7 Movies That Make You Feel Like You're on Drugs

If you’re not on that Terrence Malick tip yet, get woke. Dude’s been making some of the most aesthetically beautiful (albeit loooong) films in the business for the better part of the last four decades—Tree of Life, Badlands, The Thin Red Line, etc. With the release of his latest project Knight of Cups, which made our Most Anticipated Movies of 2016 list, there’s a lot more of that rich cinematic experience for which Malick has made a name for himself.

Starring Christian Bale as its meta-protagonist, the film follows screenwriter Rick as he attempts to navigate a heavy mid-life crisis amid the excess of Hollywood and the recent death of his brother. It’s dubbed by a stream-of-consciousness narrative from its leads and Rick’s many love interests—who include Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Imogen Poots, Isabel Lucas, Natalie Portman, and Teresa Palmer—and has all the requisite makings of a solid mind-bender, full of substance abuse, strippers, round-the-clock partying, and a whole hell of a lot of “what am I even doing with my life?” existentialism. Panning and POV shots give this flick an extra dose of perceived anxiety.

Is this a movie about Terrence Malick by Terrence Malick? To some degree, probably. Does it make you feel at times that you’re trapped in a k-hole? Yes. This is a movie that'll give you perceived anxiety on some Gaspar Noé​-level shit. It's a flashback-inducing​ nightmare. But is it a gorgeous film worth spending your lunch money on a ticket? Absolutely. And before or after you take the jump into Malick’s manic world in Knight of Cups, we’ve got you covered with a few other mind-bending films that kind of make you feel like you’re tripping by proxy.

Fans of Knight of Cups and its cinematic mechanisms will probably enjoy the craft of this film. But be forewarned, it’s not for the faint of heart. Set against the backdrop of Tokyo’s seedy underbelly, Enter the Void centers on a newly reunited sibling duo (Paz de la Huerta and Nathaniel Brown) living in Japan together and attempting to navigate the trauma of an accident that left them both parentless. But that’s just one facet of its heavy three-hour plotline.

Imagine every drug known to god, pair those with visual translations of the physiological response to said drugs, and you’re looking at about half of the viewing experience of this film. DMT, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, et al make cameos in frequent drug exchanges between the film’s leading characters. Toss in a strip club, a whole lotta sex, low-key incestual sexual attraction, and a philosophical exploration of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and you’ve got yourself one of cinema’s most notoriously fucked up movies.

Enter the Void is a lot, and that’s being generous. But for the avid cinephile who’s managed to overlook it until now, it’s the magnum opus of writer and director Gaspar Noé. It took more than a decade to conceive, produce, and bring to your screen. And honestly? It’s totally worth it—if your stomach can handle it.

This Neil Armfield-directed flick is a criminally overlooked Heath Ledger indie and a pretty dope (no pun) example of why you should definitely stay the hell away from heroin. Starring Ledger as wayward protagonist Dan and the ever-gorgeous Abbie Cornish as his burgeoning fellow addict and love interest Candy, the film’s three chapters—Heaven, Earth, and Hell—mirror the periods of their drug use and its eventual destruction of everything they hold dear.

My favorite scene isn’t any of the ones where its stars are slung over sofas with rubber bands loosening on their arms, but rather one where Candy’s forced to stare down the aftermath of her trauma and completely, for lack of a better descriptor, loses her goddamn mind. Cornish gives such an impressive and honest performance as a woman who’s been dealt a shitty hand for far too long, and watching the way that manifests is surreal.

This movie isn’t necessarily going to make you feel great, but for those who enjoy that Malick-eque heady inner monologue also present in Knight of Cups, it ain’t half bad.

Like Knight of Cups, this movie also follows a wayward man attempting to secure some direction in his life—though its protagonist Charlie Countryman (Shia LaBeouf) is about 20 years Bale’s junior, making this more of a film centered on a quarter-life crisis. In short, Countryman falls in love with a Romanian bad bitch (Evan Rachel Wood) married to a super-villain mob type (Mads Mikkelsen). LaBeouf himself plays a character I’d liken to the human equivalent of a golden retriever: overly enthusiastic, far too trusting, and kind of a goober. Countryman does fuck with recreational drugs though, and here’s where it gets interesting.

Without ruining too much, there’s a scene where Countryman is slipped some Carpathian ecstasy and starts rolling balls in a Bucharest hostel. Shia’s notorious for his committed method acting and bringing an authentic experience to the screen. The scene is beautiful, close enough to the visual representation of a psychedelic experience, and it’s rumored that LaBeouf IRL tripped on acid to prepare for the scene. By rumored, I mean he’s spoken openly about it in the press.

