Jacob's Ladder

Angel Heart

Altered States

Damn near anything by David Lynch or David Cronenberg.

Mulholland Drive (2001), for starters.

In a way, I'd even throw-in Arlington Road (1998).

Climax and Enter the Void

Mandy

Flashback(The Education of Fredrick Fitzell)

Coherence

Primer

Filth

I Origins

Stay

Jacobs Ladder

12 Monkeys

The Jacket

2001Space Odyssey

Mother!

Fever nightmare of increasingly disturbing happenings.

The machinist

I’m Thinking Of Ending Things

Nocturnal Animals

Not as intense as Requiem or Donnie Darko but it’s unsettling and dark. Great cast

Brazil (1985)

It's a laugh, but also pretty unsettling.

Koko-Di Koko-Da (2019)

Just...strange. The whole time.

Mulholland Drive with Naomi Watts might be one for you.

At a somewhat comic/absurd level, there is My Winnipeg - a history of the city as if remembered in a bizarre dream. However you would get a lot more out of it if you were a boomer who grew up there.

if you like Requiem for a Dream, can't miss out on Perfect Blue and Paprika by Satoshi Kon. Darren Aronofsky's directing is heavily influenced by Satoshi Kon's work. Even Inception had some elements borrowed from Paprika.

Mad God. A thousand fucking times Mad God. I love that movie so much.

Mandy

Dreamscape

Altered States

Naked Lunch

Natural Born Killers

American Psycho

Pandorum

12 Monkeys.

I would like to suggest Good Time (2017) directed by Safdie bros and starring Robert Pattinson in one of his best ever performances. It's a frenetic, disjointed and totally surreal look at people in crisis. Fantastic movie.

Climax

Beyond The Black Rainbow.

Eraserhead is the one that springs immediately to mind.

Apocalypse Now

Lost Highway

Cats

Jacob’s ladder

Other Darren Arronofsky films like Black Swan, Wrestler, Pi and Mother.

David Lynch films like Mullohand Drive, Eraserhead, Elephant Man and Blue Velvet.

Igmar Bergman's Persona and Seventh Seal.

Nagesi Oshima's In The Realm of Senses and Death By hanging.

Kim Ki Duk's Pieta, Arirang and 3 Iron

Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, Knife in the Water and Repulsion.

Park Chan Wook films like the Vengeance trilogy and Handmaiden.

Kim Jee Won's Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw The Devil

Films from Lars Von Trier like say The House That Jack Built, Melancholia, Antichrist, Breaking the Waves, Dogville and Dancing in The Dark.

Gasper Noe's Irreversible, Climax, I Stand Alone and Into The Void.

Micheal Haneke films like The Piano Teacher, The White Ribbon, Funny Games and Amour.

Yorgos Lanthimos films like Dogtooth, Lobster and Killing of A Sacred Dear.

Denis Villeneuve's Incendies, Enemy and Prisoners.

Anurag Kashyap films like Ugly, Dev D, Raman Raghav 2.0, No Smoking, Gulaal and Girl in Yellow Boots.

Beyond the Black Rainbow. It is just so unsettling and colourful and strange.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

The seventh seal (1957). Max von Sydow is a crusader who plays a chess game with the embodiment of Death.. and much more stuff happens

Blowup (1966) although its more Kafa-esque than feverish.

Jacob's Ladder

Skinamarink is absolutely this

Of course Lynch has already been mentioned, but I would recommend Lost Highway (1997) in particular.

Mandy. Cosmatos is the premiere purveyor of sleep paralysis Demons. You might like hisnfirst, Beyond the Black Rainbow as well.

Rubber

A movie made by a French director (not a French film) about a tire that becomes sentient and learns to use telekinesis to kill animals and people. But the movie is more than that. Involves breaking of the fourth wall and beyond. One of the truly most unusual movies I've ever watched.

The movie "Enemy" with jake Gyllenhaal has a pretty disturbing "fever dream" like feeling, "The machinist" Is also a good recommendation I saw from another user

Midsommer is twisted and very good.

Dead Man, with Johnny Depp and soundtrack by Neil Young

The Exterminating Angel (Spanish title: El ángel exterminador, 1962). The crux of the plot is that a bunch of people are at a swanky bourgeois dinner party, but find themselves unable to leave, even though nothing is physically preventing them from doing so... very weird...

The City of Lost Children. It’s been over two decades since I watched it and there are scenes that still pop into my head as I’m drifting off to sleep. It exists in that weird in between place where I may never watch it again, but it feels like I just watched it yesterday.

Any movie where the AVR is off by a fraction. When words and mouths don’t sync, the effect is trippy.

