25 movies that will really mess with your head

Gregg Araki is one of the most visionary directors working within the movement known as New Queer Cinema and Nowhere, the concluding film in his “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy” features his signature exploration of 1990s adolescent ennui. It’s a trippy and beautiful film, and it is remarkable for how it deals with weighty issues. There is a potent absurdity to its entire premise, focusing on the very bizarre lives of its teenage characters. The final scene must go down as one of the most disturbingly hilarious moments to have emerged in a non-horror film, and it’s to Araki’s credit that he makes it both funny and tragic simultaneously. 

Few films manage to capture the paranoia of the Cold War like The Manchurian Candidate. When Robert Shaw returns from the Korean War, he finds himself a celebrated war hero. Still, all too soon, it becomes clear that he is nothing more than a pawn in a sinister game for power masterminded by his ruthless and cold-blooded mother, Mrs. Eleanor Iselin. Angela Lansbury plays the latter in one of her finest roles, and she turns the domineering mother into a true monster willing to sacrifice her son on the altar of her ambition. The final revelation is a true stunner, but the twists and turns of the story will leave the audience feeling as disoriented and paranoid as the characters. 

Stanley Kubrick was undeniably one of the most talented and visionary directors of his generation. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, he pushed the cinematic medium to the fullest extent of what it could show and, in the process, created a film that is a profound and deeply moving rumination on the nature of human consciousness and the expansive canvas of history. In addition to its mind-twisting story, it is a stunningly beautiful film, and it is the film’s aesthetic, as much as its narrative, which continues to challenge the way that the viewer makes sense of the medium of film.

Planet of the Apes deserves its reputation as one of the best science fiction films ever made. Charlton Heston stars as Taylor, an astronaut who, along with two companions, crash-lands on a planet ruled over by apes. He soon finds that the apes view him with dread and hostility since he is one of the only ones of his kind who can speak. The ending scene is destined to live forever in the annals of movie history. Even now, a twist ending reshapes the entire film that came before and perfectly articulates the Atomic Age anxiety regarding humanity’s ability to destroy itself. 

Lars von Trier is a director known for making films that challenge the viewer in new and unexpected ways. In Melancholia, he turns his attention to the literal end of the world, and the film focuses on several characters who have to contend with the reality that Earth is about to collide with a giant planet, bringing all of life to a complete end. As its title suggests, it’s a film concerned with the emotional response to utter powerlessness, showing what human beings will do when the inevitable doom comes upon them. In von Trier’s capable hands, the apocalypse manages to be as beautiful as it is devastating. 

Funny Games remains a tremendously troubling film, both in its original version and the American remake (both directed by Michael Haneke). The American version is especially disturbing and, like its predecessor, uses its story about two boys who kidnap and torture a vacationing family to offer a supposed commentary on the nature of violence in popular culture. There are, in fact, many times in the film where it seems to delight in inviting the audience to vicariously partake of the sadism on offer, which is precisely what heightens its ability to mess with the mind of the viewer. 

Goodnight Mommy is a truly unsettling film, focusing on a pair of twin boys who start to wonder whether their mother, who has come home after surgery with bandages on her face, is their mother. As their paranoia grows, they resort to ever more extreme measures to try to get her to reveal the truth, even resorting to gluing her to the floor. This is horror at its most brutal and chilling, particularly once the truth about the twins is revealed. It’s haunting, chilling, and suspenseful, keeping the viewer guessing the truth of matters until the end. 

Alfred Hitchcock definitely deserved his reputation for being the master of suspense, and Vertigo demonstrates why he deserves this appellation. At the heart of the story is James Stewart’s Scottie Ferguson, a policeman who suffers from vertigo and finds his fate intertwined with the mysterious woman named Madeleine. As with so many Hitchcock films, there are quite a few twists in store for the protagonist and the audience, and it’s not until the end that it all comes together in a brutal and beautiful climax. Like the best thought-provoking thriller, it plays with the very idea of identity, asking the viewer to question just how much they can ever know about someone. 

