Pod (2015)
Disturbed Veteran/Possible Creature in the Basement
Mickey Keating film in which two siblings go to help a brother who appears in mental distress and claims to have imprisoned a monster in his basement
Disturbed Psychology
The theme Disturbed Psychology refers to portraits of abnormal psychology as depicted in genre cinema. This is separate from the theme Films About Psychos and Serial Killers, which are so numerous they have been propagated to their own topic.
Depictions of Disturbed Psychology fall into roughly three categories:-
- Depictions of Madness – works concerned with portraits of the mentally ill
- Subjective Portraits of Mental Illness – works that come from the point-of-view of a mentally ill person and show their distorted view of the world
- Ambiguously Fantastic Portraits of Mental Illness – works in which we cannot be certain that the appearance of fantastical elements is due to the protagonist’s mental health issues.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Films About Disturbed Psychology
Pop Skull (2007)
Drug Hallucinations and Madness
Micro-budgeted early Adam Wingard film that delves into the disturbed mental spaces of a depressed man
Possession (1981)
Marriage Breakdown/Surrealism/Monsters
Bafflingly surreal film from Andrzej Zulawski in which Isabelle Adjani gives birth to a tentacled monster in a subway. Nobody has any idea what the film is about but it has become a cult work since
Possum (2018)
Sinister Puppet/Disturbed Psychology
British horror film that develops a sense of uncanniness that resembles an Eraserhead at times with a man haunted by a puppet and giant spiders. The mood is unsettling, least of all that we are never sure what is real or taking place in the character’s head
A Quiet Place in the Country (1968)
Artist’s Hallucinations and Reality Blurrings
Strange, artistically stylised almost giallo film with Franco Nero as a frustrated artist blurring into visions from the past
Repulsion (1965)
Portrait of Madness
A work of considerable brilliance from a young Roman Polanski with Catherine Deneuve as a woman slipping into madness in an apartment over the course of a weekend. What makes the film particularly disturbing is Polanski’s lack of a blurring line between reality and hallucination
Requiem (2006)
Possible Demonic Possession/True Story
This should be mandatory viewing after watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose. While that film rewrote the tragedy of Anneliese Michel as a film about possession, this German-made production sets things straight and tells a story about a girl with mental health issues
Resurrection (2022)
Disturbed Psychology/Mysterious Man from the Past
Rebecca Hall gives an extraordinary performance of disturbed psychology as a woman dealing with a man from her past who may have eaten her child
Ring of Terror (1962)
Man With No Sense of Fear
Obscure B movie about a med student who has no sense of fear until he must take anatomy class
River’s Edge (1986)
Disaffected Teens/Disturbed Psychology
The rare example of a sociological horror film concerning a teenager who kills his girlfriend and how his peers seem unconcerned. Filled with great performances, this is a film with a chilling nihilism that puts its finger on a 1980s youth generation with no seeming future ahead
Rocks in My Pockets (2014)
Animated Family History of Mental Illness
Forget about movie melodrama like A Beautiful Mind , this may be one of the best, most credible films about mental illness … Essentially a surreal animated family history of a Latvian animator, this distils some incredibly bleak anecdotal material with a wittily and biting incisive brilliance
Room for Rent (2019)
Psycho Elderly Landlady
Modest and well-made film where Lin Shaye has the time of her life as an elderly widow who rents out her room and becomes attached to her tenant in disturbing ways
Saint Maud (2019)
Woman's Madness and Religious Hallucinations
Highly acclaimed film about a nurse’s descent into madness and religious hallucinations
Save the Green Planet (2003)
Man Imprisoned By Someone Who Insists He is an Alien
A bizarre South Korean comedy about a businessman who is imprisoned by a possibly crazed man who insists that he is an alien. Things sit in an absurdly funny ambiguity. Later remade by Yorgos Lanthimos as Bugonia
Schramm (1993)
Serial Killer
Jörg Buttgereit made the notorious NEKRomantik films and is a director about an uncompromising and determined to outrage as possible. This inevitably falls in the shadow of NEKRomantik but is a grim and disturbing in its own right in its kitchen sink depiction of the life of a serial killer
Screams of a Winter Night (1979)
Horror Anthology
Obscure horror anthology from the great era of regional drive-in cinema. The stories lose any potential due to incredibly dreary direction
Secrets of a Psychopath (2015)
Psycho Film
Director Bert I. Gordon was at his heyday in the 1950s, making cheap giant monster films like The Amazing Colossal Man and Earth vs the Spider. Gordon returns here at the age of 93 (making him one of the world’s oldest directors) with this rather sordid little psycho film
The Shining (1980)
Haunted Hotel/Cabin Fever/Stephen King Adaptation
Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel throws much of the book out but has duly become a classic. Jack Nicholson goes grandly mad amid Kubrick’s stupendous production and unsettling set-pieces
The Shining (1997)
Haunted Hotel/Cabin Fever/Stephen King Adaptation
Stephen King expressed dissatisfaction with the way Stanley Kubrick handled his novel and here remakes it as a tv mini-series that adheres more closely to the book. While Kubrick’s film is far better, this is not bad where even the perpetually awful Mick Garris subdues his tendency to overdo everything towards some subtlety
Shutter Island (2010)
Sinister Psychiatric Institution/Reality Bender
