'Trippy' Horror Movie Recommendations

July 18, 2024 3:54 PM

My wife is looking for horror movie recommendations. She's looking for more obscure stuff, trippy/weird - the best description of what she wants that she can give me is "The kind of movie Tool would make if they were making a horror movie."

Since I'm too scared to go near much horror, and I basically know nothing about Tool, I'm at something of a disadvantage here and was hoping people might be able to come up with some suggestions.

Content-wise she's pretty much okay with anything happening to people but definitely DOESN'T want anything bad happening to dogs.

Any thoughts, please, anyone?

posted by eternalhedgehog to Media & Arts (56 answers total)

I haven't listened to Tool since I was 17 so I may be missing the mark on what counts as trippy, but. The Endless is a very excellent and unusual horror(?) sci fi(?) something(?) movie that a lot of folks haven't seen, and that's a shame. I'd stick it right at the top of the list.

It's been a minute but I think there's a dog in a stressful situation, but I don't think the dog is physically harmed.
posted by phunniemee at 3:59 PM on July 18 [3 favorites]

When I think Tool, I think dark, angry, and somewhat forlorn. So I'm not sure if trippy/weird goes with Tool so much.

Barbarian
The Invitation (2015)
The Descent
Smile
Color out of Space (HP Lovecraft) (something bad may happen to a dog here)

Can she name other horror movies she's liked?
posted by miasma at 4:05 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks, both.

Miasma - a few she gave as a sample of what she likes/seem to kinda hit the vibe that she's going for - Dust Devil, Shadow of the Vampire, The Lighthouse, and Lars Von Trier's TV series The Kingdom.
posted by eternalhedgehog at 4:13 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

Trippy horror makes me think of Ken Russell, specifically Gothic, a VERY gonzo fictionalized retelling of the fateful house party that led to Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein and John Polidori writing The Vampyre.
posted by merriment at 4:14 PM on July 18 [5 favorites]

I'm not much of a horror fan, but I adore Tigers Are Not Afraid. Trippy, yes, and well steeped in a gritty magical realism.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:22 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

absolutely 100% Mandy
posted by capnsue at 4:25 PM on July 18 [16 favorites]

A Field in England
posted by chrisulonic at 4:29 PM on July 18 [7 favorites]

So Dust Devil is Richard Stanley, as is Color out of Space.
The Lighthouse is also somewhat cosmic horror.
Given The Lighthouse, I would recommend:
Mother!
Infinity Pool
Possibly Midsommar
posted by miasma at 4:30 PM on July 18 [3 favorites]

Your update helps a lot, hedge!

My recs here are kind of all over the place but I bet she'll like at least one:

Infinity Pool
Talk To Me (some people are reporting bad feelings about a dog "makeout" scene)
All Jacked Up and Full of Worms
any Brothers Quay
Relic
Antiviral
Parents (1989)
Dave Made A Maze
Slaxx (better than it looks, I swear)
Us

and remember that you can always check www.doesthedogdie.com for further details about potential issues like this!
posted by queensissy at 4:37 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

I forgot Murder Party - with the caveat that a dog does eat something it shouldn't
posted by queensissy at 4:40 PM on July 18

The trippiest horror movie I've seen recently has got to be Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes (2021), which is an homage to 70s euro-horror like Jean Rollin but also sort of shifts gears into, uh, multiple forms of homage and gets trippier and trippier. I loved it, and it's free there on Tubi if you're in the US.

Looking at some Tool videos, though, I wonder if she'd like Mad God (2021), which is a Shudder original that was too non-stop trippy for me but might be perfect here, or the Quay Brothers' Street of Crocodiles (1986), or even Vordum: Price of Death (2018), a microbudget stop motion film free on Youtube that's more fantasy/action than horror but not not horror.

Casting a wider net, my thoughts go to Cuadecuc, Vampir (1971), House (1977), Suspiria (1977), and Titane (2021) for different kinds of trippy. Or, again, anything by Jean Rollin, though my favorite film by him is the less trippy zombie film The Grapes of Death (1978)--much more serious than it sounds.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:41 PM on July 18 [11 favorites]

Oh boy, what a great question! I can show you such horror delights (oh wait, someone said that in a horror movie didn't they?)