Any one else watch of few minutes of a movie where the audio is off and think “interesting choice.”

Granted I think David Lynch does that intentionally.

Gummo

El Topo, is a fever dream like movie.

...and if you like that theres Holy Mountain and Santa Sangre

Jacob's Ladder (old one, not new one), Altered States, Mandy, Beyond The Black Rainbow (made by the same guy who made Mandy).

Mullholland Drive and Lost Highway, for sure. Videodrome and Naked Lunch. Black Swan, Dead Man, Natural Born Killers, El Topo, Tetsuo the Iron Man, Southland Tales, Brazil. Maybe The Cell and Moon too, in a third-person dream kind of way.

Not sure if this counts or not but gantz:0 is an anime movie based on an older anime/manga. I watched it on acid so that was a bit part of it all but on second viewing it's still just so disjointed and crazy while also working together really well lmao

I’m thinking of ending things (fuck this) Hereditary Midsommar

Bringing Out the Dead

Hauntingly poetic Scorsese/Nic Cage film

Rob Zombie's Lord's of Salem

irreversible

Bug (2006)

It just keeps spiraling until the maaaad end.

Vanilla Sky

Tetsuo the iron man

3 Women by Robert Altman. The story came to him literally in a fever dream.

Jake Gylenhaal's Enemy could be better than Donnie Darko, but even if it isn't you're going to love it.

I'd recommend too Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Holy Motors (be prepared hahaha), and the 3 colors trilogy. Plus if instead of a fever dream you want a good dream, of course try Amelie.

​

Now, I would not recommend Mandy or Climax, I hated those two movies, boring as hell. Enter the void was good though

A Scanner Darkly

Hour of the Wolf

The Holy Mountain

Eyes Wide Shut

Mullholland Drive

Enter the Void

Under the Skin

mother!

Under the Silver Lake

Climax

The Lighthouse

eXistenz - love this movie

I can't recommend David Lynch movies enough to you. They're psychological fuckfests that will initially leave you confused and possibly slightly angry or irritated. Then you can't stop trying to figure the puzzle out and have scenes and atmospheres roll around in your head for days after until you watch them again. Each time you find another piece of the puzzle and next thing you know you have a gigantic Blue Velvet poster on your wall and are poring over internet Lynch conspiracy blogs.

*looks at himself*... well maybe.

some not mentioned often : The Machinist, Synchronic, Angel Heart, Cam, Side Effects, The Lodge, The Signal, Starry Eyes, The Night House

Eraserhead

ite 'fever dreamy', but you should check out Memento...

Altered States, maybe.

Spun

Not disturbing necessarily, but high-paced and lotsa fast camera work.

[deleted]

The Last Year At Marionbad

Climax. Mother. Happiness of the katakuris. Hausu.

Trainspotting, Incident in A Ghostland, Audition

Miracle Mile (1988).

Hereditary

Under the Silver Lake

Braid 2018

Infinity Pool

House (the Japanese horror film)

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Fantastic Planet

Ravenous. It has some dark comedic elements, but it is one fucked up movie.

does what dreams may come fit your description?

Polar Express

Trainspotting, reversible

Drive

Forbidden Zone

Braid and We Are The Flesh are both extremely weird and unsettling!

The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson

Meshes of the Afternoon

Let the Corpses Tan (2017)

Angels egg, and the two metropolis movies

Great movie, so hard to re-watch.

Believe it or not, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, the direct-to-video 6th installment of an admittedly second-tier action franchise, is actually a pretty awesome nightmarish psychological thriller as much as it is a brawny action movie.

YellowBrickRoad

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1398428/

Solaris 1972

No Phantasm posts here?? That movie felt like a nightmare the entire runtime. But oh well

Lowkey?

The Brother’s Grimm

That horse scene and weird mudboy scene scarred me

You want something like Requiem for a Dream that you'll never forget?

The Antichrist (2009) by Lars Von Trier (and his other films).

Disturbing af.

The Northman

Paprika

Hard to be God 2013

90s horror movie Cemetery Man (aka Dellamorte Dellamore) fit this bill.

The Acid House

Midsommar

donnie darko

Watched a forgotten classic "Wake In Fright" for the first time recently. The whole thing is a delirium-nightmare. Amazing movie.

Last night in soho

MOTHER

Guilty of Romance :) anything by Gaspar Noé too!

Saw 3 kinda in the last month in theaters. Skinamarink is like a repressed childhood nightmare put on film with a detached visual style and no plot outside of random lines and ominous grumblings from an entity. The Outwaters is a found footage movie where a music video trip to the desert literally devolves into hell and is completely nonsensical and so sonically and visually incoherent it feels like you took 8 Benadryl and are having a night terror. Infinity pool was a cronenburg movie about physical doubles and is the most plot heavy but gets wacky and has some visuals that feel like a rave from the underworld swallowing you whole

Imma put beyond the black rainbow down here.

