A Glean movie guide
Mind-Bending Psychological Thrillers
Don't trust your eyes.
Atmospheric mysteries where nothing is as it seems and reality is always in question.
Handpicked for this guide
The movie list
- 01
A Cure for Wellness
A visually stunning descent into a remote medical facility where the cure is more terrifying than the disease.
An ambitious young executive is sent to retrieve his company's CEO from an idyllic but mysterious "wellness center" at a remote location in the Swiss Alps but soon suspects that the spa's miraculous treatments are not what they seem.
- 02
The Machinist
A haunting look at a man’s psychological collapse as insomnia blurs the line between reality and nightmare.
Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.
- 03
Stonehearst Asylum
A gothic period piece set in a mental institution where the staff and patients are hiding dark, twisted secrets.
An Oxford Medical School graduate takes a position at a mental institution and soon becomes obsessed with a female mental patient, but he has no idea of a recent and horrifying staffing change.
- 04
Memento
A brilliant, non-linear puzzle that forces you to experience the world through a protagonist with no short-term memory.
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
- 05
Identity
A tense, isolated mystery that traps ten strangers in a motel and delivers a massive psychological revelation.
Complete strangers stranded at a remote desert motel during a raging storm soon find themselves the target of a deranged murderer. As their numbers thin out, the travelers begin to turn on each other, as each tries to figure out who the killer is.
- 06
Jacob's Ladder
A disturbing journey through a veteran's fragmented mind as he struggles to distinguish hallucinations from reality.
After returning home from the Vietnam War, veteran Jacob Singer struggles to maintain his sanity. Plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks, Singer rapidly falls apart as the world and people around him morph and twist into disturbing images. His girlfriend, Jezzie, and ex-wife, Sarah, try to help, but to little avail. Even Singer's chiropractor friend, Louis, fails to reach him as he descends into madness.
- 07
The Others
A chilling, atmospheric ghost story that uses its isolated setting to build toward a reality-shattering conclusion.
Grace is a religious woman who lives in an old house kept dark because her two children, Anne and Nicholas, have a rare sensitivity to light. When the family begins to suspect the house is haunted, Grace fights to protect her children at any cost in the face of strange events and disturbing visions.
- 08
Session 9
A slow-burn horror-thriller set in a real abandoned asylum that explores the dark history of its crumbling walls.
Tensions rise within an asbestos cleaning crew as they work in an abandoned mental hospital with a horrific past that seems to be coming back.
- 09
Inception
A high-stakes heist through the subconscious that questions the nature of reality and the weight of past trauma.
Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: "inception", the implantation of another person's idea into a target's subconscious.
- 10
The Game
A masterclass in paranoia where a wealthy man’s life is dismantled by a mysterious, all-consuming simulation.
In honor of his birthday, San Francisco banker Nicholas Van Orton, a financial genius and a cold-hearted loner, receives an unusual present from his younger brother, Conrad: a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game. In nary a nanosecond, Nicholas finds himself consumed by a dangerous set of ever-changing rules, unable to distinguish where the charade ends and reality begins.