Best movies like Upstream Color
You can force your story's shape, but the color will always bloom upstream.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like Upstream Color Starring Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins, and more. If you liked Upstream Color then you may also like: Pi, The Nines, Vanilla Sky, The Wailing, Woodshock and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.
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Vanilla Sky
David Aames has it all: wealth, good looks and gorgeous women on his arm. But just as he begins falling for the warmhearted Sofia, his face is horribly disfigured in a car accident. That's just the beginning of his troubles as the lines between illusion and reality, between life and death, are blurred.
The Wailing
A stranger arrives in a little village and soon after a mysterious sickness starts spreading. A policeman is drawn into the incident and is forced to solve the mystery in order to save his daughter.
The One I Love
On the brink of separation, Ethan and Sophie escape to a beautiful vacation house for a weekend getaway in an attempt to save their marriage. What begins as a romantic and fun retreat soon becomes surreal, when an unexpected discovery forces the two to examine themselves, their relationship, and their future.
The Jacket
A military veteran goes on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death and is left with questions that could save his life and those he loves.
Being John Malkovich
One day at work, unsuccessful puppeteer Craig finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters its mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.
Beyond the Black Rainbow
Deep within the mysterious Arboria Institute, a disturbed and beautiful girl is held captive by a doctor in search of inner peace. Her mind controlled by a sinister technology. Silently, she waits for her next session with deranged therapist Dr. Barry Nyle. If she hopes to escape, she must journey through the darkest reaches of The Institute, but Nyle wonʼt easily part with his most gifted and dangerous creation.
The Butterfly Effect
A young man struggles to access sublimated childhood memories. He finds a technique that allows him to travel back into the past, to occupy his childhood body and change history. However, he soon finds that every change he makes has unexpected consequences.
Memento
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
Primer
Friends and fledgling entrepreneurs invent a device in their garage which reduces the apparent mass of any object placed inside it, but they discover that it has some highly unexpected capabilities - ones that could enable them to do and to have seemingly anything they want. Taking advantage of this unique opportunity is the first challenge they face. Dealing with the consequences is the next.
Sound of My Voice
A journalist and his girlfriend get pulled in while they investigate a cult whose leader claims to be from the future.
Source Code
When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train.
Time Lapse
Three friends discover a mysterious machine that takes pictures 24 hours into the future and conspire to use it for personal gain, until disturbing and dangerous images begin to develop.
Cowards Bend the Knee
When he takes his girlfriend to a seedy abortion clinic in the back room of a combination hair salon / bordello, Guy Maddin meets the madam’s daughter and falls in love. But she won’t let any man touch her until her father’s murder has been avenged.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.
Donnie Darko
After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.
Synecdoche, New York
A theater director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he attempts to create a life-size replica of New York inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
Eraserhead
First time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.
Enter the Void
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
MirrorMask
In a fantasy world of opposing kingdoms, a 15-year old girl must find the fabled MirrorMask in order to save the kingdom and get home.
Prospero's Books
An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.
Marjorie Prime
A service which creates holographic projections of late family members allows an elderly woman to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband.
The Signal
On a road trip, Nic and two friends are drawn to an isolated area by a computer genius. When everything suddenly goes dark, Nic regains consciousness – only to find himself in a waking nightmare.
The Future
When a couple decides to adopt a stray cat their perspective on life changes radically, literally altering the course of time and space and testing their faith in each other and themselves.
THX 1138
People in the future live in a totalitarian society. A technician named THX 1138 lives a mundane life between work and taking a controlled consumption of drugs that the government uses to make puppets out of people. As THX is without drugs for the first time he has feelings for a woman and they start a secret relationship.
Zenith
In a hellish future where human beings have become stupefied by the state of permanent happiness they have been genetically altered to experience, Jack offers relief via drugs that cause his customers the welcome phenomenon of pain. But when Jack receives a mysterious videotape of his dead father, he sets out to unmask the dangerous conspiracy that has created this dystopian world.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.
