Topic

Psychology

The study of mind and behaviour, currently rebuilding half its findings.

38: in film
13:00: average
494 min: in total
80: across the network

Psychology across the network →

All briefs38

13:00

Altered States

Ken Russell · 1980

Altered States (1980), directed by Ken Russell from Paddy Chayefsky’s novel, follows a scientist whose experiments with sensory deprivation and psychoactive drugs trigger a terrifying biological regression. Anchored by William Hurt’s debut performance and Dick Smith’s groundbreaking makeup effects, it merges psychological horror with surrealist science fiction. Though marked by creative conflict between writer and director, the film endures as a formally audacious, physically immersive inquiry into consciousness, identity, and the fragility of the human form.

13:00

Bad Timing

Nicolas Roeg · 1980

Nicolas Roeg’s 1980 psychological thriller Bad Timing follows an inspector’s investigation into a woman’s suicide attempt, using non-linear editing and restrained cinematography to dissect the obsessive, destructive relationship between a psychoanalyst and his lover. Set in Vienna and shot by Anthony B. Richmond, it stars Art Garfunkel and Theresa Russell, with Harvey Keitel as the investigator. Adapted by Yale Udoff from an Italian story, the film was controversial on release — rejected by its UK distributor and X-rated in the US — yet won the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award. Its formal rigour and emotional austerity have secured its status as an arthouse landmark.

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Birth

Jonathan Glazer · 2004

Jonathan Glazer’s 2004 film Birth follows Anna, a woman who becomes convinced that her deceased husband has been reborn in a ten-year-old boy. Shot in New York with Haris Savides, scored by Alexandre Desplat, and anchored by Nicole Kidman’s restrained performance, it is a psychological mystery that sustains ambiguity as principle. It does not confirm or deny the boy’s claim, instead focusing on the weight of Anna’s belief, the erosion of shared reality among those around her, and the quiet devastation of love that refuses to expire. Polarising on release, it has since gained recognition for its formal rigour and emotional precision.

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Cure

Kiyoshi Kurosawa · 1997

A Tokyo detective investigates a string of motiveless murders linked by an 'X' carved into victims and a mysterious man with apparent amnesia. As he traces each killer to the same enigmatic figure, his own grip on memory, motive, and agency begins to fray. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 film treats hypnosis as ambient infection, building dread through repetition, restraint, and the slow erosion of certainty — not through gore or jump-scares, but through the unnerving plausibility of suggestion.

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House of Games

David Mamet · 1987

David Mamet’s 1987 directorial debut is a neo-noir thriller about a psychiatrist drawn into a world of confidence tricks. Lindsay Crouse plays Margaret Ford, whose clinical detachment unravels as she learns the grammar of deception from con man Mike Mancuso (Joe Mantegna). Structured like a series of escalating cons, the film traces her shift from observer to participant to perpetrator — culminating not in redemption but in quiet, irreversible moral collapse. Shot with tight framing and sparse scoring, it privileges precision over psychology, logic over catharsis.

13:00

Klute

Alan J. Pakula · 1971

A 1971 neo-noir thriller directed by Alan J. Pakula, Klute follows a Pennsylvania detective investigating a missing executive by surveilling a New York call girl. Jane Fonda’s Oscar-winning performance anchors a film defined by Gordon Willis’s shadow-drenched cinematography, Michael Small’s unsettling score, and a script that treats paranoia as atmosphere rather than plot. It is the first of Pakula’s informal 'paranoia trilogy', prioritising psychological realism over narrative closure.

13:00

Leave Her to Heaven

John M. Stahl · 1945

Leave Her to Heaven (1945), directed by John M. Stahl, is a Technicolor psychological drama starring Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent, a woman whose obsessive love curdles into calculated violence. Adapted by Jo Swerling from Ben Ames Williams’s novel, it uses Leon Shamroy’s precise cinematography and Tierney’s controlled performance to map the internal architecture of possession. Though some narrative threads remain underdeveloped and its protagonist’s passivity tests credulity, the film endures as a formally rigorous study of zero-sum love — selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2018.

13:00

Rosemary's Baby

Roman Polanski · 1968

Roman Polanski’s 1968 adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel follows Mia Farrow as Rosemary Woodhouse, a young wife who suspects her neighbours and husband are conspiring over her pregnancy. Shot with clinical precision by William A. Fraker and edited with unobtrusive rigour, the film sustains tension through accumulation — not revelation. Its power lies in what remains unsaid, unconfirmed, and unchallenged: a portrait of gaslighting as architecture, paranoia as logic, and horror as domestic routine.