I don't know Tool well, but to me it definitely feels trippy, operatic and creative in sound design, so:

- Come True (Canadian film with amazing visuals and soundtrack, some scenes feel poetic, others creepy, but definitely atmospheric)
- Suspiria (Dario Argento's masterpiece, amazing colours, visceral horror and trippy visuals. It has a scene with a dog, but the dog is not the victim....)
- Beyond the black rainbow (the first feature by the director of Mandy, more like sci-fi with a horror tinge, but super-trippy visuals and sounds). Mandy is bloodier and more violent. Rainbow is more cerebral and trippy....
- Amer (modern giallo in the vein of Dawn breaks behind the eyes)
- The Endless, Resolution and Something In the Dirt, three movies by the same directors that are part of their shared horror universe and definitely trippy. Archive 81 is by them as well, but is a TV series with the same horror/supernatural vibe.
- El Conde (Spain's Franco as an immortal flying vampire, trippy and funny)
- Monolith (existential horror about a podcaster's fatal discovery)
- No one will save you (near silent alien invasion survival horror with a single female protagonist)
- Masking Threshold, Broadcast Signal Intrusion and Ultrasound (three different horror movies that involve sound and video as the driver)
- And ultimately, the Thing (1982 version, the trippy classic horror of all classics! Sadly, the dogs are victims there, but in such a trippy way. Say no more....)

More to come, I'm sure.

Wobbuffet, are we twins separated at birth?
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 5:22 PM on July 18 [5 favorites]

Hausu (1977). Also, dig around Tubi’s archives for a while. It’s teeming with…well, every kind of movie you could want.
posted by meowmeowdream at 5:31 PM on July 18 [5 favorites]

Maybe Jacob's Ladder? "The film stars Tim Robbins as Jacob Singer, an American postman whose experiences before and during his military service in Vietnam result in strange, fragmentary visions and bizarre hallucinations that continue to haunt him. " I saw it in high school after staying awake for 24 hours and that was NOT A GOOD IDEA. But it might match your parameters.
posted by true at 5:47 PM on July 18 [12 favorites]

If she likes Tool videos then the filmmaker you're looking is Jan Svankmajer. Alice, Little Odit, and Faust in particular.
posted by dobbs at 6:18 PM on July 18 [7 favorites]

I'm back for a few more:

- Under the skin (enigmatic, atmospheric, super trippy and Tool-like, Scarlett Johansson is surprisingly good in it)
- Saint Maud (religious horrror with a devastating ending)
- Daughter of Horror (1955) and Carnival of Souls (1968) two very trippy and atmospheric horror movies, more surreal, like dreams
- David Lynch's Fire Walk with Me, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive all check the trippy, horror, with inventive visuals and sounds
- Messiah of Evil (unforgettable visual flair, great horror vignettes, if Tool played in the 1970's they would have made this)
- Let's all go to the world's fair and I saw the TV glow (two by a talented trans film maker with amazing visual flair, they explore the trippy horror space of contemporary media/internet culture and function as poetic horror visions of gender/self dysphoria. Will get under your skin and no dogs harmed)
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 6:26 PM on July 18 [4 favorites]

Oops!
We're all going to the world's fair, not Let's all go to the world's fair!
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 6:40 PM on July 18

If she has Netflix, consider The Fall of the House of Usher miniseries.
posted by SPrintF at 6:41 PM on July 18 [4 favorites]

Cure (1997), and seconding Under The Skin.

