MUBI brings you a great new film every day.  Start your 7-day free trial today!
Watch a new film every day for $4.99.
Try MUBI for FREE.
 
All Topics  »

Good films that involve conspiracies and paranoia

odilonvert

almost 2 years ago

Love that title — so astrological and so celestial! Like that almost 1970s book, The Andromeda Strain. (Speaking of which, wasn’t that also a movie)?

Duncan Gray

-moderator-
almost 2 years ago

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

A key source of modern paranoia films.

ricky richtof​fen

almost 2 years ago

…and a miniseries. I’ve seen neither. read the book, though. Don’t remember it, but this looks right up my alley.

Westley

almost 2 years ago

The Ghost Writer
Spider (David Cronenberg)
Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Buddy Boy
The Truman Show
Body Snatchers (Abel Ferrara)
Habit
Moon
The White Ribbon
Edmond
Talk Radio

Vlad C.

almost 2 years ago
Jacob’s Ladder fits the bill and I remember liking it though my memory of it is a little vague

ruby stevens

almost 2 years ago

i thought of a fun one no one has named: the president’s analyst (1967) with james coburn :D a paranoid conspiracy comedy!

huh, incredibly this isn’t in the database. i will have to fix that

ruby stevens

almost 2 years ago

here’s a trailer for those who don’t know this crazy film

ruby stevens

almost 2 years ago

oh i should also mention the seventh victim (1943) d. mark robson, one of my favorite films and a big influence on rosemary’s baby. this is one of my favorite genre also so this was fun, thanks :)

Ben Simingt​on

almost 2 years ago

ZO. DI. AC.

sam

almost 2 years ago

Rivette’s entire body of work.

Patrick Jonatha​n Blair

almost 2 years ago

I would recommend:

Pi
The Conversation
Blow Out

I’m still getting around to checking out The Parallax View. It’s in my instant queue on Netflix. ;D

LuDgate

almost 2 years ago

Oliver Stone’s JFK

Mary

almost 2 years ago

The Manchurian Candidate

a Smith

almost 2 years ago

Perhaps I didn’t read closely enough, but I didn’t see Le Corbeau or any Clouzot mentioned.

Some will disagree that it is good, but I would also add The Game

Pierlui​gi Puccini

almost 2 years ago

Check my list:

http://mubi.com/lists/17254

VonPurr

almost 2 years ago

In addition to what others have already mentioned:

Solaris
Moon
Memento
A Beautiful Mind
The Piano Teacher

Alex

almost 2 years ago

The Tenant

mubiane​r

almost 2 years ago

Out 1 (Rivette)

Waerdno​tte

almost 2 years ago

Got to bump Ruby’s choice.

The President’s Analyst (1967) is a fantastic reflection of the counter-culture’s obsession with the great conspiracy theory. Ultimately the US is being run by the telephone company. Interjected with the usual New American Cinema set pieces (dreamlike sequences of hippies running through fields), this is, I think, Theodore Flicker’s only theatrical release (he would re-emerge as creator of TVs Barney Miller).

A forgotten gem.

Another 60s favourite is Sidney J Furie’s The Ipcress File (1965) starring the English perennial favourite Michael Caine. Just who are the baddies?

Matt Parks

almost 2 years ago

The Seventh Victim
The Fury

Tobin.

almost 2 years ago

THE PARALLAX VIEW

Rolph90

almost 2 years ago

soylent green
the lives of others
the odessa file
all the presidents men
Rosemary’s baby
the truman show
the day of the jackal
the trial

although all very different films , these are the ones that popped out to me

Jack

almost 2 years ago

House of Games, conspiracy on a smaller level.

VOLUPTE NOIR

almost 2 years ago

Two that come to mind that no one has mentioned: Executive Action, based on the assassination of John Kennedy, and of course Rock Hudson’s creepy classic Seconds.

Paul Johnson

almost 2 years ago

An obvious one that hasn’t been mentioned yet (unless my Ctrl-F key and I missed it): Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), with its quilt-work of extraordinary acts of murder and manipulation, and conspiracies wrapped inside conspiracies, all tied to Fascism afoot in Great Britain.

Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible Part II is one of the all-time great conspiracy films, a movie where the plots and counter-plots that criss-cross the narrative evoke the paranoia of Stalin’s Soviet Union, and which of course led to the end of Sergei Eisenstein’s directing career.

Prisoner of Zenda (1937) is grand fun, with Douglas Fairbanks Jr proving to be a particularly impish delight.

Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99 – actually all of Baldwin’s films – does a great job fabricating an alternate history of the world out of found footage, and the stranger it gets, the more it seems like it’s really onto something oddly truthful about the bizarro-world patterns of American history at the end of the 20th century.

Lucas Davies

almost 2 years ago

The first half of World on a Wire.

BALISTI​K

almost 2 years ago

No Way Out (1987)