Martin Scorsese and an impressive A-list cast make a 1940s-styled psycho-thriller about a sinister asylum that soon starts into a series of major reality bending turns
Sick Girl (2007)
Teenage Girl on a Killing and Torture Spree
Portrait of a disturbed teenage girl on a killing and torture spree. Makes fictitious claims to be based on a true story but mostly seems designed to outrage an audience. At which, despite an undeniable amateurishness, you cannot deny it succeeds
Spider (2002)
Inside a Mentally Ill Man's Mind
David Cronenberg film that subjectively takes place in the mind of mentally ill Ralph Fiennes, a bewildering film with no easy handholds
Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)
Crazed Family
Obscure film that has developed a certain cult following concerning a murderous family. This plays out like a non-comedy version of the Addams Family and has an undeniable ghoulish atmosphere
Stopmotion (2023)
Filmmakers Obsessive Descent
A film about a stop-motion animation filmmaker who descends into a dark and obsessive state of mind
Strange Circus (2005)
Twisted Disfigurement Story
Japanese director Shion Sono has emerged as an increasingly worthwhile name in recent years. This is an admirably twisted and perverse work that leaves you quite flabbergasted
Swallow (2019)
Woman Becomes Obsessed with Eating Objects
A film of considerable creepy fascination where Haley Bennett has married into a family of wealth and develops an obsession with eating objects. This heads into an area of disturbed psychology that is quite unsettling
The Swarm (2020)
Woman’s Obsession with Raising Killer Locusts
Not the classic Irwin Allen bad movie but a work of disturbed psychology about a woman who develops an unhealthy obsession with feeding locusts blood and turning them into a killer swarm
Symptoms (1974)
Psycho-Thriller
Strange film from Spanish director Joseph Larraz about mysterious happenings at a country mansion
Take Shelter (2011)
Possible Premonitions of Disaster
Strong and effective film with Michael Shannon as a man who has precognitive vision of a terrible coming storm and tries to build a shelter while everyone around him thinks he is going mad
Tales of Halloween (2015)
Anthology of Halloween Horror Stories
An anthology of Halloween-themed horror tales, all from different genre directors, including some interesting high-profile names. The results are uneven with the film providing a couple of amusing segments but nothing truly standout
Taxi Driver (1976)
Urban Psychosis
Possibly the best film made by Martin Scorsese. A disturbing vision of urban psychosis set in a morally festering New York City where the psycho, Robert De Niro’s title character who spills over with pent-up violence, actually becomes the hero of the show
The Terminal Man (1974)
Neurosurgical Experiment Amok/Michael Crichton Adaptation
Adaptation of a Michael Crichton book about an experimental neurological implant that ends up going amok. This adopts the blinding white-on-white look that has chilling effect in the early hospital sections but stifles the drama when it is extended to the real world too
They Look Like People (2015)
Man's Possible Hallucinations of Demons
Man meets a childhood friend only to find the friend is suffering from possible hallucinations telling him to kill demons. Similar to Take Shelter in leaving you uncertain whether the central character is sane or not, this comes with an extraordinarily fresh indie sensibility
Tilt (2017)
Disturbed Psychology
Somewhat reminiscent of The Shining, this a film about a documentary-maker suffering creative block who descent into dark and disturbing mental spaces
Der Todesking (1990)
Anthology of Deaths and Suicides
From Jörg Buttgereit, director of the notorious NEKRomantik, an anthology that depicts various scenes of death and suicide. Essentially the original version of The ABCs of Death
Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Man Believes He is a Vampire Comedy
Bizarre comedy where Nicolas Cage is a literary agent who believes he is a vampire. Cage gives the most absurdly over-the-top performance ever put on film
The Visit (2015)
Found Footage/Weird Grandparents
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
The Voices (2014)
Inside a Mentally Ill Man's Mind/Black Comedy
On the scale of weird movies, this is about as out there as it gets – Ryan Reynolds has conversations with his cat and dog who urge him to cut people’s heads off, which continue to talk as he keeps them in his refrigerator. A mind-bogglingly warped film and quite brilliant in its dark funniness when you work out what is going on
The Ward (2010)
Haunted Asylum
John Carpenter returned to the director’s chair after more than a decade but failed to light the world on fire. Carpenter makes what you could call a ghost story version of Girl, Interrupted. The scares are tame and the film is hamstrung by an improbable M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Werewolf Woman (1976)
Disturbed Woman Believes She is a Werewolf
A classic from 70s Euro trash cinema. The title is misleading as this is not about a female werewolf but more akin to Cat People about a disturbed woman who thinks she has turned into a werewolf at the thought of sex
The Wind (2018)
Pioneer Woman Alone in a Cabin Haunted by Possibly Imagined Demons
A beautifully subtle and ambiguous film about a pioneer woman alone in a cabin on the American Frontier where she is haunted by demons of the prairies that may all be in her mind
The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)
Disturbed Woman Cuts Up Men
Cult film with Millie Perkins as a disturbed waitress with a troubled background, this takes place in a fascinating swim of dream and symbolism
Wound (2010)
Hallucination and BDSM
The always interesting David Blyth returns to screens with what feels like an amateur remake of Nicolas Roeg’s Track 29 that becomes a confused and plotless mishmash of hallucinations, random BDSM scenarios and shock effects