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Are you looking for fantastic lucid dreaming movies?
I’ve collected a large selection of lucid dreaming movies, that will stimulate your imagination and enhance your (lucid) dreams!
Anyone interested in lucid dreaming and dreams, in general, will surely enjoy exploring these films.
Now, let’s jump directly to the list with movies that will take you on a conscious journey inside the fantasy dream world.
Before we start, it is important to mention that some of them are not exactly about lucid dreaming, but dreams and fantasy worlds in general. Yet, they are still extremely inspiring and worth watching!
25 Movies About Lucid Dreaming & Dreams:
1. What Dreams May Come
After Chris (Robin Williams) dies in a car accident, he meets his afterlife spirit, who is guiding him. His new world is beautiful and can do and be whatever Chris wants.
The main actor, Robin Williams, plays a breathtakingly compelling performance, as always.
Sum up:
A metaphysical story of life after death. This movie shows how our imaginations can lead us, both into wonderful and horrible places.
2. The Matrix
A stranger leads Neo (Keanu Reeves), a computer hacker, to a forbidding underworld, where he uncovers the unexpected truth about his reality.
The life he knows is a false version of 20th-century life, created by an evil cyber-intelligence.
Sum up:
They drift off from the real world and they go to the Matrix, which is pretty much like a lucid dream.
Neo learns how to bend the rules of the Matrix – he becomes aware and lucid, which gives him the power to achieve ANYTHING!
Neo and the entire human rebellion fight against the Artificial Intelligence that creates this simulated reality.
3. Vanilla Sky
David (Tom Kruz), a spoiled child receive his father’s company after his parents encounter a road accident.
David meets a girl and instantly falls in love with her. However, an unfortunate event happens where David encounters a horrible car accident.
Sum up:
After surviving the car crash, David struggles to find out the truth when his dreams turn into reality, and what he thinks is a reality, turns into nightmares.
4. The Science of Sleep
Stéphane, a shy insecure young man, goes to Paris to move to his widowed mother Christine, after the death of his father.
He falls in love with his charming neighbor Stéphanie. But winning her is not the easiest deal so he decides to put up with the challenges he is going through and he escapes into his dream world.
Sum up:
A man, love-struck with a French woman who is being entranced by his dreams and imagination.
5. Waking Life
The movie observes dreams of a man, who is trying to find answers about the dream world and the waking life.
He wants to find and spot the difference between these two dimensions.
He meets many different people, that are sharing with him their thoughts on life’s mysteries.
Sum up:
Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life and death? Where we come from and where we are going?
The movie doesn’t have all the answers, but it provokes people to ask the questions and to find the answers, individually.
6. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
Joel (Jim Carrey), finds out that his girlfriend Clementine had her memories of their relationship erased. Heartbroken, he decides to do the same.
Nevertheless, as he sees his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he doesn’t want to remove her from his memories, as he rediscovers their earlier love.
Sum up:
Joel attempts to escape and stop the procedure. He fights to stay lucid and aware in his memories while sleeping, so he can stop Dr. Mierzwiak and his crew.
While he tries hard to do that, they remove his memories and hunt him within the labyrinth of his mind.
7. Paprika
A machine that allows people to record and watch their dreams is stolen.
A thief uses the device to enter people’s minds, when awake, and distract them with their own dreams and those of others. Chaos ensues.
Sum up:
Everything merges – dreams, reality, and the movie. Entering the nightmare, the female therapist, Paprika must try to identify the thief as they try to avoid the thief’s attacks on their own psyches.
8. The Good Night
Gary, a former British pop star is at a crossroads in his life. He is feeling depressed and sad. But then he meets Anna – the girl of Gary’s dreams… literally.
And that’s the problem.
Sum up:
Gary sees Anna only in his dream life. He wants to find a way to carry on the best relationship of his life, in his dreams.
His journey with lucid dreaming presents to Gary to characters that are eventually presenting him a completely new perspective on life.
9. Avatar
Jake Sully, a paralyzed former marine decides to take a mission on the distant world of Pandora.
Jake goes to sleep while his mind is scientifically transferred into an Avatar and he becomes mobile again and he also falls in love in another Avatar.
