Remember Inception?
It was that movie where Leonardo diCaprio played a man who stole corporate secrets by getting into people’s dreams. He’s given the challenge of planting an idea in someone’s head with a dream that he creates and manipulates. To do that, he has to get past the person’s subconscious defenses, but that’s the easy part. He also has to work through his own fears, deep ones brought on by his very use of that dream-sharing technology with his wife. Brilliant, right?
If you, like me, wish there had been a sequel to that movie, here are some movies like Inception and books like those movies to give you a similar brain-bending, dream-inducing escapist adventure:
MOVIES LIKE INCEPTION AND THEIR BOOKS
Dreamscapes and Passage
I’m surprised I’ve never heard of Dreamscapes before, given how similar their premises are. It’s about a young psychic recruited by a government agency to experiment with dream-sharing technology . They want him to plant an idea into the mind of the U.S. president.
Passage is based on the exploration of near-death experiences that sound like dreams. It’s different in that respect, but shares the same idea of manipulating the subconscious.
Watch the trailer!
Insomnia and…Insomnia
The Insomnia movie is a crime thriller starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro. One of them can’t sleep out of guilt. In Insomnia the book, a teenage boy always enters the dreams of the last person he had eye contact with. He hasn’t had a dream of his own in four years. After four years of insomnia from this, he literally can’t take it any more. That is, until he meets a girl named Mia whose dreams are blissfully, addictively calm. But then she starts getting anonymous death threats.
Watch the trailer!
Total Recall and Mindswap
Both Total Recall and Mindswap are about guys who get more than they bargained for seeking happy times. Douglas Quaid wants blissful vacation memories implanted in his head, only to find his whole life is fake. Marvin, the main character in Mindwap, swaps minds with someone on an alien planet who turns out to be a criminal.
Watch the trailer:
What Dreams May Come and Strange the Dreamer/Muse of Nightmares
You may remember What Dreams May Come as one of those serious Robin William movies. In it, he plays a husband who is killed in a car accident and goes to the afterlife. There, he visits his still-alive widowed wife as a ghost. But he has to watch as she kills herself out of grief. Then he seeks to save her from where that sends her, so that they can be together in happiness. Sad and heartbreaking and ethereal, all at the same time.
Strange the Dreamer and its sequel Muse of Nightmares have that same ethereal, mournful feel. While not involving the afterlife per se, there are also ghosts and gods.
Watch the movie trailer:
Shadow Effect and Dream Thieves
Both Shadow Effect and Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater, are about characters whose dreams interject themselves into reality.
Watch the movie trailer:
Sliding Doors and Pivot Point
While Sliding Doors doesn’t have anything to do with dreams, it does have everything to do with alternate realities. Pivot Point does too, and explores the conflict that arises from knowing our futures through dream-like visions, and not being able or not knowing how to pick which one we want.
Watch the trailer:
Dream Runner and Snapshot
Dream Runner, which out in March of 2021, is about a world in which humans no longer dream. So, to get their dream fix, they turn to illegal dream runners to attain illicit fantasies. Snapshot by Brandon Sanderson is a detective fantasy thriller about crime detectives sent 10 days into the past. They discover evidence of a grisly crime, but have to pretend it didn’t happen. All kinds of illegal things going on in both the movie and the book!
And, as it so happens, Snapshot has been optioned to be made into a movie.
Watch the trailer:
So there you go! What movies have you seen or books have you read that remind you of Inception?
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