15 Movies That Are Packed with Subliminal Messages

Movies run at 24 frames per second. It’s kind of nuts really — our eyes and brains work together to join these crazy-fast images together and turn it into a story. People have been messing about with this for as long as cinema has existed, using impossibly brief imagery to fuck with audiences’ heads.

For a while there was enormous paranoia that single-frame imagery could be used to influence moviegoers’ behavior — a brief glimpse of a packet of cigarettes here or a beer there leading people to walk out of the theater and, without knowing entirely why, smoke and drink themselves into oblivion.

While that turned out to be an unfounded fear, and cigarettes and beer did perfectly well out of regular advertising for decades and decades, filmmakers have used the technique in more creative ways, generally to create a feeling of discomfort or uncertainty in the viewer, perfect for suspense and horror. You might not know entirely what you saw, or if you saw anything at all, but you know you don’t feel too good afterward…