Highest-Rated Movies about 'Mental Institution'

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Green Mile (1999), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Memento (2000), Amadeus (1984), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Batman Begins (2005) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Mental Institution movies.

#1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Storyline: McMurphy has a criminal past and has once again gotten himself into trouble and is sentenced by the court. To escape labor duties in prison, McMurphy pleads insanity and is sent to a ward for the mentally unstable. Once here, McMurphy both endures and stands witness to the abuse and degradation of the oppressive Nurse Ratched, who gains superiority and power through the flaws of the other inmates. McMurphy and the other inmates band together to make a rebellious stance against the atrocious Nurse.

Plot Keywords: mental institution, mental illness, 1960s, sadistic psychopath, sexuality, lobotomy, native american ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#3. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Storyline: F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) works hard to advance her career, while trying to hide or put behind her West Virginia roots, of which if some knew, would automatically classify her as being backward or white trash. After graduation, she aspires to work in the agency's Behavioral Science Unit under the leadership of Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). While she is still a trainee, Crawford asks her to question Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Sir Anthony Hopkins), a psychiatrist imprisoned, thus far, for eight years in maximum security isolation for being a serial killer who cannibalized his victims. Clarice is able to figure out the assignment is to pick Lecter's brains to help them solve another serial murder case, that of someone coined by the media as "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), who has so far killed five victims, all located in the eastern U.S., all young women, who are slightly overweight (especially around the hips), all who were drowned in natural bodies of water, and all who ...

Plot Keywords: serial killer, psycho thriller, cult film, bad guy wins, strong female character, strong female lead, murder of a police officer ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Storyline: Over 10 years have passed since the first robot called The Terminator tried to kill Sarah Connor and her unborn son, John. The man who will become the future leader of the human resistance against the Machines is now a healthy young boy. However, another Terminator, called the T-1000, is sent back through time by the supercomputer Skynet. This new Terminator is more advanced and more powerful than its predecessor and its mission is to kill John Connor when he's still a child. However, Sarah and John do not have to face the threat of the T-1000 alone. Another Terminator (identical to the same model that tried and failed to kill Sarah Conner in 1984) is also sent back through time. This Terminator has been reprogrammed by the future Resistance on the orders of adult John. This Terminator's mission is to protect John and Sarah Connor at all costs. The battle for tomorrow has begun.

Plot Keywords: time travel, male nudity, villain turns good, mother son relationship, artificial intelligence, sequel, future ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#5. Memento (2000)

Storyline: Memento chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards revealing more each time.

Plot Keywords: memory, hidden truth, amnesiac, diabetic, neo noir, nonlinear timeline, insulin ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#6. Amadeus (1984)

Storyline: Antonio Salieri believes that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's music is divine and miraculous. He wishes he was himself as good a musician as Mozart so that he can praise the Lord through composing. He began his career as a devout man who believes his success and talent as a composer are God's rewards for his piety. He's also content as the respected, financially well-off, court composer of Austrian Emperor Joseph II. But he's shocked to learn that Mozart is such a vulgar creature, and can't understand why God favored Mozart to be his instrument. Salieri's envy has made him an enemy of God whose greatness was evident in Mozart. He is ready to take revenge against God and Mozart for his own musical mediocrity.

Plot Keywords: composer, 1800s, opera, first person narration, 18th century, partial female nudity, 19th century ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#7. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Storyline: From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally - late in life - received the Nobel Prize.

Plot Keywords: mathematician, mental illness, schizophrenia, conspiracy, psychiatrist, based on book, paranoia ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#8. Batman Begins (2005)

Storyline: When his parents are killed, billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne relocates to Asia, where he is mentored by Henri Ducard and Ra's Al Ghul in how to fight evil. When learning about the plan to wipe out evil in Gotham City by Ducard, Bruce prevents this plan from getting any further and heads back to his home. Back in his original surroundings, Bruce adopts the image of a bat to strike fear into the criminals and the corrupt as the icon known as "Batman". But it doesn't stay quiet for long.

