When thinking about narcissists, people usually imagine individuals who are incapable of loving, have an inflated sense of self, and tend to hurt others for their own gains. The truth is that there is so much more to know about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), which is a mental health condition that can include some of those traits – as well as a need to impress others and be admired, a lack of empathy, the tendency to form superficial relationships, and more – but that also often conceals insecurities, and usually stems from trauma or neglect.
Needless to say, narcissists often make for the best characters. Think of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada, Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, and even Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs: all of these characters never think about taking a narcissist test; they embrace their most manipulative traits, and that leads to compelling, unpredictable storytelling. Not only that, but a lot of people have narcissistic traits that aren’t toxic, and a lot of films delve into this aspect to make their characters more interesting and authentic.
To give you some examples of different types of narcissism in movies, we made a list of 5 recent movies about narcissists! The films listed below all feature a prominent character with narcissistic traits that help improve the storytelling and give us an understanding of what the condition is really like. All movies were released in the 2020s, and they’re listed in alphabetical order. Happy watching!
1. A Real Pain (2024)
Jesse Eisenberg
Kieran Culkin is superb in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, in a role that even earned him a well-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actor last year. He plays Benji, cousin to David (Eisenberg): together, the two protagonists travel to Poland to fulfil their recently deceased grandmother’s wish that they would visit her birthplace. They do so by joining a Jewish heritage tour with a bunch of other characters that are all very different from each other. Yet, in this very diverse group (including the recently single Marcia, played by Dirty Dancing‘s Jennifer Grey), the one who stands out is Benji, who, unlike his cousin, is somehow able to win everyone over instantaneously.
Benji would just seem to be an outgoing, extroverted person who listens to others and always knows the right thing to say. He’s confident, charismatic, attentive to others, and makes others feel special just by being near them. Yet at the same time, he’s often impulsive and he sometimes struggles to deal with emotions, be it the kind of contagious euphoria that can help people bond on these kinds of tours or sudden outbursts of emotion that can lead to excessive bluntness or even unexpected crying. There’s a point in the film where we find out exactly why Benji is the way that he is, which is also when we also realize that his cousin, David, is very depressed.
Benji is what many experts have called a vulnerable, or covert, narcissist: someone who still embodies the same kind of attention-seeking, self-centeredness, and grandiosity of narcissists, but in a more nuanced way. Benji is a sensitive and charismatic person, but he’s also entitled enough to think the rules don’t apply to him, as evidenced by a certain package he sends to the hotel before his departure. He’s also quite self-centered and unempathetic, which really comes across in his interactions with his cousin. A Real Pain really manages to capture how, behind the way Benji projects himself to the world, lies a very “real pain” – immense sadness and self-doubt that could make him crumble at any time, and that affects everyone around him too. A Real Pain is a must watch for anyone interested in mental health, and a fantastic exploration of vulnerable narcissism.
2. The Invisible Man (2020)
Leigh Whannell
NPD is explored in a less subtle way in Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, where the narcissistic character is an abusive ex-boyfriend who unleashes his manipulative, gaslighting, and even sadistic self on the film’s protagonist by haunting her from the beyond. It’s a simple but highly effective premise that makes this Blumhouse Production movie such a beloved gem, made even better by a superb performance from Elisabeth Moss, who plays the resourceful Cecilia. Her ex, scientist Adrian (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), isn’t really dead, but he’s certainly psychopathic, as he stages his own death in order to stalk and frighten Cecilia.
Over the course of the film, we understand exactly how self-centered, controlling, and entitled Adrian is, but he’s also quite delusional. Adrian has a distorted image of his own relationship to Cecilia in his head that makes him believe he can control her own feelings and even make her love him again; yet, at the same time, what he does to her only makes her feel more terrified and unsafe, which is one of the most common traits of sociopathic narcissism. The Invisible Man becomes even more gripping when Cecilia takes matters into her own hands, realizing no one will ever believe that she isn’t crazy and this is actually happening to her, which is also a fantastic way to show what it’s like to be on the receiving end of gaslighting and manipulation. Not to be missed!
