer/director of the film wasn't involved in the sequel. You might also not know that Cube was a student film (part of the Features First program at the Canadian Film Centre) and was a *huge* hit in France and Japan (huge).

so true. I really enjoyed Cube and then was so ticked that the sequel was that bad. Should've figured that would happen.

Apparently, the third Cube movie "Cube Zero" is already out on DVD. Looks like it's a prequel.

From http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...396239-7616924:
From the featured user comments for Cube Zero on http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377713/:

Yes! I knew there was another big movie she was in but for the life of me I coulden't remember what it was.

And on the current note of the Cube series: I'm not sure if I'll be able to bring myself to watch Cube Zero after Hypercube... I probably will sometime though, cause I'm a movie whore like that.

Requiem for a Dream and Saw, both great but haunting movies.

Flashdance. Here is the plot summary from IMDb.com:

I am serious when I say this movie fucks with my mind. Maybe the lame plot, the extreme 80's feel... the fact it made a ton of money...

I remember seeing Cube on Sci Fi channel and insisted on recording it and showing it to my friends.

I'd have to nominate Dead or Alive, the Japanese gangster film. After the last ten minutes of the film, the theater just sat there for a second, stunned silent.

Also, Battle Royale. That's just a weird film and weird premise.

event horizon.

Bah... Those are all tame..

For true mindfuckery, Find a good indy video rental store and ask for movies by Takashi Miike..

Audition starts out pretty dull for the first half, then quickly spirals into a Requiem For a Dream-style madness. Kirii, kirii, kirii...

Fudoh: The Next Generation is a kind of young gang wanting to take over power from their parents. Lot of issues involved, but check out the chick who can do the amazing deathly dart trick.

Happiness of the Katakuris is a fun romp. It's about a small bed and breakfast who are struggling to get on their feet, except all their guests keep dying, so they hide the bodies. Oh, and it's a musical.

Ichi the Killer is um... damn. Tough to explain this one. Involves lots of Yakuza and goes into the mentalities that surround Sado-Masochism. The lead guy is bad-ass, though.

Visitor Q! Wow, watched this the other night. Definately the most mind-fucking movie ever. It's a sort of study about the demise of the tradional family unit in Japan, which is saved by a visitor who destroys it. It makes sense in a strangely touching way. Necrophilia, lactating nipples, incest, heroin use, & microphone anal rape has never been funnier, though.

I still have more of Miike's (pronouced Mee-KAY) movies to watch, but he's amazing. I dare everyone (of age) to check out his stuff.

Just saw this.. Dead or Alive was directed by Takashi Miike, check out my posts for more stuff the check out.

Cube was great, and Battle Royale bring a smile to my face. great stuff!

The Spanish Apartment has a pretty smoothe plot line, but then again, there are those flashes where sometimes things just don't make sense.

Hahaha I think I watched that movie soley because it has Kiefer Sutherland in it. And yeah it was a pretty weird movie! And I'm glad someone else said Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, that movie was pretty trippy. 12 monkeys was probably the movie that fucked with my mind the most. When I watched it I was only 8, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the concept. The entire rest of the night I was trying to get it. And I still don't....maybe I should go back and watch it.

In the company of men, sex and lucia

As far as movie twists go, I thought of another one:

The Spanish Prisoner

The two Matrix sequels fucked with my mind.


Wait... they just fucked with my wallet.



Hold on, ..... I guess they did fuck with my mind, after all... here's a GREAT film with a definite ending ( the Matrix).. now let's milk the public, just arfing fleece them with two over-wrought, needless and needlessly cg movies.

Also, the matrix if not the sequels were apparently blatantly stolen from another author. So the brothers might be the geniuses they were made out to be.

The end.

ARG! Battle Royale... It's a mindfuck, but not in the same way, say, Pi was. Where Pi was a constant "wow... fuck" situation, Battle Royale both the first and second time I watched it (I watched it again to try and get past the shock value) was a "WHAT THE FUCK!" situation.

I just think a lot more could've been done with the plot... But it was definitely a mindfuck.

You guys know where I can find a copy of Battle Royale? Amazon doesn't seem to have it and without that I'm practically impotent when it comes to finding stuff. :D

AH-MAZING MOVIE. I can't believe I forgot that one. If you like that, you'd love Phantoms, the one based of Dean Koontz's novel.