As a bond with her grows, he is drawn into a battle for the survival of her world.
Sum up:
The most interesting and the main aspect of Avatar is that our states of consciousness and mind separate from the body, which allows our minds to wander while our bodies lay asleep.
10. Inception
Cobb (Leonardo Di Caprio) is an unusual thief with the rare ability. He can enter people’s dreams and steal their secrets from their subconscious.
Seeing his abilities, someone approaches him and wants to hire Cobb, but instead of getting information out, they want him to plant an idea into the mind of the legal heir of a Billion Dollar Entrepreneur.
The process is called ‘inception’, and it is not easy to do.
Sum up:
Cobb and other specialists must do the impossible in order to get back his life by completing the perfect crime.
11. A Nightmare on Elm Street
That’s a scary one!
A girl is experiencing terrifying nightmares involving badly-scarred figure, wearing a glove with razor blades on the fingers.
She soon discovers that her friends are having similar dreams. When the kids start to die, Nancy understands that she must stay awake to survive.
Nancy must think quickly, as the killer is trying to kill them, one by one.
Sum up:
Revealing the hidden name of the dream murderer and the connection with the children of Elm Street, the Nancy plans to bring him inside the real world.
12. Dreams
Creative Japanese movie that presents a series of short films. Many of the films in this inventive movie are tied together.
The stories inside the movie are filmed and written just like real dreams. Full with strange events that most of the time makes no sense.
Sum up:
It was inspired by actual dreams that Kurosawa (the director of the movie) claimed to have had repeatedly.
The movie does not have a single story but is rather 8 different adventurous segments or ”dreams”, each of them titled.
13. Shutter Island
Teddy (Leonardo Di Caprio) is assigned to go to a mental institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, near Boston, since one of the prisoners has gone missing.
Teddy’s sharp investigating skills provide a promising lead quickly, however, the hospital denies to give him access to records that can possibly break the case wide open.
A storm cuts off the connection with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion.
Sum up:
There are a series of dream sequences interspersed and flashbacks about Teddy’s life. He begins to doubt everything – his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.
14. The Lovely Bones
The 14-year old girl Susie experience something terrible – she is murdered by her neighbor. Soon after that, she realizes that she is pulled into the “In-Between”, that is neither Heaven nor Earth.
Sum up:
Susie, or more like her spirit, is looking over her family and friends. She is trying to lead those that can feel her presence to her murderer, while he is planning his next victim.
15. Dreamscape
Alex has psychic abilities. Long before, he was in a scientific study because of his power, but left without a word or a trace, since he didn’t want to be continually hooked up to electrical probes.
However, the main doctor is able to locate Alex, whereas he discusses with him his latest scientific breakthrough: dream therapy.
The doctor discovered how to enter into the dreams, or as the case may be, nightmares of others, in order to treat the patients through or in dealing with the dreams/nightmares.
Alex agrees to participate for one main reason…
However, as he starts working with them, he begins to suspect that others involved in the study, are working on their own agenda against the goals of the study.
Sum up:
Alex must find a way to stop the abuse of the power to enter dreams. However, if he comes close to finding the truth of their agenda, his life, and the lives of others in the study, may be in huge danger.
16. 1408
Mike is an author, specialized in paranormal investigations. He writes books along the line of the 10 best-haunted hotels in America and other similar topics.
After getting an anonymous postcard, telling him not to stay in Dolphin hotel, room 1408, he does the exact opposite.
Sum up:
After researches, he finds out weird stories about room 1408 but he is determined to stay there. Perhaps, it was better to listen to the manager of the hotel, who begged him not to stay there.
Mike ignores all the warnings and is soon in the room – from which he quickly becomes desperate to leave. Being in the room, he begins to wonder, is he dreaming or is he in the real world?
17. Minority Report
It is the near future, murders have become so common, that a system had to be established. John, the main character, is one of the 3 psychics that predict murders before they happen, allowing the police to stop the crimes.
TThe unit, known as “Pre-Crime” is a newly developed system where allows the murderers to be arrested before they can commit the murder.
Sum up:
They use “Pre-Crime” as they recreated dreams through computer monitors. The images are transformed into holograms, and identification is done through eye-scanning.
