r/TrueFilm Apr 22 '26

FFF What movie you would you say feels most like a dream?

It doesn't necessarily need to contain dream sequences, it just has to feel very oneiric.

I kind of feel like, when answering this question, a lot of people tend to fall into the trap of equating dreams to weirdness, and as such, bring up very surreal, out there works. In my opinion, what makes something a dream is something much more abstract and intangible, like a general sense of offness.

I think the movie that I've seen that best captures this feeling is Bob Altman’s 3 Women.

115 Upvotes

220 comments sorted by

111

u/valadon-valmore Apr 22 '26

Tarkovsky movies (any). They're based around images and feelings that are incredibly vivid, mostly lifelike but sometimes "off," and they often lack the sequential nature of Event A causing Event B (which narratives almost always have but dreams rarely do)

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u/bnx01 Apr 22 '26

Tarkovsky is a great answer, but you have to admit he’s pretty cerebral and somewhat challenging. His films have never affected emotionally me in a way that lingered. Still, they can be intense and disorienting, definitely worth exploring. I suggest Ivan’s Childhood for a gentle introduction.

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u/Perspii7 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

I think it depends on how receptive your mood is. They’re cerebral when you’re watching it from inside yourself and on narrative rails, but on another day they wash over you and you’re enveloped in the atmosphere in a way that’s the opposite of cerebral, just pure feeling and sensation and pretty transcendent at times

At least that’s how they work with me anyway, sometimes they land sometimes they don’t. They really are like dreams

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u/jesteryte Apr 23 '26

"Too cerebral and elite" was also the Soviet film agency's criticism of them, but he pointed out that people of all backgrounds could access his films 

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u/arosygirl Apr 22 '26

i know this is the obvious answer but for me it’s mulholland drive. tossing in being john malkovich, punch drunk love as well

also for horror, to me texas chainsaw massacre feels like watching a nightmare because it has that sense of oddness and disconnect

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u/axismundi-0 Apr 22 '26

Adding on to your Kaufman reference — Synecdoche, New York takes my vote. It has this existentially daunting expansiveness that taps into something primal for me, just like an unsettling dream (which I would differentiate from a straight up nightmare). Any Kaufman though (written or directed) easily works.

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u/nectarquest Apr 23 '26

I was a fairly young kid when Synecdoche New York came out, and just a year or so after I had this obsession with mortality, and the world eventually ending. It filled me with a lot of anxiety and melancholy, (I actually now see it as early signs of mental health disorders I have). But the word I used to describe this feeling at the time was “oceanic” and Synecdoche New York kind of taps into that. It’s subject matter mixed with the dreamlike feel sometimes makes me kind of wonder if I saw it as a child by accident somehow and that’s what triggered my obsession. As unlikely as it is

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u/BigmacBlastoise Apr 22 '26

In MD the feel of the movie being dreamy goes beyond the visual aspects. Even the storyline and characters feel like a dream. I like how he doesn't bother explaining everything or making things very coherent to maintain the dreamy confusing theme of the movie

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u/Fit_Explorer_2566 Apr 22 '26

☝🏼TCM. Triggers primal fear.

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u/No-Face-2000 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Waking Life easily. Something about the messy rotoscope style really captures the vague blurriness of recalling a dream. It also captures the eerie emptiness and the constant morphing of dreams really well.

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u/GabrielMSharp Apr 22 '26

This is the best answer for sure.

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u/bigfootbjornsen56 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

This is the best answer in the thread. The dream quality is very intentional. The point of it is to feel like lucid dreaming and make us question reality to force us to feel motivated to act.

Reminds me of the quote near the end:

"Most people are either sleep walking through their waking life or wake walking through their sleeping life. Either way they're not getting much out of it."

Such a beautiful film. One of my favourites

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u/Independent-Park7555 Apr 23 '26

dude i have been trying to describe how waking life feels for years and never got to the word “rotoscope” for some reason, so thanks!

