The Wizard of Oz

SPOILER ALERT: It’s all a dream in the end. Or was it? Anyway, there’d be no point in recounting the plot of The Wizard of Oz, not just one of the most famous dream movies but one of the most famous movies of all time – literally everyone has seen it. And as dream movies go, the plot if pretty linear – Dorothy lands in Munchkinland, and has to achieve a series of tasks before she can get out. Still, having a dream in which you see a brand new set of colors as Dorothy does would have to be pretty startling.

8 1/2

Here’s a dream movie about a movie being made by a guy who is often dreaming in the movie about his movie. Or is he? Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 is a dream movie about the dream we all share – that dream called “cinema.” And a pretentious sentence like that is as good a way as any to end the entry on 8 1/2.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

This surrealist comedy from the master of the surrealist comedy, Luis Bunuel, uses the form of the dream movie to take satirical shots at the upper class. You know, people who go to dinner parties only to never actually get to eat, deal cocaine, murder each other, etc. It also features multiple sequences in which bizarre stuff happens, only to have a character wake up from a dream, which makes this a pure dream movie from start to finish.

A Nightmare on Elm Street

This isn’t so much a “dream movie” as it is a “nightmare movie.” The nightmare in question is one Freddy Krueger, a violently deceased child killer who haunts the dreams of the children of those who killed him. “What’s the big deal?” You might be asking. Well, if he kills you in the dream, you die in real life! Pretty cool, right?

Inception

When you saw the title of this article, there’s an 87 percent chance that the first dream movie you thought of was Christopher Nolan‘s Inception. Inception proved that dream movies can still be financially successful, provided there are plenty of gravity-defying fight scenes and kickass shootouts. In case you were dreaming when the movie came out, it’s about a band of criminals wh break into the subconscious mind and implant ideas into the person’s dreams, in a process known as “inception.” The end result is a lot of, well, gravity-defying fight scenes and kickass shootouts. And unlike The Wizard of Oz, no one knows if it was all a dream or not.

Dream movies will be a popular genre for as long as people are fascinated by dreams. So, forever. The above dream movies are simply five of the most popular – there are many more at your local video store, library, or Netflix account, so get going, won’t you? These dream movies aren’t going to watch themselves, and you have a pop quiz that you didn’t study for in five minutes!