Hypnotic, a Netflix original film released in 2021, delves into the worlds of hypnotism and psychological terror. In Hypnotic, viewers follow Jenn Tompson, an anxious and unmotivated woman dealing with a recent separation with her fiancee Brian and the emotional sorrow of a miscarriage. The notion of losing time and being controlled instils a sense of dread in people viewing. While also implying that we may not know what our thoughts are up to and that we may lose our sense of ourselves. We have some films similar to Hypnotic if you’re looking for more mind-bending thrillers with captivating dread.
1. Gothika (2003)
Director- Mathieu Kassovitz
Dr. Miranda Grey is a psychiatrist who works in the mental institution sector, in a penitentiary. Dr. Douglas Grey, the chief of department where Dr. Pete Graham also works, is her husband. Dr. Miranda’s patient Chloe Sava alleges that the devil in her cell raped her while she gets abuse by her stepfather. Dr. Miranda has a car accident after leaving the asylum on a stormy night. When she wakes up, she is an inmate of the institution, accused of a heinous crime and with no memory of the occurrence.
2. Distorted (2018)
Director- Rob W King
Lauren and Russell Curran choose to relocate from the hustle and bustle of the city to the Pinnacle. A sought-after luxury skyscraper with ultramodern design, cutting-edge technology, and cutting-edge security. When Lauren suspects the building has a dark side, she turns to Vernon. An investigative journalist who gets interest in cyber conspiracy. They come to the conclusion that the Pinnacle is possibly brainwashing the occupants.
3. Get Out (2017)
Director- Jordan Peele
During a weekend in their Lake Pontaco mansion, Chris Washington, a skilled young African-American photographer, prepares to meet his Caucasian fiancée Rose Armitage’s parents. Chris and Rose had been dating for five months, and the Armitages have no idea that their daughter’s sweetheart is African chevalier. When Chris eventually meets Rose’s mother, a hypnotic psychiatrist, and her father, a neurosurgeon, he will quickly see that the family is surround by black servants in the utter privacy of their gorgeous, yet remote estate in the woods. The uncomfortable mood combined with sheer fear will quickly disrupt the family’s peaceful façade as the cordial and polite atmosphere gives way to an unidentifiable, rather unrecognisable danger.
4. Jacob’s Ladder (1990)
Director- Adrian Lyne
Jacob Singer, an American soldier, gets injure by a bayonet during an attack on his squad in Vietnam on October 6, 1971. He wakes up late at night in a New York subway after working overtime at the post office. He gets divorce from Sarah, lives in a modest Brooklyn apartment with his colleague and lover Jezebel, and misses his little son Gabe, who died in an accident for which Jacob feels guilty. Jacob is pursue by demons and discovers an army plot against him over the following few days, while also seeing bizarre visions at various points in his life.
5. Shutter Island (2010)
Director- Martin Scorsese
Troubled US Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new sidekick, Chuck Aule, head to Ashecliffe Hospital, Shutter Island’s fortress asylum for the criminally ill, to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of a demented child-murderer. Soon, inexplicable nuances of medical negligence appear behind the gloomy purgatory’s thick stone walls, implying that the institution’s enigmatic top psychiatrists must be concealing something. Then, in the dark off-shore prison, a violent storm trapped patients and investigators alike, triggering Teddy’s severe headaches and grisly recollections from the past.
6. I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (2020)
Director- Charlie Kaufman
Despite her reservations about their relationship, a young woman travels to his family’s farm with her new partner. While stuck at the farm with Jake’s mother and father during a snowstorm, the young woman begins to doubt everything she thought she knew or understood about her lover, herself, and the world. An examination of sorrow, longing, and the human spirit’s frailty.
7. Equilibrium (2002)
Director- Kurt Wimmer
The world fell under the dominion of Father and the Tetragrammaton at the end of World War III: a government that outlawed all forms of art and emotion. Citizens are compelled to use anti-emotional medications. The Tetragrammaton is always at odds with “Sense Offenders,” citizens who defy the laws and operate underground. With the support of a brutal police force, John Preston is a Cleric, an elite super-soldier whose duty is to hunt out and eliminate Sense Offenders. Preston’s morning dose of emotion suppressing medicine is accidently broken, and he begins to feel. He soon comes to empathise with the Sense Offenders and recognises the value of sensation. Preston devoted his life serving in the government, which would like to see it eliminated.
8. American Ultra (2015)
Director- Nima Nourizadeh
Mike Howell, a stoner from a small town, spends most of his time stoned and composing a comic novel about a superhero monkey. Mike has no idea that he was taught by the CIA to be a lethal killer. His former handler awakens his dormant skills, turning the mild-mannered slacker into a deadly weapon, when the agency targets him for elimination. Mike must now use his newfound talents to save himself and his sweetheart from the CIA’s failed test subjects.
9. The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Director- Jonathan Demme
Sergeant Raymond Shaw saved his fellow soldiers when his army unit was ambushed during the first Gulf War, just as his commanding officer, then-Captain Ben Marco, was knocked unconscious. Shaw becomes a vice presidential nominee after brokering the incident for political gain, while Marco is troubled by nightmares about what happened or didn’t happen in Kuwait. As Marco investigates, the story begins to unravel, and he begins to wonder if it actually happened. Is it feasible that the entire unit was abducted and brainwashed into believing Shaw was a war hero in order to grab the White House? Manchurian Global Corporation appears to be trying to keep him from discovering the truth.
10. Mulholland Drive (2001)
Director- David Lynch
Betty, the wide-eyed actress, arrives in bustling, sun-kissed Hollywood, untarnished by the predatory film industry’s false promises. Betty arrives into Aunt Ruth’s fancy apartment, brimming with hope and ready to prove her worth. Unbeknownst to her, fate has other things in store for her, setting the stage for life-altering experiences with the unexpected, the indecipherable, and the unknown. A strange key to a mysterious keyhole, an even stranger indigo-blue cube, the young director, Adam, and one cryptic woman: the amnesiac brunette and devilishly seductive car-crash survivor, Rita, now lie at the heart of an elaborate labyrinth of half-truths, faded memories, unrequited loves, and dangerous encounters with the city’s ugly face. However, time passes, and Rita’s mysterious history demands answers. Both ladies, after all, are entitled to the truth.