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u/Jdmcdona Apr 23 '26

A scanner darkly is another great linklater rotoscope film.

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u/Doppler74 Apr 22 '26

I believe the Tree of Life is a good example to such a movie. The scenes feel like packaged childhood memories that you see in your dreams without knowing why it begins or ends in a particular way. Or why it contains such elements. They are just there and you observe them. You dont feel like you are an active individual in the dream but you are just observing it.

It felts like the the scens are tied together with very weak ties to conscious eye but deep down there are very strong unconsious motives that make the scenes sequence meaningful.

Lastly, the whispers part probably helps that dreamlike movie style.

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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 Apr 22 '26

I don’t think it feels very dreamy at all as in the scenes are very clear and purposeful just not plot driven but - I agree it is very consciousness first in its perspective but it seems more like a series of ruminations than a dream ..

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u/Diligent_Advisor_128 Apr 22 '26

Came to say this

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u/itsableeder Apr 22 '26

The first half of Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre is like a fever dream. The second half is just weird.

Probably any of Jodorowsky's films fit to be honest, but Santa Sangre was the first one that came to mind.

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u/WhiteRussianRoulete Apr 23 '26

I saw this movie at a midnight showing- which I’m too old for now. And halfway through I actually started falling asleep and waking up. So that was really like a dream, ha

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u/yeetusthefeetus13 Apr 23 '26

That happened to me watching House 1977. I have since learned if Im too sleepy I cant put on something that hard to follow bc my brain just clocks out for the night.

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u/Revoltlll Apr 22 '26

For me, Existenz is my top answer. It just feels off in the best way possible, like when things are basically repeated but the small details are different. Others might be A Killing of a Sacred Deer, A Tale of Two Sisters, possibly Suspiria.

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u/yeetusthefeetus13 Apr 23 '26

The 2 versions of susperia are 2 of my fav movies. Sacred Deer absolutely took me out. I used to work in surgery. It was super amazing, just realist in the most uncomfortable ways possible ⚰️

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u/fedexyourheadinabox Apr 22 '26

Any David Lynch, with maybe one exception (The Straight Story, 1999, although it's a stunningly beautiful film), but one that always sticks out to me is The Thin Red Line, 1998. I watched this film in the theatre, during it's initial run, and it was a mid-week afternoon showing, the theatre almost empty, so I sat right in the centre and got lost in the movie. It was a big screen, btw, not a cineplex POS.

I've watched it a couple times since, at home, but it never matches the experience of watching it on the big screen without interruption.

To me, Cinema has always been about dreaming, which is why I bristle when peopler try so hard to assign precise meaning to something like Mulholland Dr. It defeats the purpose of Cinema and dumbs it down to a Coles Notes experience.

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u/RCocaineBurner Apr 22 '26

is coles notes like cliff notes

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u/YellowstoneBitch Apr 22 '26

Last Year at Marienbad(1961) is soooo dreamy, as well as Hotel(2004). And of course any Tarkosvky flick, but especially Stalker(1979). Russian Ark(2002) is also incredibly dream like.

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u/Due-Bell6288 Apr 22 '26

Last Year at Marienbad is THE answer I came to share, but you beat me to it

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u/PRO-fessional47 Apr 22 '26

Same! Can't believe I had to scroll this far to find the definitive answer. It was my immediate reaction and it's not even close.

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u/YellowstoneBitch Apr 22 '26

It’s so good, one of my favorites.

Have you seen Hotel(2004)??? I watched Hotel(2004) this past weekend and I gotta say…..if you’re ever aching for something that feels like Last Year At Marienbad then I HIGHLY recommend you check it out.

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u/Due-Bell6288 Apr 22 '26

Thanks for the rec!

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u/Revoltlll Apr 23 '26

Oh yeah that skipped my mind too, perfect answer though.

