Five movies that keep the spirit of weird alive

From the very beginning, cinema was a rather weird form of art. From the German expressionism of Nosferatu and over-the-top acting in silent films to the more action-packed campiness of the 1980s, the film has always had a spirit of weirdness about it. 

But recently, it has seemed as though cinema is losing its weird edge. With every other film being a superhero movie, a sequel or a remake, it can be easy to see all contemporary films as overly polished and perfectly sanitised.

Then something like Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn comes along, and you get hopeful. Everyone is talking about how weird and gross it is. And, upon watching, you’re left a little disappointed. That’s what we consider weird nowadays. That’s not even the weirdest character Barry Keoghan has played by a long shot. If anything, its main criticism should be that it’s not weird enough. 

However, a few contemporary movies have fought to keep the spirit of weird alive in both terrifying and wholesome ways. Here are just five of them, focusing on mainstream Western films, as this is the area of cinema that most needs its weirdness levels re-adjusted.

Five movies keep cinema strange:

Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010)

As most of the other films on this list can be considered horror, it only felt right to include one or two lighthearted and whimsically weird films. Richard Ayoade’s Submarine may lack the gory, gut-churning weirdness of the majority of the others on this list, as well as an extraterrestrial, but its main character Oliver and Ayode’s stylised vision veer into the otherworldly.

Oliver Tate is an odd, deep-thinking Welsh schoolboy who has encountered his first love in Jordana, his mischievous classmate and struggles to keep his home life together. The weirdness of this movie hinges mostly on Oliver’s bizarre view of the world, where poisoning a dog can save someone from grief and writing amorous letters to your mother from your father can keep their relationship going. These odd yet heartwarming plot points are made even quirkier thanks to Ayoade’s unique camera work, use of Super 8 footage and playful fourth-wall breaking. Plus, the dialogue is as weird as Ayoade’s often is in interviews, a mix of ironic and idiosyncratic.

All in all, it is a delightfully weird coming-of-age story aided along by a wistful soundtrack by Alex Turner.

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

2019 was a year for weird movies, and the first horror addition to the list has to be Ari Aster’s masterpiece Midsommar. While horror often veers into the weird, this film is unique due to its use of light. While horror films are often associated with darkness and shadows, Aster chose to set Midsommar in perpetually sunny Sweden. This means that the terrifying picture has to be derived from the plot, characters, and psychological themes. 

The film explores the breakdown of traumatised Dani and distant Christian’s relationship when they take a trip to Sweden with their friends and end up drawn into an ancient pagan cult. Featuring ancient pagan suicide rituals, ritual sacrifice and sex rituals, its plot points are already creepy and grotesque. But the weirdness is confounded by the ever-present colourful array of flowers, psychedelic visuals and oppressive sunlight. The main way this film keeps the spirit of weirdness alive, however, is through its use of sound, especially the crescendoing wails of Dani and other women throughout the film. Florence Pugh gives her all as Dani, proving that she can be both charming and utterly unhinged.

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson, 2023)

Since his debut in 1996, Wes Anderson has kept the spirit of weirdness alive and well, even bringing it to a much more mainstream audience. While Asteroid City is by no means his weirdest film, it’s been included over the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom due to being his most recent film. This demonstrates the ways in which Anderson has stuck to his bizarre and overtly stylised guns for the entirety of his career, despite criticisms that he has become ‘too Wes Anderson’.

Definitely his most stylised film to date, Asteroid City follows a grieving father and his four children as they arrive at the Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention in an American desert town circa 1955. When an alien arrives, it sends the camp into quarantine and disarray. Using a three-foot stop-motion puppet for the alien brings the childlike oddness of Anderson’s animations to the real world. A retro world realised in bright technicolour with sweeping desert landscapes, Anderson creates an almost ethereal and fantastical mood made even weirder by his usual idiosyncratic dialogue and a fantastic ensemble cast. 

Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2017)

Yorgos Lanthimos is undoubtedly one of the weirdest directors of the 21st century so far, even being part of the ‘Greek Weird Wave’ movement, and could easily be featured as every entry on this list. Tackling political and cultural issues through a subversive lens, his most commercially viable film, Poor Things, is only the tip of the iceberg. 2017’s Killing of a Sacred Deer is arguably his strangest and features everyone’s favourite weird boy himself, Barry Keoghan.

It follows Dr Steven Murphy, a renowned cardiovascular surgeon who presides over a pristine household with his idyllic wife and children, as he reluctantly takes Martin, an awkward teenage boy, under his wing. But Martin begins infiltrating the Murphy family in increasingly bizarre and sinister ways. The film features Keoghan, Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman on top form, perfectly delivering Lanthimos’ idiosyncratic stilted dialogue. It’s a surreal psychological horror that refuses to tone down its gore and reveal its surreal, almost magical elements, which only serves to make it even weirder. 

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers, 2019)

Starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as marooned 19th-century lighthouse keepers, The Lighthouse was set to be incredibly weird from the beginning – especially considering Robert Eggers‘ previous horror film The Witch. Its weirdness is only strengthened by Eggers’ choice to shoot it in black-and-white with a nearly square, 1.19:1 aspect ratio, which adds to the claustrophobia of its subject matter.

An unfinished Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name and a 19th-century legend of an accident at a lighthouse in Wales inspired it. It follows the two lighthouse keepers, both named Thomas, and their descent into madness due to their isolation. It combines mythology with aesthetics of maritime French cinema and 1890s New England photography, plus its dialogue is almost Shakespearean, the visuals become more and more surreal as the film progresses, and the consistent wail of the lighthouse horn haunts the entire experience.

This may sound like a lot to take in, and it is overwhelming, but ultimately, the right way, especially considering the career-defining performances of Dafoe and Pattinson. They could surely keep the spirit of weird alive all on their own. Not to mention the grotesque performances of those seagulls.

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