Top 10 Weird Movies

Top 10 Weird Movies

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If you’re looking for films that are a bit – or a lot – off center, you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the top 10 weird movies. For this list, we’ll be looking at films that contain some traditional elements, but heavily feature strange or bizarre components or storytelling. Films that are more avant-garde – for example, “Begotten” – and don’t feature any typical storytelling do not qualify.

In this mystery film’s lead role, Laura Dern plays an actress who’s believed to be cursed following the revelation that the two former lead actors of the film she’s been shooting had been murdered. After she begins to become more and more like her character, she also begins to lose her grasp on reality. Initially shot as a series of separate scenes, writer and director David Lynch realized there were recurring themes between them and developed Dern’s character and confusion to allow her to play a role in each sequence. The weird really hits its peak when she plays a tearful woman watching a sitcom on TV focused on a room full of rabbits.

This postmodern drama tells the story of a theater director who finds himself in the middle of a seismic change in his life and who is given seemingly endless funds that allow him to create a whole new world for himself and his interests. Recreating New York as he sees it in a gigantic warehouse, Caden Cotard populates his city with representations of the people in his life, including himself, and has his characters live out their lives in a never-ending play. Never seeking to create logic in the film’s story, “Synecdoche” director Charlie Kaufman instead wallows in the absurdity.

#8: “Being John Malkovich” (1999)

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When a movie’s protagonist starts working at a company that operates on a building floor that appears to be designed for little people and thus has to spend his working hours perpetually bent over, you know that this is not going to be a typical film. In this fantasy comedy, while working at said company, Craig Schwartz finds a door that eventually allows him to take control of the body of real-life actor John Malkovich. If that wasn’t bizarre enough already, the love story that develops is all too weird but somehow relatable. Packed to the gills with eccentric imagery, everything we see ultimately serves the plot of Spike Jonze’s masterpiece of a film.

#7: “Naked Lunch” (1991)

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In this David Cronenberg sci-fi drama, an exterminator and his wife become addicted to a chemical he uses to kill insects. The exposure to the bug powder causes him to hallucinate and later, accidentally kill his wife. As is to be expected, his life is never the same again. Delving further into the new fantasy world his addiction has unveiled to him, he comes to see himself as a secret agent who’s trying to find his way out of a conspiracy while reporting to strange creatures. Perhaps the most unsettling moment of it all is when we’re first introduced to the insect-like typewriter that William Lee uses to type up his findings.

#6: “La montaña sagrada” (1973)

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In order to make this film, whose title translates to The Holy or Sacred Mountain, its director Alejandro Jodorowsky claims to have gone a week without sleep and took LSD for the first time. While this kind of preparation may not make sense for most films, after viewing this surreal fantasy work, we totally get it. Explaining its plot may be near impossible, but all we will say is that it involves a thief who looks like Christ and his limbless little person companion travelling through a strange city. Actually, strange may be an understatement.

Going back to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”’s Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog, the history of cinema has included some unlikely killers, but this film arguably takes the cake. After a tire comes to life, it begins to roll around, pulsate and acquires the ability to blow up people’s heads. This discovery is the catalyst to an unusual killing spree like you’ve never seen before. All the while, a group of onlookers with binoculars observes the chaos that the tire instigates as though they’re watching a film.

Filmed for a mere $10,000, this John Waters film has garnered more of a reputation for controversy than nearly any film ever made. Starring Divine as the supposed winner of the title of filthiest person alive, the black comedy largely surrounds a competition between her and another group that is attempting to outdo her filthiness. Devolving into depravity that was completely new to most viewers, “Pink Flamingos” is not for the weak of stomach or those who are looking for a traditional film.

#3: “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998)

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In the ‘90s when you hired Johnny Depp to star in your film, you were purchasing a rabid female following that lusted after the star along with him. Eschewing that entirely, this dark comedy stripped the actor of his looks and likeability by casting him as a journalist on the bender of all benders while attempting to cover a motorcycle race. Told from Raoul Duke’s vantage point, in this Terry Gilliam adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel, we are treated to series of hallucinations as he and his attorney search for the secret of the American Dream at the bottom of a bottle.

In a society akin to the one featuring Big Brother from the novel “1984,” a workaday bureaucrat becomes entranced with the neighbor of a recently deceased, suspected terrorist and becomes an enemy of the state in the process. It’s the visual style of director Terry Gilliam that really lands this science fantasy on this list, as seemingly mundane moments like a plastic surgeon at work become incredibly marked on viewers’ minds. Turning an actor like Robert De Niro, known principally for tough guy roles at the time, into the kooky suspected terrorist, is another masterstroke by the director of this offbeat film. Before we reveal our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions. - “Enter the Void” (2009) - “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002) - “Videodrome” (1983) - “Holy Motors” (2012) - “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975)

Arguably the godfather of weird cinema, it was a natural fit that director David Lynch’s first feature-length film finds itself at the top of our list. Produced over five years, “Eraserhead” introduces the character of Henry and his surroundings, which includes his reptilian-looking son and a strange-looking woman who sings to him from his radiator where she lives. Though his other works like the trippy 2001 film “Mulholland Drive” are weird in their own right, it is this surrealist body horror flick that weirds us – and so many others – out the most. Do you agree with our list? Which movie do you think is the weirdest? For more weird Top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.