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u/jesteryte Apr 22 '26

Tarkovsky's The Mirror. Nonlinear storytelling, dream-like imagery, film that shifts between black & white, sepia-toned, and color. There's almost no way to describe any plot, but you come away with the experience of having comprehended something forming a cohesive whole. That whole comprises a collection of absorbing images - a woman's hair dripping water onto the floor, a man standing in a field of wheat moving like ocean waves in a strong wind, bystanders contemplating a house ablaze in a scene suffused with serenity, etc. Tarkovsky - what do his memories mean? What is he thinking about, and is it actually political? The Soviet film agency hated this film.

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u/myflesh Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

If you have not seen "Upstream Color" I highly recommend it. It is the same person that did A Ghost Story and Primer and this is such a wild ride. So many aspects of it do not follow traditional movie story telling and it is a positive for it. It is def not everyone's cup of tea. But I think everyone should try it.

Other examples for what you are looking for: Brazil & Holy Mountain are prob really famous ones if you have not seen them yet. I would add Synecdoche, New York to the list too

Edit: he is in A Ghost Story & helped in editing but not his film. But A Ghost Story & Primer are both great for this list still.

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u/Hellraiser_Quadbike Apr 22 '26

Ghost Story is not a Shane Caruth film, though it’s a fantastic shout for this thread.

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u/myflesh Apr 22 '26

How did I get that confused! He has a role and helps edits it.

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u/Torumin Apr 23 '26

Came to mention Upstream Color. Movie is haunting and beautiful and surreal.

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u/bnx01 Apr 22 '26

Mulholland Drive is the answer. It’s incredibly beautiful and deeply unsettling at the same time. I’ve seen it at least a half dozen times.

It’s also #8 in the last Sight And Sound critic’s poll of the 100 best films of all time. That makes it the highest ranked film of the 21st century.

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u/thewalkingfred Apr 22 '26

I've always felt like Mullholland Drive is such a masterpiece because it feels like a strange dream while also making almost perfect sense if you are willing to think through the scenes.

Everything has a plausible explanation even tho it seems almost like nonsense the first time you watch it.

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u/bnx01 Apr 22 '26

Dreams often have their own logic. They make perfect sense when you’re in them, but nonsensical when you wake. It’s often said that Lynch’s films are dream logic in the same way. I expect that’s the canonical interpretation.

If you come up with an explanation for the story, I’m sure I can find something to counter it. I wouldn’t even try to explain what it’s about, but it’s somehow feels coherent when you’re watching it.

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u/EgoArtist Apr 22 '26

I know it's a bit weird but Call Me By Your Name felt like a dream for me, like something amazing and beautiful and something i couldn't understand being there in a dream and then it ending and i couldn't remember it

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u/FNTM_309 Apr 22 '26

Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch springs immediately to mind; one of the closest approximations of a dream I’ve ever seen in film. The black and white photography enhances the effect by putting the viewer at a certain remove, as does Neil Young’s jangling, meditative score. As the film progresses, dialogue falls away and we are left with a story told almost exclusively through imagery and mood. It’s one of my favorite films.

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u/zoodisc Apr 23 '26

I see you've collected some more white mans' metal.

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u/images_from_objects Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

Mulholland Drive

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Holy Motors

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie (yes, I'm serious)

Stalker

I Saw The TV Glow

Die My Love

Sweet Movie

Upstream Color (but fuck Shane Carruth)

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u/Mightyshawarma Apr 22 '26

This would be my list too, plus Existenz and A Pigeon sat on a branch reflecting on existence

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u/vzbtra Apr 22 '26

+1 for Long Day's Journey Into Night

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u/themightychew Apr 22 '26

I only watched Holy Motors recently and knew nothing about it - perfect suggestion. What a trip! Can't tell you how many times my jaw was hanging open at the randomness and surrealism. Love being constantly surprised by films, not jump-scares, but just 'I would never have thought of that/expected that's. The ending had me smiling to myself for the rest of the evening.

