The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Reality and Illusion refers to works where the protagonist may find that what they believe about the real world proves to be an illusion or some elaborate form of Simulation. Most of these are works involving Conceptual Breakthrough, and frequently Conceptual Reversal Twists, on the part of the protagonists.
Questions of reality and illusion can frequently be found in films dealing with Virtual Reality and Altered Memory. They can also be due to some sort of drug trip, or else a fugue state or hallucination experienced by somebody with mental health issues – see Mad Person’s Delusion. In horror, such games can be conducted with malevolent intent by evil or demonic forces.
Creating illusions and/or messing with what some people accept to be reality is frequently the powers employed by some Magicians and those with Psychic Powers.
Another form of illusion can be what is referred to here as the Reality Game, a type of film where a protagonist becomes wound into an elaborate but ultimately mundane charade placed on by a master gameplayer to make the protagonist doubt the reality around them.
Steven Spielberg makes a thoughtful return to the theme of alien contact. Rather than the rosy optimism of Close Encounters and E.T. , he seems to have embraced the dark conspiratorial view of The X Files