Best movies like Brand Upon the Brain!
Last updated March 2024
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Plot Summary:
Together with his teenage sister and a horde of orphans, young Guy Maddin lazes away his under-stimulated youth on the mysterious island he will someday inherit. In the lighthouse orphanage in which they all live, their every move is watched over by their overbearing and tyrannical mother while their father, a scientist and inventor, works away secretively in the basement. When new adoptive parents discover mysterious head wounds on their children, teen detectives Wendy and Chance Hale - brother and sister sleuths known as the "Lightbulb Kids" - visit the island to launch an investigation. As the investigation progresses, the kids are led into the darkest regions of revelation and repression as the terrible secrets of Guy's family are revealed.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, avant garde, experimental, psychological, atmospheric, black and white, cerebral, mind bending, psychedelic
Best tv shows and movies like Brand Upon the Brain! (2006):
Similar in 80%
Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)
Plot Summary:
Story of Guy Maddin, hockey player for the Maroons, and son of a local hairdresser/abortion doctor. Guy tries to overcome his own cowardice (and multiple head-knocks) as he navigates through a dream-like Winnipeg.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Drama, Romance
Country: Canada
Duration: 60 min
Plot tags: surreal, romantic, psychological, atmospheric, suspenseful, mind bending, dark comedy, black and white, psychedelic, cerebral
Similar in 89%
The Aerial (2007)
Plot Summary:
La Antena (English: The Aerial, 2007) is an Argentine drama film, written and directed by acclaimed film director Esteban Sapir. The film features Alejandro Urdapilleta, Rafael Ferro, Florencia Raggi, and others. The movie begins with a pair of hands typing on a typewriter. The denizens of a nameless city "in the year XX" have lost their voices. People communicate by mouthing out words that are spelled mid-air. The only person who has kept the use of her voice is La Voz ("the voice"), a singer working for the sole TV channel broadcast in the city, run by Mr. TV, who desires La Voz. La Voz wears a hood over her head that hides away her face. She has a son called Tomás, an eyeless little kid who nonetheless also has a voice (although this is kept a secret). Tomás lives next door to Ana, whom he one day befriends after a letter addressed to his house is erroneously delivered to hers.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 4000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Country: Argentina
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: surreal, silent, atmospheric, serious, suspenseful, expressionism, black and white, experimental, retro, mind bending
Similar in 86%
Dr. Caligari (1989)
Plot Summary:
Mrs. Van Houten has shown signs of losing touch with reality, and her husband discusses possible treatment with Dr. Caligari, who says Mrs. Van Houten has a disease of the libido.
IMDB Rating: 6.2
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 80 min
Plot tags: independent film, mind bending, psychedelic, experimental, surreal, disturbing, controversial, psychotronic, horror comedy, cult classic
Similar in 77%
Reflections of Evil (2002)
Plot Summary:
Julie, a teen who died from a PCP overdose in the early '70s searches from beyond the grave for her younger brother Bob who now in the '90s is an obese watch seller suffering with sucrose intolerance.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 711
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA
Duration: 138 min
Plot tags: surreal, rough, mind bending, serious, suspenseful, scary, atmospheric, psychedelic, suspense, dark
Similar in 90%
Poison (1991)
Plot Summary:
Three intercut stories about outsiders, sex and violence. In "Hero," Richie, at age 7, kills his father and flies away. After the event, a documentary in cheesy lurid colors asks what Richie was like and what led up to the shooting. In the black and white "Horror," a scientist isolates the elixir of human sexuality, drinks it, and becomes a festering, contagious murderer; a female colleague who loves him tries to help, to her peril. In "Homo," a prisoner in Fontenal prison is drawn to an inmate whom he knew some years before, at Baton juvenile institute, and whose humiliations he witnessed. This story is told in dim light, except for the bright flashbacks.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Horror, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 85 min
Plot tags: disturbing, surreal, anthology, avant garde, independent film, controversial, enigmatic, cult classic, sexual, allegory
Similar in 75%
Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988)
Plot Summary:
While their mother is dying in the modern Gimli, Manitoba hospital, two young children are told an important tale by their Icelandic grandmother about Ainar the lonely, his friend Gunnar, and the angelic Snjofrieder in a Gimli of old.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 1000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller
Country: Canada
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: surreal, black and white, avant garde, mind bending, psychedelic, suspense, dark, experimental, controversial, deep
Similar in 85%
Escape from Tomorrow (2013)
Plot Summary:
In a world of fake castles and anthropomorphic rodents, an epic battle begins when an unemployed father's sanity is challenged by a chance encounter with two underage girls on holiday.