I will say if by Tool you mean the music videos, creepy claymation = Svankmajer. His Alice legit creeped me out.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:44 PM on July 18

Videodrome (1983)
posted by Rash at 7:34 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

"The Cell" and "I Saw the TV Glow"
posted by signsofrain at 7:51 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]

+1 under the skin, mother!, suspiria, jacob's ladder.

clockwork orange
pi
I think def midsommer
stoker is creepy and surreal af
I thought cabin in the woods was a mindfuck
posted by j_curiouser at 8:03 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

Begotten. Begotten. Begotten. Seriously, Begotten.
posted by goatdog at 8:50 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

David Lynch's Fire Walk with Me, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive all check the trippy, horror, with inventive visuals and sounds

If you're new to Lynch, however, I'd suggest skipping Fire Walk With Me (unless you really get in to his Twin Peaks TV series) and delaying Eraserhead for awhile and instead starting with Mulholland Drive or even better, Blue Velvet. It's really his masterpiece.
posted by Rash at 9:08 PM on July 18

Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now from 1974, with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland.
posted by Rash at 9:17 PM on July 18

'Skinamarink' might be appealing? No dogs, but it does have kids getting hurt. It's definitely a bit of a mindfuck.
posted by BeeJiddy at 10:04 PM on July 18

+1 for the 1977 Suspiria.
posted by terretu at 11:28 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]

Nicholas Cage can be pretty trippy! Check out Willie's Wonderland and Mandy
posted by SweetLiesOfBokonon at 11:50 PM on July 18

If you're new to Lynch, however, I'd suggest ... delaying Eraserhead for awhile

Aw hell no. Eraserhead was my introduction to Lynch's work and the only reason I looked at any of the rest of it in the first place. I don't think he or anybody else has ever matched its deep, deep creepiness.
posted by flabdablet at 1:01 AM on July 19

+1 for Pi. hits obscure/weird. arguable Tool connection: manifestations of mathematical patterns. math: the deepest cosmic horror.

Hereditary? good soundtrack. scarier than peter rabbit.
posted by are-coral-made at 2:31 AM on July 19

Phil Tippett's beautifully bleak and cruelly dystopian stop-motion animated film Mad God (trailer). 92% at RT, with an understandable 68% from the audience because it's just too fucking bleak after a while. I had to break it up into separate viewings to slowly dole out the unrelenting cruelty of the world Tippett created over 30 years (!) of working on the film, but goddamn it's the trippiest film I've seen in years. The animation is amazing. Tippett won Oscars for his work on Jurassic Park and Return of the Jedi, and Mad God was a labor of love for decades. Streaming on AMC+/Shudder, and Hoopla if your library has that, and rentable a bunch of other places.
posted by mediareport at 3:38 AM on July 19 [3 favorites]

A few I didn't see mentioned yet (you may want to do your own diligence on dog safely, I'm pretty sure these are all cool but not 100%). These probably all fall into the category of you're either gonna love it or wonder what my problem is that I suggested it, but I think a lot of trippy horror is...

I'm super surprised no one has recommended Possession yet. Whether she loves or hates it, a must for the weird-horror enthusiast.

Also:
Caveat
A Quiet Place in the Country
Men
The Outwaters
Alucarda
Santa Sangre
posted by hilatron at 4:17 AM on July 19

Another vote for Hausu (1977) mentioned above, one of the most remarkable film discoveries that I've seen in ages.
posted by ovvl at 5:24 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

From Beyond!
posted by evilmonk at 7:06 AM on July 19 [2 favorites]

I'm super surprised no one has recommended Possession yet. Whether she loves or hates it, a must for the weird-horror enthusiast.

Seconding the rec for Possession! It's really unlike any other horror-thriller I've ever seen, and the performances by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill (as a psychotically fractious married couple on the splits) are maybe the craziest I've seen from either actor in anything *ever*.

Possession was also SUPER-HARD to find on streaming in the US until just the past year or two, but it is now readily available on Shudder, as well as the free public library streaming services Kanopy and Hoopla.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:24 AM on July 19 [2 favorites]

I also strongly suggest Don Coscarelli's Phantasm series -- each of the films contains some wild new twist on the franchise and are gloriously trippy and insane even with some fairly low production values. Coscarelli is also responsible for the Bruce Campbell/Ossie Davis starring Bubba Ho-Tep as well as the film adaptation of Jason Pargin's comic horror novel John Dies At The End, both great cult horror comedies of the last 20-odd years.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:34 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

So many great recs!

