15. Sleepwalk With Me (2012)
Mike Birbiglia writes, directs, and stars in this indie comedy that might have flown under your radar. In this feature-length exercise in breaking the fourth wall, he plays a fictionalized version of himself named Matt and tells us the story of how he started sleepwalking.
It all began eight years ago when he moved in with his girlfriend (played by Lauren Ambrose). As that relationship intensifies and marriage begins to rear its head, Matt’s sleepwalking worsens.
Matt wakes up in increasingly dangerous situations, like the time he jolts awake in shards of glass—from jumping out of a window.
Although it never gets to the severity seen inSide Effects, Matt does end up having to buy a sleeping bag to restrict his movements.
Related:Breaking the Fourth Wall, Explained (With Movie Examples)
14. Whirlpool (1950)
Insomnia is a near-perfect match for film noir, a genre in which characters tend to pervade the night-time streets as if walking through shadowy dreams while solving crimes instead of sleeping.
Charles Bickford plays Lt. James Colton, the conventional detective in Otto Preminger’sWhirlpool, with Gene Tierney leading as the not-quite-femme-fatale Ann Sutton.
Ann has guilt-induced insomnia after she’s caught shoplifting at a bougie department store, but little does she know things are about to get a whole lot worse…
Lost in a sleep-like trance from a trained hypnotherapist, Ann awakens to find she’s been charged with murder.Whirlpoolis a hypnagogic melodrama that manages to smooth over implausibilities with style.
Related:The Best Film Noir Movies of All Time
13. Light Sleeper (1992)
You might not have heard of this Paul Schrader and Willem Dafoe collaboration as it somehow slipped through the box office like sand through fingertips, all despite positive critical reviews.
Willem Dafoe stars as drug dealer John LeTour, who questions his morality during a midlife crisis. Insomnia is partly to thank for John’s sudden change in tune, as he spends his nights mulling over the consequences of his actions.
Sadly, this new start comes a little too late for John, who’s propelled into the chaos of crime following a fatal tragedy.
Insomnia and addiction often go hand-in-hand, a relation that Schrader explores in this slow-burning,Taxi Driver-esque character portrait that’s made up of mood rather than action.
Related:The Best Midlife Crisis Movies
12. Buster’s Mal Heart (2016)
When Rami Malek signed up to leadBuster’s Mal Heart, he’d just started playing the drug-addicted hacker Elliot Anderson inMr. Robot. Here, he’s notcausinga worldwide digital crash; he’s terrified of one.
Remember the Y2K scare at the turn of the millennium? Basically, computer systems around the world were at risk of collapse because the year 2000 would’ve been indistinguishable from the year 1900. (Luckily, it was addressed in time and nothing actually happened.)
Buster’s Mal Hearttakes place before the Y2K scare. After Buster meets the “Last Free Man,” he goes from family man to crazed conspiracy theorist on the run from police.
It doesn’t help that he works hotel shifts, which amplifies his sleep deprivation and makes him more susceptible to paranoia. Sarah Adina Smith writes, directs,andedits this surreal indie mystery.
Related:Surrealism in Movies, Explained (With Great Examples)
11. Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
As you might infer from the title, the stars of this feel-good rom-com live sleeplessly in Seattle, Washington.
The fates of Sam (played by Tom Hanks) and Annie (played by Meg Ryan) accidentally collide when insomnia keeps them awake on the same night. Despite being strangers in different states, the two happen to meet via radio talk show. How’s that for destiny?
In reality, Sam’s sleep deprivation renders him hazy, scatterbrained, and piling on the pounds. Still, Nora Ephron’s comedy-drama, inspired by 1957’sAn Affair to Remember, has us yearning for late-night love.
Related:The Greatest Female Movie Directors (And Their Best Films)
10. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Even though the title is a reference to a sketch inMonty Python and the Holy Grail, and even though a thread of humor runs through it,Bringing Out the Deadis actually an intense psychological drama.
Nicolas Cage stars as an overworked Manhattan paramedic who has—you guessed it—insomnia. Plus burnout. Plus depression. Not a great mix when your job requires sharp mental focus (although sadly it’s true for many real-life medics who work the night shift).
Frank is used to being a fast-acting, life-saving hero whose hands work on autopilot. Now, he’s seeing the ghosts of his dead patients and practically begging to get fired, and it’s all because he can’t sleep. This is an underappreciated gem from Martin Scorsese’s canon.
Related:The Best Movies About Grief and Loss, Ranked
9. Last Night in Soho (2021)
Ellie (played by Thomasin McKenzie) doesn’t suffer from a sleep problem so much as a dream problem—one that, at first, she’s completely fine with.
When studying fashion in London doesn’t work out, Ellie moves into a single-room occupancy unit while pursuing her 1960s designer dreams. And we don’t just mean dreams as in life goals!
Ellie literally has dreams about living in the 1960s, and these dreams are so lucid that they actually bleed into her reality. When she sleeps, Ellie transforms from awkward student to gorgeous blonde singer (portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy).
Of course, these visions quickly turn into nightmares and start pressing against the walls of Ellie’s real life. Director Edgar Wright delivers this psychological thriller in his usual punchy, dynamic style, and the end result is an amazingly thrilling ride.