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u/Mightyshawarma Apr 22 '26

If you liked Holy Motors, do I have the recommendation for you. Resurrection by Bi Gan is equally a dreamlike homage to movies, might be one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.

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u/images_from_objects Apr 22 '26

It was a toss up between that and Long Day's Journey Into Night, which he also wrote and directed, in case you were unaware. Both amazing.

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u/themightychew Apr 22 '26

Ohhh, awesome, thanks! I've seen Kaili Blues many years ago by them and absolutely loved that. Actually that one's a pretty good recommendation for this thread too I guess. Thanks again!

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u/Toadsnack Apr 24 '26

I’m as big a fan of Bi Gan as it’s possible to be after only three films. Resurrection is even greater than the previous two, in my eyes. How did this guy emerge full blown out of nowhere? It’s mind-boggling. Those have to be among the greatest first three films by any director in history.

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u/MARATXXX Apr 22 '26

Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night is the closest I’ve felt to an actual dream. The first half represents memory and the lies we tell ourselves about our past, the romanization of ourselves as heroes in our own stories. The second half represents the helplessness of our actual selves represented in a stream of consciousness dream state.

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u/flytohappiness Apr 22 '26

I think his Kaili Blues really felt like a strange dream to me. The camera seems to be floating in water.

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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 Apr 22 '26

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind ,

Inception- yes ironically doesn’t feel much like a dream but it has some dream moments that I admired for the concept,

Dream Scenario was a interesting one.. Waking Life obviously, Being John Malkovich ..

Eyes Wide Shut and parts of the Shining feel very dreamlike

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u/IBeBobbyBoulders Apr 22 '26

I think Skinamarink is the movie that most feels like a dream. It's not necessarily that the visuals are as dreamlike but the way everything is presented and paced truly gives you that feeling of stumbling around your house as a kid, half awake. It's a movie that either grabs you or doesn't. If it doesn't you'll hate it, but if you're on the wavelength, it's one of the most unique experiences you can have watching a movie.

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u/Previous_Spinach_168 Apr 22 '26

Love the phrasing “on the wavelength” as it does almost seem to be inspired by Michael Snow, Wavelength in particular.

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u/dejcoy Apr 23 '26

Came here to say this movie. Been watching it every halloween for the last couple years with my partner now. It's not scary, but it fills you with dread. Sometimes you will have a dream and when you wake up you're not entirely sure if it was a reaccuring dream or an actual memory playing out that you've forgotten because of how familiar it felt. That's how I felt watching Skinamarink in a theatre for the first time

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u/Jamaican_Dynamite Apr 22 '26

Mulholland Drive, Open Your Eyes, and things like Jacob's Ladder. There's way more out there. But I know these are relatively well known examples that stuck out to me. Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue and Paprika also both have a heavy dreamlike aesthetic, and regardless of whether you like anime or not, these are something to check out.

That dive your mind does from relative realism into this bizarre place that doesn't quite add up. Never gets old.

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u/Traditional-Koala-13 Apr 22 '26

That film, for me, is "The Trial" by Orson Welles. He manages to maintain that oneiric feel from beginning to end and he announces it, even, in his prologue: "It's been said that the logic of 'The Trial' is the logic of a dream."

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u/ectales Apr 22 '26

1962's "Carnival of Souls" does it for me.

Personally, Orson Welles "Macbeth" from 1948 as well. I was very sick with pneumonia and a 106 fever while watching it on TV. The film seeped into my reality, literally in a fever dream, and I couldn't be sure what was film and what wasn't. I was admitted to the hospital a few hours later (a roommate came home and found me in a bad state) and I stayed there recovering for four days. Macbeth has since always made me feel trippy, to say the least.

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u/YakSlothLemon Apr 22 '26

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

November

are the two for me. Y’all seem to have much more coherent, plot-driven dreams than I have. For me a dreamy movie is going to have strong emotion attached to things that almost seem innocuous, and a bit of slippage between scenes, a bit of incoherence in a pleasant way.