13:00

Spellbound

Alfred Hitchcock · 1945

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 thriller Spellbound stars Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck as psychiatrists entangled in a mystery of identity, memory, and repression. Made for Selznick International Pictures, it uses Freudian concepts as narrative architecture, anchored by Miklós Rózsa’s theremin-scored score and a famously truncated Dalí-designed dream sequence. Though its clinical framework feels period-specific, its formal discipline and psychological clarity remain compelling.

13:00

The Comfort of Strangers

Paul Schrader · 1990

Paul Schrader’s 1990 adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novel, scripted by Harold Pinter, follows an English couple drawn into the unsettling hospitality of a Venetian couple. With Natasha Richardson, Christopher Walken, and Rupert Everett, it builds dread through restraint: sparse dialogue, controlled framing, and the gradual erosion of autonomy. Not a thriller of action but of atmosphere, it asks the viewer to sit with ambiguity, not solve a mystery.

13:00

The Housemaid

Kim Ki-young · 1960

Kim Ki-young’s 1960 The Housemaid is a tightly controlled psychological horror set in a Seoul two-storey house. When a piano teacher hires a factory cleaner as maid, her quiet observation and escalating demands expose fault lines in his marriage, class position and moral authority. The film builds dread through restraint — no score, minimal exposition, unflinching framing — and ends where it began, suggesting its tragedy is cyclical, not exceptional.

13:00

The Innocents

Jack Clayton · 1961

Jack Clayton’s 1961 adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw sustains a rigorous ambiguity: are the ghosts real, or projections of the governess’s repressed psyche? Shot by Freddie Francis in stark CinemaScope, scored by Georges Auric with early electronic textures, and carried almost entirely by Deborah Kerr’s tightly coiled performance, the film refuses resolution. Its power lies in what it withholds — no confirmation, no diagnosis, no moral anchor — making it a landmark of psychological horror and arthouse restraint.

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The Manchurian Candidate

John Frankenheimer · 1962

John Frankenheimer’s 1962 adaptation of Richard Condon’s novel follows Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, a decorated hero secretly programmed as a communist assassin. Through meticulous craft — Lionel Lindon’s controlled cinematography, Ferris Webster’s taut editing, Angela Lansbury’s chilling performance — the film maps how ideology operates inside families, institutions and minds. It is less a warning about foreign threats than a demonstration of how obedience is taught, memory overwritten, and power disguised as normalcy.

13:00

The Rite

Ingmar Bergman · 1969

Ingmar Bergman’s 1969 television film The Rite confines three actors and a judge to a single office, where questions of obscenity give way to deeper reckonings of guilt, desire, and performance. Shot by Sven Nykvist in stark, unbroken takes, it relies on vocal nuance and spatial tension rather than plot. Gunnar Björnstrand, Anders Ek, and Ingrid Thulin navigate layered relationships under Erik Hell’s implacable scrutiny — until the line between witness and participant dissolves.

13:00

The Vanishing

George Sluizer · 1988

George Sluizer’s 1988 French-language thriller, co-written with Tim Krabbé, follows a Dutch man’s obsessive search for his vanished girlfriend — a quest that culminates not in rescue or revenge, but in a chilling confrontation with the kidnapper’s warped moral logic. Shot in Nîmes with austere precision, it trades procedural suspense for psychological immersion, anchored by Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu’s unnervingly calm performance as a man who sees evil as a test of virtue.

13:00

Black Narcissus

Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell · 1947

Black Narcissus (1947) is a British psychological drama directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, adapted from Rumer Godden’s novel. Set in a remote Himalayan palace converted from a harem, it follows a group of Anglican nuns whose mission unravels under isolation, climate and unspoken desire. Shot almost entirely at Pinewood Studios using matte paintings and expressive Technicolor, it prioritises mood and interiority over realism or cultural specificity. Jack Cardiff’s cinematography won an Academy Award, as did Alfred Junge’s production design. The film remains a landmark of studio craft — formally rigorous, emotionally precise, ethically circumscribed.

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Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick · 1999

Stanley Kubrick’s final film adapts Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Story into a slow-burning psychological mystery set in 1990s New York. Dr. Bill Harford’s night-long descent, triggered by his wife’s confession of fantasy, exposes the rituals of power, secrecy, and male fragility beneath the surface of privilege. Shot by Larry Smith and scored by Jocelyn Pook, it sustains a single, unwavering tone — neither erotic nor thrilling, but rigorously observed and formally controlled.

