10 Most Twisted Asylum Horror Movies

5. Bad Dreams

The Ward Amber Heard
20th Century Fox

Released in 1988, Andrew Fleming's Bad Dreams sees Cynthia Weston (Jennifer Rubin) awaken in a psychiatric hospital after spending 13 years in a coma.

For Cynthia, she was part of the Unity Fields cult when she was a child. When cult leader Franklin Harris decides that his group need to embark on a mass suicide via fire, Cynthia is the only person who manages to just about make it out of a torched house alive.

Having been plunged into a coma following that trauma, Rubin's character is plagued by nightmarish flashbacks to her time at Unity Fields, with doctors also suspecting Cynthia may have a personality disorder as a result of these horrors.

It's not just flashbacks that Cynthia is having now, though, for she is also having visions of her fellow patients dying - with these visions soon becoming premonitions when said patients do indeed die in the ways Cynthia had seen it.

Adding further to the mental strain, cult leader Franklin is seemingly back from the dead and doing his best to goad Cynthia into taking her own life. With dreams within dreams - nightmares within nightmares, to be precise - Bad Dreams rockets to a conclusion involving corrupt doctors and mental manipulation.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main day job, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks/Saints, Jamie Hayter, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg. Where his beloved Wrexham AFC is concerned, Andrew is co-host of the Fearless in Devotion podcast, which won the Club Podcast of the Year gong at the 2024 FSA Awards.