Content Warning: The following article contains spoilers.Even a good storyline can't save a movie if it's poorly executed, and several dozen movies are perfect examples of this. This doesn't mean that a movie's story must be a thousand pages long. Some movies get by perfectly fine with easy but effective plotlines that leave room for plenty of emotion and entertainment.

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Some movies, on the other hand, decide not to take the easy route. Whether it's because of the writers' delight in playing with their audience or just a stylistic choice, these types of movies often have plotlines that are so hard to follow, they require at least a second viewing to grasp and even a third to understand fully.

Updated on December 23rd, 2022, by Hannah Saab:

With recent mind-boggling films like Tár and Everything Everywhere All at Once, it's clear that the trend of making audiences think about (and motivating some to rewatch) movies to fully appreciate them isn't going anywhere. Some movies manage to warrant a second or third viewing without being frustrating, as viewers are glad to be able to pick up on any details they have missed or storylines they couldn't piece together the first time around.

'Interstellar' (2014)

Available to stream on Paramount+ and FXNow.

An astronaut team explores a frozen planet
Image via Warner Bros. 

Interstellar tells the story of a bleak future for humanity as dust storms ravage the Earth and render the planet uninhabitable. With a mission to find a new place to live, a group of astronauts embarks on a journey into the deepest reaches of space to find a planet suitable enough for humanity to call home.

Along the group's journey through some of the most dangerous folds of outer space, the flow of time becomes distorted and leaps forward and backward for decades at a time. Eventually, time comes full circle, right back to the beginning, before abruptly jumping forward a century into the future. Though the movie does explain how this all happens, it's not exactly easy to understand the first time around.

'Life of Pi' (2012)

Available to stream on HBO Max.

Pi builds a raft out of life preserver rings, tarps, rope, and oars to get away from the tiger on his lifeboat
Image via 20th Century Fox

Life of Pi is fairly straightforward at first glance, but it's the second viewing that makes it complicated. Featuring a young man who is lost at sea with an orangutan, a zebra, a hyena, and a tiger, it seems an innocent, albeit harrowing, tale of survival in impossible conditions.

The twist ending in the movie is that the animals may not have been there the whole time. Pi (Suraj Sharma) gives two vastly different accounts of his journey to the rescuers, which both seem feasible. Pi initially says the animals were there, but when he is not believed, he then states that the animals were instead replaced by his mother, a sailor, and a cook. To this day, many still debate which account was real because it is never explicitly stated. The movie allows its viewers to choose what the reality was.

'Memento' (2000)

Available to stream on HBO Max and Kanopy.

Guy Pearce in Memento
Image via Newmarket

Memento was the second film of director Christopher Nolan, who also directed Interstellar. It features Guy Pearce as a devastated widower trying to track down the man who murdered his wife. Though it seems a relatively simple mystery flick, the fact that the chronology is all over the place doesn't make it very easy to follow during the first viewing.

Of course, the killer isn't exactly who the audience thought they would be, and his identity is only revealed towards the end. Unfortunately, the film is remarkably confusing for those who only watched it once. If one were to watch it a second time knowing the twist ending, they would understand much more about the film and appreciate it more.

'Oblivion' (2013)

Available to stream on Netflix.

Jack and Julia stare out at the coast using an old pair of binoculars
Image via Universal Pictures

Oblivion stars Tom Cruise as Jack Harper, one of the last people left on Earth after an alien invasion rendered the planet uninhabitable. His job is to repair broken drones so that they can protect the water farms and hunt down the remaining aliens that still roam the wastes. He is aided by his wife, Vika (Andrea Riseborough), who serves as his communications officer. They report to someone named Sally (Melissa Leo), a human reportedly aboard a space station orbiting Earth filled with the rest of humanity.

It isn't until Jack comes across a crashed spacecraft that his whole world turns upside-down. The woman who survived the impact claims to be his real wife, which is when memories come flooding back to him. Throughout the film, every established truth is ripped away, one by one. New truths are revealed, and things become incredibly confusing about halfway through. It's a solid sci-fi movie, but it requires at least two viewings to understand it fully. It's nowhere near as simple as it seems on the surface.