Because he’d never done acid and wanted to nail the role (for which ecstasy was written?), he says that he got nervous as shooting the scene inched closer. He told MTV News he decided to drop “not because I’m wanting to be on drugs. I’m not trying to mess with the set or anything like that. It’s really just fear that propels people.”

But that reportedly didn’t go particularly well. Co-star Rupert Grint told the Guardian that Shia kind of lost his shit on LSD. “He smashed the place up, got naked and kept seeing this owl,” he said. “If anything will make you not do drugs, it's watching that.” And it’s worth noting that acid and the script’s requisite ecstasy are two very different drugs. But it’s the thought that counts, right?

As we noted in our round-up of last year’s best in film, the cool thing about Queen of Earth is its ability to make you feel like you’re losing your mind. The film follows a well-to-do big city socialite, Catherine (Elisabeth Moss), who retreats to the remote cabin of her closest friend, Virginia (Katherine Waterston), following the passing of her late father and a breakup that left her in shambles. But wait, Catherine and Virginia low-key hate each other and their mind games send Catherine from her fragile state to one of full-on mania—like, talking to herself, refusing to sleep for days on end, and holding entire conversations on a dead phone line. You know, crazy shit.

Director Alex Ross Perry did an incredible job of keeping Catherine’s slip into non-reality suspenseful, thrilling, and nuanced. Is what Catherine thinks is happening actually taking place? It’s difficult to tell in many scenes, but the best occurs toward the end of the film. As Catherine weaves her way through a crowd of Virginia’s party guests one evening, she starts hallucinating and a tight Polanski-style POV shots let us as viewers experience that same invasive paranoia. The second to final scene sees this thing come to fruition. I guarantee it’ll give you the weirds, and “you unrepentant piece of shit” may become your new go-to drag.

There’s really no better way to fuck up your mind/life than to sit for an overly indulgent Lars Von Trier art drama. (Same applies for Antichrist and Nymphomanic, two others from the director’s “depression series,” if those are more up your alley.) This movie has little drug use (beyond a single scene I’ll leave for you to discover on your own because spoilers are rude as hell), but its protagonist Justine (Kirsten Dunst) slips into a depression so debilitating that it can only be remedied by a foreign planet’s proximity to Earth. Think of Justine as the female equal to Knight of Cups’ Nick: miserable, lost, and willing to destroy everything around her to achieve some semblance of peace.

Sexual promiscuity, psychological self-destruction, and impending doom make for a remarkably von Trier-esque film. Justine’s increasingly bizarre behavior and obsession with Melancholia narrowing missing Earth gives the film a supernatural element as well. But, like Malick, von Trier makes some of the most beautiful films in the game, and this ethereal gem, while long, is a must-see for that very reason.

From a psychological thriller standpoint, this film is frequently overlooked on the usual roundups for best in genre. Sure, it centers on an adult ballerina with some peculiar mommy issues, but in terms of chronicling its protagonist’s mental unraveling, it’s fantastic. We’re never really sure—even up until its climactic ending—what is real and what’s a construction of its protagonist Nina Sayers’ (Natalie Portman) troubled mind.

There’s a scene when against her better judgment, Nina hits the club with fellow ballerina and company nemesis Lily (played by Mila Kunis, a thirst trap if ever there was one). Lily slips your girl some ecstasy and unleashes Nina’s inner party animal. This is sort of a pivotal tipping point for Nina’s psyche, and director Darren Aronofsky does a fantastic job of walking us through her perceived reality.

Both Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis give two of the best performances of their respective careers, and it will keep you on your toes (so to speak) until the very last moments of its final scene. For her part, Portman also appears in Knight of Cups as Elizabeth, one of the (many) love interests of Rick. Without ruining too much, Portman’s great at losing her mind in both films.

There’s a reason there are two Darren Aronofsky features on this list, being that he truly creates some of cinema’s most unnerving fixtures of the art. There’s no shortage of reasons that this movie is heralded as a filmmaking masterpiece and cult classic. Pi or The Fountain could have just as easily fit in among the rest of these films, but Requiem for a Dream is truly unparalleled in its portrayal of both drug use and madness—and it’s beautifully made to boot.

Requiem for a Dream follows multiple interwoven narratives of a widow, her son, as well as his girlfriend and best friend, and how they all succumb to their respective addictions to drugs. There’s nothing subtle about its exploration of the rabbit hole of substance abuse, and its protagonists are dragged through metaphorical hells of their own making. There’s something sinister in the way that Aronofsky shapes the Dream universe, leading us to invest deeply in the lives of its protagonists, before destroying each of them in ways irreparable. Malick is kinder in Knight of Cups, but you’ll find the experience of watching each is similarly cathartic.