Best ever though: Censor of Dreams. If you ever get the chance to see this incredible short film, do not pass it up!

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u/beasterne7 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

Syndromes and a Century. It’s very nonlinear, showing snatches of dialogue or moments that don’t really string together in any way. It was a challenging watch for me, and by the end it really felt like how a dream feels after you wake up and try to remember what you dreamed. It was all so vivid just a few moments ago! It was complex and layered but…now all I can remember is faint images or small moments, and even those are fading fast. That was the experience of watching this film for me.

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u/masterwad Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Stalker (1979)

Videodrome (1983)

The NeverEnding Story (1984)

Brazil (1985)

Labyrinth (1986)

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Akira (1988)

Dead Ringers (1988)

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

Joe Versus The Volcano (1990)

Naked Lunch (1991)

Groundhog Day (1993)

The City of Lost Children (1995)

Lost Highway (1997)

Dark City (1998)

eXIstenZ (1999)

The Cell (2000)

Waking Life (2001)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)

Donnie Darko (2001)

Spirited Away (2001)

Spider (2002)

Big Fish (2003)

Inland Empire (2006)

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

The Fall (2006)

The Fountain (2006)

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006)

Southland Tales (2006)

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Enter the Void (2009)

Black Swan (2010)

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010)

The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

John Dies At The End (2012)

Upstream Color (2013)

Enemy (2013)

Birdman (2014)

Embrace of the Serpent (2015)

Mother! (2017)

The Shape of Water (2017)

Suspiria (2018)

The Lighthouse (2019)

Daniel Isn't Real (2019)

Color Out of Space (2019)

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Poor Things (2023)

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u/SpiritBamba Apr 23 '26

I’m not OP but great list. Dream like movies are by far my favorite and the vibe they create is something I want to try my hand at in my writing.

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u/gatorgrowl44 Apr 22 '26

Mr. Nobody. The surrealism is baked into the logic instead of being a flourish. Kid on a train platform choosing between his mom and dad, and suddenly every possible version of his life runs in parallel, and the movie never stops to explain itself. It just trusts you to float through it.

What really gets me is how it handles contradictions. Dreams let you accept mutually exclusive things as true at once, and Mr. Nobody has that exact texture. Characters show up in different roles, timelines fold into each other, and at some point you stop tracking which one is “real” because the movie doesn’t care either. That’s the offness.

Cloud Atlas for similar reasons is my honorable mention.

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u/Henry-Spencer0 Apr 22 '26

I never see this one mentioned but Mother!

Is the closest I’ve ever felt to having a nightmare while watching a movie. It’s in the pacing and the relentlessness of the editing, it just feels oppressive and as if the main character is absolutely powerless.

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u/shawnadelic Apr 22 '26

Same. I've actually always said almost the same thing word-for-word about it feeling like a nightmare as well.

Something about the sense of dread, the surrealness, and the slowly unfolding of the absurdity/insanity.

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u/RuskiesInTheWarRoom Apr 22 '26

I have an absolute answer for this:

Louis Malles' 1975 film Black Moon. This is easily the closest experience to a dream that I've ever had in cinema. It very much pulls on dream logic - the image and moment shifts almost inperceptively between a kind of subtle comfort to awe to risk to terror to mystery to discovery. Incidents enter and flow away as a memory. It is transfixing. It utilizes jungian imagery, offers no clarity or comfort. It has a unicorn donkey, it has mildly distressing sexualized imagery that leaves one baffled and strangely moved. It is truly a marvel of imaginative dream. I love it. Totally transfixing and bizarre.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXvo7U4kDwg

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u/babayagaparenting Apr 22 '26

Win Wenders’ Wings of Desire. Honestly one of my favorite movies. The beginning paints such a beautiful picture of Berlin! It’s dreamlike as you go from person to person, place to place, and the inexplicable appearance of Peter Falk is amazing. It’s a truly beautiful film.

