10 Trippy Horror Movies With Non-Linear Narratives

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As a cinephile who’s spent countless hours delving into the realms of horror and science fiction, I can confidently say that these movies are not for the faint-hearted. Each one offers a unique blend of psychological terror and mind-bending narratives that challenge our understanding of reality.

Horror flicks typically delve into mysterious, baffling narratives that resonate deeply within one’s mind. This is inherent to the genre as it aims to stimulate thought. The primary objective of horror is to unsettle and provoke doubts about reality. Exceptional horror films capitalize on prevalent societal anxieties, sparking intellectual discourse and encouraging examination of our lived experiences. Admittedly, some horror movies resort to sensational jump scares for shock value, paying scant attention to story development. However, it’s essential to recognize that numerous horror productions carry meaningful messages beyond mere frightening moments.

Exploring films that provoke viewers to ponder the authenticity of their lives and consider global events more deeply often results in movies that are not just unconventional, but also mind-bending. Unlike typical horror flicks, these don’t adhere to traditional story structures or spoon-feed viewers with excessive explanation. Rather, they delve deep into your consciousness and senses, blurring the line between movie and reality. If such a film experience appeals to you, we have compiled a list of ten trippy horror movies featuring non-linear narratives for your viewing pleasure:

10 Mandy (2018)

Panos Cosmatos’
Mandy

is a psychedelic, nightmarish trip into the Shadow Mountains of the Pacific Northwest in 1983. The chaotic, mind-bending film follows a man named Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) and his girlfriend, the titular Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), who live in a secluded cabin in the woods in the mountains. After a psychotic cult leader kidnaps Mandy, the couple’s peaceful existence is destroyed, leaving Red to go on a violent revenge rampage.

A Hyper-Violent Hallucinogenic Ride

The religious cult
that kidnaps Mandy is heavily into psychedelic drugs, giving the movie a hallucinogenic atmosphere that makes the viewer feel as though they are on the same destructive acid trip the characters are on. The story doesn’t unfold chronologically, adding to the intense phantasmagoric vibe of the film. Instead, we see glimpses of Mandy and Red before her abduction interspersed between her kidnapping and Red’s bloody journey. We see how Mandy spent time alone and with Red before her imminent abduction. The use of color and editing effects makes the entire film feel like a hyperrealistic nightmare that you simply can’t look away from.

Stream Mandy on Hulu

9 Triangle (2009)

Triangle

is a horror thriller that keeps you guessing until the moment the credits begin rolling. The film revolves around a single mother named Jess (Melissa George) who is invited to set sail on a friend’s yacht for the afternoon. After a strange storm leaves the group shipwrecked, they board a mysterious ocean liner that appears seemingly out of nowhere. From the moment they board the boat, the line between reality and dreams is blurred.

A Nightmarish Time Loop

Triangle is unlike other horror or sci-fi films featuring time loops. Even before the friend group boards the ocean liner, an unsettling atmosphere lingers in every scene leading up to that fateful moment. Once they are on the ocean liner, it becomes impossible for Jess and the audience to distinguish what’s real from what’s not. Events that have already occurred start repeating themselves but unfold differently than the previous occurrence. Time stops moving normally and instead becomes a construct rather than a reality. You think the story is going in one direction, and then it goes in the completely opposite direction. Go into this one knowing nothing more than this to get the film’s full effect.

Stream Triangle on Prime Video

8 Altered State (1980)

Ken Russell’s

Altered States

is a hallucinogenic
sci-fi film
with horror elements that follows a revered scientist and professor named Eddie Jessup (William Hurt). As a grad student in the late ’60s, Eddie experimented in an isolation chamber where he experienced religious hallucinations despite not being religious. Years later, he fears he has lost his edge and decides to resume his sensory deprivation experiment, this time with hallucinogenic drugs. Convinced he can reach different levels of consciousness, he uses drugs specifically from Mexican rituals to enhance the isolation experience.