Ink
Invisible forces exert power over us in our sleep. A mercenary named Ink, on a literal nightmare mission, captures the spirit of 8-year-old Emma in the dream world. To save her, the dream-givers marshal all their resources, focusing on saving the soul of Emma's tragically broken father.
Moon
With only three weeks left in his three year contract, Sam Bell is getting anxious to finally return to Earth. He is the only occupant of a Moon-based manufacturing facility along with his computer and assistant, GERTY. When he has an accident however, he wakens to find that he is not alone.
One Point O
Paranoid computer programmer Simon wakes up to find a package in his room one day. Despite attempts at securing his apartment, the packages keep arriving. While cameras watch Simon's every move, he struggles to find the answers to the mysterious forces taking over his life.
Synchronicity
A daring physicist travels into the past to stop a mysterious woman from stealing his invention. But once there, he uncovers a surprising truth about the machine, the woman, and his own fractured reality.
Timecode
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.
One in the Gun
A sexy brain teaser of a thriller with nods to classic film noir of the past mixed with a post-modern flair of David Lynch-style surrealism and surprises. When Mickey Lewis, a homeless struggling artist crosses paths with Katrina, the beautiful rich wife of Arthur Webb and is enlisted to paint their home, deadly passions ignite. Soon hidden agendas, dangerous seductions, double and triple-crosses spiral Mickey's life out of control leading to a motel in the middle of nowhere filled with strange people and twisted secrets that all hold the key to the mystery of Mickey's past, present, and future. All it takes is - ONE IN THE GUN.
Shattered Image
Confusing realities surface in this paranoid film dealing with the fragile nature of a young woman recovering from rape and an apparent attempted suicide. In one reality, she is a killer destroyer of men. In another she is the new wife on a Jamaican honeymoon with her husband (William Baldwin), who is trying to help her recover. Which is real is the question as the story unfolds.
Swung
David’s life is on the slide: he’s broke, in the middle of a divorce and ‘can’t get it up’. His girlfriend, Alice, is his rock, but the magazine she writes for is going down and the pressure is on to find a story. While job hunting online, David stumbles across the perfect antidote to his boredom: a ‘Swingers’ site. The resulting inbox of lewd invitations on the home-laptop justifiably upsets Alice, until she realises this could be just the ‘story’ she needs. The idea of uncovering the swinging scene causes quite a stir in Alice’s office and, much to David’s chagrin, she is urged to pursue the story. Their first reluctant foray is an hysterically low-rent initiation, however, an unexpected upturn for David’s manhood is all the extra encouragement they need. As events accelerate beyond their control the once adoring couple become lost and fundamental questions are asked of their relationship.
Extracted
Thomas Jacobs invents a way to watch people's memories from the inside. Going against his morals, he accepts an offer to enter a heroin addict's memories to literally see if he committed a crime. However,a malfunction causes his consciousness to become trapped inside the criminal's mind. He remains a prisoner in the addict's memories for more than four years until he discovers the possibility of escape.
Soi Cowboy
In order to avoid working in the red-light district of Bangkok, a Thai woman lives with an overweight expatriate. Their lives are uneventful and dull until a provincial mafia hitman arrives on the scene.
Brain Dead
In a battle of man versus machine, Martin, a top neurosurgeon who's studying brain malfunctions that cause mental illness, delves deep into his own mind to save himself from a megalomaniacal corporation.
Infinitum: Subject Unknown
Jane is the subject of a twisted science experiment where she is placed in a parallel world and is forced to find a way to either alter her reality or be stuck in a time-loop, destined to repeat the same test over and over again, with no memory of her doing it before. But with each 'reset' she starts to retain fragments of memory. With clues pointing to the mysterious Wytness Quantum Research Centre, she tries to find a way out. (The film was shot entirely on an iPhone during the UK’s first lockdown.)
It's Such a Beautiful Day
Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche, in this feature film version of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short film trilogy.
Pi
A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.