18. The Thirteenth Floor
Hannon is a computer scientist who found something very valuable.
He wants to share his discovery with his colleague, Douglas, and he leaves a letter to him in the computer generated parallel world his company has created.
After Hannon is murdered in the real world, his partner is suspected. Douglas finds a bloody shirt in his bathroom furthermore he simply can’t recall what he was doing the night Fuller was murdered.
Sum up:
The discovery that Hannon made, in truth, is extremely disturbing. Douglas logs into the system so he can find the letter, where he confronts with something completely unexpected.
19. Source Code
Colter is an Army Captain who discovers himself working on a special program. His consciousness can be inserted into another human being.
The mission he has is to go back for 8 minutes and to prevent a bomb from exploding.
Sum up:
Colter is a time-traveler who occupies the body of a male passenger during the eight minutes before the man is killed.
With time flying quite fast, he repeats the mission over and over, in order to stop the deadly terrorist attacks.
20. Total Recall
Douglas is a construction worker who keeps having dreams about Mars.
He decides to visits “Rekall,” a corporation that plants false memories into people’s brains.
He hopes to experience the thrill of Mars without having to travel there.
Something goes wrong during the procedure. He suddenly rememberers that before, he was actually a secret agent!
Sum up:
Douglas discovers that his entire life is actually a false memory and that the people who implanted it in his head now want him dead.
21. Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko – a teenager who sleepwalks out of his house one night, and sees a giant, demonic-looking rabbit named Frank. The ”bunny” tells him the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.
With the help of various characters, including the rabbit Frank, he starts to discover the mysterious physical and metaphysical laws that rule his life and that will lead up to the end of the universe.
Sum up:
Theories attempt to explain the fatal end with schizophrenia, dreams, or even actual precognition.
22. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
A sideshow troupe of Doctor Parnassus ensures the audience a journey to the “Imaginarium”, an imaginary world where dreams come true.
Dr. Parnassus, the leader of a traveling show, has a dark secret. Thousands of years ago he traded something with the devil. Now the devil has come to collect his prize.
Sum up:
A traveling theater company gives its audience much more than they were expecting.
23. Falling Water
A tv show about three non-related people realizing that they are dreaming separate parts of a single common dream.
Each of them is on a difficult and very personal journey. The clues in their common dream is what guides them.
Sum up:
The deeper they dig the more they come to understand that their purposes are much larger than their personal agendas.
24. Alice In Wonderland
When the 19-year old Alice follows a rabbit down a whole, she finds a magical world of Wonderland.
She is told that she is the person, that is having a huge role and she needs to complete an important task.
Even though she doesn’t believe she is the right person, after being attacked by the red queen’s army, she decides to fight back.
Sum up:
When Alice uncovers her true destiny and fate she will stop at nothing to take the Red Queen off the thrown. She sets out on a daring challenge to save her friends and to get the white queen back on her throne.
25. Take Shelter
Curtis is a father and a husband who is experiencing very bad dreams and hallucinations.
Considering that he is mentally ill, he looks for medical help and advice. Yet, he begins to build an extensive and quite expensive storm shelter in their backyard.
Sum up:
This storm shelter starts to split apart his family, threatens his sanity and his reputation in the community. However, he is determined to build it in order to save his family’s life.
Have you watched these awesome (lucid) dream movies?
Feel free to share in the comments below which movie is your favorite.
Also, if I missed something, make sure to leave a comment so I can update the list with more amazing lucid dreaming movies!
I’d add the movies:
Enter the void
Lucy
Limitless
Lucid Dream
I Origins
The Giver
That’s awesome, thanks!
I love Lucy, Limitless and I Origins!
I’ll go through the rest.
excellent list, and that includes the ones on the comment …but if I may add just one movie about dreams it will be The Cell with jennifer lopez…a weird psychological thriller
Thanks, I’m glad you like it! I haven’t watched it, but I’ll check it out, and maybe I could add it to the list 🙂 Thanks for the suggestion.
A series called Up-load from Amazon
Not really a Movie in the classical sense, but I can really recommend it: It’s called journey into the subconcious, you can find it on youtube. It’s animated, might seem odd at the beginning, but give it 10 minutes and you’re gonna ve blown away!