Jacob’s Ladder (1990, TriStar/Carolco, dir. Adrian Lyne, 115 min, R) presents the layering of two forms of reality: a Vietnam soldier is dying, and he is living out a whole life of mystery in New York City, eventually being chased by fibbies. Ultimately his pretend, alternate reality world has to come to a dead-end, in a subway as I recall, and he must wake up out of his near-death experience. But he may not.
The Handmaid's Tale (1990, MGM, dir. Voldker Schlondorff, novel by Marageret Atwood, 108 min, R) is an exercise in dystopia. In the ultimate extrapolation of the religious right, a girl Kate (Natasha Richardson) becomes a sexual slave to bear children because she is still nubile, in a world where having children has gotten tough. It's an all too frightening an plausible scenario, if birth rates in high income people and previously privileged races fall too fast. No, there is nothing like this in Canterbury Tales.
The Butterfly Effect (2004, New Line Cinema and Film Engine, R) presents Ashton Kutcher as a grown man, and dramatic actor and producer. The plot is a bit of the genre of Paycheck above, moving around in time, and maybe to alternate universes across the branes. Here the hero Evan (Ashton) tries to repair his life from a series of handwritten composition books (it could have been a website except, well, they have to have been written as physical originals), where he remote views back to various points and finally to some 8mm home movies. In the meantime, his experiments change the outcome in undesirable ways, sending him to prison (including a risk of prison homosexuality), then to life as an amputee, and then as a g.d.m.p. (like Lex Luthor waiting for shock treatment). The movie gets going once the setup flashback story is over, as Kutcher is compelling and charismatic enough to carry the role.
Zardoz (1974, 20th Century Fox, dir. John Boorman). In the far future, a god represented as a huge floating stone head order a primitive race to kill the "eternals" who preserve the remnants of lost human civilization, but who do not procreate. Anticipates "Children of Men" and "The Eternals".
Flatliners (1990, Columbia, dir. Joel Schumaker, 115 min, R) covers similar territory to Jacob’s Ladder and Altered States, as medical students play with inducing “death” or at least near-death experiences. Kiefer Sutherland and Julia Roberts star, and the movie migrates into the Midwest.
Altered States (1980, Warner Bros., dir. Ken Russell, 102 min, R) relates a dangerous experiment that a Harvard scientist Professor Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) conducts on himself, starting as sensory deprivation as he lies in a tank, leading toward evolutionary regression. Quite sensational at the time, but there would be many more similar film treatments over the years.