10 Most Visually Stunning Horror Movies Ever

Released in 1920, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari was early proof that movies don't always have to be realistic. The comparison is often made that certain films look like paintings, but that's almost literally the case with Dr. Caligari, where many frames closely resemble the surrealist works of Salvador Dali or Joan Miro.

Among other things, Dr. Caligari is about the line between the real world and the dream world, and we fully understand that even though it's a silent film. In a lot of sequences, the background bends at a peculiar angle like something out of Dali's The Persistence of Memory. The shadows cast on the floors will make no sense, buildings are strangely slanted, and rarely does anything resemble something that would exist in reality.

Back in 1920, when film was just barely getting started as a medium, it was a pretty revolutionary concept that a movie didn't have to make total sense and match up with the way we see things. You could now create a strange universe of your own that has a nightmarish quality to it, and that idea would go on to be the basis of so many later films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Hausu, and the entire filmography of David Lynch. Aside from its historical importance, Dr. Caligari remains a masterful and intriguing piece of cinema.