An Unconventional Hallucinogen Experience

Reaching altered states of consciousness or reality would feel like a long, nonsensical, drawn-out dream sequence for a human being. This film effortlessly captures that disjointed state that many of us will never experience. Time moves however it pleases in Eddie’s tripped-out thrill rides. Chronological order and structure mean nothing when the mind is entering levels of consciousness it has never thought possible to witness.

Rent Altered States on Prime Video or Apple TV

7 Lost Highway (1997)

Just like any David Lynch movie, attempting to understand the storyline or find hidden meanings becomes futile. The film Lost Highway adheres to this unspoken principle. It revolves around Fred Madison, a saxophonist who finds himself accused of murdering his wife, Renee, in an enigmatic manner. While serving time for the crime on death row, he unexpectedly transforms into a young man named Pete. Upon Pete’s release from prison, his life intertwines with Fred’s in a bizarre tapestry of mystery and deception within a surreal landscape.

A Surrealist, Dream-Like Experience

If Hitchcock was a maestro of suspense, then Lynch can be considered a virtuoso of surrealism. His knack for turning abstract narratives into experiences mirroring human dreams is exceptional. Dreams are frequently illogical, even when they have meaning, and their visuals contrast greatly with reality. Lynch skillfully portrays this dreamlike state effortlessly. The film “Lost Highway” seems like an endless dream that transcends all constraints of time and space without worrying about how the audience will interpret the plot.

Stream Lost Highway on The Criterion Channel or rent on Apple TV

6 Climax (2017)

French director Gaspar Noe’s films are not for everyone. Truthfully, they are likely not for most people. He has an extremely experimental approach to filmmaking and storytelling that more than subverts most people’s expectations for narrative structure. His 2018 horror film

Climax

does exactly that. Taking place over the course of one night,

Climax

follows a group of dancers who meet up in an abandoned school building to practice one of their routines. Afterward, they decide to party the night away with too much sangria. Unbeknownst to them, someone has spiked the sangria with LSD.

A Completely Non-linear, Wild Trip

Climax

takes any semblance of typical narrative structure and completely annihilates it. Not one sequence of this film happens in chronological order. Instead, scenes happen whenever Noe feels like placing them, leaving the viewer to guess the real order of events. The film’s opening credits occur about halfway through the movie and the movie opens up with the ending. In one scene, a character is dead, and the next, they are alive. The film is as trippy and non-linear as a film can be.

Stream Climax on Max

5 In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Perhaps one of
John Carpenter’s most underappreciated films
,

In the Mouth of Madness

follows an insurance investigator named John Trent (Sam Neill) who is tasked with locating the whereabouts of an extremely popular horror novelist whose work has had peculiar effects on his readers. His assignment leads him to the sleepy New England town of Hobb’s End, a supposedly fictional town from Sutter Cane’s latest tale of terror.

Fiction Meets Reality

The mid to late ’90s saw the rise of meta-horror films that would explode in popularity, with films like

Scream

taking genre tropes and stripping them down to the bone.

In the Mouth of Madness

did this in a way that turned fiction into reality. John Trent doesn’t just find Sutter Cane; he starts to live within the world of his novels. Time, reality, and space cease to exist the moment he steps foot in Hobb’s End. Everything he thinks is real is actually fake, and everything he thinks is fake is actually real. Is Cane writing John’s story? Or was there ever a story to begin with? These are the questions you will be asking as you watch John’s descent into madness.

Rent In the Mouth of Madness on Prime Video or Apple TV

4 Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Starring Tim Robbins,

Jacob’s Ladder

centers around a haunted Vietnam War veteran named Jacob Singer (Robbins) as he tries to make sense of the featured pieces of his life. Plagued by hallucinations and conspiracies after the death of his child, Jacob struggles through the haze of PTSD and severe dissociation to make it out alive from his own delusions. He must decipher reality from his misguided perceptions of death.