IMDB Rating: 5.1
IMDB Votes: 10000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Horror
Country: USA
Duration: 90 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, psychedelic, enigmatic, black and white, atmospheric, stylized, scary, underground film, horror comedy
Similar in 84%
Careful (1992)
Plot Summary:
In the remote Alpine village of Tolzbad at the turn of the century, people talk quietly and restrain their movements lest avalanches come and kill them. This atmosphere lends itself to repressed emotions - shown through the parallel stories of butler student Johann lusting after his mother (an old flame of the mysterious Count Knotkers) and Klara's attraction to her father (who lusts after his other daughter), leading to duels and suicidal plunges galore. All this is shot in the style of an early German sound film, complete with intertitles, deliberately crackly soundtrack and 'hand-tinted' colour effects.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Horror, Romance
Country: Canada
Duration: 100 min
Plot tags: surreal, cult classic, atmospheric, experimental, disturbing, stylized, mindfuck, avant garde, mind bending, psychedelic
Similar in 86%
Leolo (1992)
Plot Summary:
The story of an imaginative boy who pretends he is the child of a sperm-laden Sicilian tomato upon which his mother accidentally fell.
IMDB Rating: 7.4
IMDB Votes: 7000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Canada, France
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, art house, humorous, dark comedy, erotic, mind bending, psychedelic, epic, controversial
Similar in 81%
Begotten (1989)
Plot Summary:
Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.
IMDB Rating: 5.6
IMDB Votes: 12000
Genere: Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA
Duration: 72 min
Plot tags: surreal, avant garde, disturbing, experimental, atmospheric, independent film, controversial, black and white, postmodern, mindfuck
Similar in 76%
Cremaster 3 (2002)
Plot Summary:
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 2000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 182 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, atmospheric, stylized, serious, thought provoking, psychedelic, disturbing, independent film, avant garde
Similar in 82%
Rabbits (2002)
Plot Summary:
A story of a group of humanoid rabbits and their depressive, daily life. The plot includes Suzie ironing, Jane sitting on a couch, Jack walking in and out of the apartment, and the occasional solo singing number by Suzie or Jane. At one point the rabbits also make contact with their “leader”.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 8000
Genere: Short, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 43 min
Plot tags: surreal, avant garde, psychological, atmospheric, experimental, mind bending, offbeat, psychedelic, art house, dark
Similar in 76%
John Dies at the End (2012)
Plot Summary:
A new drug promises out-of-body experiences, but users are coming back changed forever, and an otherworldly invasion of Earth is underway.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 40000
Genere: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 99 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, absurd, offbeat, not serious, dark comedy, atmospheric, enigmatic, horror comedy, cult classic
Similar in 88%
Gummo (1997)
Plot Summary:
Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.
IMDB Rating: 6.6
IMDB Votes: 38000
Genere: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: disturbing, surreal, dark comedy, experimental, independent film, art house, bleak, psychedelic, offbeat, erotic
Similar in 75%
Holy Motors (2012)
Plot Summary:
We follow 24 hours in the life of a being moving from life to life like a cold and solitary assassin moving from hit to hit. In each of these interwoven lives, the being possesses an entirely distinct identity: sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes youthful, sometimes old. By turns murderer, beggar, company chairman, monstrous creature, worker, family man.
IMDB Rating: 7.0
IMDB Votes: 48000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy
Country: France, Germany, Belgium
Duration: 115 min
Plot tags: surreal, art house, psychedelic, cerebral, mindfuck, enigmatic, disturbing, atmospheric, experimental, artsy
Similar in 77%
Santa Sangre (1989)
Plot Summary:
A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre ("Holy Blood"), and then commit suicide. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 23000
Genere: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Country: Mexico, Italy
Duration: 123 min
Plot tags: surreal, disturbing, psychedelic, dark, atmospheric, psychological, art house, mindfuck, creepy, cult classic
Similar in 83%
The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973)
Plot Summary:
Set in pre- World War II era. A young man is on a strange train to see his dying father in a sanatorium. But the place is going to ruin and recalls a lot of memories from the past. He is beset by soldiers from the past, colonial black mercenaries, girls from his early life, and his parents. It is an interior adventure, with unusual atmospheric flair and extraordinary sets.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 5000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: Poland
Duration: 124 min
Plot tags: surreal, mind bending, psychological, psychedelic, dark, mindfuck, disturbing, existential, philosophical, slasher
Similar in 84%
Eraserhead (1977)
Plot Summary:
Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 125000
Genere: Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA
Duration: 89 min
Plot tags: surreal, avant garde, art house, psychological, disturbing, psychedelic, experimental, atmospheric, black and white, dark
Similar in 76%
Tideland (2005)
Plot Summary:
Because of the actions of her irresponsible parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination.