Anyone remember Altered States, a film where William Hurt didn't act :gasps and is shocked:. Doesn't matter, the whole... psychosomatic... transformation... to an ape deal and later make a giant... swirly... whirlpool of oblivion was odd...

And there's a third Cube. Shit! Now I have to rent it... and watch it... and be angry at how crappy it is! All because I can't help but MST3K every movie I watch. It's a sickness really.

(And yes, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" is used as a verb)

what about Dark Crystal?? Granted I was like 5 but I still said what the fuck!? hehe

i heard that if you watch Star Wars on acid you will try to kill yourself...thats a pretty good mindfuck

Trainspotting was a disturbing mind fucking flick. Good movie, gritty.... the toilet scene was a pleasant touch.

How could I have forgotten "KIDS" or "Bully"?? Geez

Did anyone say "After Hours" yet?

Gummo, and Conspirators of Pleasure...dude.........

Pinkie... I love After Hours... Believe it or not, that was a movie I took my highshool girlfriend to on our first date.

Altered States is definitely a good choice for the sheer weirdness factor.

I believe "misting" is the common verb used to describe the MST3K process.

Phantoms? The one with Affleck? Are you for real? :hmm:

yeah, the spanish prisoner is pretty good. i'm not a cube fan though.

i didn't see any fellini mentioned. i'd suggest 8 1/2 first.
i just watched satyricon...that's a fairly weird one. i'm not sure what i think of it yet.

21 grams is another disjointed movie. it took me a bit to realize what was going on.

i don't know if 2001 or solaris have been mentioned. i also suggest the original insomnia. too bad they remade it.

or watch touch of evil. it may mess with you that charleton heston plays a mexican. listen for the times he speaks spanish.

Try this site.
http://www.battleroyalefilm.net/video/db1.html
It seems to have a complete listing of where to get this DVD.

I went to the movie Brazil on a highschool date, and it turned out to be our last date.

YEAH! I loved that movie. The book was great and the movie actually held some water to it. The way the mother mass was portrayed and the people swirling into it was weirdness.

And here we just say "MST3K'ing."

come on... affleck was the bomb in phantoms! :thumbsup:

Mullholland Drive

Lost Highway

Frank Zappa's 200 Motels

Being John Malkovich

Bubba Ho-tep

I storngly recommend Bubba Ho-tep. It's about how Elvis faked his own death and ended up in a retirement home under an alias, and no one beleived he was the king. He teams up with a crazy black man who thinks he's JFK, to battle an evil mummy that is sucking out the souls of all the poor retirees at the Home.

It stars that guy who was in Evil Dead and Army of darkness.

Can't imagine why. :lol:

How about Arlington Road?

The film I just saw Oldboy by Park Chan-wook certainly qualifies. Genuinely disturbing initial premise simply becomes more nightmarish and frightening as the plot unfolds.
A business man, Oh Dae Su is kidnapped seemingly for no reason and held in a cell for fifteen years. It is when he is released, again seemingly for no reason, and begins to search for his tormentor that things really get scary. The violence, and there is a lot of it in this film, while it is shocking at times, is nothing compared to the implications of the plot as it reaches its final scenes.
Still trying to wash the unpleasant feeling out.
Great great movie though!

A Clockwork Orange

I recently watched this movie and I gotta say, it definitely left me with a weird feeling in my stomach. It was a pretty good movie, and I kinda figured out what was happeneing before the end, but it still shocked me.

A Clockwork Orange - made the mistake of watching it drunk, NO BUENO
Pi
Happiness
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Leaving Las Vegas

These movies always screw with my mind in a bad way

Butterfly Effect.
The Matrix (This is my favorite).

I always ask questions about these movies.

Fight Club, Se7en ,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Life of David Gale, Idenity, The Ring( not scary but messes with your head), THe village sorta till it become the worst movie ever. LOVE LIZA

Wicker Park. This was great. It was recently released on DVD.

I actually liked The Village. I didn't go into it thinking it was a horror movie.

Koyaanisqatsi -- http://imdb.com/title/tt0085809/
Powaqqatsi -- http://imdb.com/title/tt0095895/
Naqoyqatsi -- http://imdb.com/title/tt0145937/

These three movies will make you THINK!