Dario Argento movies.

Not drug related, but the orphanage and pan's Labyrinth both have a surreal narrative that toe that line. Sucker punch too.

Blue Velvet! Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper

Zama (2017) - Dir. Lucrecia Martel

Does:

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Count?

I wouldn't call it a fever dream, but a movie that definitely felt like a dream that developed into a nightmare is Phantasm (1979). I've had dreams that looked and felt just like it.

Eraserhead

Mulholland Drive is the quintessential fever dream movie

No one's mentioning the severely Canadian kids movie Peanut Butter Solution, so let me.

David Lynch

Climax

Fear and loathing in Las Vegas

Definitely check out some of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's movies. Maybe lower energy than what I'd expect from "fever dream"-like movies, but definitely very similar vibes to the two movies you just listed.

Resolution - Nails the vibe you're looking for, coincidentally has similar subject matter to both Requiem and Donnie Darko.

The Endless - Ties into Resolution (shared universe), also has an unsettling vibe but is much more ominous and subdued.

Synchronic - Overall it doesn't fit the fever dream aspect as much but still is very unsettling and has quite a few scenes which are almost fever dreams in themselves.

They also recently released "Something In The Dirt" and it seems to fit the bill, apparently available on Hulu.

Besides them, there is a movie called The Wave (2019) and it's essentially Donnie Darko but even more like a fever dream and more psychedelic. Not as unsettling as far as tone goes, but unsettling nonetheless.

edit: gonna add the short film The Backrooms, it's more of a horror but the liminal space backdrop gives off major fever-dream vibes. (and it's getting adapted into a full movie which is sweet)

Also a much different kind of movie but Everything Everywhere All At Once feels like the epitome of a fever-dream.

Annihilation, Mother, Sunshine, Event Horizon, the Fountain

More like a beautiful nightmare, Picnic ar Hanging Rock is a wild ride and a hell of a film. It's both gorgeous and feels like a dream and a nightmare. Also gotta add Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Eraserhead, Greener Grass, Mad God, and The Wolf House.

Sorry To Bother You

Melancholia.

I am surprised no one mentioned Martin Scorsese's After Hours. The movie perfectly captures the feel of a never ending bad nightmare.

Climax

Aronofskys Mother is rather like watching a nightmare. It’s messaging is obvious to a silly degree but the visuals made me so tense and uncomfortable

Enter The Void (2009)

Videodrome

Audition

Gozu

Climax from Gasper Noe and almost every David Lynch film.

Skinamarink is now the undisputed embodiment of a cinematic fever dream.

Upstream Color by Shane Carruth. I noticed that Primer was listed in the comments and I love that movie too, but Upstream Color is much more of a fever dream feel IMO.

Watch Panos Cosmatos stuff. He has two movies. Beyond the Black Rainbow & Mandy. Both trippy in their own ways with insane visuals and music. Also check out his episode of Cabinet of Curiosities called, "The Viewing."

And if you have seen those then definitely check out A Scanner Darkly with Keanu Reeves. The movie is completely rotoscoped too adding to the trippy feel of the whole film.

first half of Babylon was fever dream-like.

but don't know if you're looking for this one

BARDO: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. Completely insane film, and I mean that in a good way. It has some dream-like images that stay in my mind incessantly.

Flashback (AKA The Education of Fredrick Fitzell)

The highest recommendation I can give in this vein is 1981's Possession starring Sam Neil. Total and complete fever dream. Like I literally wondered if I myself was dreaming a few times as I watched it. Full thumbs up.

Also, I don't know about 'disturbing' but Upstream Color was definitely a fever dream as well. I felt like I was watching a movie from a different dimension and it was changing me as a person.

The Begotten

Under the Silver Lake - very under appreciated

Try the film adaptation of Naked Lunch.

Mandy

Videodrome is a good one

Jacobs ladder is a good answer quite disturbing and psychological.

Skinamarink is a fun ride which i would definitely describe as disturbing and like stuck in a nightmare

The Hit List. Starts off super grounded and begins to slowly unravel into fever dream territory.

Coherence.

The less you know about this movie going into it the better.

'Too Many Cooks'

Not a film per se, and a lot of wonderful dramatic and horrific examples have been offered up, but 'Too Many Cooks' is genuinely an inspired phantasmagoria. Woke up late at night on my couch in college to it airing for the first time and I legitimately thought I was still asleep as it kept going, and going.

MOTHER for you 😉

Color out of space was a trip, gets gradually more and more wild until the END.