Gaslighting in Live-Action Films.
Trope Namer:
- Gaslight is the Trope Namer and probably the modern Trope Maker. In that film, a man marries a woman so he can get into the loft her aunt willed her and get at her aunt's hidden treasure, after killing that same aunt with his bare hands. To keep her out of the loft while he searches for it, he starts a plan to make her think she's gone insane so that he can commit her to an asylum. The trope name (and the movie's title) comes from the part of the film in which the woman, convinced that she is going crazy, is unsure whether or not she's imagining the gas lights dim, which is happening because he's turning on the lights in the attic for his search, and this is re-directing gas from the downstairs lights.
By Creator:
- Stanley Kubrick
- He does it to the viewer in A Clockwork Orange. He made continuity errors on purpose during the scene where Alex has dinner with the author. The dishes on the table move around and the level of wine in the glasses changes between shots.
- He did something very similar in The Shining; the hotel sets are deliberately constructed to be geometrically and architecturally impossible. It's too subtle to notice unless you are really paying attention to the sets, but rather cleverly inflicts unease in the audience.
- A favorite plot device of William Castle, who was influenced by Les Diaboliques. Visible in Macabre (on a male victim, fairly unusually), House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tingler, and The Night Walker at the very least.
By Title:
- All My Friends Hate Me: Pete is increasingly convinced that Harry is trying to drive him crazy and/or turn his friends against him for some unknown reason.
- Amélie does this to the grocer as a punishment of sorts for berating and belittling her friend. At first, they're just little things — for example, she replaces his slippers with identical ones that are a size too small, swaps his lightbulbs with much dimmer ones, and exchanges his toothpaste with a cream intended for his feet. Eventually, her tricks get more and more elaborate until he really begins to question his sanity...but the real kicker is when she replaces the speed-dial number for his mother with that of a mental hospital.
- A variation of this idea forms the plot of the 1969 film The Big Cube. In it, spoiled rich teenager Lisa tries to con her stepmother Adriana out of the money her recently-deceased father left her by driving Adriana insane. She and her drug-dealer boyfriend try to accomplish this through a combination of LSD and a hidden tape recorder. The boyfriend takes things too far, however, when he adds an extra message to the tape urging Adriana to jump out the window to her death...
- Referenced in Bordello of Blood, although in that case, it was less about driving anyone mad and more about concealing criminal activities.
- Bowfinger: Bobby Bowfinger unknowingly does this to Kit Ramsey. When Kit refuses to star in his movie Chubby Rain, Bowfinger decides to make the movie with him in it without him finding out. However, he seemingly has no idea Kit is actually intensely paranoid about aliens and thinks they're very real, so when Bowfinger's actors walk up to Kit out of nowhere and start talking to him about aliens and UFOs, it pushes Kit right up to the edge of a breakdown.
- In Bunny Lake is Missing, the heroine's young daughter disappears, along with nearly all evidence of her existence. Her brother encourages her to try to prove to the police that her daughter is real. It's actually a misdirection gambit to prevent her from figuring out that he was the one behind the abduction.
- A major plot point in Changeling, as the Los Angeles Police try to convince Christine Collins that the boy they found is really her missing son (despite being obviously different) and she must be crazy to think otherwise. Frighteningly enough, this is Based on a True Story.
- In the Anthology film Chilling Visions 5 States Of Fear, a variant of this trope occurs in "The Trouble With Dad". An elderly man living in a nice isolated house appears to be suffering from Alzheimer's, as his daughter and son-in-law keep having to remind him of events he can't recall. In fact, these events never happened; they're just trying to convince him that his mind is failing so he'll be Driven to Suicide and they can inherit his house. He discovers the truth when he finds the freshly-dead carcass of his dog, which they'd secretly killed and claimed had been "put down" months ago.
- In the 1940s film The Dark Mirror, the evil twin, Terry, attempts this on the good twin, Ruth. She uses such tricks as turning the lights on quickly in the middle of the night and telling her now-awake sister she must be hallucinating, and hiding a music box in the house and leaving it on.
- Mentioned in The Darjeeling Limited. When Jack discovers his ex-girlfriend's perfume in his luggage, Peter suggests she might be trying to gaslight him.
- In Les Diaboliques, a man's mistress and his wife conspire to kill him. But after they drown him, signs turn up to make it unclear whether he's really dead or not. The mistress and the husband are actually conspiring to frighten the wife, who has a weak heart, to death.
- Lucy, the heroine from False Positive, undergoes artificial insemination. It works, but as her pregnancy progresses, Lucy suspects that Dr. Hindle is doing this to her, such as by denying that he aborted her "parasitic" twins.
- A large part of how the conspiracy is maintained (most namely with the therapist and, for instance, his disappearing drink) in The Forgotten (2004).
