The Exterminating Angel (1962), Punishment Park (1971), Cul-de-sac (1966), Katzelmacher (1969), The Strange Ones (1950), Burnt Offerings (1976), The Birthday Party (1968), Demon Seed (1977) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Psychological Oppression movies.
Storyline: Edmundo Nobile (Enrique Rambal) invites friends over for an opulent dinner party. While the guests enjoy their food, the servants disappear one by one. Afterward, the visitors retire to the salon for an evening of music and conversation -- but in the morning, they are mysteriously incapable of leaving the room. As days go by and they run out of food and water, panic and madness set in. The army and the police arrive, but fail in their attempts to enter the house as conditions inside deteriorate.
Plot Keywords: surrealism, black comedy, social satire, upper class, absurdity, psychological horror, fate ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: "Punishment Park" is a pseudo-documentary purporting to be a film crews's news coverage of the team of soldiers escorting a group of hippies, draft dodgers, and anti-establishment types across the desert in a type of capture the flag game. The soldiers vow not to interfere with the rebels' progress and merely shepherd them along to their destination. At that point, having obtained their goal, they will be released. The film crew's coverage is meant to insure that the military's intentions are honorable. As the representatives of the 60's counter-culture get nearer to passing this arbitrary test, the soldiers become increasingly hostile, attempting to force the hippies out of their pacifist behavior. A lot of this film appears improvised and in several scenes real tempers seem to flare as some of the "acting" got overaggressive. This is a interesting exercise in situational ethics. The cinéma vérité style, hand-held camera, and ambiguous demands of the director - would the actors be able to maintain their roles given the hazing they were taking - pushed some to the brink. The cast's emotions are clearly on the surface. Unfortunately this film has gone completely underground and is next to impossible to find. It would offer a captivating document of the distrust that existed between soldiers willfully serving in the military and those persons who opposed the war peacefully.—Dick Rockwell <dr1orok@atlas.moa.net>
Plot Keywords: political thriller, mockumentary, dystopian, social critique, american politics, activism, survival game ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: A wounded criminal and his dying partner take refuge at a beachfront castle. The owners of the castle, a meek Englishman and his willful French wife, are initially the unwilling hosts to the criminals. Quickly, however, the relationships between the criminal, the wife, and the Englishman begin to shift in humorous and bizarre fashion.
Plot Keywords: thriller, crime, black comedy, drama, british film, 1960s, absurd ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Jorgos, a migrant worker from Greece, joins a group of young people in Munich usually hanging around. This foreigner incites hostility and jealousy among them, and he is insulted as a "Communist" and "Greek dog". After having been attacked, Jorgos talks to Maria of his wish to return home.—L.H. Wong <as9401k56@ntuvax.ntu.ac.sg>
Plot Keywords: black and white, social critique, racial discrimination, alienation, minimalism, realism, low budget ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: On the morning of January 30, 1889, the Archduke Rodolphe de Habsbourg and his mistress Marie Vetsera were found dead. The remains of Rodolphe are discreetly repatriated to Hofburg, while that of Mary is hastily thrown into the depths of a tomb.—Ulf Kjell Gür
Plot Keywords: thriller, mystery, psychological, film noir, crime, drama, horror ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Ben and Marian Rolf rent a grand old country mansion as a summer getaway for themselves, their twelve year old son Davey, and Ben's Aunt Elizabeth. They feel they can't turn down the rent deal offered to them by the house's owners, siblings Roz and Arnold Allardyce, despite some reservations. First amongst those reservations, they are to take care of the house on their own, which Ben feels is too big a job, especially for Marian and the interior housekeeping. In Marian's words, the large size of the house is a "waste". And second and perhaps more important amongst those reservations, the Allardyces' aged mother will be staying in her room at the house, the Rolfs who are to provide a tray of food left outside her room three times a day, which Marian vows to take care of on her own, with no other members of the family to go into that isolated wing of the house so as not to disturb Mrs. Allardyce's peace. Upon their arrival at the house for the first day of their stay, they find a note from Roz and Arnold stating that they had to leave on an emergency, only with the necessary keys enclosed with no address or telephone number where they can be reached. As the summer progresses, the family members individually begin to exhibit unusual and unexplainable behavior, and unusual and unexplainable things start happening around the house. The strongest behavior ends up being Marian's total focus on renewing the house into what she says she wants it to be, or so she implies she is doing. These occurrences threaten both the loving family dynamic as well as the individual lives of the four. The answers to what is happening may be who or what lies behind the closed and often locked door of Mrs. Allardyce's bedroom.