Since the look of most of Tool's vids came from Adam Jones's mind, it might be fun to have a night of movies he worked for on the art department.
posted by haplesschild at 8:16 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

I am somehow personally invested in you watching Mandy.

And given the context, I think Eraserhead should definitely be the Lynch film you start with.
posted by Number Used Once at 8:24 AM on July 19 [3 favorites]

'A Wounded Fawn' might work
posted by Selena777 at 8:58 AM on July 19

came in to recommend Dawn Breaks Behind the Eyes. its SO.WEIRD. definitely doing a trippy giallo style thing. Dieter! Margot!
posted by supermedusa at 9:08 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

Bliss is a great one!
posted by tiny frying pan at 9:27 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Really appreciate all the suggestions here - thank you so much, everyone! Adding a bunch of stuff to her watchlist (and trying to work out which ones I think I can cope with, lol.) She's a huge Bruce Campbell fan (she loves Evil Dead) and adored Bubba Ho-Tep, so Phantasm is definitely jumping to the top of the list, but tons of stuff mentioned looks great. Thanks again!
posted by eternalhedgehog at 10:07 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

House at the End of Time. Seemingly straight forward horror that takes some trippy twists.

We are the Flesh. In a post-apocalyptic world, twin brother and sisters stumble into what they think is an abandoned warehouse. They discover a madman, who is building a new reality out of duct tape and plaster,
posted by zerobyproxy at 10:07 AM on July 19

You can use the website Does the Dog Die to check if it has deal breakers.
posted by Iteki at 10:16 AM on July 19

Tetsuo: The Iron Man
Singapore Sling
posted by indexy at 10:22 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

Not sure these fit the bill or not, but they all have unique takes and are horror-adjacent, and I could see Maynard getting inspiration from these.

Absentia 2011 88%

The Babadook 2014 98%

Nocturne 2020 63%

Violet 2021 82%

Stopmotion 2023 91%
posted by Pig Tail Orchestra at 11:19 AM on July 19

Altered States?
posted by alexandermatheson at 11:23 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]

I can't get past the trippy/weird request, and this one fits: The Love Witch from 2016. It's a homage to 1960 technicolor, down to the fact it was made and cut on film...it's a gorgeous movie, full of odd 60's era drug effects and trippy/hallucinatory visuals. It's very camp, and very 1960s era sexy. Thinking of Tool, I think Maynard would like it.
posted by griffey at 11:32 AM on July 19 [6 favorites]

Children of the Stones is a 1977 British TV series (seven episodes, all on YouTube). Super creepy and weird, especially considering it was made for children!

The original 1973 The Wicker Man.

Witchfinder General (1968) and The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971).
posted by goo at 4:11 PM on July 19 [1 favorite]

In Fabric
A lonely divorcee visits a bewitching London department store to find a dress to transform her life. She soon finds a perfect, artery-red gown that unleashes a malevolent, unstoppable curse.
posted by macska at 5:03 PM on July 19 [2 favorites]

If she's open to a TV show, NBC Hannibal starts off as a police procedural and ends up trippy, arty, and operatic.
posted by Mournful Bagel Song at 4:37 AM on July 20

Mandy has my strongest recommendation. Most of the movie feels like a bad acid trip.

Possessor by Brandon Cronenberg is one that hasn't been mentioned yet. It's not what I'd call a fun watch but it is excellent. It's trippy in that it deals with concepts of identity and self and what it does to a person when their livelihood is literally becoming someone else and then absolutely destroying that person's life. He explores similar themes in Infinity Pool but I think Possessor is the stronger film.

If you want ecological horror In The Earth (by Ben Wheatley whose A Field In England recommended above is required viewing for trippiness) is worth watching, though it doesn't quite pull it all together as a whole.

