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Dreaming is definitely one of the most fascinating parts of human existence. Dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of our sleep cycle and are caused by neural activity in the brainstem. These are essentially the stories and images that our minds create while we’re in deep sleep. However, many believe that dreams hold far more significance than modern science is able to explain. Indeed, many people have reported seeing an event happen in a dream before it happened in waking life. And then you get into the subjects of lucid dreaming and astral projection, and things get even more fascinating and mysterious.
So, with how incredibly interesting dreams are, it’s no wonder that Hollywood scriptwriters have involved dreams in quite a few big-budget movies. Allowing movie characters to enter the dreamscape removes any restraints placed upon them in the real world. Anything can happen in a dream. And these dream sequences can make for some incredibly visually and mentally stimulating scenes.
In fact, some movies are dream sequences from start to finish. Some speculate that The Wizard of Oz, one of the most famous and highly regarded films of all time, was actually just a dream inside Dorothy’s mind the entire time.
In this article, we’re going to look at the 5 best movies that we know are about dreams. Some of these films are so exciting, there’s no way you could doze off while watching them.
1. Inception
You all knew this was coming as soon as you read the title. There hasn’t been a more famous movie that centers around dreams in the 21st century than the 2010 sci-fi thriller Inception. This movie was destined for greatness from the get-go. When a film directed by the great Christopher Nolan has a star-studded cast including actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Elliot Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cillian Murphy, and Tom Hardy, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be a classic. And Inception certainly didn’t disappoint.
The film stars DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals corporate secrets by infiltrating the dreams of his targets. However, things get a bit more complicated when he’s given an entirely new task: planting an idea into the mind of his target by entering a deep level of his subconscious. In this film, the physical laws of the real world don’t govern the dream world. Time moves faster the further into the different dream levels you get. Humans can manipulate their surroundings with their minds. All of this makes for an extremely trippy and somewhat confusing film.
2. A Nightmare on Elm Street
You may not have seen this one coming, but the classic 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street is definitely one of the most famous movies about dreams of all time—it’s also one of the most famous horror movies from the 80s. This movie is so famous that pretty much everyone in the Western world is aware of the movie’s main villain, Freddy Kruger, even if they have no idea that the character is from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy Kruger has been featured in The Simpsons and Family Guy, he’s a DLC in Mortal Kombat, and he was even parodied by a character named Scary Terry in Rick and Morty.
The Wes Craven-directed film (and Johnny Depp’s film debut) follows a teenager named Nancy Thompson whose group of friends become the target of a supernatural serial killer who murders his victims with bladed gloves in their dreams. But, if they die in their dreams, then they die in real life. Throughout the film, Freddy Kruger picks off Nancy’s friends and classmates one by one, and Nancy must reveal the dark secrets of her family to stop Freddy from killing her.
3. Source Code
The 2011 sci-fi thriller Source Code stars Jake Gyllenhaal as U.S. Army pilot Captain Colter Stevens. The film begins with Stevens waking up on a Metra commuter train headed for Chicago, which is confusing to Stevens because his last memory was of being on a military plane in Afghanistan. But, when Stevens sees his reflection in the window of the train, he discovers that he’s not Captain Colter Steven any longer; he’s a schoolteacher named Sean Fentress. Not long after, the train explodes and kills everyone on it.
After that, Stevens awakes in a dimly lit cockpit as himself. He then learns that he’s part of a special mission that involves him being sent back eight minutes before the explosion in order to identify the bomber. In order to be sent back to this time period, Stevens must fall asleep and awaken in a dream state as Sean Fentress. While this movie centers more around a simulation than an actual dream, the fact that Stevens must fall asleep to access the simulation is close enough to warrant Source Code getting a spot on this list.
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4. Alice in Wonderland
The classic 1951 film Alice in Wonderland (based on the 1865 novel by Lewis Carroll) pretty much started the whole trend in which the main character of a movie wakes up at the end to realize that all of the events of the film were just a dream. This film was also a major moment in animated cinema, ushering in an entire era of animation featuring strange and visually captivating dream sequences. Alice in Wonderland featured a talking doorknob, the famous caterpillar smoking a hookah, mushrooms that change Alice’s height, and evil playing cards that try to kill our protagonist.
Walt Disney Productions initially planned to make Alice in Wonderland a live-action movie but eventually decided that an animated film would give them more freedom to include visually stimulating sequences and outlandish fantasy elements. However, when the film first premiered in London in 1951, it was considered an overall failure. However, the film was later re-released in theaters in 1974, and it garnered much more commercial and critical success. Since then, there have been so many more film adaptations of Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that it’s actually hard to keep track of them. However, the 2010 version starring Johnny Depp is probably the most famous.
5. Paprika
Believe it or not, people outside of the United States also have dreams. Likewise, people outside the U.S. also make films about dreams, and the animated film Paprika comes to us from the nation of Japan. This movie is one of the most well-recognized pieces of Japanese animation that wasn’t made by Studio Ghibli. Instead, the 2006 film was directed by Satoshi Kon and animated by the Japanese studio Madhouse. The film ended up winning several awards, including the Feature Film Award for Best Animation and the Newport Beach Film Festival.
This film centers on a battle between a so-called “dream terrorist” who steals a device that allows him to cause nightmares and share people’s dreams and a research psychologist who enters the dream world and tries to catch the terrorist and stop him. However, when the psychologist enters the dream world, she changes into her detective alter-ego, known as Paprika. As the chase continues, dreams and reality begin to merge to the point where dream beings begin to affect the real world. This film features some of the most mind-boggling animation sequences in any anime film ever. If you need an introduction to Japanese anime cinema, Paprika is a good place to start.