- Lyle attempts this in George of the Jungle when he tells Ursula he was the one who fought the lion, not George, and Ursula was just so terrified she misremembered. Ursula doesn't buy it for a second.
- In The Hands of Orlac, the Con Man Nera has been carefully manipulating things to make Orlac believe that his hands have a mind of their own so that Orlac will believe that he could have been responsible for his father's murder and be susceptible to blackmail.
- Sgt Angel in Hot Fuzz starts to think that he's going insane after everyone in the village ignores the increasing amount of evidence that there is a murderer on the loose in the village.
- The House That Dripped Blood: In "Method for Murders", Charles' sightings of Dominick turn out to be part of a plan by his wife Alice to have him declared insane so she can run off with her lover.
- This is exactly what the NS-5 robots do to Detective Spooner in I, Robot; upon failing to kill him, they systematically remove ALL evidence that they even tried.
- Lifetime Movie of the Week In The Dark has this being done to a woman who has recently been blinded in an accident, the culprit being her volunteer aid, who is also her Stalker with a Crush. The purpose is to make her feel helpless and thus more dependent on him — thus he'll do things like move an end table just enough that she'll trip over it the next time she enters a room, or take a vase from her house and hide it in plain sight, then buy her flowers and "find" the vase for her, pretending it was there the whole time and she missed it while feeling around the shelf.
- The Invisible Man (2020) begins with Cecilia attempting to escape from her abusive boyfriend Adrian. After she does so, he fakes his own death and begins stalking her, using a special suit of his own invention that renders him invisible. Cecilia realizes what's going on fairly quickly, but of course, everyone just thinks she's losing her mind, a belief that Adrian takes advantage of to alienate her from her friends and ultimately frame her for her sister's murder. And even when she finally manages to prove the suit exists and Adrian isn't dead, he sets things up so that his brother takes the fall instead. Driven to the edge with grief and realizing the law will never punish Adrian, Cecilia eventually resolves to murder him herself.
- Jagged Mind: Alex uses Billie's mental confusion (that she's the cause of) and makes her doubt her suspicion that something nefarious is going on as a result (which Billie was right to suspect).
- Kimi: Angela's psychiatrist suggests that her mental illness is just making her think that what she overheard is like her rape, but doesn't push it. Natalie Chowdhury though explicitly tries to use it against Angela so she can dismiss her report. Angela however never falls for it, and has hard evidence too in any case.
- The Lodge: Aiden and Mia spend the film pulling this on Grace, attempting to drive her into committing suicide by, among other things, claiming everyone in the lodge is dead and in Purgatory. They succeed too well - Grace kills their father Richard and is implied to be about to murder both of them at the end of the film.
- Disney's Mary Poppins may or may not be doing this on purpose to George Banks in her job interview scene. George wrote an advertisement for a nanny job which he posted in the newspaper. His children also wrote an advertisement which George ripped to pieces and threw into the fireplace because he thought their version was childish, but when he isn't looking a mysterious wind picks up the pieces and carries them up the chimney and into the sky. George is very confused and disturbed when Mary shows up at his door with the advertisement that the children wrote instead of the one he actually posted. Mary acts like there isn't anything strange about how she got the kid's advertisement and genuinely doesn't seem to know why George is muttering to himself and looking at the fireplace. Later in the movie she tricks George into taking his kids to the bank with him by claiming that he was the one who suggested it, which also confuses him.Mary: I beg your pardon, are you ill?
George: I hope not. - Matilda does this to Sadistic Teacher Trunchbull via telekinetic powers, at first in very little adjustments, but finally by outright having two paintings levitate around the room. Since Trunchbull is highly superstitious, she instantly assumes that her brother-in-law Magnus, whom she had murdered is haunting her. She catches up on the situation though when she finds Matilda's red hairband.
- Mean Girls: Regina does this to Aaron when she gets back together with him just to prevent him from asking out Cady, flat out denying that she broke up with him.Aaron: What are you doing? YOU broke up with ME?
Regina: That's crazy, why would I break up with you? You're so HOT. - Midsommar: Christian does this to Dani, as part of his emotional abuse. This results in some serious retribution when Dani sends him to be boiled to death in a bear carcass.
- Next of Kin (1982): Rita plans to drive Linda insane as part of her plan to take over the Montclare retirement home, creating the intimation that her spirit is haunting the place.
- In the The Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera, the brothers do this to a police inspector. He checks Groucho's apartment for Chico, Harpo, and Ricardo, and the brothers try to conceal the fact that they are staying there by hiding the fact that there are four beds. The beds get repeatedly shuffled between rooms until the cop is convinced he is nuts.