IMDB Rating: 6.3
IMDB Votes: 34000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Country: UK, Canada
Duration: 120 min
Plot tags: disturbing, surreal, psychedelic, bleak, dark fantasy, atmospheric, psychological, controversial, cult classic, mindfuck
Similar in 85%
The Bothersome Man (2006)
Plot Summary:
Forty-year-old Andreas arrives in a strange city with no memory of how he got there. He is presented with a job, an apartment - even a wife. But before long, Andreas notices that something is wrong. Andreas makes an attempt to escape the city, but he discovers there's no way out. Andreas meets Hugo, who has found a crack in a wall in his cellar. Beautiful music streams out from the crack. Maybe it leads to "the other side"? A new plan for escape is hatched.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: Norway, Iceland
Duration: 95 min
Plot tags: surreal, enigmatic, psychological, psychedelic, philosophical, mindfuck, art house, suspenseful, dark comedy, dark
Similar in 82%
Taxidermia (2006)
Plot Summary:
Three generations of men, including a pervert that constantly seeks for new kinds of satisfaction, an obese speed eater and a passionate embalmer.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 18000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Horror
Country: Hungary, Austria, France
Duration: 94 min
Plot tags: disturbing, dark comedy, surreal, controversial, cult classic, offbeat, art house, humorous, semi serious, erotic
Similar in 82%
Swiss Army Man (2016)
Plot Summary:
Alone on a tiny deserted island, Hank has given up all hope of ever making it home again. But one day everything changes when a dead body washes ashore, and he soon realizes it may be his last opportunity to escape certain death. Armed with his new “friend” and an unusual bag of tricks, the duo go on an epic adventure to bring Hank back to the woman of his dreams.
IMDB Rating: 6.9
IMDB Votes: 131000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: USA
Duration: 97 min
Plot tags: surreal, buddy comedy, touching, mindfuck, dark comedy, humorous, psychological, philosophical, breathtaking, dark
Similar in 81%
Ink (2009)
Plot Summary:
Invisible forces exert power over us in our sleep. A mercenary named Ink, on a literal nightmare mission, captures the spirit of 8-year-old Emma in the dream world. To save her, the dream-givers marshal all their resources, focusing on saving the soul of Emma's tragically broken father.
IMDB Rating: 6.8
IMDB Votes: 22000
Genere: Action, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 107 min
Plot tags: surreal, dark fantasy, atmospheric, mind bending, enigmatic, fairy tale, serious, clever, visually appealing, independent film
Similar in 79%
The Science of Sleep (2006)
Plot Summary:
A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 71000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: France, Italy
Duration: 105 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychedelic, psychological, philosophical, mind bending, intellectual, meditative, visually appealing, cerebral, mindfuck
Similar in 89%
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Plot Summary:
Spike Jonze’s debut feature film is a love story mix of comedy and fantasy. The story is about an unsuccessful puppeteer named Craig, who one day at work finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters it’s mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 349000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: USA
Duration: 113 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychological, cerebral, mind bending, offbeat, mindfuck, philosophical, dark comedy, disturbing, black comedy
Similar in 84%
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Plot Summary:
Nemo Nobody leads an ordinary existence with his wife and 3 children; one day, he wakes up as a mortal centenarian in the year 2092.
IMDB Rating: 7.7
IMDB Votes: 243000
Genere: Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: Belgium, Germany, Canada, France, UK, Luxembourg, USA
Duration: 141 min
Plot tags: psychological, surreal, philosophical, mind bending, thought provoking, confusing, cerebral, mind blowing, reflective, offbeat
Similar in 79%
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Plot Summary:
Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.
IMDB Rating: 8.3
IMDB Votes: 11000000
Genere: Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Duration: 108 min
Plot tags: psychological, surreal, melancholic, romantic, mind bending, sentimental, philosophical, cerebral, psychedelic, clever
Similar in 75%
Pi (1998)
Plot Summary:
The debut film from Darren Aronofsky in which a mathematical genius Maximilian Cohen discovers a link in the connection between numbers and reality and thus believes he can predict the future.
IMDB Rating: 7.3
IMDB Votes: 185000
Genere: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Country: USA
Duration: 84 min
Plot tags: surreal, psychological, cerebral, black and white, mind bending, independent film, atmospheric, psychedelic, philosophical, dark
Similar in 84%
The City of Lost Children (1995)
Plot Summary:
A scientist in a surrealist society kidnaps children to steal their dreams, hoping that they slow his aging process.
IMDB Rating: 7.5
IMDB Votes: 71000
Genere: Adventure, Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Country: France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, USA
Duration: 112 min
Plot tags: surreal, atmospheric, art house, stylized, gothic, disturbing, mindfuck, visual, visually stunning, mind bending
Similar in 77%
Arizona Dream (1993)
Plot Summary:
An Innuit hunter races his sled home with a fresh-caught halibut. This fish pervades the entire film, in real and imaginary form. Meanwhile, Axel tags fish in New York as a naturalist's gofer. He's happy there, but a messenger arrives to bring him to Arizona for his uncle's wedding. It's a ruse to get Axel into the family business. In Arizona, Axel meets two odd women: vivacious, needy, and plagued by neuroses and familial discord. He gets romantically involved with one, while the other, rich but depressed, plays accordion tunes to a gaggle of pet turtles.
IMDB Rating: 7.2
IMDB Votes: 45000
Genere: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Country: France, USA
Duration: 142 min
Plot tags: surreal, art house, melancholic, atmospheric, humorous, semi serious, dark comedy, cult classic, erotic, funny