V.

Butterfly Effect! Yes!... I don't think you will find another movie where that guy will play another serious role.

I don't want to open Pandora's box with this, but... Akira... Akira still fucks with my head. Spoiler: The whole Tetsuo transforming into the Stay Puff Marshmallow man from hell still makes me shiver!

WITH THAT SAID: I will promptly start an "animes that fuck with your mind" if I cannot find previously existing one somewhere. So let's agree on one thing:

ANY NON-AMERICANIZED AND/OR NON-COMMERCIALIZED ANIME AFTER 1985 WILL FUCK WITH YOUR MIND!

I'm kind of surprised Requiem for a Dream didn't make more of a splash in this thread, as it is a good mind-fuck movie. Or is it too mainstream?

When I was a little kid, I walked in on my sister watching the very end of The Good Son , right Spoiler: when the mom drops Macaulay Culkin off the cliff . I was like 8 and it messed with my head. Haven't watched it since.

How about the Larry Clark movies? Kids, Bully, and most recently, Ken Park. They're all fucked up in their own way. I just saw Ken Park a couple months ago after my friend had to buy an illegal copy off eBay because you can't get it in the States. I wouldn't say I was slack-jawed the whole way through, but by the end I definitely stared at the credits for a several minutes and just said "What the fuck," several times, and then asked my friend "What the fuck?" and he said "That's fucked up." Sorry to cuss so much but that was pretty much verbatim.

On a small tangent, I was watching TV the other night (in London) and they showed Kids on one of the local broadcast channels, uncensored and all, followed by Bully in the same fashion. No way ever would either one of those make TV back home (the States), no way no how. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing.

The Wall -- wow. I first saw that when I was going to a boarding school many years ago. If taking over your mind means messing with your mind, that movie did it to me. I knew everything there was to know about the movie, the music, etc. I saw every laser show and midnight showing, Wizard of Oz synch, etc. "Comfortably Numb" and "Mother" are very powerful songs for me decades later.

Eraserhead had a peculiar effect on me as well. Don't try to eat and watch it at the same time. That shaved lamb -- that was fucked up.

Trainspotting

The movie What the Bleep do we do? really screws with my mind. It is at is heart a documentary about Quantum metaphysics. I am in a philosophy class right now, so I know a little about basic metaphysics, but they are talking about some crazy shit. They say that its possible to control the world with your mind (alah bending the spoon). They talk about how there was an experiment where 4,000 people were brought from many different religions and countries to Washinton D.C. The experiment was to lower the crime rate by at least 25% through prayer and meditation. It worked, and I looked it up on the internet, here is a link: http://www.alltm.org/pages/crime-arrested.html


There is some really intersting stuff in this movie and it really blows your mind.

Se7en, Donnie Darko, Saw, Fight Club, and Event Horizon.

I remember Koyaanisqatsi was the last movie I ever watched in highschool, shown by my senior year AP English teacher on the last day of class. It affected me greatly, especially the minimalist music.

Here's two movies that haven't been mentioned yet. They don't really fuck with your mind intellectually, but rather emotionally, or physically (pure shock value).

Happiness. This is *the* darkest comedy ever made. I mean pure fucking spit-bile-at-the-world black. Its one of those movies that makes you cringe so much that it hurts until its funny. Its by the director of Welcome to the Dollhouse and Storytelling, both of which are in a similar vein but not nearly as dark.

Blood Sucking Freaks. What Happiness was on an implied emotional level, Blood Sucking Freaks is on a purely physical shock-value level. It is the ultimate epitome of exploitation films while still being a satire of exploitation. It is so horrific that even Lloyd Kaufman, head of Troma Films, regrets distributing the film. (If you know anything about the films Troma produces, you'll realize just how much that says). Watch the movie, and I guarantee that by halfway through the film you'll be asking yourself (and maybe anyone else in the room) "Why the fuck would anyone make this movie?" every 5 minutes.

Magnolia. To be honest I can't remember it very well because I was too busy thinking, but it reminded me of an earlier event. I had fallen on my ass in front of a bunch of people and had agitated a shoulder injury. But there was no way to explain it. So I was just sitting there on the floor cringing for seemingly no reason. I didn't get up for an especially long time. But instead of being incredibly embarrassed I just kind of fell back into the true reality.

