Paranoid film12/18/2023 ![]() All (eventually) agree that Kennedy has to be taken out because of his support for civil rights, his plan to end the war in Vietnam, and other perceived inconveniences. It opens on a secret meeting of conservative titans played by the familiar faces Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, Will Geer, and others. ![]() Mixing documentary footage with reenactments and dramatic scenes (not unlike a later, more famous Kennedy assassination movie), Executive Action wastes no time establishing who killed Kennedy. It’s hard to direct anything but faint praise toward the grandaddy of all Kennedy assassination movies, but this Dalton Trumbo–scripted docudrama - taken from a story by playwright Donald Freed and Rush to Judgment author Mark Lane - remains a fascinating document of a particular moment in conspiratorial thinking. But we can explore the question via some compelling films inspired by the deepest, darkest pockets of political discourse. Would our distrust of the government have deepened quite as intensely after Watergate were it not for the Watergate-inspired films that followed it? We may never know. Here’s Hofstadter again: “Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content.” In the right hands, conspiracy theory–inspired movies tap into a deeper sense of unease and distrust. What might not literally be accurate can still be metaphorically true. You won’t find Close Encounters of the Third Kind, for instance, even though it feeds off the paranoid mood of the era, or stories of corporate conspiracies, real or fictional, like The Insider and Michael Clayton.) (And for this list we’ve kept the focus on conspiracy theory movies with political implications. The sense that we live in a world filled with dark forces and sinister plots can be queasily intoxicating. Yet the same elements that can make for irresponsible journalism - and conspiracy theories have a tendency to fall apart upon close examination - can prove irresistible to storytellers. Misleading - and often outright false - documentaries have been used to push everything from 9/11 conspiracy theories to COVID-19 disinformation to alleged UFO cover-ups to whatever nonsense Dinesh D’Souza is trying to push on any given day. Movies have had a complex relationship with conspiracy theories. Writing today, Hofstadter would have have little trouble extending that line, from the Kennedy assassination theories that started to crop up immediately after the president’s death the previous November through internet-fueled conspiratorial thinking that has become a prominent part of the 2020 presidential election thanks to QAnon. Writing in 1964, Hofstadter connected the dots between eruptions of panic about the Illuminati and Freemasonry through anti-Catholic conspiracy theories up to the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era. In his essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” historian Richard Hofstadter identified a “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” that served as a recurring pattern in American history (though not exclusively in American history). Every filmmaker approaches it so differently.Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. ![]() You’re able to paint this picture of what’s going on inside someone and make it tense and scary. Every movie does that to some extent, but that tends to come across more in these movies, not so much through dialogue, but music and cinematography and sound. “Especially for ‘Watcher,’ but for any movie, what draws me to the paranoia genre is the fact that, maybe more so than any other genre, you’re using the tools that you have as a filmmaker to show the audience what the interiority of your character is. “All of these picks are pretty different,” Okuno said. She described why the genre is a source of inspiration to her. Okuno, who also wrote “Watcher,” was the perfect person to help curate Variety’s list of the best paranoid thrillers of all time. The actress’s performance recalls the emotional complexity of her breakout role in 2014’s “It Follows.” Scream queen Maika Monroe stars as an expat who is convinced she’s being watched by someone across from her Bucharest apartment complex. This terror comes to vivid life in “Watcher,” the feature debut from director Chloe Okuno, which impressed and terrified audiences at this year’s Sundance Film Festival before heading to horror streamer Shudder. One of the most primal fears is someone watching every move you make, quietly invading your privacy as they prepare to strike. Chloe Okuno, whose film “ Watcher “ is one of the best horror movies of the year, shared her picks for the best paranoid thrillers of all time. This October, Variety has enlisted some our favorite spooky content creators to share their scary movie essentials.
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