Down the Rabbit Hole: Movies about an Alternate Reality

Down…down…deep into the rabbit hole. The idiom comes from Alice in Wonderland, where Alice fell into the rabbit hole and then faced an alternate reality she called ‘Wonderland’. The ‘rabbit hole’ portrays a bizarre and disorienting alternate reality. Although Alice in Wonderland is a children’s tale and fantasy, many try to learn deeper and make conspiracies about what Alice faced.

Many theories are made based on an alternate reality, such as the controversial simulation hypothesis that questions the nature of existence. Even, a multibillionaire public figure, such as Elon Musk, believes that our life is a simulation and we all might be under the control of computers. This theory is very controversial. However, many movie creators picked this concept, and turned it into their movies.

The Truman Show (1998) is one of many that used the concept of alternate reality. This award-winning sci-fi/drama movie is about an insurance salesman named Truman, who is oblivious that his life was just a movie. From birth, he was chosen as an actor of his own life. The story of his life was all directed and scripted, and everyone around him are mere actors and actresses, including his wife, parents, and best friend. There were many cameras around him that were recording him 24/7 and he didn’t even know it. However, Truman started to become skeptical when he realized that whenever he tried to travel out of the town, there was always something that stopped him and made him come back. This is because his hometown is just a movie set, and there is nothing beyond.

“In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.”

This is one of my favorite quotes from The Truman Show. Truman said that quote  as a greeting to the people who passed by, representing every greeting time of the day in case they wouldn’t meet. Yet he knew he would see them again the day after, at the same second, on the same spot, and with the same conversation.

But The Truman Show is a frank, direct example of alternate reality movies that related with a man-made masterplan where the audience knew that it was an alternate reality before the characters knew it themselves, and so do movies like Inception (2010), Avatar (2009), the Series Alice in Borderland (2020), and many more.

In the movie industry, some movies are made for the audiences to figure out by themselves about the ‘alternate reality’ situation going on in the movie. Such as Sucker Punch (2011), Black Swan (2010), Secret Window (2004), the Joker (2019), and Shutter Island (2010).  These movies are more metaphorical and related to psychological disorders where the characters are ‘losing themselves’. Rather than just ‘a fantasy’ that is unlikely to happen in real life, these movies may represent actual issues that happen in real life.

As an example, Sucker Punch, a 2011 psychological fantasy action movie directed by Zack Snyder, tells a story about a girl nicknamed Babydoll who was brought to a mental asylum for brain surgery after being framed for killing her younger sister. When she was about to receive lobotomy, she slipped into a fantasy world where she needed to collect things to escape. In her mind, she fought villains somewhere more appealing and decent. But the reality was, she was in the asylum all the time, combating the asylum workers. This is where reality and fantasy merged.

Though the movie never explicitly reveals what happened to Babydoll, we might think the character was losing herself in the fantasy world because she was having brain surgery that messed her mind up, or maybe she was already mad before the lobotomy and had the delusions about the fantasy world. Or maybe, it was a metaphorical way to describe how she actually felt in the asylum, as if she was combating villains.

So, those are examples of alternate reality movies. All of them have their own version of ‘the rabbit hole’. Movie makers and writers find it interesting to make stories from this concept not only because it is abstract, but also it engages with the audience. It leaves the audience confuse, make them analyze the situation,  and might even make them imagine themselves being on an alternate reality.

What do you think? Have you ever watched a movie about alternate reality that leaves you jaw-dropping?

Editor: Handiko Wijaya & Nadia Salsabila