Hulu’s ‘Jagged Mind’ is a horror film that revolves around Billy, a woman who meets Alex at a bar one night. The two hit it off immediately and start a relationship together. But Billy soon starts suffering from blackouts and a serious sense of déjà vu about almost everything she encounters during the day. As her condition grows more and more severe, Billy starts to suspect that somebody is doing it to her. Her suspicions only solidify when she runs into a voodoo practitioner who claims she knows what’s going on with her.
Directed by Kelley Kai, the film stars Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Shannon Woodward, and Rosaline Elbay. Filled to the brim with elements of magical surrealism, ‘Jagged Mind’ gives viewers a healthy dose of apprehension about what is going to transpire on the screen. If this is the type of film that you enjoy watching, then we have a list of recommendations that we believe you might like as well.
8. Horse Girl (2020)
‘Horse Girl,’ directed by Jeff Baena, revolves around Sarah (Alison Brie), a shy young woman who lost her mother at a very young age. She works at a crafts store, with her only solace being an old horse, Willow, that she used to own but had to sell due to financial constraints. She visits the horse at its new home regularly, much to the annoyance of its new owners. Her ordinary, day-to-day life is interrupted when Sarah starts to have bizarre dreams about being in a white room.
The dreams are followed by unaccounted lapses in time and sleepwalking. Convinced that something otherworldly is at play here, Sarah soon starts to lose her grip on her sanity. Fans of ‘Jagged Mind’ will find Sarah quite relatable to Billy, as both of them go through a series of strange memory losses that are caused due to an outside force interfering with their minds.
7. Re/Member (2022)
‘Re/Member’ is a Japanese-language horror film that revolves around Asuka (Kanna Hashimoto), a high school student, who, one day at school, encounters the ghost of Haruka, another student who was murdered. Haruka asks Asuka to find her body parts, which were dismembered and hidden by her killer, the Red Person. When night falls, Asuka and her five friends start their investigation but are soon hunted down one by one by the Red Person. Then they wake up in their rooms the next day.
The six of them soon realize that the events of the previous day were repeating themselves, and they are all cursed to relive their deaths over and over again until Haruka’s body can be reassembled. Directed by Eiichiro Hasumi, ‘Re/Member’ takes murderous killing to the extreme with its gory death scenes. Time resets for everybody in the friend group as soon as the last of them dies, much like it does for Billy when she passes away in ‘Jagged Mind.’
6. The New Mutants (2020)
‘The New Mutants,’ directed by Josh Boone, revolves around Danielle “Dani” Moonstar (Blu Hunt), Samuel “Sam” Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Roberto “Bobby” da Costa (Henry Zaga), and Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), all of whom find themselves locked up inside a hospital. All of them share the x gene, which mutates their DNA and gives them extraordinary powers. Each of them was also either caught up in an incident that took the lives of people or was the cause of one such incident.
Though they are assured by Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga) that they’re in the hospital to master their powers, as well as for their own protection, the five teenagers soon start to experience strange occurrences within the hospital, which puts their lives at risk. Despite there being no time loop involved, the mutant children’s initial trust in Dr. Reyes, who later turns out to be the perpetrator behind their horrifying circumstances, echoes the trust Billy put in Alex, who is the cause behind her continuous deaths.
5. Before I Fall (2017)
Samantha Kingston (Zoey Deutch), a high school girl, wakes up on February 12th knowing that she is popular and has a bright future ahead of her. But everything changes when she seemingly dies in a car crash on her way home from a party but then wakes up in her bed once again. Forced to relive the same day over and over again, Samantha tries to unravel the secrets of the people closest to her in order to find out what is causing time to behave like this with her. ‘Before I Fall,’ directed by Ry Russo-Young, sees Samantha go through a time loop due to somebody else, much like Billy relives her life because of Alex in ‘Jagged Mind.’
4. Happy Death Day (2017)
Directed by Christopher Landon, ‘Happy Death Day’ revolves around Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), a party-loving college student who is killed by a masked man with a knife. She wakes up once again, confused about what she remembers, reliving her day with a strange sense of Déjà vu, but is killed once again by the masked man.
When she wakes up a third time, Tree realizes that she’s in a time loop that begins with her death. Determined to find the identity of her killer, Tree uses each of her days to piece together clues, as well as her life, together. Much like in ‘Jagged Mind,’ the killer and the cause of the time loop in ‘Happy Death Day’ turns out to be somebody very close to Tree, who is motivated by love as well.
3. Predestination (2014)
‘Predestination,’ directed by brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, follows a Temporal Agent (Ethan Hawke) on a mission to stop the Fizzle Bomber in 1975, New York. After failing to do so, and sustaining severe injuries in the process, the agent returns back to his own time, where he is given one last mission before he retires. He travels back in time to 1970 and starts working as a barkeep, where he meets a man who writes true confession articles under the name “The Unmarried Mother.”
The mysterious personality tells him the most extraordinary story the agent has ever heard, which sets off a series of adventures through time that shapes and reshape the agent’s life throughout his existence. Fans of ‘Jagged Mind’ will find that the Agent keeps altering his timeline due to the decisions he makes, much like Billy. Thus, both of them end up reliving each iteration of their lives differently.
2. Palm Springs (2020)
Directed by Max Barbakow, ‘Palm Springs’ revolves around Nyles (Andy Samberg), a guest at a wedding in Palm Springs. The night of the wedding reception, he meets Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the bride’s sister, and the two of them bond with each other, heading off into the desert to spend time together. But once there, Nyles is shot by an arrow, and he starts to crawl inside a nearby cave, asking Sarah not to follow him inside the entire time.
However, a worried Sarah follows him anyway and then wakes up on the day of the wedding reception once again. Once she finds Nyles, he explains to her that she is now stuck in a time loop, having followed him inside the cave. ‘Palm Springs’ sees Nyles willfully getting Sarah stuck in the time loop because he is in love with her and doesn’t want to relive every day all alone, much like what Alex does to Billy in ‘Jagged Mind,’ even going so far as to pretend that they were meeting for the first time.
1. Source Code (2011)
Directed by Duncan Jones, ‘Source Code’ follows Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who keeps reliving a train ride in the body of a school teacher named Sean Fentress for eight minutes before the train explodes in a bombing. Sent back, again and again, eight minutes before the bombing in what Stevens is told is a simulation of the collective residual memories of the passengers, his mission is to identify the bomber so that he can be stopped before another such incident happens. Both Stevens and Billy are quite similar to each other, as they have to live through their deaths over and over again in order to identify who the culprit is.
Read More: Where Was Jagged Mind Filmed?