A lot of people realise how meaningless the things they care about are, but barely anyone really believes and acts on it deep down. When I say they truly believe it, I mean they could sit naked in public without the slightest care in the world. I felt like that during the moment. I didn't care about anything at all. I knew how pointless life was, and lost all modesty and fear. I was overcome by this feeling of being entirely freed from everything (and no, I wasn't on drugs). But as soon as I got up I returned to normal and haven't felt that way since.

If I did a psychological evalulation of myself I would probably find that it was my mind's way of coping with something too distressing to believe. While the event might seem trivial to everyone else, it really forced me to realise how excessively I care about what other people think of me.

I can not watch that movie. I just get this extreme sickness seeing how wicked that kid is... and he's a kid... and it's a movie! God that movie freaks me. Good pick in here.

I am amazed that no one has put "In the mouth of Madness" up here yet. Great movie for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. John Carpenter. May be his best film... certainly his most thought-provoking and sophisticated.

^^ How did I forget that. I just remember seeing it, didn't really fuck with my mind, but it was damned cool. Long live Jurgen Prochnow!

Kalifornia...I thought it was great. But that's one of those movies that never seems to get it's due.

I'm still trying to figure out Muholland Drive...

While Vanilla Sky has been mentioned earlier, no one mentioned (in my opinion) one of the most truly disturbing cinematic scenes of all time in the movie..

When Cruise is riding with Cameron Diaz as she starts to freak out & get bug-eyed.. talks faster and faster, drives more and more erratically until you figure out what she's about to do. First time I saw that I had chills up and down my spine for five minutes. Had to go back and watch it again to make sure it was as crazy and well-done as I had imagined it was the first time. Just got chills again thinking about it. Yuck. A guy's worst nightmare. Well, at least this guy's. Hell hath no fury..

Something Wicked This Way Comes

^ Is that the one about the circus or something?

Oh and something that classifies as a mind fuck: ANYTHING QUENTIN TARANTINO MAKES!
I don't remember if I have mentioned it before! It doesn't matter what movie you think that he directed because when you watch it you no longer are sitting in your chair--you are hovering above the ground in the sitting position! Holy hell, I saw Sin City, not a mind fuck EXCEPT where Tarantino directed. And you can tell where he directed because it became a crack fantasy, and we were thrust into this drug filled delusion as if being offered the needle as we walked out of rehab.

Donnie Darko for sure I've watched it three times now and although I think I understand I'm still totally lost.

Also Dune, I don't know why but this film confused me so much. I haven't read the book which probably didn't help but it was soooo random and left me feeling really quite strange afterwards. I don't know what it was.

Did I mention:

Violent Cop
Freaks

Which one, the original by David Lynch or the remade miniseries?

I love the original one because that... that made me shake my head. Also, I love the theme music. I humm it all the time.

I guess I am in the minority to have liked HyperCube.

Cube and Hyper were great movies and can't wait to see the third.

I think the problem is Cube set such a high standard that Hyper was a letdown as we always expect he sequel to be better. Hyper wasn't better than he first but it was still damned good.

It just shows Hollywood doesn't have to spend huge money to make good films.

A good mind fuck is Blair Witch and Blair Witch2........ Blair Witch was pretty predictable and I didn't find it all that bothersome, but I know some people just freaked. BW2 was far better in my opinion and a mind fuck for me especially if you have the VHS or DVD and play it in reverse and look at all the clues.

Suspiria was a mind fuck in that why the fuck did I sit through this and feed it into my brain.

Hypercube was just... it didn't make any sense at all, the hell was up with that random shape? At any rate, there's gonna be a third one?!?? What the crap?
Besides, Cube wasn't a Hollywood endeavour. It was independant on a tiny budget, and then Hypercube was Hollywood on a large budget and it was naaaathing on the first.

Waking Life might qualify.

Cube was a student film... made at the Canadian Film Centre. It just happened to become a cult hit in North America and a runaway hit in France and Japan...

I have to agree with Blair Witch. It was the waiting...and waiting...for something terrible to happen and it never quite does, that was the worst. It totally freaked me out and I couldn't sleep for a few days afterwards. I'm a wimp when it comes to horror though; I'm the one who screams in the theater when something jumps out at you.