An unreliable narrator, a term coined by literary critic Wayne C. Booth, and is defined as “a narrator whose credibility is compromised”. A few famous examples are Tyler Durden, from the film Fight Club, Trevor Reznik, from the film The Machinist, Humbert Humbert, from the novel Lolita, and the characters of the Japanese film Rashomon. 

There are a multitude of different types of unreliable narrators, many categorized by Willaim Riggan in his 1981 book Picaros, Madmen, Naïfs, and Clowns: The Unreliable First-Person Narrator , such as one of the more recognizable ones: The Madman. Many narrators who fall under this category happen to be suffering from some sort of mental illness, such as schizophrenia or paranoia. One of the classic examples of this is the un-named narrator in Edgar Allen Poe’s 1843 short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart”, who is driven mad with paranoia after murdering “the Old-Man" because of his “vulture eye” that he believes is constantly watching him.

Unreliable narrators have appeared in film multiple times throughout the history of cinema, including Rashomon, the 1950 Japanese film about a whodunit, featuring multiple different characters telling multiple different stories, and has been immortalized because of the phrase “Rashomon effect”, which is when multiple different contradicting statements are given to explain an incident. Another is Fight Club, the 1999 film about a man suffering from insomnia who hallucinates another man who helps him gain an underground cult-like following, which did poorly during the initial release, but exploded in popularity over the next 20 years. 

Recently, media has included a lot more of the “Madman”-type characters, and the most famous would likely be The Narrator/Tyler Durden from Fight Club. In the beginning, The Narrator talks about his crappy white-collar job, and how he gets his kicks from visiting consolement groups for people suffering from cancer. One part of his job is flying place to place to investigate car accidents with cars from the company he works for—which he never admits—and his slow derangement first comes to life when he imagines the plane he’s in getting torn apart. The original explanation for his hallucinations is that he is suffering from insomnia, but I’d have to assume he is suffering from some other, more severe disorders. While he’s on one of his plan rides, he meets Tyler Durden, a confident soap salesman who befriends him after the Narrators apartment explodes. Throughout the movie, the Narrator becomes more and more encumbered with his delusions, before slowly putting the pieces together and realizing that he was, in fact, Tyler Durden, and had been doing everything that he imagined Tyler doing by himself. 

When a writer uses an unreliable narrator in their plot, they are sure to create an intriguing story, as many people find the character dynamic fascinating. To watch a movie or read a book featuring an unreliable narrator is to subject your brain to the contrivance of detective-like thinking. I, personally, find that one of my favorite parts of watching a movie like The Machinist is finding which parts of which scenes Reznik is imagining.