'Caché' (2005)

Available to stream on Tubi TV.

A family sits at a dinner table surrounded by bookshelves
Image via Les Filmes de Losange

Caché, also known as Hidden in English, is a French mystery film that has been debated for over a decade. It features a small suburban family who one day receives a mysterious package containing a VHS tape. The tape's contents are filled with hours of footage of the family home. For months, the family receives anonymous mail, all filled with tapes containing details about their daily routines that many otherwise wouldn't know.

With paranoia wreaking havoc on the family, they become desperate to find the answers. The viewer, in turn, also becomes desperate, as every lead seemingly leads to a dead end. Unfortunately, the movie never gives the audience an answer. Not directly, anyway. The answer can only be found by paying close attention to the tiny details hidden throughout the film. This, of course, warrants more than just one viewing, as many of said details are the "blink, and you'll miss it" type.

'Annihilation' (2018)

Available to stream on Paramount+.

A group of female soldiers armed with guns standing in line in Annihilation.
Image via Paramount Pictures 

Natalie Portman stars as Lena, an army veteran and biologist who receives word that an anomaly known as The Shimmer has appeared on Earth. Her husband was one of the few to be sent into The Shimmer, and the only one who returns. Unfortunately, he comes back in a coma and cannot give an account of what he saw.

Lena then leads a team into the mysterious region in search of the missing expedition. In The Shimmer, animal life has mutated, and time does not flow normally. Things get weird when Lena arrives at the source of The Shimmer, which is when it is revealed that nothing is as it seems. The nature of the anomaly is something otherworldly, so otherworldly that it can perfectly copy any life form. Which begs the question, who in the movie was real, and who was an imposter?

'Shutter Island' (2010)

Available to stream on Netflix and Paramount+.

Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island

Leonardo DiCaprio stars in Shutter Island, a crime-mystery film focusing on a mental asylum just off the shores of New England. DiCaprio plays Teddy, a troubled American detective sent to investigate the island to search for an escaped patient who happens to be a murderer.

The film inevitably ends, as many complicated films do, with the revelation that everything the audience has known is a lie. The ending seems relatively straightforward. However, there is a lot to be implied within its subtle details. This makes the ending quite ambiguous and muddies the details of the rest of the film even more.

'Birdman' (2014)

Available to rent on Apple iTunes and Amazon Video.

Birdman flying behind Riggan as he walks down the street in Birdman.

Birdman was one of the first films to utilize the unconventional but brilliant choice of making the movie appear to be done all in one take. It features a retired actor who attempts to get back into the industry by writing and starring in his own Broadway production.

Though the "all-in-one-take" style makes it appear that the audience won't miss a thing, there is quite a lot that can be missed. What's more, some parts are downright befuddling. For example, the drum beat soundtrack that seems to be added in post-production (like a normal film) originates from a street drummer who appears in random places. Strange, almost hallucinogenic choices such as this make the film difficult to understand. But that's what makes it so entertaining.

'2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968)

Available to stream on HBO Max.

An astronaut explores the corridors of his spaceship
Image via MGM

One of the earliest films to be incredibly dumbfounding, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a sci-fi flick featuring a small crew of space explorers sent to Jupiter to find the origins of a strange artificial object beneath the Moon's surface. A SuperComputer aids them with a horrid personality, which becomes the source of worry and woe.

What confounded audiences was its ending, namely, the final shot of a fetus in some sort of embryo floating in space after a series of bizarre twists and turns. Much of it is symbolism, of course, but that doesn't make it any easier to follow.

'Inception' (2010)

Available to stream on Hulu.