3. Lurker (2025)
Alex Russell
The most recent movie on this list is Alex Russell’s Lurker (2025), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and has been doing the festival round to much acclaim these past few months. The film begins when an up-and-coming singer/influencer named Oliver (Archie Madekwe) enters a retail store. One of the employees, Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), is a huge fan of his, but he knows that letting him know won’t really earn him anything. Instead, he carefully selects a track that he thinks Oliver will like for the store’s playlist, and he succeeds, as it’s only a matter of minutes before the star reacts in exactly the way Matthew predicted. Soon, our nerdy employee is invited into Matthew’s inner circle, and his whole life changes.
But what happens when Oliver gets tired of him and discovers someone else? And who is the real narcissist in the film – Oliver, Matthew, or both? The answer to that question is left for you to discover to avoid spoilers, but Lurker is a film that will surprise you till the very end, with a central relationship whose nature is always up for interpretation. Given how manipulative and self-centered both characters are, maybe Matthew and Oliver aren’t so alike after all. But who will succeed in the end? Watch it now on Mubi in the U.S., and on December 12 in U.K. cinemas, to find out.
4. Saltburn (2023)
Emerald Fennell
Archie Madekwe is also in the cast of Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, which also mainly revolves around two young men: the newly arrived Oliver (Barry Keoghan), and the popular, aristocratic Felix (Jacob Elordi) are both Oxford students, and their meeting at the beginning of the movie sets off a series of unexpected events. But unlike the central pair in Lurker, Oliver and Felix really hit it off from the moment they meet one another. When the latter finds out that the former’s father has just died, he invites him to stay at his estate in the summer; needless to say, madness ensues.
Though both of Saltburn‘s protagonists display narcissistic traits, they are more evident in one of them, but we won’t reveal which one as that would be a spoiler. Still, the way that character evolves throughout the film is very interesting, ultimately highlighting his grandiose narcissism – an inflated sense of self that leads to feelings of entitlement, superiority and self-importance and an evident lack of empathy – as his major trait. Interestingly, there is at least one more narcissist in the movie: Felix’s mother, Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), who is clearly quite controlling and manipulative. But she might have just found a worthy opponent.
5. Tár
Todd Field
The protagonist of Todd Field’s Tár is one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the first female director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Of course, Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is entirely fictional, but she’s portrayed in such a vividly unpleasant way that you’d be forgiven for thinking she does exist in real-life. As for the actual plot of the movie… Let’s just say that it’s only deceptively simple. On paper, the film sees Lydia prepare for a book launch and a live performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony; yet what Tár really is, at its core, is Lydia’s own show from start to end.
Lydia Tár is a narcissist in the most manipulative sense of the word, and one of the rare examples on screen of malignant narcissism: someone whose total lack of empathy, guilt, and remorse and highly inflated sense of self leads them to be not only grandiose and antisocial, but also cruel, paranoid, end even quite dangerous. Lydia is an extremely unlikable, borderline unbearable character; yet, just like one would be in real life, we are forced to spend time with her on her own terms, be it during her never-ending monologues or even through the film’s own, unnecessarily long end credits sequence, which weirdly takes place at the start of the movie.
All of this makes Tár quite a frustrating movie, and purposefully so; yet if you know how to approach it, you’ll find an intriguing character study that you won’t be able to stop thinking about. Anchored by a superb performance from Cate Blanchett, Tár is one of the best portrayal of narcissism you’ll find in recent movies.
The five films listed above are all recent movies about narcissists, and each portray a different aspect to a mental health condition that many of us might have encountered in real life. For more recommendations, check out I Care a Lot, The Devil All the Time, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, and Rebecca (2020), or consider rewatching a modern classic like Gone Girl, and Mother!. Enjoy!
