Best surreal/strange/bizarre Movies

by davekrue | created - 16 Mar 2011 | updated - 28 Jul 2015 | Public
 Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you haven't rated, etc
  • Instant Watch Options
  • Genres
  • Movies or TV
  • IMDb Rating
  • In Theaters
  • Release Year
  • Keywords





IMDb user rating (average) to
Number of votes to »




Reset
Release year or range to »




































































































1. Lost Highway (1997)

R | 134 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

53 Metascore

Anonymous videotapes presage a musician's murder conviction, and a gangster's girlfriend leads a mechanic astray.

Director: David Lynch | Stars: Bill Pullman, Patricia Arquette, John Roselius, Louis Eppolito

Votes: 152,987 | Gross: $3.80M

2. Mulholland Drive (2001)

R | 147 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

86 Metascore

After a car wreck on Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesiac, she and a Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.

Director: David Lynch | Stars: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Jeanne Bates

Votes: 383,305 | Gross: $7.22M

3. Songs from the Second Floor (2000)

Not Rated | 98 min | Comedy, Drama

77 Metascore

Where are we humans going? A film poem inspired by the Peruvian poet César Vallejo. We meet people in the city. People trying to communicate, searching compassion and get the connection of small and large things.

Director: Roy Andersson | Stars: Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson, Bengt C.W. Carlsson, Torbjörn Fahlström

Votes: 20,316 | Gross: $0.00M

4. Adaptation. (2002)

R | 115 min | Comedy, Drama

83 Metascore

A lovelorn screenwriter becomes desperate as he tries and fails to adapt 'The Orchid Thief' by Susan Orlean for the screen.

Director: Spike Jonze | Stars: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Tilda Swinton

Votes: 202,854 | Gross: $22.25M

5. Synecdoche, New York (2008)

R | 124 min | Drama

67 Metascore

A theatre director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Director: Charlie Kaufman | Stars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener

Votes: 98,103 | Gross: $3.08M

6. Being John Malkovich (1999)

R | 113 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

90 Metascore

A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich.

Director: Spike Jonze | Stars: John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich

Votes: 353,093 | Gross: $22.86M

7. Eraserhead (1977)

Not Rated | 89 min | Fantasy, Horror

87 Metascore

Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

Director: David Lynch | Stars: Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates

Votes: 127,263 | Gross: $7.00M

8. Inland Empire (2006)

R | 180 min | Drama, Fantasy, Mystery

73 Metascore

As an actress begins to adopt the persona of her character in a film, her world becomes nightmarish and surreal.

Director: David Lynch | Stars: Karolina Gruszka, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Grace Zabriskie, Laura Dern

Votes: 61,837 | Gross: $0.75M

9. Brazil (1985)

R | 132 min | Drama, Sci-Fi, Thriller

84 Metascore

A bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.

Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond

Votes: 211,046 | Gross: $9.93M

10. Antichrist (2009)

Not Rated | 108 min | Drama, Horror, Thriller

49 Metascore

A grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage, but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

Director: Lars von Trier | Stars: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Storm Acheche Sahlstrøm

Votes: 136,377 | Gross: $0.40M

11. Donnie Darko (2001)

R | 113 min | Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

88 Metascore

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Director: Richard Kelly | Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne

Votes: 849,067 | Gross: $1.48M

12. A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

R | 114 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

65 Metascore

After being institutionalized in a mental hospital, Su-mi reunites with her sister, Su-yeon, and they return to live at their country home. But strange events plague the house, leading to surprising revelations and a shocking conclusion.

Director: Jee-woon Kim | Stars: Lim Soo-jung, Yum Jung-ah, Kim Kap-su, Moon Geun-young

Votes: 68,195

13. La Jetée (1962)

Not Rated | 28 min | Short, Drama, Romance

The story of a man forced to explore his memories in the wake of World War III's devastation, told through still images.

Director: Chris Marker | Stars: Étienne Becker, Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich

Votes: 37,011

14. Paprika (2006)

R | 90 min | Animation, Drama, Fantasy

81 Metascore

When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients' dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it.

Director: Satoshi Kon | Stars: Megumi Hayashibara, Tôru Emori, Katsunosuke Hori, Tôru Furuya

Votes: 96,592 | Gross: $0.88M

15. The Bothersome Man (2006)

Not Rated | 95 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

In a strange city where every person seems content beyond reason a new man arrives in town and stirs up trouble by asking too many questions.

Director: Jens Lien | Stars: Trond Fausa, Petronella Barker, Per Schaanning, Birgitte Larsen

Votes: 18,056

16. eXistenZ (1999)

R | 97 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

70 Metascore

A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.

Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe

Votes: 107,076 | Gross: $2.84M

17. Naked Lunch (1991)

R | 115 min | Drama, Mystery

67 Metascore

After developing an addiction to the substance he uses to kill bugs, an exterminator accidentally kills his wife and becomes involved in a secret government plot being orchestrated by giant bugs in a port town in North Africa.

Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands

Votes: 56,580 | Gross: $2.54M

18. Videodrome (1983)

R | 87 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

58 Metascore

A programmer at a Toronto TV station that specializes in adult entertainment searches for the producers of a dangerous and bizarre broadcast.

Director: David Cronenberg | Stars: James Woods, Debbie Harry, Sonja Smits, Peter Dvorsky

Votes: 102,798 | Gross: $2.12M

19. Strange Circus (2005)

Unrated | 108 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.

Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Masumi Miyazaki, Issei Ishida, Rie Kuwana, Seiko Iwaidô

Votes: 6,240

20. Pi (1998)

R | 84 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

72 Metascore

A paranoid mathematician searches for a key number that will unlock the universal patterns found in nature.

Director: Darren Aronofsky | Stars: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart

Votes: 186,311 | Gross: $3.22M

21. Stay (I) (2005)

R | 99 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

41 Metascore

A psychiatrist attempts to prevent one of his patients from committing suicide while trying to maintain his own grip on reality.

Director: Marc Forster | Stars: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Kate Burton

Votes: 85,937 | Gross: $3.63M

22. The Fall (I) (2006)

R | 117 min | Adventure, Drama, Fantasy

64 Metascore

In 1920s Los Angeles, a bedridden patient in a hospital captivates a young girl with a fantastic tale of heroes, myths, and villains on a desert island.

Director: Tarsem Singh | Stars: Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, Justine Waddell, Kim Uylenbroek

Votes: 116,608 | Gross: $2.28M

23. The Machinist (2004)

R | 101 min | Drama, Thriller

61 Metascore

An industrial worker who hasn't slept in a year begins to doubt his own sanity.

Director: Brad Anderson | Stars: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, John Sharian

Votes: 415,090 | Gross: $1.08M

24. Santa Sangre (1989)

NC-17 | 123 min | Drama, Horror, Thriller

A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless mother - the leader of a strange religious cult - and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name as he becomes "her arms".

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky | Stars: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou

Votes: 23,291

25. Spiral (2000)

90 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror

62 Metascore

The inhabitants of a small Japanese town become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals.

Director: Higuchinsky | Stars: Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan, Hinako Saeki, Shin Eun-kyung

Votes: 8,975

26. Barton Fink (1991)

R | 116 min | Comedy, Drama, Thriller

69 Metascore

A renowned New York playwright is enticed to California to write for the movies and discovers the hellish truth of Hollywood.

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen | Stars: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Michael Lerner

Votes: 128,826 | Gross: $6.15M

27. Caché (2005)

R | 117 min | Drama, Mystery, Thriller

87 Metascore

A married couple is terrorized by a series of surveillance videotapes left on their front porch.

Director: Michael Haneke | Stars: Daniel Auteuil, Juliette Binoche, Maurice Bénichou, Annie Girardot

Votes: 85,108 | Gross: $3.63M

28. Cemetery Man (1994)

R | 105 min | Comedy, Horror

A cemetery man must kill the dead a second time when they become zombies.

Director: Michele Soavi | Stars: Rupert Everett, François Hadji-Lazaro, Anna Falchi, Mickey Knox

Votes: 23,289 | Gross: $0.25M

29. Gozu (2003)

R | 129 min | Crime, Drama, Horror

58 Metascore

A yakuza enforcer is ordered to secretly drive his beloved colleague to be assassinated. But when the colleague unceremoniously disappears en route, the trip that follows is a twisted, surreal and horrifying experience.

Director: Takashi Miike | Stars: Yûta Sone, Kimika Yoshino, Shohei Hino, Keiko Tomita

Votes: 12,718 | Gross: $0.05M

30. Haze (2005)

Not Rated | 49 min | Horror, Mystery

A man wakes up to find himself locked in a cramped concrete maze of corridors, in which he can barely move. He doesn't remember why he is there or how he got there. He has a terrible stomach injury and is slowly bleeding to death.

Director: Shin'ya Tsukamoto | Stars: Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Takahiro Murase, Takahiro Kandaka, Masato Tsujioka

Votes: 3,090

31. Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Not Rated | 67 min | Horror, Sci-Fi

A businessman accidentally kills The Metal Fetishist, who gets his revenge by slowly turning the man into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and rusty metal.

Director: Shin'ya Tsukamoto | Stars: Tomorô Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Nobu Kanaoka, Shin'ya Tsukamoto

Votes: 25,869

32. Alice (1988)

Not Rated | 86 min | Animation, Adventure, Fantasy

A surrealistic revision of Alice in Wonderland.