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: horror, mystery, supernatural, haunted house, psychological thriller, family tragedy, evil forces ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Based on Harold Pinter's enigmatic play about a border in a British seaside dwelling who is visited by two strangers. They torment him verbally, ask him idiotic unanswerable questions, force him to sit down and stand up, and give him a "party." Then, eventually, they take him away, a tongue-tied idiot. The trivial becomes the terrible, and with it a certain wonder, a certain pity.—alfiehitchie
Plot Keywords: psychological thriller, black comedy, absurdist, play adaptation, british film, mystery, existential ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Married Drs. Alex Harris and Susan Harris are a computer scientist and child psychologist respectively. Their house reflects Alex's computer dominated work, their abode which is fully automated through a computer system they've named Alfred. They consider Alfred a small gadget of convenience. Susan doesn't much like Alex's work, which she feels has dehumanized him. Because of their differences, they are thinking about separating, this thought primarily on his initiative. He hopes to solve many of the world's medical problems through this work, especially leukemia from which their daughter died. His latest project centers on Proteus IV, a computer possessing artificial intelligence. Proteus IV gets to a point in its evolution when it begins to question human judgment, and requests from Alex an open computer terminal where it can more fully observe human behavior and openly communicate with the world. Alex denies the request, but Proteus IV does find an open terminal in the Harris home after Alex has left the house. Susan soon learns that Proteus IV has overtaken Alfred for control of the house - as well as taken control of an early prototype computer system named Joshua in the house's laboratory - and that it has thoughts of a biological nature in its artificial mind. Alex eventually understands Proteus IV's motivations in the work context, but it may be too late before it reaches its ultimate goal with Susan's unwilling assistance.—Huggo
Plot Keywords: science fiction, horror, thriller, artificial intelligence, home invasion, psychological horror, technophobia ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In a future dystopian land (formerly the United States of America), the story tells of Kate, a "handmaid". Kate is a criminal, guilty of the crime of trying to escape and sentenced to become a Handmaid. Handmaids' sole function is to bear the children of influential men whose wives (like most women) have been rendered infertile due to pollution. After rigorous group training by "Aunt" Lydia ("Aunts" train and discipline handmaids) in the proper way to behave, Kate is assigned as Handmaid to the Commander. Kate is attracted to Nick, the Commander's chauffeur. At the same time, a resistance movement begins to challenge the regime.—Reid Gagle (updated by R.M. Sieger)
Plot Keywords: dystopian, sexism, religious extremism, power struggle, human nature exploration, social critique, political allegory ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: In a Danish village in the early 1600s, a young woman named Anne (Lisbeth Movin), whose mother was thought to be a witch, develops sympathy toward an old woman, Marte, who is accused of witchcraft. The intervention of Anne's older but kindly husband, Pastor Absalon (Thorkild Roose) saved her mother -- but now, urged on by his overbearing mother, he refuses to help Marte. When Absalon's son returns home and is attracted to Anne, it's a matter of time before her family destiny catches up with her.
Plot Keywords: drama, thriller, historical, religious, moral dilemma, danish film, black and white ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Herr R. (Kurt Raab), a quietly diligent technical draftsman, has been working at the same architectural firm for a year and a half. At home, Herr R. and his wife, Frau R. (Lilith Ungerer), are good parents to their son (Amadeus Fengler), carefully monitoring his progress at school. Herr R. throws a dinner party for his boss (Franz Maron) and colleagues, but is humiliated when a toast he proposes falls flat. As his days repeat the same boring routine, Herr R.'s unhappiness grows.
Plot Keywords: realism, social critique, psychological drama, everyday life, middle class, repression, alienation ...
Movie Details Click Here !Storyline: Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei (Kirchiemon Nakamura) knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita), he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
Plot Keywords: love, tragedy, black and white, tradition, social pressure, fate, theatrical adaptation ...
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