13:00

Manhunter

Michael Mann · 1986

Michael Mann’s 1986 adaptation of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon stars William Petersen as FBI profiler Will Graham, drawn from retirement to hunt serial killer Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), with Brian Cox as the imprisoned Hannibal Lecktor. Shot by Dante Spinotti and scored by Michel Rubini, it uses stylised colour, ambient sound, and deliberate pacing to explore the psychological cost of seeing through a killer’s eyes. Though a box-office disappointment on release, it has since been reassessed as a landmark neo-noir thriller and foundational text in the forensic crime genre.

13:00

Peeping Tom

Michael Powell · 1960

Michael Powell’s 1960 Peeping Tom follows Mark Lewis, a shy focus puller and amateur filmmaker who murders women while recording their final expressions of terror. Written by cryptographer Leo Marks and shot by Otto Heller, it treats voyeurism as method, not motive — embedding the camera in the narrative as limb, lens, and legacy. Its clinical precision, psychological rigour, and formal restraint shocked contemporary critics but now mark it as a foundational work of British arthouse horror.

13:00

Phantom Thread

Paul Thomas Anderson · 2017

Set in 1950s London, Phantom Thread follows Reynolds Woodcock, a revered but rigid haute couture designer, and Alma Elson, the waitress he takes as muse and wife. Their relationship unfolds through quiet power shifts, two deliberate poisonings, and the slow, unstitching and restitching of domestic and creative boundaries. Directed, written, and shot by Paul Thomas Anderson, it stars Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, and Lesley Manville, with a score by Jonny Greenwood and Oscar-winning costume design.

13:00

12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet · 1957

Sidney Lumet's first feature takes Reginald Rose's 1954 teleplay and confines it almost entirely to a jury room, where eleven men ready to convict a teenager of murder are worked, one by one, toward doubt. Shot in three weeks on a budget of $340,000, it turns a single set into an escalating study of temper, prejudice and procedure, carried by an ensemble led by Henry Fonda, who also produced.

13:00

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky · 2010

Nina Sayers, a disciplined but fragile dancer at a New York ballet company, wins the lead in Swan Lake and starts losing her grip on reality as she competes with a looser, more sensual rival for the role's darker half. Aronofsky built the film from a decade-old idea about doppelgängers and understudies, shot it on a $13 million budget with Matthew Libatique's camera pressed close to Portman's face, and had his lead actors train in ballet for months before a single scene was filmed.

13:00

Blue Velvet

David Lynch · 1986

David Lynch followed the disaster of Dune with a $6m film he was left almost entirely alone to make, trading a pay cut for final cut. Kyle MacLachlan's amateur sleuth spies on Isabella Rossellini's abused nightclub singer and runs into Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth, and the American town around them turns out to hide as much as either of them.

13:00

Burning

Lee Chang-dong · 2018

Eight years after his last film, Lee Chang-dong adapted a short Murakami story into a slow, unsettling thriller about a young writer, the childhood friend who vanishes, and the wealthy man who may or may not have killed her. Cannes competed for it, critics kept it on year-end lists, and a Korean poll of over a hundred critics later called it the best Korean film ever made.

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Eraserhead

David Lynch · 1977

David Lynch spent roughly five years shooting his AFI student project in disused stables and a soundproofed studio he built himself, financed along the way by donations from friends including Sissy Spacek. The result follows Henry Spencer, left to care for a grotesquely deformed baby in an industrial wasteland, shot in stark black and white with sound design as unsettling as anything on screen. It became a midnight-movie staple and launched Lynch's career from almost nothing.

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Full Metal Jacket

Stanley Kubrick · 1987

Stanley Kubrick's 1987 war film, shot entirely around London, splits into a Parris Island boot-camp section under a savage drill instructor and a Tet Offensive combat section in Hue. Built from Gustav Hasford's novel with Michael Herr, and carried by R. Lee Ermey's largely self-written performance, it argues that training, not combat, is where a soldier is actually made.

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Inside Out

Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen · 2015

Riley Andersen's move from Minnesota to San Francisco throws her mental control room into crisis when Joy and Sadness are accidentally flung from headquarters, forcing them to find their way back through the wreckage of her long-term memory. Pete Docter and Ronnie del Carmen's Pixar feature spends five personified emotions and a five-and-a-half-year production trying to dramatise, rather than explain, why a child needs to be allowed to feel bad.