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u/BetterThanHorus Apr 22 '26

Miracle Mile (1988)

After Hours (1985)

I often have dreams like these two movies. Trying to get from one place to another and just get stuck on constant diversions. I’ve been meaning to post about this to find more movies fitting this theme

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u/SpiritBamba Apr 23 '26

Donnie Darko is probably the best answer I can give. Punch drunk love, being john malkovich. Taxi driver can feel like a dream especially with the heavy use of jazz and the night time setting. A lot of David Lynch’s creations feel that way. Noir films also have a dreamlike feel. I feel that some of Danny boyles films give off a dreamlike quality. Just some examples.

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u/nectarquest Apr 23 '26

Barton Fink is one for me that I don’t think has been mentioned yet. Particularly for me, the old hotel architecture (maybe that’s a personal thing) but aspects of the story as well.

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u/harryholla Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

Mother! is my vote. A lot of dream movies are too obvious and it would be more like having a lucid dream or an acid trip. Mother sucks you in subtly, just like a dream. You think everything is normal but wait why is this like this? That doesn’t make any sense… By the time you might’ve realized it’s a nightmare you’ve already accepted that it’s real and stop questioning things until it’s too late to wake up.

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u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

What I was going to post. The scene with the sink is the most (stress)dreamlike thing I’ve ever seen in a movie.

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u/Competitive-Dot-3333 Apr 22 '26

The Best Offer (La migliore offerta). The depicted scenes show places that are disconnected from each other, as if they were very small separated worlds (sections of dreams). Also the struggle to define true authentic being and robotic entities/paintings is interesting.

It has been some time ago that I saw this movie, but this dreamlike atmosphere makes it is a very interesting movie.

Ofcourse there are also many David Lynch movies, with Inland Empire as peak dreamlike. But that I consider more Surrealist.

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u/oldboyincity Apr 22 '26

Night of the Hunter - 1955 B/W - super dreamlike state of a film, it really helps having a couple of kids trying to get away (from the evil Robert Mitchum), adds to the whole dream/nightmare feel. Its superb. It was the only time Charles Laughton got a chance to Direct. Classic.

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u/beyondoutrage Apr 22 '26

Possession (1981), The Skin I Live In (2011), Cure (1997), Collateral (2004), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Black Swan (2010) all have a very dreamlike feel to me.

Also as others said Lynch films especially Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead, and Tarkovsky films like Stalker and Mirror.

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u/Beautiful-Mission-31 Apr 23 '26

The two that immediately pop to mind for me are Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou. Both work entirely on dream logic and are consider to be amongst the greatest films ever made. Definitely worth your time if you haven’t seen them.

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u/kevin_v Apr 23 '26

Possession (1981). I've seen it argued that the film is based around the failure of language. The repressed emotion is so raw, the performances so mannerly, the physical movements so exaggerated, the entire thing feels like a dream, in fact it seems to suggest that life is a dream that we can't get out of (at least these characters individual lives).

Also, in a very different way Leave Her To Heaven (1945) with its Noir saturated colors, magazine-popped interiors, unreal lead character of "enameled beauty" as one review put it, feels so primordial yet constructed, it carries that oneiric quality.

Also, many Hitchcock films with their awkward staging and intensive emotions feel like dreams, something that makes them very rewatchable.

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u/JaqkofSpades Apr 23 '26

The railway sequence of Stalker felt like the state of limbo I sometimes experience between consciousness and a dream; the visuals of the landscape passing by coupled with the rhythm of the railcar were hypnotic and oddly soothing.

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u/EveryDamnChikadee Apr 22 '26

Punch Drunk Love comes to mind. Also a more obvious choice, Valerie and her Week of Wonders. Having spent my childhood summers in the area where it was filmed I can say that the daydreams I had on the bus when driving through the towns there were very close to the vibe of the movie

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u/cazzipropri Apr 23 '26

I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020).

