Did you lie awake at night contemplating the end of Interstellar? Here are eight other movies that will blow your mind and cause you to lose sleep. (Disclaimer: spoilers ahead)
“I see dead people.” — It’s an iconic line that haunted far too many of us when we first watched M. Night Shyamalan‘s most popular film. As the master of a good twist-ending, Shyamalan blew movie-goers’ minds when he revealed that baby Haley Joel Osment wasn’t just your typical boy with secret powers. (That would be too simple.) Instead, it’s really Bruce Willis the boy’s ‘psychiatrist’, who is deceased and seeing all sorts of dead people.
2. Inception
Where to begin with this one? Anyone who has seen the 2010 Christopher Nolan flick knows that it doesn’t simply end with a juicy twist. Inception, instead, blows audiences’ minds with its ‘dream within a dream within a dream’ structure. Viewers have a tough time knowing what is and isn’t real in the world of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), and there have been plenty of fan theories and analyses dedicated to helping make sense of this complex story. That, in itself, is pretty mind-blowing.
Martin Scorsese‘s thriller isn’t what it initially seems. Following a U.S. Marshal’s (Leonardo DiCaprio again) investigation of a disturbing asylum, this movie first comes across as a murder mystery. In the final moments, however, we become aware that Shutter Island is simply in the protagonist’s mind. He is actually unstable and going through therapy of his own.
4. The Others
This creepy film is your classic haunted house flick…sort of. Nicole Kidman plays a woman with two young children, is constantly harassed by the presence of what seems to be ghosts. By the end, our worlds are flipped upside down when we discover that Nicole and her kids are actually the spirits…obliviously haunting everybody else.
5. The Prestige
Don’t let the fact that this film is about magic fool you — The Prestige is no Harry Potter. Christopher Nolan pulls off another one of his whacky endings in this movie starring Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. Former magician-partners try to out-do the other, leading to the involvement of identical twins and clones. Confused? You probably still will be even after watching this movie. Once you start to wrap your boggled mind around the ending, though, it’s totally worth it.
6. Fight Club
This cult classic tells the story of an office worker who befriends a wild and reckless man and, naturally, starts a fight club. The David Fincher film managed to throw audiences for a loop when it revealed that Tyler (Brad Pitt in his prime) isn’t actually a real person — he’s just a figment of Edward Norton’s imagination (*gasp!*). Sploid even published an article on what the movie might look without Brad Pitt.
7. Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1960’s masterpiece is hailed as one of cinema’s best. It’s also where we get that iconically terrifying shower-stabbing scene (the reason we always check behind the curtain now). As the movie that Bates Motel derives inspiration from, Psycho boasts one of the biggest mind-blowing scenes of all-time: Norman Bates suffers from split-personality disorder and believes himself to be his mother. Therefore, he is truly the killer.
8. Arrival
The arrival of aliens is a tale that’s as old as time (especially in Hollywood), but this new, highly-acclaimed movie is nothing like you’d expect. Sure, mysterious extraterrestrials land on earth and send everyone into a panic, but the plot chronicles a linguistics expert’s (Amy Adams) journey as she tries to decipher these being’s language and purpose. Meanwhile, she also battles with thoughts of her daughter’s life and death. Much like the alien’s communication, the timeline of this movie is non-linear, and we soon find out that this daughter has not yet been born. It turns out Amy Adams is seeing into the future and–it seems–awaiting the arrival of this new life.