The ensemble cast on Inception standing on a street.
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Christopher Nolan strikes for a third time in this mind-bending masterpiece of cinema. Inception once again stars Leonardo DiCaprio, this time as a dream researcher. The plot of Inception revolves around the study and untapped potential of dreams. Like many other films featuring alternate realities, this film ends in such a way that it leaves its viewers scratching their heads, wondering whether what they just witnessed was real or was, in fact, a dream.

This is further convoluted by the fact that through the movie's complex web of plotlines, the dreams featured in it can occur inside other dreams. It becomes a mess of dreams inside a series of others, to the point where reality itself becomes questionable.

'Tenet' (2020)

Available to stream on DirecTV, TNT, TBS and truTV.

John David Washington as The Protagonist in Tenet

Nolan gives audiences what is arguably his most divisive and confusing movie yet through Tenet, a perplexing film that follows a character known simply as the Protagonist (played by John David Washington). He navigates the dangerous world of international espionage with a tool his enemies are using as well – not exactly time travel, but "inversion."

The explanations themselves about what inversion is and how it works are enough to spend anyone's mind spinning. It only gets even more complicated when the Protagonist realizes he has already played a bigger role in the fight for humanity's survival than he initially thought. It's certainly a film that should be watched more than once to fully grasp.

'Arrival' (2016)

Available to stream on Starz.

Louise Banks standing on a field looking pensive in Arrival.
Image via Paramount Pictures

Amy Adams stars as the language expert Louise Banks in Denis Villeneuve's award-winning sci-fi drama, Arrival. It's centered on the way the world's experts and governments respond to the mysterious spacecraft that have landed all over the world. Louise's role is especially important, as she is responsible for understanding the extraterrestrial beings' complex language and figuring out what they want.

A brilliant twist eventually reveals that Louise's constant flashbacks in the alien movie have a deeper meaning. They have something to do with what exactly the aliens came to the earth for. The spine-chilling plot point changes everything about the film, making it necessary to see it all over again with the new context in mind.

'Waking Life' (2001)

Available to stream on HBO Max.

Jesse and Celine laying in bed in the animated film 'Waking Life'.
Image via Fox Searchlight Pictures

Waking Life is a criminally underrated experimental animated film for adults written and directed by Richard Linklater. It follows an unnamed young man as he lives an ethereal existence, walking in and out of philosophical conversations and bizarre (often intense) events. He's often a listener, but will also participate in deep conversations with all sorts of characters, including scientists, activists and everyday people.

Those who have seen the film know that it's impossible to fully describe the surreal events that take place, which is also evident in its unique animation style. Everything is fluid – the conversations, animation and events – and anyone interested in philosophy will enjoy watching this movie over and over.

'Everything Everywhere All at Once' (2022)

Available to stream on Showtime.

Michelle Yeoh in 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'
Image via A24

At this point, any A24 fan needs no introduction to the international hit from directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once. The absurdist comedy-drama follows Evelyn Quan Wang (masterfully played by Michelle Yeoh), an aging woman struggling with her hectic business, failing marriage and, most importantly, messy relationship with her daughter. When she learns that she's the only version of herself in the multiverse that can save the world from destruction, it's the last thing she needs.

Wacky, zany and surprisingly emotional and philosophical, the film will have viewers' heads spinning for all the right reasons. It manages to deliver a myriad of art styles, well-written characters and a powerful message about optimistic nihilism – all of which demand more than one viewing.

'Tár' (2022)

Available to rent on Google Play Movies and YouTube.

Lydia Tár conducting in TÁR.
Image via Focus Features 

Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár in director Todd Field's psychological drama film that depicts the renowned composer-conductor's rise and fall. Lydia goes from a lavish lifestyle, one interview after another and numerous fans waiting for her next project to an isolated, rejected and often shamed outcast because of her own actions.

Because of the film's narrative structure and remarkable subtlety in the way it presents Lydia's story, just like the protagonist, audiences likely won't really understand what's going on until the shocking ending. There are also so many tiny details that hint at Lydia's fate scattered throughout the movie, which is why it's rewarding to watch it at least a second time to be able to fully appreciate it.

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