- The 1964 Hammer Horror movie Nightmare has this done to a traumatized teenage girl named Janet, as a part of an evil plot by her guardian, Henry and her nurse, Grace, who also happens to be his mistress, in order to get rid of his wife. However, the same thing is done to Grace, making her believe that her new husband is cheating on her, leading to their downfall...
- Panic Beats has a husband conspiring with his mistress to get rid of his wife by convincing her that an ancient ghost of his estate is after and frightening her to death with it. That's only half of the story of backstabbing and intrigue.
- The 1961 film The Pit and the Pendulum has a man believe he accidentally buried his late wife alive. It turns out his wife was never dead and is conspiring with the man's best friend, who was also the doctor who declared her dead, to drive the man insane so they can continue an affair they are having. They succeed, but soon find they have driven him too insane, and are quickly on the receiving end of Laser-Guided Karma.
- Psycho II. Norman Bates came home cured. Marion's sister decides to unravel that.
- Respire: Sarah’s method of abusing Charlie. After she freezes Charlie out once during their holidays, she warms to her when they return to school and alternates chaotically between these behaviours. She even blames Charlie by projecting her abusive behaviour to her.
- Featured extensively in Rosemary's Baby, where the plot turns out to revolve around a satanic cult that wants to impregnate Rosemary and make her give birth to The Antichrist. This is accomplished by drugging her, insisting that she looks healthy when in reality the Fetus Terrible causes her to look pale and malnourished and just generally acting like nothing is wrong. Later they dismiss her ravings about witches and cults as stress from the pregnancy and use similar tactics to convince her that the baby died. The reason this works so well at first is due to the sheer amount of people involved, with Rosemary’s husband, doctor, and every tenant in her apartment building being in on it.
- The Screaming Skull has a Bluebeard who killed his first wife for her money and then attempted to gaslight his second wife, already mentally shaky, into suicide so he could get her inheritance. As it turns out, his first wife's spirit wants revenge from beyond the grave...
- Shall We Play?: Matt and his friends act like Stacy is crazy for getting upset with him for taking the humiliating photos of her when she'd been unconscious, while he denies doing anything.
- In Shock, Dr. Cross and Elaine first decide to make Janet forget the murder she witnessed, but then they decide to discredit her proclaiming Janet insane.
- Shutter Island:
- The film uses continuity errors to suggest insanity. For instance, while one of the patients is being questioned early on she asks for a glass of water. She's brought a full glass in one shot, in the next shot she drinks it, but there's no glass in her hand, and in the next shot she sets down an empty glass. All these shots are so short (about a couple seconds each) that it becomes harder to notice, heightening the unease the audience feels for reasons they can't really explain.
- Furthermore, such tricks seem to be used against the protagonist by the staff of the hospital. By the end, he doesn't know if everyone in the hospital is conspiring against him or if he has slipped into paranoid insanity. He is in fact a paranoid schizophrenic with psychotic delusions, and the staff are indeed part of a conspiracy, but it's to help him.
- Society: After the Society is exposed, Billy realizes that all the messed-up things they've been showing him, including several displays of their Lovecraftian Superpower, were in an effort to make him lose his mind.
- The Tenant, Roman Polański's self-starring conclusion to his "Apartment Trilogy" (with Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby), has the protagonist moving into a new apartment whose former tenant (a woman named Simone Chule) had committed suicide. Over time, he becomes convinced his neighbors are conspiring to turn him into Simone's likeness. It is probably more likely that he is going mad on his own, but the film does leave room for interpretation.
- The Terror: Katrina is attempting to drive the Baron to suicide by making him think that he is haunted by the ghost of late wife. However, unusually for this trope, she uses supernatural means to do so.
- They/Them (2022): Cora acts sympathetic to Jordan while in their session, then quickly twists their words to claim that Jordan's just presented as nonbinary so they'll feel special, while really being a lesbian and confused about this.
- Trading Places: The Duke Brothers do this to Louis Winthorpe as part of their bet. When Louis returns home with Ophelia, he finds that somebody changed the locks on his door, and when he knocks on the door, his butler Coleman pretends he doesn't know him.
- The Truman Show is all about this, especially when he starts to notice there are things wrong with his reality because it's a reality show inside a giant soundstage. His wife and best friend, who are actors, try to convince him that little things like seeing his "dead" father again on the street or a Klieg light falling from the sky are signs of a mental breakdown.
- One part which stands out is when Truman starts voicing his objections, and then he begins the next scene dressed in children's clothing.
- Both Vabank and its sequel base their delightful mind-screwyness on Kwinto's crew gaslighting Kramer (in the first movie, to give him a "perfect" alibi: in the second, to drive him right into the hands of Przygoda) in very elaborate ways.
