“Dreamlike” is a term that is usually used to describe a film that bases it construction focusing more on atmosphere then plot. Films that use this technique range from the reflective (Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line”), the chaotic (Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”), and the nightmarish (Most of the films of David Lynch). Currently, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is redefining the heist movie with its literal interpretation of the term, and it does it so well that it will take multiple viewings to push it into your cerebellum. But as Nolan’s film reveals, not all dreams are created equal.

Often mishmashes of plot and idea, dreamlike cinema is the rarest form of filmatic mind fuck. One that scares the crap out of the Hollywood hit machine.  It exists not to entertain, but to annoy. To make you literally review every frame of film over and over to try and extract the meaning of each abstract image. This is cinema at its most pure. Stories can, and usually do, go anywhere, characters are strange and untrustworthy, and the world as we know it is turned upside down.

Nicholas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” falls directly into this category of dreamlike cinema, as could be said of most of Roeg’s films. His use of editing to insert images purposely to unsettle and disorient the viewer don’t gel into a totally cohesive narrative, rather thrust the viewer into a systematic feeling of dread that echoes throughout the films entire 110 minute running time. This style, combined with expertly underplayed performances by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, make this film one of the greatest purely cinematic horror films ever made.