15 Movies That Will Haunt Your Dreams

When one thinks of a haunting movie, their first choice goes to some type of horror movie. Designed to shock and revolt, countless horror movies do their best, either through terror or abject violence, to catapult the mind into newfound states of heightened emotion.

There are, however, other movies that present more conventionally but contain something sinister and unreproachable below their surface. Some take the simple, mundane circumstances of daily life and flip them on their head, making you question the concreteness and safety of your existence. Others use the mask of sanity and slowly strip it away, leaving an abject yet believable terror that stays with you for days, weeks, or even years after seeing it. In this article, we will explore 15 of these movies, the ones that will haunt your dreams and leave a stark, lasting impression on you forever. (Also See 25 Beloved Classics Movies That Were First Epic Fails at the Box Office.)

To compile a list of 13 movies that will haunt your dreams, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of film and entertainment sites including WhatCulture, TasteofCinema, and DVD Talk. Next, we selected movies that haunted or stuck with us longer after watching them. After that, we used sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB for specific details about the films.

“The Vanishing” (1988)

Rex and Saskia are a couple on holiday. When they stop at a gas station, however, Saskia mysteriously disappears. Rex searches for her high and low, but to no avail. The years drag on, and Rex remains obsessed with finding out what happened to her, including going on television and putting up missing posters. Soon, however, an unassuming teacher approaches him, suggesting he knows what may have happened to her.

From the outset, “The Vanishing” gives you goosebumps. Composed in an elegant, almost clinical fashion, the movie explores the unspeakable darkness that lurks behind the mundane facade of daily life before culminating in an unforgettable climax. Terrifying in its simplicity, and bone-chilling in its ramifications, “The Vanishing” is the type of movie that will haunt you forever.

“The Night of the Hunter” (1955)

Reverend Harry Powell is a religious zealot and serial killer who selects female victims he believes flaunts their wiles to men. While in prison for car theft, Powell meets another murderer who tells him he stashed $10,000 in stolen money. Upon release, Powell tracks down Harper’s widow and children to find the hidden loot.

Compared to the previous movie on the list, there is nothing understated about “The Night of the Hunter.” Its characters are outsized and grotesque, and it explores the perversity and contradiction behind every principle people hold dear. In the process, it becomes a psychological horror movie unlike any ever made.

Come and See (1985)

When German forces invade a village in Byelorussia, young Florya flees into the woods against his family’s wishes to join a group of resistance fighters. Upon returning to his village, he finds his townspeople massacred. He carries on in survival as the war becomes increasingly nightmarish and hopeless around him.

Relatively forgotten for decades, “Come and See” has re-emerged into the popular imagination in recent years. You can see why too, as there’s no other movie that captures the relentless plodding and pace of a nightmare. Beautifully filmed and expertly focused, “Come and See” is a harrowing journey into the grim horror of war that will stay with you forever.

“Under the Skin” (2013)

Opening on the darkened Scottish countryside, there emerges a strange, hauntingly beautiful figure. Ostensibly an alien, it transforms itself into a beautiful woman. From there, it gets ahold of a van and drives around Scotland picking up unsuspecting men. What it does to these men defies explanation.

Leave it to Jonathan Glazer to create another film with imagery so beautiful and stark that it horrifically imprints in your mind. There’s not so much a plot as a relentless hunting of humans, seducing them, and injecting them into a type of cosmic horror or high strangeness that turns the viewer inside out. Some imagery in “Under the Skin” will haunt your dreams forever.

The Act of Killing (2012)

In an attempt to better understand the genocide and mass killings that happened in Indonesia in the 1960s, filmmakers travel to the country and find some of the perpetrators. Unwilling to divulge their crimes plainly, the crew convinces some of the culprits to stage plays retelling the actions they committed during the killings.

Unlike any other documentary ever made, what will haunt you about “The Act of Killing” is how absurdly real it all is. Brave in its approach and innovative in its goal, the documentary’s sly coaxing of the killers into a theatrical rendition of their brutality is astonishing, horrifying, and ultimately profound.

Jeffrey Beaumont is a college student who returns to his hometown after his father has a stroke. One day, he finds a severed ear in a field, so he teams up with a detective’s daughter in an attempt to solve the mystery. In the process, Beaumont is lured into a dark, twisted underworld sitting just beneath the surface of the unassuming town.

No one can capture the absurdly horrific quite like David Lynch, and nowhere is this more apparent than “Blue Velvet.” A controlled, visionary quest into the vile rot that lurks beneath the suburban surface, the film injects the viewer into situations that make the skin crawl, imprinting indelibly provocative images that will haunt your dreams forever.

“Enter the Void” (2009)

Oscar is an American drug dealer living in Toyko with his prostitute sister. After a drug bust goes bad, Oscar is killed, and his spirit enters the Bardo–the Buddhist notion of the stage between death and the afterlife. In the process, Oscar’s spirit eerily floats between his family’s past, his deathly present, and his sister’s uncertain future.

Unlike other movies on this list, “Enter the Void” doesn’t seek to scare or shock so much as slowly dig into your skin as your body becomes spirit and all the rules of existence are upturned. Both an orgy of color and an assault on the senses, the film is an exercise in camerawork and a meditation on the places in between life and death, body and spirit, and past and future. It’s like no movie you’ve ever seen and it will linger in your bones for a long while after watching.