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Lost Highway

David Lynch · 1997

David Lynch's first film after Twin Peaks follows Bill Pullman's jazz musician, arrested for a murder he cannot account for, who inexplicably becomes a different young man midway through. Written with novelist Barry Gifford and shot by Peter Deming in near-total darkness, it was a box-office failure on release that has since built a devoted following willing to sit with a story that refuses to resolve.

13:00

Network

Sidney Lumet · 1976

Sidney Lumet's satire follows a failing network that builds a hit show around its anchor's on-air unravelling, with four Oscar-winning performances built almost entirely on monologue.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Miloš Forman · 1975

Miloš Forman's adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel puts Jack Nicholson's disruptive new patient against Louise Fletcher's controlled head nurse inside the Oregon State Hospital, an operating psychiatric facility used as the actual set. Made for $3 million after a development history stretching back to 1962, it became one of only three films to sweep the top five Academy Awards, and it still plays as a study of institutional control rather than a simple underdog story.

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Paprika

Satoshi Kon · 2006

A stolen dream-sharing device lets a psychologist's alter ego, the detective Paprika, chase a saboteur through other people's nightmares. Satoshi Kon's 2006 feature, adapted from Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel, folds one dream into another until the seams between them disappear.

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Perfect Blue

Satoshi Kon · 1997

Perfect Blue follows Mima Kirigoe, a retiring pop idol turned actress, as an obsessive fan's stalking and a string of murders around her erode her ability to distinguish memory from fabrication. Satoshi Kon directed his first feature from Sadayuki Murai's screenplay, reworking an inherited splatter-horror premise into a study of the victim's collapsing perspective rather than the stalker's psychology. Made on a budget of roughly $830,000, it under-performed commercially before building a lasting reputation as one of animation's most influential psychological thrillers, cited as an inspiration by Darren Aronofsky.

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Persona

Ingmar Bergman · 1966

Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film pairs Elisabet Vogler, an actress who has gone entirely silent for reasons the film never states, with Alma, the nurse assigned to care for her at a remote coastal cottage, and lets the imbalance between one woman's silence and the other's compulsive talking gradually erode the line between them. Shot by Sven Nykvist, scored sparingly by Lars Johan Werle, and running just 84 minutes, it opens with a self-conscious montage of film equipment and unrelated images before settling into the two-hander at its centre, and it has since become one of the most closely analysed films in the medium's history.

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Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock · 1960

Hitchcock financed Psycho himself after Paramount balked at the material, shooting it fast, cheap and in black and white with his television crew. Anthony Perkins's Norman Bates, Bernard Herrmann's string score and a mid-film murder that removes the film's ostensible heroine turned a low-budget genre picture into the template for the modern horror thriller.

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Run Lola Run

Tom Tykwer · 1998

Franka Potente plays Lola, who has twenty minutes to find 100,000 marks and save her boyfriend Manni from a violent debt collector, and Tom Tykwer's 1998 film runs the same twenty minutes three times, letting split-second differences in Lola's path — a man with a dog, a delay on the stairs — cascade into wildly different outcomes for everyone she passes. Told through a mix of live action, animation and still-photo flash-forwards, it became the highest-grossing German film of its year.

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The Conversation

Francis Ford Coppola · 1974

Gene Hackman plays a wiretap specialist convinced his latest recording documents a murder he's enabling, in Coppola's Palme d'Or-winning thriller that arrived just months before Watergate made its premise feel prophetic rather than speculative.

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The Shining

Stanley Kubrick · 1980

Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's novel follows a recovering alcoholic, his wife and their clairvoyant son through a winter at an isolated hotel, shot entirely on constructed sets in England on a $19 million budget, built around Jack Nicholson's escalating performance, John Alcott's Steadicam corridors and Wendy Carlos's electronic score.

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The Silence of the Lambs

Jonathan Demme · 1991

Jonathan Demme's 1991 thriller sends FBI trainee Clarice Starling to interview imprisoned psychiatrist and cannibal Hannibal Lecter for insight into a serial killer skinning his victims. Adapted by Ted Tally from Thomas Harris's novel and shot by Tak Fujimoto, it swept the Academy Awards' top five categories, a feat achieved by only three films, and remains the only horror film to win Best Picture.