Related:The Best Movies About Fashion, Clothes, and Designers
8. Vanilla Sky (2001)
Vanilla Skyfeatures a lucid dreamworld, this time in early-2000s Manhattan. Tom Cruise plays rich playboy David, whose face is disfigured in a car crash.
Recalling the events through a creepy prosthetic mask, David ’s memories start to move and distort like his face.
A US remake of the 1997 Spanish filmOpen Your Eyes,Vanilla Skyis one of those films where the viewing experience is totally different your second time around (assuming you catch all the little details).
Related:The Best Movies With Dream Logic
7. Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Like many of my picks,Hour of the Wolfdeals with the psychological more than the physical. After all, sleep problems are mental disorders that disturb how people experience reality.
Johan Borg (played by Max von Sydow) is a painter who expresses his innermost fears through his art. All through the long nights of insomnia, Johan sketches out his terrifying visions to try and make sense of them… to his wife’s dismay.
Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman is known for his reflective movies that probe deep into his characters' souls and psyches.Hour of the Wolfis no exception, playing out like a waking nightmare where demons roam free in a lucid dream state.
Related:The Best Movies About Art and Painting
6. Inception (2010)
Filmed in classic Christopher Nolan style,Inceptionfeatures lots of complex storybuilding, shifting timelines, and crescendo music. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Dom Cobb, an “extractor” who enters people’s dreams to find secrets and plant ideas.
Nolan began work onInceptionshortly after completelyInsomnia(which is also on this list down below), inspired by its sleepless plot to write a treatment about “dream stealers.”
Deeming the original idea far too ambitious, Nolan shelved the concept until he was able to gain more experience (which he eventually did with the creation of hisThe Dark Knighttrilogy).
Related:The Best Movies With Brilliant Symbolism
5. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
People literally need sleep to survive, but for the kids on Elm Street, sleep guarantees their death—and a gruesome one, at that.
Teenager Nancy (played by Heather Langenkamp) relies on coffee to stay awake, but it doesn’t quite do. Whenever she inevitably dozes off, Freddy Krueger is there waiting with his metal claws.
Krueger has become a standard Halloween costume nowadays, what with his melted face and brown fedora. He’s not your usual child-killer, but a spirit who attacks his victims in their sleep.
When brought into the real world, his supernatural shapeshifting powers are rendered useless—but he can still kill you!
Related:The Best Slasher Movies of All Time
4. Insomnia (2002)
Insomniamight not be Christopher Nolan’s most hailed movie, but he did set a high bar for himself with it. (Notably,Insomniais Nolan’s only movie for which he didn’t write the screenplay himself.)
Led by a solid cast—Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, Robin Williams—this psychological thriller follows a police investigation in Nightmute, Alaska where people spend entire months in perpetual daylight.
Detective Dormer (played by Al Pacino) doesn’t quite live up to his usual investigating standards thanks to his chronic insomnia. His inability to sleep is brought on by a mixture of guilt and sunlight, and the killer uses it to his advantage to tease him.
Related:The Best Psychological Horror Movies
3. Taxi Driver (1976)
Light Sleeperdidn’t try to hide the inspiration it took fromTaxi Driver, and that’s becauseTaxi Driveris such an iconic film!
The first collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro,Taxi Driverhas an atmosphere of insomnia that somehow makes a physical issue feel abstract and tonal.
Instead of snoozing, Travis Bickle (played by Robert De Niro) spends the night hours as a taxi driver, meandering through the “scum” of the streets. Everything about Travis is contradictory, such as him being a junk food-eating gym freak who picks up passengers he hates.
Travis is a character who undergoes transformation following a midlife crisis, but this one’s a little more extreme. (I mean, he shaves himself a mohawk and tries to assassinate a presidential candidate!)
Related:The Best Movies About Trauma
2. Fight Club (1999)
The main plot twist ofFight Club(which might be a spoiler, but it’s been over two decades and nearly everyone on the planet knows it by now) is the fact that Edward Norton and Brad Pitt play the same character.
While they’re presented as two separate, polar opposite best friends for most of the movie, one is imaginary. Experts say that Tyler Durden’s Dissociative Identity Disorder is likely exasperated by his insomnia.
As if a soul-crushing office job doesn’t make you enough of a zombie, Tyler’s insomnia has him stumbling red-eyed through work, barely even a person at all. And that leads to some serious consequences.
Related:The Best Movies With Imaginary Characters
1. The Machinist (2004)
InThe Machinist, Trevor is a skeletal man who’s so consumed by guilt and paranoia that he becomes anorexic. He also has insomnia.
His inability to sleep or eat stems from the fact that he (accidentally) ran over a young boy in the past, and he’s been suppressing the reality of this hit-and-run ever since. Now he works as a machinist—a dangerous trade for a man who can’t focus.
Christian Bale is known for undergoing extreme physical transformations for his roles, but his weight loss forThe Machinistno doubt takes the cake. In fact, it’s still the biggest example of weight loss for a role in cinematic history.
Related:The Best Movies About Eating Disorders