Plot Keywords: social decay, dc comics, superhero, neo noir, dark past, origin of hero, based on comic book ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#9. Mary and Max (2009)

Storyline: In the mid-1970's, a homely, friendless Australian girl of 8 picks a name out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him; she includes a chocolate bar. She's Mary Dinkle, the only child of an alcoholic mother and a distracted father. He's Max Horowitz, an overweight man with Asperger's, living alone in New York. He writes back, with chocolate. Thus begins a 20-year correspondence, interrupted by a stay in an asylum and a few misunderstandings. Mary falls in love with a neighbor, saves money to have a birthmark removed and deals with loss. Max has a friendship with a neighbor, tries to control his weight, and finally gets the dream job. Will the two ever meet face to face?

Plot Keywords: stop motion, black comedy, understanding, traumatic childhood, suicide, shoplifting, rooster ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#10. Persona (1966)

Storyline: A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer. Alma eventually confesses her secrets to a seemingly sympathetic Elisabeth and finds that her own personality is being submerged into Elisabeth's persona.

Plot Keywords: silence, patient, mute character, psychiatry, meta film, lesbian, nihilism ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#11. Shutter Island (2010)

Storyline: In 1954, up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he thinks he's been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.

Plot Keywords: surprise ending, neo noir, mental asylum, psycho thriller, year 1954, cult film, confinement ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#12. Love Exposure (2008)

Storyline: Three emotionally abused people from the fringes of society get locked in a convoluted love triangle. Yuu, a Catholic boy searching for true love ends up taking erotic photographs of women in public until he discovers Yoko, whom he sees as his Virgin Mary. Yoko, an antifamily, misandristic girl finds that her foster mother will be marrying Yuu's father. Koike, an "original sinner", coordinates a plan to convert Yuu's family to her cult. Under her careful direction, their lives come crashing together in one fateful street fight.—Anonymous

Plot Keywords: upskirt, short skirt, sexual fantasy, schoolgirl uniform, high school girl, skirt, schoolgirl ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#13. The Conformist (1970)

Storyline: This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello's mind.

Plot Keywords: fascist, paris france, 1930s, political assassination, assassination, professor, italy ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#14. Sling Blade (1996)

Storyline: A partially handicapped man named Karl is released from a mental hospital, about 20 years after murdering his mother and another person. Karl is often questioned if he will ever kill again, and he shrugs in response saying there is no reason to. Now out of the mental institution, Karl settles in his old, small hometown, occupying himself by fixing motors. After meeting a young boy named Frank, who befriends him, Karl is invited to stay at Frank's house with his mother Linda, who views Karl as a strange but kind and generous man. However, Linda's abusive boyfriend, Doyle, sees things differently in the way rules ought to be run- normally insulting Linda's homosexual friend Vaughan as well as Karl's disabilities, and having wild parties with his friends. As Karl's relationship with Frank grows, he is watchful of Doyle's cruel actions.

Plot Keywords: southern gothic, based on play, tragedy, sadistic psychopath, neo noir, small town, mental institution ...

Movie Details Click Here!

#15. Twelve Monkeys (1995)

Storyline: An intense film about time travel, this Sci-Fi entry was directed by Terry Gilliam, a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python. The film stars Bruce Willis as James Cole, a prisoner of the state in the year 2035 who can earn parole if he agrees to travel back in time and thwart a devastating plague. The virus has wiped out most of the Earth's population and the remainder live underground because the air is poisonous. Returning to the year 1990, six years before the start of the plague, Cole is soon imprisoned in a psychiatric facility because his warnings sound like mad ravings. There he meets a scientist named Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the mad son of an eminent virologist (Christopher Plummer). Cole is returned by the authorities to the year 2035, and finally ends up at his intended destination in 1996. He kidnaps Dr. Railly in order to enlist her help in his quest. Cole discovers graffiti by an apparent animal rights group called the Army ...

Plot Keywords: time travel, virus, mental institution, underground, psychiatrist, plague, madness ...

Movie Details Click Here!