Lucid Dreaming Movies

David Aames appears to lead a charmed life. Handsome, wealthy and charismatic, the young New York City publishing executive's freewheeling existence is enchanting, yet he seems to be missing something.

Then, one night David meets Sofia, the girl of his dreams, but loses her by making a small mistake. Thrust unexpectedly onto a roller-coaster ride of romance, comedy, suspicion, love, sex and lucid dreams, David finds himself on a mind-bending search for his soul and discovers the precious, ephemeral nature of true love. Strong lucid dreaming themes are present throughout this heartfelt sci-fi drama.

Read my full Vanilla Sky review!

Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream state. He observes and later joins in on philosophical discussions on the appearance of reality, free will, our relationship with others, and the meaning of life. He eventually comes to realize that the reason he can't wake up is that he may be dead - although the ending is left open for interpretation.

The movie was made using a technique called rotoscoping where real life action is overlaid with animation. This adds to the dream-like visual effects. It was nominated for numerous awards for its technical achievements, including Best Animated Film by the New York Film Critics Circle and Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.

The Science of Sleep (or La Science des Reves - literally translated as The Science of Dreams) is a playful romantic fantasy. It is set inside the topsy-turvy brain of Stephane Miroux, an eccentric young French man whose dreams constantly invade his waking life.

Stephane pines for next-door neighbor, Stephanie, but she becomes confused by his childishness and shaky connection to reality. Unable to find the secret to Stephanie's heart while awake, Stephane searches for the answer in his dreams.

This movie features the concepts of lucid dreaming, false awakenings and bizarre inventions like the one-second time machine.

The President of the United States is about to be assassinated in a dream where there is no morning after. Only one man can save him through the phenomenon of mutual dreaming and plunge himself into the President's horrendous nightmare.

Alex Gardner is a psychically gifted young man recruited to help two scientists in an experiment to help patients disturbed by menacing nocturnal illusions. But corrupt high-ranking government official Bob Blair has darker plans for Alex's unusual powers. Soon Alex is propelled inside the President's nightmare, a frightening wasteland of nuclear holocaust, and locked in a fantastic battle that could only happen in a dream. This action-packed science fiction adventure will excite and thrill you with its unusual journey through the mind's most terrifying recesses.

Handsome 25-year-old César has it all - a successful career, expensive cars, a swank bachelor's pad, and an endless string of beautiful and willing women. Unfortunately, he can't get rid of his latest conquest, Nuria soon enough. When she crashes his birthday party, César uses his best friend Pelayo's stunningly attractive girlfriend, Sofia, as a means to avoid her.

The next morning, Nuria is waiting in her car outside his apartment and manages to coax him into the vehicle. The next thing César knows, he's wearing a mask to conceal a horrible disfiguration while being interrogated in a prison held on a murder charge. Alejandro Amenábar's thriller distorts both the viewer's and César's perception of reality with a series of mind-bending plot twists, ensuring that this intriguing Spanish production will keep you guessing until its final moments. This is the original movie on which Vanilla Sky was based.

Bill Murray is at his wisecracking best in this riotous romantic comedy about a weatherman caught in a personal time warp on the worst day of his life. This is a potential play on the bizarre nature of false awakenings.

Teamed with a relentlessly cheerful producer and a smart-aleck cameraman, TV weatherman Phil Connors is sent to Punxsutawney Pennsylvania to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities. But on his way out of town Phil is caught in a giant blizzard which he failed to predict and finds himself stuck in small-town hell.

Just when things couldn't get any worse - they do. Phil wakes the next morning to find it's Groundhog Day all over again... and again... and again...

Computer hacker Neo has lived a relatively ordinary life - in what he thinks is the year 1999 - until he is contacted by the enigmatic Morpheus who leads him into the real world.

In reality, it is 200 years later, and the world has been laid waste and taken over by advanced Artificial Intelligence machines. The computers have created a false version of 20th century life - called the Matrix - to keep the human minds satisfied and use their bodies as a power source. Neo, pursued by Agents (computers who take on human form and infiltrate the Matrix), is hailed as The One who will lead the humans to overthrow the machines and reclaim the Earth.