Director: Jan Svankmajer | Stars: Kristýna Kohoutová, Camilla Power

Votes: 13,973

33. Possession (1981)

R | 124 min | Drama, Horror

75 Metascore

A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

Director: Andrzej Zulawski | Stars: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen, Heinz Bennent

Votes: 42,624 | Gross: $1.11M

34. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)

PG-13 | 123 min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy

65 Metascore

Having made a deal with the Devil himself for immortality many millennia ago, the now decrepit mystic Doctor Parnassus fights for the freedom of his only daughter's soul.

Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Christopher Plummer, Lily Cole, Heath Ledger, Andrew Garfield

Votes: 153,862 | Gross: $7.69M

35. Society (1989)

R | 99 min | Comedy, Horror

50 Metascore

An ordinary teenage boy discovers his family is part of a gruesome orgy cult for the social elite.

Director: Brian Yuzna | Stars: Billy Warlock, Concetta D'Agnese, Ben Slack, Evan Richards

Votes: 21,900

36. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

R | 108 min | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi

89 Metascore

When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories forever.

Director: Michel Gondry | Stars: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Tom Wilkinson, Gerry Robert Byrne

Votes: 1,076,522 | Gross: $34.40M

37. Rubber (2010)

R | 82 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Horror

59 Metascore

A homicidal car tire, discovering it has destructive psionic power, sets its sights on a desert town once a mysterious woman becomes its obsession.

Director: Quentin Dupieux | Stars: Stephen Spinella, Roxane Mesquida, Wings Hauser, Jack Plotnick

Votes: 40,278 | Gross: $0.10M

38. Amer (2009)

Not Rated | 90 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

72 Metascore

As a young girl Ana was a rebellious child. She was also tormented by images of death and a shadowy, ominous figure in black. Now an adult, she is once again tormented by shadowy, other-worldly forms.

Directors: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani | Stars: Cassandra Forêt, Charlotte Eugène Guibeaud, Marie Bos, Biancamaria D'Amato

Votes: 6,569

39. The Skin I Live In (2011)

R | 120 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

70 Metascore

A brilliant plastic surgeon, haunted by past tragedies, creates a type of synthetic skin that withstands any kind of damage. His guinea pig: a mysterious and volatile woman who holds the key to his obsession.

Director: Pedro Almodóvar | Stars: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, Jan Cornet, Marisa Paredes

Votes: 165,608 | Gross: $3.19M

40. Persona (1966)

Not Rated | 83 min | Drama, Thriller

86 Metascore

A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.

Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand

Votes: 130,709

41. Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Not Rated | 88 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery

While vacationing on a remote German island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

Director: Ingmar Bergman | Stars: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Gertrud Fridh, Georg Rydeberg

Votes: 22,545

42. Dogtooth (2009)

Not Rated | 97 min | Drama, Thriller

73 Metascore

A controlling, manipulative father locks his three adult offsprings in a state of perpetual childhood by keeping them prisoner within the sprawling family compound.

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos | Stars: Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Christos Passalis

Votes: 110,150 | Gross: $0.11M

43. The Moustache (2005)

Not Rated | 87 min | Drama, Mystery

71 Metascore

Mark is a middle-aged man who has spent most of his life with a mustache on his face. He suddenly decides to shave them. When he tells his wife, he disagrees with her, but.

Director: Emmanuel Carrère | Stars: Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos, Mathieu Amalric, Hippolyte Girardot

Votes: 5,590

44. Stalker (1979)

Not Rated | 162 min | Drama, Sci-Fi

85 Metascore

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.

Director: Andrei Tarkovsky | Stars: Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn, Nikolay Grinko

Votes: 144,514 | Gross: $0.23M

45. Ex Drummer (2007)

Not Rated | 100 min | Comedy, Crime, Drama

36 Metascore

Three handicapped losers who form a band ask famous writer Dries to be their drummer. He joins the band and starts manipulating them.

Director: Koen Mortier | Stars: Dries Vanhegen, Norman Baert, Gunter Lamoot, Sam Louwyck

Votes: 10,949

46. Black Swan (2010)

R | 108 min | Drama, Thriller

79 Metascore

Nina is a talented but unstable ballerina on the verge of stardom. Pushed to the breaking point by her artistic director and a seductive rival, Nina's grip on reality slips, plunging her into a waking nightmare.

Director: Darren Aronofsky | Stars: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Winona Ryder

Votes: 823,425 | Gross: $106.95M

47. The Zero Theorem (2013)

R | 107 min | Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

50 Metascore

A hugely talented but socially isolated computer operator is tasked by Management to prove the Zero Theorem: that the universe ends as nothing, rendering life meaningless. But meaning is what he already craves.

Director: Terry Gilliam | Stars: Christoph Waltz, Lucas Hedges, Mélanie Thierry, David Thewlis

Votes: 49,623 | Gross: $0.22M



Recently Viewed