Movies are meant to entertain us. They are known to transport us into different worlds and sweep us off our feet with light-hearted adventures. But there are certain movies that leave us scratching our heads, wondering what just happened. These films make you question everything you saw and force you to revisit and piece back the scattered fragments of a story that should have been more coherent. These are the confusing movies that get under your skin and linger in your mind for years on end.
Like a fast-spoken riddle or a slow-burn mystery, these movies slip clues here and there but never quite explain how they fit in together. They may contain alternate realities, convoluted time travel, or jumbled storylines and overlapped characters that somehow make sense, but only after you’re long thought about it. The confusion only intrigues you. You want nothing more than to watch the movie again, now armed with the tiny bits of information you gathered the first time, wanting to see if things finally make sense the second time around.
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The most confusing movies have existed since the Hollywood Renaissance era. Back then,films may not use high-stakes science fictionto place blanks in the story, but they still manage to let reality and fantasy collide and blur the lines between what’s possible and what is merely imagination. Through this confusion, the movies give your mind a puzzle to solve while the credits roll. They leave you with so many questions, but maybe that’s the thrill of it. To feel utterly fascinated by the ability of cinema.
202001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2001: A Space Odysseyis a science-fiction masterpiece that jumps through various timelines – from prehistoric ages to man’s first venture into space. The movie begins with a commander from Discovery One coming upon a large black monolith that is responsible for guiding his evolution. With the supercomputer HAL, they set to find out the mysteries associated with the object.
The film is packed with moments that raise more questions than they answer. It is set in a nonlinear manner, and the shifting sequences often make it hard to follow. However, the stunning visuals and bizarre scenes ultimately grip the audience. Stanley Kubrick has crafted amagnificent cinematic experience that is relevant to date.
19Mirror (1975)
Director Andrei Tarkovsky spins a tale that is both fascinating to watch and physically complex to understand, leaving the audience wondering what exactly it was they witnessed.Mirrorfollows an ill 40-year-old man, Alexei (Ignat Daniltsev), whose daily interactions with his wife (Margarita Terekhova) and children set him on a journey through fragments of memories and dreamlike visions. The movie is filled with flashbacks from the protagonist’s time as a child bracing for the impact of his parents’ failed marriage and the dreadful time he served in World War II.Mirrorblends the past and present events quite seamlessly, and yet the non-chronological narrative and haunting visual imagery make it open to interpretation.
18Lost Highway (1997)
Lost Highwayis an outstanding neo-noir mystery where nothing is what it seems, and reality seems to change at every turn. The story revolves around two parallel yet intersecting narratives. In one, a jazz musician is accused of murdering his cheating wife, and in the other, a young mechanic is hypnotized by the girlfriend of a gangster. The catch is that both women are played brilliantly by the same actress.
Director David Lynchchallenges conventional storytellingby going all out with the puzzle. The movie has some unexplained time jumps and an open-ended plot, completely dissolving the idea of clarity. Overall, the film deliberately incorporates confusion as a tool to explore the darkness that lies within the human mind.
17The Matrix (1999)
The dawn of the 21st time was an exciting time for science fiction and experimentation. Considered to be the most successful film in the franchise,The Matrixis a mind-bending sci-fi action film that takes you down the rabbit hole only to reveal a devastating secret – that our reality is actually an elaborate computer simulation designed to control the human race.
In the movie, Keanu Reeves stars as a computer programmer who discovers the truth about the artificial world. Given a choice to enter the chaos that ensues or live in blissful ignorance, Neo naturally picks a fight. What follows is a wild trip filled with scenes of impossible physics, time manipulation, and gravity-defying martial arts. The movie’s USP has always been its visual style, and regardless of a story that leaves your mind in knots,The Matrixoffers an utterly unique cinematic experience.
16Fight Club (1999)
Based on the bestselling novel by Chuck Palahniuk,Fight Clubthrows the audience right into a broken and scattered world of conspiracy and chaos. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton star as a soap salesman and a corporate insomniac, two men who form an unlikely alliance and start an underground fight club where office drones and slaves can unleash their pent-up aggression. Seems like a harmless story. Except their story takes a twisted turn and sends them into a sinister spiral of events.
The way David Fincher creates plot twists is absolutely amazing. The film introduces new angles every now and then and uses an unreliable narration to cast a shadow on what you’ve seen so far. It all results in adark commentary on consumer culture and individuality.
Related:What Is the Actual Point of Fight Club?
15Memento (2000)
Christopher Nolan is at the helm of this mysteriously confusing movie. Told in reverse,Mementois considered a neo-noir masterpiece of the year 2000. The movie follows Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, an insurance investigator suffering from short-term memory loss. Because he finds it hard to form new memories, he uses notes and tattoos to remember information. He is trying to track down the man who killed his wife, but the entire memory loss arc is why the movie is told in backward order, jumping from scene to scene without any coherent explanations.
Moreover, the narrative unfolds in black-and-white for the present-day story and in color for the flashback. The movie allows audiences to structure it using their own understanding and emerges as a metaphor for how we construct our own memories.
14Mulholland Drive (2001)
Another spectacular entry by revolutionary director David Lynch,Mulholland Drivestars Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in what may be their best performances. This fever dream of a film noir revolves around Watts’ Betty, an aspiring actress who befriends Harring’s Rita, a woman who loses her memory after surviving a car crash on Mulholland Drive. The two women team up to unravel the mystery of her identity and the strange blue box she carries.
Lynch employs his signature indirect storytelling technique and laces the plot with terrifying themes, unlikely encounters, and dreamy logic. Both the actresses have great on-screen chemistry and paired withthe story’s haunting fantasy nature,Mulholland Drivebecomes a poetic mystery that lingers long after the credits have rolled.
13Donnie Darko (2001)
Donnie Darkois a cult classic that blends genres like science-fiction, horror, and fantasy to create a surreal experience. The movie follows Donnie Darko, a troubled teenager who sees visions of a manic rabbit named Frank. Frank is extremely unsettling; he not only manipulates Donnie to commit crimes but also tells him that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds.
Donnie’s nightmare of a life is thrown into even further confusion when themes like lime loops, parallel universes, and the possibility of changing the past are lurched at him. Directed by Richard Kelly, the movie has a habit of skipping between alternate timelines and contrasting chain of events as Donnie navigates all things Frank leads him into.
12Vanilla Sky (2001)
Cameron Crowe’s remake of Open Your Eyes stars Tom Cruise as David Aames, a wealthy publishing executive whose life spins out of control after a car crash leaves him disfigured with a huge scar on his face. The incident takes a toll on him, and he begins questioning reality and the very existence of human life. Slowly and gradually, the story descends into a confusing and maddening spiral of events. The scenes get more compelling and perplexing as Cruise’s character cannot tell dreams and waking life apart. InVanilla Sky, Crowe uses the idea of multi-layered realities and unclear timelines as a metaphor for the human mind and the inner psychological journey that finally leads to self-discovery.
11Primer (2004)
Accidentally building a time machine and facing the consequences of tinkering with past events may seem like an interesting trope in movies, but it’s actually quite puzzling when executed.Primeris a low-budget science-fiction film that follows two engineers, Aaron and Abe, who are tasked with creating an error-checking technology, but end up inventing an elementary-level time machine built inside a metal box. After Abe decides to create an advanced version of the same machine and the two experiment with traveling back a few hours, things become quickly alarming, and they realize what would follow if they altered the timeline.
Many time travel paradoxes intersect and clash together in the movie,making it quite hard to follow and requiring a second-time watch. It does try to use a technical tone for explanations, but it is often too dense.