Few films have captured the absurdity of modern life quite as well as The Truman Show.  Jim Carrey is in top form as the character Truman Burback, a man whose entire life has been a television show about him. Though it was released in 1998, the film’s exploration of the blurred boundaries between the real and the simulated has become increasingly relevant and potent in an age dominated by social media and AI. It combines emotional authenticity with thought-provoking philosophy and demonstrates the extent to which Carrey has always been a remarkably versatile performer. 

The 1990s was a rather brooding period for teen movies, as Donnie Darko demonstrates. This is a film that is, by design, meant to mess with the mind of the viewer, dealing as it does with the apocalypse and with time travel. Jake Gyllenhaal was in one of his first major roles, and he perfectly captures the title character’s brooding sense of despair. There’s a brooding sense of menace and doom to  Donnie Darko that captures the millennial anxieties that were still very much in the air, to say nothing of the events of September 11 (which occurred about a month before the film’s wide release). Donnie Darko is as mind-bending as they come, and it is a perfect encapsulation of its time.

Rosamund Pike gives a terrifically icy performance in Gone Girl.  Directed by David Fincher, it shows the director’s ongoing fascination with the dark and sinister side of the human condition. Ben Affleck is also perfectly cast as Nick Dunne, a man suspected of having murdered his wife. There are many twists and turns as the story unfolds, but the final series of revelations are as shocking and devastating for the audience as they are for Nick. It’s an incisive look at the lies people tell, both to others and themselves, as they try to create the life they want.

Christopher Nolan has repeatedly shown that he has a knack for creating films that combine the thought-provoking with the disturbing, but few are quite as adept as Insomnia.  Starring Al Pacino in the role of Will Dormer, a policeman who accidentally shoots his partner, it follows his efforts to find the murderer of a young woman and contend with his guilt in the almost-permanent Alaska daytime. Most disturbing, perhaps, is the villainous turn by Robin Williams, who proves, once again, that some of his best work was in drama rather than in comedy.

Folk horror doesn’t get much better than The Wicker Man. When an English detective goes to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl, he finds himself drawn into a sinister neo-pagan cult led by the charismatic Lord Summerisle (played by the late great Christopher Lee). Little does he know that the lord and his vassals have plans for the detective and that he has a central part to play in a pagan ceremony. Unsettling and thrilling from beginning to end, The Wicker Man is potent horror filmmaking, and the last scene of the film is as haunting as it is beautiful. 

Don’t Worry Darling is one of those movies that threatened to be overwhelmed by the publicity surrounding the behind-the-scenes drama. However, this shouldn’t distract from the film’s unsettling story, which focuses on a young woman, Alice (played by Florence Pugh), whose seemingly idealistic existence turns out to be something darker and much more sinister. Pugh gives one of the best performances of her career as the heroine, and she is joined by similarly fantastic Harry Styles and a charismatically unhinged Chris Pine. With strands of DNA from  The Matrix, it’s the kind of film that calls the entire nature of existence, and of gender relations, into question. 

Nicole Kidman gives one of her career-best performances in The Others, starring as a mother who becomes increasingly convinced the home in which she lives with her children is haunted by spirits. Dark, sinister, and atmospheric, this movie is the perfect type of ghost movie, and it has a flawlessly executed twist ending that will leave the audience questioning everything that came before. Like the best mind-bending movies, it also has a definite note of tragedy which, combined with the film’s ability to make the viewer inhabit the characters’ tortured psychological state, makes the twist much more devastating. 

Folk horror is one of those genres in which it is sometimes very difficult to do well, but with Midsommar, Ari Aster proved that he was more than up to the task. The story is about a group of American tourists who go to Sweden only to immerse themselves in a deadly religious ritual that deeply unsettles the viewer. Particularly striking is the use of bright light, which sharply juxtaposes the brutal and violent scenes unfolding. The film gets under the viewer’s skin and stays there, a perpetual reminder of just how dangerous and precarious life can be when one is away from home.

