HORROR TEN SPOT: Top 10 Trippiest Horror Films

March 11th 2010, 2:04pm

Last Updated on August 3, 2021

Congrats to Tim Burton and the juggernaut that his version of ALICE IN WONDERLAND became this past weekend. Mediocre reviews aside, the thing kicked ass and took names.
Thinking about Burton got me musing on the lack of much straight ahead horror on his resume, but there are always strong genre elements in anything he does. And along with that comes his usual bag of perspective benders and visual craziness.
In other words, if there’s a filmmaker more suited to fans of tripping, then I don’t know who it is. So keeping in mind movies that may expand when viewed in an altered state, let’s get down with the trippiest damn horror out there.
And spit bullets dammit! I definitely want to hear your stories on this one.

1. DAVID LYNCH’S WHOLE DAMN CAREER

Lynch and horror go together kind of like Burton and horror do. Finding a specific film of his that is considered strict genre is tricky, but a strong gothic horror ethic infuses all of his work. And when you want to talk about tripped out films, well as The Arrow himself said to me while chatting about this list, “[Lynch] is the KING of mindf*ck!” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

2. EXISTENZ

Cronenburg is a master of combining horror and pure visual oh sh!ttery. Trying to pick just one of his films for a list like this is similar to picking which film of Diora Baird’s features her boobs best. Tough to get it right, but impossible to get it totally wrong either. One of the joys of eXistenZ is that it takes all the fetishism and ick factor that DC loves to play with, and anchors it in a world that within its own rules, really does play fair.

3. JACOB’S LADDER

This sucker just baked my noggin when I was watching it the first time. Tim Robbins performance at the center draws the viewer into the confusion and terror of not knowing what the hell is going on in such an effective manner that it hides the relatively simple narrative and “surprise” rather well. And surprising though it may be, Elizabeth Pena looks hot in it.

4. IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS

Easily my favorite horror movie, ITMOM makes its horror work largely through leaving you off balanced during most of the runtime. Whether it’s satanic children, upside down spider ladies, an author ripping himself apart or simply the presence of Charlton Heston, this is Carpenter reaching right into your brain and pressing scramble.

5. ANTICHRIST

WTF is wrong with Lars von Trier? It’s like he wants to punish everyone involved in his movies. The actors for sure, no doubt his crew, and the audience perhaps most of all. While many of the picks on this list are fun mind-benders, this one is pure I’m gonna vomit in my mouth. Thanks Lars.

6. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

Freddy’s been around so long that he’s getting retrod, but can you remember what it was like the first time you saw NOES? It was, quite simply, a nightmare. You weren’t safe anywhere, and the thing we cling to most dearly, our slumber, was turned into a deathscape of razors and pain. Wes Craven may have dropped off a bit post-SCREAM, but when it comes to outright mindf*ckery he gave us one of the classics.

7. REPULSION

Leave a man hating, paranoid psychotic up to her own steadily growing agorophobic devices and just see what happens. Under the sure direction of everyone’s favorite kiddie rapist Roman Polanski, Catherine Deneuve gives a great perfomance as a woman slowly breaking down, but then again, maybe just returning to form. People definitely die, though, so that’s good.

8. ALTERED STATES

You know that if you’ve got a movie that not only introduced William Hurt, but also contains one of his oddest roles, it’s gonna be one for the books. The story ends up getting a bit heavy with death of God musings and such going on, but the fun part is all the reality shifting, drug induced, sensory deprevation experimentation. Grab yourself a lava lamp and check this sucker out.

9. BRAIN DEAD

Possibly the trippiest thing about this bastard (not Peter Jackson’s) is that it stars both Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. On top of that, there’s all kinds of boogeying with brain extraction, confused center of reality and did I mention the surplus of Bill’s? It’s not exactly a tour de force when it comes to the direction, but the story content more than makes up for it.

10. DREAMSCAPE

Back in the day when Dennis Quaid was still the hot young actor on the Hollywood scene he popped up in this underappreciated flick about government sponsored dream assassins. You can imagine that since a large portion of the movie deals with people moving through dream states it gets weird, especially since personal nightmares and Freudian histories get manipulated early and often. Sweet dreams.