The Matrix is, in essence, a lucid dream, guided by the AI machines that create the basic rules of the simulated reality. As Neo learns to bend these rules, he discovers that, like inside a lucid dream, anything is possible.

In this lucid dreaming movie, we take a wry look at an obsessed man who will do anything to make his passion-filled dream life a reality. Gary Sheller is caught in a midlife crisis: dead-end job, depressing life and a deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend Dora. That is until he meets Anna - the girl of his dreams.

Able to see her only while asleep, Gary seeks out an expert on lucid dreaming techniques who agrees to help him carry on the most satisfying relationship of his life. But as he continues to shun reality, his waking life troubles worsen in this illuminating dark comedy.

Read a full review of The Good Night by Dan Tea!

In this movie of consciousness and memories, Joel Barish decides to have the memories of his ex-girlfriend erased - after he discovers she's already had him erased from her own memory. But midway through the procedure, he changes his mind and struggles to hang on to their experiences together.

The result is a lucid dream-like romp through the stored unconsious memories of his life. Joel fights the eraser by mixing up memories, trying to force himself awake, and leaving subtle clues for his ex to remember him by. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) spins this idea into a funny, sad, structurally complex, and simply enthralling love story that juggles morality, identity, and heartbreak with skill. The all-star cast gives superb performances. This is one of my favorite movies ever with a great paino soundtrack by Jon Brion.

This science fiction blockbuster began its production life as a very different movie than the one that was released. An adaptation of the Philip K Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," Total Recall was originally conceived of with Richard Dreyfuss starring as a Walter Mitty-like character who experiences a variety of artificially induced fantasies.

The movie we know is a mega-budget action epic set on Mars. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a normal working man who discovers that his entire reality has been invented to conceal a plot of planetary domination. Oscar-winning special effects and violent action propel the twisting plot, in which Arnie manipulates his manipulators in a world of dazzling high technology. Director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) indulges his usual penchant for gratuitous bloodshed, but the movie has enough cleverness to rise above its excesses.

Based on a novel by the noted Japanese science fiction writer Yasutaka Tsutui, the brilliant and unsettling feature Paprika is an exploration of the disturbingly permeable boundaries between dreams and reality.

Techno-geek Kosaku Tokita invented the DC Mini to allow therapists to enter a patient's dreams and explore his unconscious, but an evil cabal uses the Mini to create a mass nightmare that causes multiple suicides. Psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba uses her alter-identity, "dream detective" Paprika, to intervene. Entering the nightmare, she witness a bizarre parade of appliances, toys, and kitsch objects: all of her intelligence and imagination are needed to escape this nightmare and its perpetrators. Paprika effortlessly carries the audience between reality and fantasy: a feast for the eyes.

The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history, Spirited Away is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of animation to create fantasy worlds. An unforgettable story brimming with creativity, it will take you on a journey beyond your imagination.

On the way to their new home, Chihiro and her parents find what they think is a deserted amusement park. Her parents stuff themselves until they mysteriously tranform into pigs, and Chihiro soon discovers they're trapped in a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. In a series of fantastic adventures, she purges a river god suffering from human pollution, rescues the mysterious No-Face, and befriends Yubaba's kindly twin, Zeniba. The result is a moving and magical journey between worlds - totally captivating and wonderful inspiration for lucid dreams.

As a bleak and chilling mood piece, The Machinist gets under your skin and stays there. Christian Bale threw himself into the title role with such devotion that he shed an alarming 63 pounds to play Trevor Reznik, a factory worker who hasn't slept in a year.

Reznik is haunted by some mysterious occurrence that turned him into a paranoid husk, sleepwalking a fine line between harsh reality and lucid nightmare fantasy. The movie presents a grimy, nocturnal world of washed-out blues and grays, as Reznik struggles to assemble the clues of his psychological conundrum. With a friendly hooker and airport waitress as his only stable links to sanity, Trevor reaches critical mass and seems ready to implode just as the plot reveals its secrets. For those who don't mind a trip to hell with a theremin-laced soundtrack, The Machinist seems primed for long-term status as a cult thriller on the edge.