Paranoid movies

[theimposter]

I first watched the 1978, Philip Kaufman directed, remake of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers when I was about 17. At this time in my life I knew that I perhaps loved movies more than the average person might, but was yet to find my feet as someone who knew the difference between something that I merely liked and something that was truly great (at

Comments

[flibble_2000ad]

I love this sort of thing myself too. That paranoid feel can encompass quite a wide range of styles of film too.
A film that you recommended to me springs to mind instantly: The Lives of Others. Paranoia is pretty much the theme there. Then there's the dystopian movies, notably Terry Gilliam's Brazil. The original 1963 version of The Haunting could also fit, and is an amazing film that I like to recommend every chance I get.

A couple of other John Carpenter's that might interest you if you haven't seen them: They Live, a great satire where aliens are already covertly in control, and In The Mouth of Madness, a bizarre Lovecraft inspired film about blurring the line between reality and fiction. The latter can be a bit of a mess at times, but it's very imaginative and is worth seeing. It also quite disturbed me back when I first saw it.

Have you seen M, the Fritz Lang film? Been a while since I saw it but I think that really fits the bill for what you've been writing about.

The person who best captured paranoia on the page was Philp K Dick in my opinion, but when they make films of his stuff they have a tendency to change them into action films instead and the mood is lost.

[theimposter]

I did see that The Lives of Others was considered by many to be a great paranoid film - I however thought that while it was undoubtedly great, the fact that there were overtly people watching others, it does not quite count. I suppose that the same is true of All the President's Men and JFK, but the things that I love about the other movies in my list is that you're not sure throughout if anyone is actually following/listening/conspiring.

Haven't seen either of those John Carpenter movies. I'm not the biggest fan of his work. In fact, my favourite of his movies may be Escape from New York, which pretty much makes me a dick. And the only Lang film that I have seen is Metropolis, which I loved, so I might look into watching M.

[flibble_2000ad]

I'm not a massive John Carpenter fan myself really, I was just trying to think of different forms of paranoia. You know, I have Metropolis on DVD and still haven't watched it. I really need to see that. And the effects look stunning considering the time the film was made from what I've seen of it.