12 Psychedelic Horror Movies Guaranteed To Trip Audiences Out
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Vote up the best psychedelic horror movies.
- 1Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper
Midsommar begins with a horrific murder-suicide, ends with a devastating pagan ritual, and in between showcases the films protagonists do so many drugs many will wonder how they are even able to stand, so it is only natural it has grown to become one of the most revered and beloved psychedelic horror films of the 21st century. The use of drugs is never for fun in this film, but instead, a way to showcase the slow poisoning of minds when put in the wrong hands, and the subtle but prominent visuals that warp the viewer's minds will have them wonder if this masochist cult managed to slip them something sinister as well.
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- 2Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache
Panos Cosmatos delivered to audiences one of the most wild, sadistic, vibrant, and abnormal films of all time with his 2018 masterpiece Mandy. A film that is purposely designed to feel like a bad trip, the stunning artwork and visual style mixed with some of the most grotesque and disgusting imagery every put to screen is all but guaranteed to freak audiences out, and Nicolas Cage giving one of his most unhinged performances of all time only amplifies the madness. Throw in demonic sex gimps, chainsaw fights, Nic Cage pounding an entire bottle of vodka, and the Cheddar Goblin, and one of the most profound and psychedelic horror experiences has been created.
More Mandy - 3Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jürgen Prochnow
By 1995, John Carpenter had already solidified himself as not only one of the greatest horror directors of all time, but plainly as one of the greatest cinematic minds the world had ever seen, and with his trippy and unrelenting film In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter set out to deliver on the title of its film. From the jump, audiences will feel a polarizing effect as the film begins at the end, and then subsequently jumps all over the place with an unreliable narrator, scenes that never actually happen, and grotesque imagery that will make them feel as though they too are slowly losing their minds.
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- 4
Color Out of Space
Nicolas Cage, Joely Richardson, Tommy ChongLovecraftian horror and psychedelic horror oftentimes go hand in hand, as the glorious storytelling of the latter mixed with the trippy and offbeat visual style of the former combines to create a beautiful nightmare horror fans can adore, and Color Out of Space is a pristine example of how these two subgenres can come together to create something magnificent. A phantasmagorical masterpiece that showcases the beauty in the grotesque, Color Out of Space is a fantastic feat of cinematic achievement that will leave audiences floored by the time the final 30 minutes arrive.
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- 5Kimiko Ikegami, Haruko Wanibuchi, Yōko Minamida
It is rare for a horror film to come along that genuinely makes audiences feel as though they are currently experiencing a drug-like high, however, Nobuhiko Obayashi's House manages to encapsulate that otherworldly experience perfectly. With some of the wackiest and flat-out ludicrous images ever put to screen, audiences will be lulled into a trance-like state while watching the terrifying, hilarious, and downright ridiculous events unfold. A film that is genuinely indescribable, House is guaranteed to be one of the greatest trips of many horror fans' lives.
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- 6Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Joan Bennett
With gorgeous cinematography, vibrant and masterful use of colors, and one of the strangest and most out-of-control stories of witchcraft of all time, Suspiria perfectly encapsulates psychedelic horror in its visual and tonal styles. Showcasing grotesque and horrifying images of dreadful acts of violence, the film is a 99-minute nightmare-fueled trip that will have audiences feel as though they just went on the worst acid trip of their lives but saw some of the prettiest moments of murder in any film. Shocking, jarring, gorgeous, and unforgettable, Suspiria is one trip audiences will never forget.
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- 7Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez
Annihilation is a gorgeous slow burn that dares to ask profound, bombastic, and spine-chilling questions about life and humanity, all while slowly delving into complete and utter madness. A film that beautifully encapsulates the slow and impending dread of a bad trip, things in the film start off relatively normal until each passing second shows audiences that they aren't in Kansas anymore, and things are very quickly about to go off the rails. Crescendoing into one of the most hallucinatory, intoxicating, and perfect final acts in sci-fi history, audiences will be floored by the time the credits roll and question the very meaning of reality.
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- 8Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, Valeriia Karaman
Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe work as two lighthouse keepers in Robert Egger's The Lighthouse, and that bit of information is about as normal as the film will get for its subsequent 109-minute runtime. Slowly delving further and further into the macabre mouth of madness, The Lighthouse is a film designed to break and tear apart audiences' minds piece by piece until they are simply a shell of the person they entered the movie as. A film that is unrelenting in its weirdness but beloved for its willingness to push the envelop, The Lighthouse is a one-of-a-kind experience that will stick with audiences for a lifetime.
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- 9Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone
Sometimes psychedelic horror movies don't need a sweeping epic story or profound characters, sometimes they just need a gorgeous backdrop to do some weird stuff, and no film does weird stuff more often or better than Nicolas Winding Refn's The Neon Demon. Almost all of Winding Refn's work has the tang of incomprehensibility about them, but The Neon Demon fully embraces the madness and takes the macabre and dangerous to another level. The film fascinating trip that will have audiences both amazed and dumbfounded by the time the credits roll.
- 10Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams, Lynsey Taylor Mackay
One of the most polarizing and divisive horror films to release in the last 20 years, Under the Skin is a devilishly seductive, sensual, and intoxicating experience that is almost guaranteed to blow audiences' minds. Following an alien who seduces men only to take them back to her place and horrifyingly rip them apart in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the word, Under the Skin is not a fun-filled psychedelic experience, instead, a film that feels as though it was a psychedelic movie made that slowly morphed into the realm of terror, and once it realized it was there, never turned back.
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- 11Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, Satish Ratakonda
While most people hear the term psychedelic and think of groovy hippies on acid, the true meaning behind this stingy little word is the strange, mind-melting, and world-altering states it has on the human body. While some trips are good, some are very, very bad, and no film offers up audiences a more grounded and realistic portrayal of a bad trip than Phil Tippett's Mad God. An almost silent stop-motion horror film, Mad God features horrifying images, grotesque and almost vomit-inducing moments of terror, and an incoherent mess of a story that will show all the non-drug users out there exactly what a bad high can feel like.
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- 12Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen
A horror film seeming made by people on drugs, for people on drugs, Andrzej Zulawski's Possession is one of the most unhinged, unapologetic, and intoxicating horror films ever made. Brutal in its direction, masochistic in its visual style, and unrelenting in its feats of terror, Possession is a mind-melting film that showcases the beauty of the horror genre, as the story is just tight enough to keep audiences entertained by mad enough to continue to one-up itself until audiences are relegated to witnessing some of the vilest images ever put on screen.
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