On the more scifi end, Phase IV is about ants becoming a hive mind and communicating with humanity in the Arizona desert. It gets especially trippy at the end, which isn't too surprising as it was directed by graphic designer Saul Bass (title designer for most of Hitchcock's films).
posted by slimepuppy at 1:30 AM on July 23 [1 favorite]

If you are still looking, I will add New Religion (2022), a Japanese movie with trippy red-tinged visuals and drone like music that might feel a bit Tool like.

It's a little bit Bergman-esque, but with a post-punk sensibilility, and it touches on grief, redemption, dreams and fantasies, ghosts and insects, with a finishing touch of Haruki Murakami (or is it Ryu Murakami).....

PS. Let us know what you ended up watching, and what you both thought!
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 7:41 PM on July 25 [1 favorite]

Oh my goodness! I was born for this moment. Obscure stuff, trippy/weird is the jam I keep in my wheelhouse.

First of all: Mandy is a straight up cinematic masterpiece and I can (and will!) go on for hours about it. Also add my voice to Under the Skin and The Love Witch

Some great recs above! I'll try to add a few, sorry if I repeat a previous.


- Berberian Sound Studio
- Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (Spanish Film)
- City of Lost Children (French Film)
- Existenz
- John Dies in the End
- Koko-Di, Koko-Da (Swedish film)
- Motivational Growth (Very B, but weirdly compelling)
- Paperhouse
- Snowflake (German film)
- Sorry to Bother You
- The Bad Batch (by Lily Amirpour, who also did A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night)
- The Cube (Jim Henson, 1969!)
- The Exterminating Angle (1962, Luis Bunuel)
- The Ninth Configuration (William Blatty calls it the true sequel to the Exorcist)
- The Wolf House (Warning, contains autobiographical trauma)
- Nightwatch & Daywatch (Russian Films)
- The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)
- One Shot of the Dead (Japanese film)(Horror? Horror adjacent)
- Rubber
- Dead Ringers
- Delicatessen (French Film)
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Does relationship horror count?)
- Taxidermia (Hungarian movie)
- The Happiness of the Katakuris (Japanese film, Takashi Miike)
- The Wild Boys (French film, some graphic sex violence)
- Annihilation
- High-Rise
- Dark City
- Event Horizon
- A Clockwork Orange

Some TV recs (horror, horror adjacent, much weirdness):

- Maniac (Netflix, 2018)
- Dreamcorp, LLC (Adult Swim, iirc)
- I'm a Virgo (Amazon)
- Legion (FX)
- Russian Doll (Netflix)
- Severance (AppleTV)
- True Detective (Season 1)
- The Prisoner (1967)

Something in this list to offend everyone!

A few of these are pretty hard to find, Kanopy.com is a good starting point.

If The Kingdom, for a laugh, follow up with: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
posted by chromecow at 2:10 AM on July 28

I'm going to add:

- The Hourglass Sanatorium (Polish film)

Because it definitely fits the trippy, and because it has the best Polish movie poster of all time.

As far as I can tell, the only US distributor of this film is music importer called Mr. Bongo.

While you're there, you can also find The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), which, when viewed from different angles is,

- A horror story (supernatural/psychological)
- A Swashbuckler
- A Bodice Ripper
- A Farce
- The Spanish Inquisition (unexpected)

With a deeply nested fractal story structure.
posted by chromecow at 2:42 AM on July 28 [2 favorites]

Wow, great additions, chromecow!

As long as we're keeping this list going, how about some multiple bills to make an evening of it (and maybe have to sleep with the lights on afterwards):

A repeat from above as a quadruple bill with Berberian Film Studio (great choice):
- Ultrasound
- Broadcast Signal Incursion
- Masking Threshold

More Japanese weirdness triple bill:
- Uzumaki
- Kairo (aka Pulse)
- Alice in Borderland (TV miniseries)

As a double bill with The Love Witch
- The Duke of Burgundy (also by Berberian's director - maybe more psychological horror)
posted by Bigbootay. Tay! Tay! Blam! Aargh... at 11:54 PM on August 1