“Antichrist” (2009)

While a newly married couple has sex, their baby crawls out of a window and falls to his death. The wife naturally becomes distraught and is hospitalized. The husband is a psychiatrist, however, and attempts to treat her himself. Believing she needs to face her fears, he takes her to a secluded cabin in the woods. There, she becomes increasingly unhinged and threatens both their lives in the process.

A stark movie without much joy, “Antichrist” is typical of Lars Von Trier’s oeuvre in that it plumbs darkness and tragedy for emotional capacity. Though visually it’s a poignant, and beautiful journey, emotionally it tears at your heartstrings before planting a knot in your throat. By the film’s finale, the foreboding energy of the setup explodes into shocking, graphically repulsive chaos. Some of the scenes in this movie will never leave your head.

“Happiness” (1998)

An ensemble comedy of truly dark proportions, “Happiness” focuses on the lives of three sisters. Joy ambles through a series of mundane jobs without much overarching goals or purpose. Helen is a well-regarded poet who becomes fascinated by her perverted neighbor. The eldest, Trish, is married to a psychiatrist with an alarming secret life.

Though it’s billed as a dark comedy, and to be sure, it is, there’s much more going on in “Happiness.” It’s a shooting gallery of deviants and marginalized characters, weaving through their lives in a balance between judgment and understanding. Don’t be fooled, however, as this character study is profoundly dark and twisted, yet speaks to the unspeakable desires in all of us hauntingly comedically.

“Schindler’s List” (1993)

Oskar Schindler is a businessman who arrives in Krakow, Poland on the eve of the second world war. Eager to make his fortune, he joins the Nazi party for political expediency before staffing his factory with Jewish workers. Thoroughly pragmatic, he rebuffs the Nazis as they attempt to exterminate his employees. In the process, he realizes the position he is in to save lives.

Perhaps the best-known movie on this list, “Schindler’s List” is a tour de force of filmmaking. Thoroughly planting the viewer in the time and place, it weaves a story of terror and compassion through a series of indelible images and shocking energy. The scenes of the Nazi officer picking off Jewish prisoners with a rifle from his balcony is enough to haunt your dreams for a long time after watching.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Theater Director Caden Cotard is worse for wear. His wife has left him, his psychiatrist is more interested in her book than his problems, and a mysterious disease is slowly but surely shutting down his body. In response, he heads to New York where he gathers a collection of actors and has them live their normal lives within the construct of a fake city.

Charlie Kaufman has written several movies that take bold steps to actualize profound visions. In his directorial debut, his approach is no different. Instead of dazzling the audience, however, Kaufman literalizes the idea that life is one giant stage play, creating a depressing if not minutely harrowing exploration of loneliness and alienation. It’s a simulation of a simulation of a simulation, crafted in a way that will haunt the parts of you that feel like they never measured up to anything.

Upon returning home from the Vietnam War, veteran Jacob Singer slowly loses his grip on reality. Plagued by nightmarish visions and violent flashbacks, Singer rapidly falls apart, morphing the places and people around him into unholy totems of terror. His girlfriend, his ex-wife, and even his chiropractor attempt to help him, but it’s to no avail.

A nightmarish journey into madness on the surface, in many ways, “Jacob’s Ladder” is also a profoundly anti-war movie. That matters little upon watching, however, as it casts a spell on the viewer with Revelations-level visions, psychological torture, and a cascading series of surreality that manages to all make a strange sort of sense when it gets to the final scene. Some moments in “Jacob’s Ladder”, however, will truly haunt your dreams.

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2011)

Eva is a travel writer who forgoes her free lifestyle to have a child with her husband. It goes from bad to worse, however, as she suffers through the pregnancy only to fail to bond with her boy once he is born. Even more alienated from him as a fussy, unruly toddler, Eva is forced to deal with the consequences once he grows into a dangerous, psychopathic teenager.

Told through a series of vignettes, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is a tour de force of emotional volatility and the little-seen places and people affected by senseless tragedy. Using evocative imagery and foreboding energy, director Lynne Ramsay slowly but steadily raises the film’s overarching feeling of dread until it explodes into a nightmare. It’s assault on the senses and the roles we play in life will haunt your dreams forever.

“The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017)

Dr. Steven Murphy is a well-respected surgeon and patriarch of his family and their pristine lives and home. Lurking on the margins, however, is Martin, whose father died in a surgery Dr. Murphy performed. Slowly, Martin insinuates himself into the family in strange, unsettling ways. Soon, however, it becomes clear just how sinister and otherworldly Martin’s intentions for the family are.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is a master at creeping dread, and nowhere is this more apparent than in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.” Presented in a seamless, almost clinical manner, the movie is funny and absurd, but ultimately terrifying in its exploration of consequence and the willingness of strangers to hurt and torment. Some of the moments in this movie will never leave your head.

“Mystic River” (2003)

After the daughter of Jimmy, a local gangster, is found murdered, it becomes clear that someone from the neighborhood is involved. While Dave, a local blue-collar worker, was the last person to see her alive, Sean is the homicide detective investigating the case. Meanwhile, Jimmy conducts his own investigation and takes the law into his own hands.

Though “Mystic River” is a relatively slow-burner, it does so with an expert pace and growing energy that culminates in some truly unforgettable scenes. A meditation on both violence and revenge, the film is an authentic look at how tragedy befalls us and how we respond to it. There is one scene in “Mystic River” in particular that will never leave your head.