A Trauma-laced Vision of Dissociation

Jacob’s Ladder

manages to blend psychological horror and war drama together to create an effective tale that also has elements of religious horror, legal drama, and conspiracy thriller. The film often feels like a fever dream, and it takes full advantage of that. It operates strictly on dream logic that somehow still makes sense when you take into consideration the severe PTSD and dissociation that Jacob experiences. It has a lack of coherence that works well because of the dream-like state of the movie that keeps the viewer questioning everything that happens.

Stream Jacob’s Ladder on Prime Video

3 Annihilation (2018)

Alex Garland, both writer and director, has built a remarkable career in the realms of science fiction and horror, contributing to films such as “28 Days Later”, “Ex Machina”, and most notably, “Annihilation”. This film skillfully combines elements of science fiction and horror, offering viewers an intellectually stimulating journey through a landscape that resembles a jungle, where appearances can be deceiving. When biologist Lena (portrayed by Natalie Portman) loses her husband, she decides to join an expedition team venturing into a disaster-stricken environment. However, instead of finding answers, Lena encounters a region where the rules of nature don’t seem to apply.

An Intellectual Mind-Bender

The movie “Annihilation” is one that demands your focus from beginning to end. Things aren’t what they appear, and nature behaves abnormally. The area these women encounter isn’t a chaotic, noisy disaster zone but rather an unsettling, silent one. It seems like they’ve entered another reality because time and nature don’t follow the rules we expect. The movie’s use of color and dreamlike visuals adds to its otherworldly atmosphere. It’s incredibly trippy, with a climax that will have you questioning how everything leading up to it even occurred.

Stream Annihilation on Paramount+ or Pluto TV

2 Possession (1981)

Ukrainian/Polish director Andrzej Zulawski’s

Possession

is one of the most influential psychological and supernatural horror films put to screen. Featuring phenomenal performances from both Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani, the film follows a woman named Anna (Adjani) who begins to exhibit increasingly disturbing behavior after telling her husband she wants a divorce. Mark (Neill) suspects infidelity at first, but his obsession with learning Anna’s reasons for wanting a divorce soon gives way to something much darker and sinister.

A Bizarre, Nightmarish View on Desire and Obsession

Adjani’s performance cannot be understated, as it is her completely deranged and unhinged manner of behavior that makes this such a pivotal film in the horror genre. While Mark’s intense obsession with Anna is somewhat straightforward, Anna’s actions are unpredictable. This makes everything that happens in the film unpredictable, and as she descends into madness, so do Mark and the audience. She seems to be caught between two lives, just as the movie feels caught between a psychological story of a couple’s failing marriage and a story of a much more unnerving supernatural phenomenon. Hard as you may try, trying to figure out where this movie is going or what Anna’s motivations are is like trying to solve a Rubik’s cube.

Stream Possession on Shudder

1 Videodrome (1983)

Similar to David Lynch, David Cronenberg’s films are designed to delve into your mind and disrupt your thinking patterns. The movie Videodrome, for instance, revolves around a Toronto-based TV producer named Max Renn (James Woods), who is always on the hunt for provocative programs to broadcast on his questionable cable network. During his quest, he encounters a brutally violent show titled Videodrome. After airing it, his girlfriend auditions for the program and mysteriously disappears. As he delves deeper into the mystery, he uncovers the possibility that the violence might not be as staged as he initially believed.

Disturbing Yet Mesmerizing

Cronenberg’s films are famous for their body horror, and you’ll find plenty of it in ‘Videodrome’. His work is also distinctive because it often follows unusual plotlines that can be quite bizarre, which is true for ‘Videodrome’ as well. The film is captivating, unsettling, and mind-bendingly hallucinatory, leaving viewers feeling like they’ve stepped into someone else’s consciousness. As the traditional storyline fades away, so does the very structure of reality.

Rent Videodrome on Prime Video

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2024-11-09 20:31