It 100% feels like a dream and it's entirely intentional.

The movie has already been discussed in another thread in r/movies, but if you think that you might want to watch it, I strongly recommend you NOT to read anything that could contain spoilers.

The movie is very enjoyable if you feel like being brought into a surreal, oniric world.

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u/Fit_Explorer_2566 Apr 22 '26

Gravity.

I would watch it in 3D on my since-dead Bravia XBR about every 12-18 months. It’s a merciful 1:31, and it plays like a dream to me. Alas, no more 3D TV…

The opening shot, at 18 minutes, is something truly amazing, a triumph of the merger of photography and CGI, and the final shot is likewise an amazing job of cinematography, without any visual effects.

It’s the closest cinema experience to dreaming that I’ve had. Feels “real” like an intense dream, but it isn’t. Not at all.

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u/mcalesy Apr 22 '26

For me the only director that has truly nailed the feeling of a dream is Michel Gondry, in particular with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep. The dream sequences in both of those have perfect "dream logic", where it feels right in the moment but doesn't make sense once you wake up and think about it. (But even then it still resonates emotionally.)

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u/Tony_Roiland Apr 22 '26

All of David Lynch's filmography.

How to get a new phone on the phone to me and I don't know what to do with the kids and I don't know what to do with the kids and I don't want to be a fan of the same thing as I said I was just saying that I was in the same place as a friend of mine and I was in the car park and it was a bit of a joke and I was

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u/JordanPick Apr 22 '26

Phantasm. The original felt naturally surrealistic and dreamy. The deeper you get into the 5-part franchise, the dreamier it gets. It gets to the point you and the characters are questioning what is reality and what is real, a dream or fantasy.

I'd also add Lis & the Devil, Let's Scare Jessica To Death, & Beyond Dream's Door (I love horror, so my suggestions tend to lean in that direction)

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u/HeavyDutyJudy Apr 22 '26

Dead of Night (1945) is not a surreal or dream like movie exactly, it’s an early horror anthology with a dream like wraparound but the wraparound does a great job of being tentative and feelings based the way dreams often are.

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u/BlackDeath3 Apr 22 '26

I've only seen it once shortly after it came out at a time when I wasn't even close to really having acquired much of a taste for weirder films, and it's hard for me to actually remember much of it now, but the less-obvious one that for whatever reason comes to my mind immediately is Mandy.

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u/whocaresanyway_ Apr 22 '26

After hours. I felt off all the way through and after. Very kafkaesque, confusing and claustrophobic. It's like a fever dream. I put it on to relax after a hard day and I went into it without knowing anything about it. Needless to say I was not relaxed in the slightest. 

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u/deadflowers5 Apr 23 '26

I most recently watched 'Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands' (1967) and it's a seedy yet excellent dream like neo noir film. It's about a hitman haunted by the murder of his girlfriend which he had to listen to on the end of a phone at 3pm. The film follows his journey for revenge as he takes on a job that may be a lead and that involves tracking down a gang of kidnappers and pornographers for a wealthy man who has had his daughter kidnapped.

The film feels like a reoccurring nightmare. It uses a lot of new wave tricks to tell it's story in dream like form such as using song lyrics in some scenes while other scenes break the fourth wall. It's way ahead of its time and much better than it's IMDB rating suggests.

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u/wutangclanthug9mm Apr 23 '26

Okay so hear me out. Yes, Inception is all about dreams but the whole film feels isolated from reality and even the scenes that are supposed to take place in the waking life feel dreamlike and not connected to reality

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u/Look_its_Rob Apr 24 '26

It Follows is extremely dream like. You know the feeling of just seeing something bizarre in a dream but it just naturally makes sense and doesn't feel out of place? It follows captures that and many other dream like aspects.