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Best Experiment Movies

Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of experiment cinema — measured across 2,789 indexed frames from 37 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.

Experiment films over-index on lab coat, debris and blood — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.

  1. 1

    Darkman (1990)

    Sam RaimiDP Bill PopeIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    Peyton Westlake is a scientist who has discovered a way to produce synthetic skin. This could revolutionise skin grafting, except for one minor glitch; the synthetic skin degrades after 100 minutes of exposure to light. When gangsters attack Peyton, he is horrifically burnt, and assumed dead. In his quest for revenge, Peyton, aka the Darkman, is able to take on the appearance of anyone (using the synthetic skin,) but he only has 100 minutes per disguise.

  2. 2

    Re-Animator (1985)

    Stuart GordonDP Mac AhlbergIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Obsessed with the idea of overcoming the obstacle of death and determined to vindicate himself by backing up his theory, the ambitious medical student, Herbert West, arrives in New England, after the horrific incident at the Institute of Medicine in Switzerland. Before long, Herbert will pick up where he left off--at first, experimenting with dead feline tissue, and then, with fresh human cadavers--talking his sceptic roommate, Dan Cain, into joining his audacious project. Inevitably, as the two young scientists burrow deeper and deeper into uncharted territories, the campus will start brimming with West's reanimated corpses, catching the eye of his arch-nemesis, Dr Hill, who yearns to take credit for this astounding discovery. The dead will rise again, even with a bit of help; however, can the young re-animator harness the power of his phosphorescent green reagent?

  3. 3

    Altered States (1980)

    Ken RussellDP Jordan CronenwethIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    A research scientist explores the boundaries and frontiers of human consciousness. Using sensory deprivation and hallucinogenic mixtures from Native American shamans, he explores these altered states of cognizance and finds that memory, time, and reality itself are states of mind.

  4. 4

    The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

    Marc WebbDP John SchwartzmanIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.7See in full on FrameThrower →

    Peter Parker (Garfield) is an outcast high schooler who was abandoned by his parents as a boy, leaving him to be raised by his Uncle Ben (Sheen) and Aunt May (Field). Like most teenagers, Peter is trying to figure out who he is and how he got to be the person he is today. Peter is also finding his way with his first high school crush, Gwen Stacy (Stone), and together, they struggle with love, commitment, and secrets. As Peter discovers a mysterious briefcase that belonged to his father, he begins a quest to understand his parents' disappearance - leading him directly to Oscorp and the lab of Dr. Curt Connors (Ifans), his father's former partner. As Spider-Man is set on a collision course with Connors' alter-ego, The Lizard, Peter will make life-altering choices to use his powers and shape his destiny to become a hero.

  5. 5

    RoboCop (1987)

    Paul VerhoevenDP Jost VacanoIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    In a violent, near-apocalyptic Detroit, evil corporation Omni Consumer Products wins a contract from the city government to privatize the police force. To test their crime-eradicating cyborgs, the company leads street cop Alex Murphy into an armed confrontation with crime lord Boddicker so they can use his body to support their untested RoboCop prototype. But when RoboCop learns of the company's nefarious plans, he turns on his masters.

  6. 6

    The Fly (1986)

    David CronenbergDP Mark IrwinIMDb 7.6TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    An eccentric scientist changes the world with his teleportation technology: when his experiment seems to be going well, Dr. Seth Brundle tests his machine on himself and he gets fused with the worst kind of pest on Planet Earth; The Fly. What is the price of a man playing God? Only Seth knows.

  7. 7

    Akira (1988)

    Katsuhiro OtomoDP Katsuji MisawaIMDb 8.0TMDB 7.9See in full on FrameThrower →

    2019. 31 years after being destroyed during World War 3, Tokyo (now 'Neo-Tokyo') has been rebuilt and is a thriving metropolis. Shotaro Kaneda is the leader of a biker gang. His friend Tetsuo is injured in an accident and taken to a top-secret government facility. He develops telekinetic powers but decides to use them for evil rather than good. He has the same powers as Akira, the force that destroyed Tokyo in 1988, and now it appears that history will repeat itself.

  8. 8

    Hollow Man (2000)

    Paul VerhoevenDP Jost VacanoIMDb 5.9TMDB 6.0See in full on FrameThrower →

    Cocky researcher Sebastian Caine is working on a project to make living creatures invisible. Determined to achieve the ultimate breakthrough, Caine pushes his team to move to the next phase — using himself as the subject. The test is a success, but when the process can't be reversed and Caine seems doomed to future without flesh, he starts to turn increasingly dangerous.

  9. 9

    From Beyond (1986)

    Stuart GordonDP Mac AhlbergIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →

    Dr. Edward Pretorius and his assistant, the physician Crawford Tillinghast, have developed the Resonator, a machine to stimulate the sixth sense through the pineal gland. When Crawford activates the apparatus, he sees creatures flying in the air and he summons Dr. Pretorius. The experiment goes out of control and Dr. Pretorius refuses to turn off the Resonator. Meanwhile their neighbor calls the police, and when the police officers arrive, they see Crawford trying to escape from his house and Dr. Pretorius beheaded. Crawford is sent to a mental institution under the supervision of the sadistic Dr. Bloch. However, the prominent psychiatrist Dr. Katherine McMichaels requests the custody of Crawford and Detective Bubba Brownlee that is investigating the case stays with them. Katherine goes with Crawford and Bubba to see the Resonator and turns the machine on. Dr. Pretorius returns in a mutant shape and attacks them, in the beginning of a gore night with weird life forms.

  10. 10

    Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

    Adrian LyneDP Jeffrey L. KimballIMDb 7.4TMDB 7.4See in full on FrameThrower →

    After returning home from the Vietnam War, veteran Jacob Singer struggles to maintain his sanity. Plagued by hallucinations and flashbacks, Singer rapidly falls apart as the world and people around him morph and twist into disturbing images. His girlfriend, Jezzie, and ex-wife, Sarah, try to help, but to little avail. Even Singer's chiropractor friend, Louis, fails to reach him as he descends into madness.

What experiment films are made of

How much more often each element appears in a experiment frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — lab coat is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.

  • lab coat8.7×
  • debris2.8×
  • blood2.6×
  • skin1.9×
  • eyes1.9×
  • smoke1.6×
  • glasses1.6×

How experiment films are shot

Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate experiment from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.

  • 29%naturalvs 43% baseline
  • 28%dayvs 42% baseline
  • 51%low keyvs 40% baseline
  • 27%closeupvs 21% baseline
  • 53%nightvs 43% baseline

What breaks the pattern

The Haunting (1963) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.

Method

Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 2,789 frames from 37 films carrying the experiment label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.

Machine-readable: /api/list/experiment

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These are real movie frames, shown at reduced resolution. All rights remain with their respective owners; they appear here for study, commentary and education under fair-use principles. How these are meant to be used