Robert Eggers burst onto the film scene with The Witch, a film about a colonial family’s encounter with the sinister being of the title. It is the type of film that immerses the viewer in the dark and dangerous world of early America when the forest was a potential site of Satanic encounters. As the film demonstrates, however, the family itself is the heart of darkness, and daughter Thomasin has to watch as they all start to crack under strain. The young woman, however, ultimately proves that there is more to her than meets the eye, and the film's ending is both shocking and cathartic. 

With his directorial debut, Get Out,  Jordan Peele demonstrated that he is one of today’s finest and most talented horror directors. Its story about a young Black man, Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris Washington, who finds himself subjected to a middle-class white family’s brutal experiment with mind transplantation, is both shocking and incisive.  Get Out is the type of film designed to reflect on and indictment of how the bodies of BIPOC in America are routinely devalued and exploited by those in power. This is horror with a social conscience, and this helps to explain why it remains one of the director’s most beloved and highly acclaimed films.  

The Matrix looms large in the collective consciousness, and it remains one of the most thought-provoking and challenging films from the minds of the Wachowskis. Its story about a man, Neo Anderson, who discovers that he is meant to be the savior of humanity and break the rule of the machines is one that comes to be increasingly relevant in a world laboring under the shadow of AI. It’s the kind of film that encourages the viewer to rethink everything they thought they knew about the world and how it works, and therein lies its extraordinary power and unsettling energy. 

M. Night Shyamalan has, by now, established his reputation as being someone willing to lean on a twist ending to get his point across. Though it has become something of a trope by this point, The Sixth Sense  is remarkable for the extent to which it still holds up. Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment perform amazingly — the former as a child psychologist and the latter as one of his patients. The twist ending is arguably one of the best to have emerged from the movies, particularly since it appears so obvious in hindsight. 

Few films have captured the angst and male anger of the late 20th century quite as well as Fight Club. Based on the bestselling novel by Chuck Palahniuk, it follows Edward Norton’s nameless Narrator as his life becomes increasingly intertwined with the dangerous, charismatic, and violent Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt). The film messes with one’s mind on several levels, for not only is it obsessed with male violence — it is called  Fight Club, after all — but also for the way its final revelation plays out. This is the kind of film that isn’t for the faint of heart, but it more than earns its place as one of the best cult films of the 20th century.

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have had a long and productive partnership, and they each bring their own particular strengths to the brooding and disturbing Shutter Island. DiCaprio is in fine form as Teddy Daniels, a man who, along with his partner, investigates a hospital for the criminally insane. As the investigation unfolds, however, Daniels is forced to confront some ugly truths about his own past and his relationship with a murderer. There are many twists and turns in the story, and the final revelation is one of the most devastating that Scorsese has ever delivered. It’s the kind of film designed to stay with the viewer long after the final frame. 

Throughout his career, director Christopher Nolan has been fascinated with the function of narrative and storytelling, and no film exhibits this interest better than Memento.  Guy Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, who suffers from amnesia and has almost no short-term memory and must, as a result, leave clues as to the mystery of who killed his wife on his own body (he also uses photographs and handwritten notes). Memento forces the audience to think about how they make sense of their own lives and of the power of storytelling itself to help wrest meaning from unremitting chaos. 

As a genre, science fiction has often concerned itself with pushing the boundaries of human consciousness. This is one of the central themes of Solaris, one of the most notable films by acclaimed director Andrei Tarkovsky. Its central character, Kris Kelvin, goes to a space station to determine why the crew has fallen victim to a strange phenomenon on the planet Solaris; unfortunately, he soon finds himself swallowed up by its power. The film's final scene is one of the most bleakly existential moments to have emerged from the movies, and it is a testament to Solaris’ ability to question the very nature of meaning and reality.

Alex Garland’s sophomore effort (after Ex Machina ) is designed to engender fear, alienation, and distress in its audience. It follows a group of scientists, led by Natalie Portman’s Lena, examining an anomaly known as the Shimmer. As they encounter creatures whose DNA has been melded by the entity, they also start to find their own bodies and minds beginning to change. The film is a fascinating examination of the nature of humanity and life itself. It is filled with pleasurably disturbing images, and the mutated bear is a being that will forever live in the nightmares of all who watch it.