This article discusses the 10 Best Thought-Provoking Movies of All Time you must watch. Add these mind-bending recommendations to your watch list.
If you’re someone who is fascinated by the mind of characters and how they operate in the world built for them, then psychological thrillers are the films for you. The reason why these thrillers sometimes scare audiences is because of how realistic the characters are and then the choices they make test the morals of the viewers. On top of that, the directors and actors know how to get into the mind of the viewer to pull them into the world that they created.
The films listed below are thought-provoking because you become fully immersed in the world and each film will consume your thoughts long after you’ve watched them.
10 Best Thought-Provoking Movies of All Time
Fight Club (1999)
In David Fincher‘s adaptation of Fight Club, he explores consumerism, toxic masculinity, and the capitalist society that will eventually turn people into slaves for the working class. An insomniac office worker (Ed Norton) and a devil-may-care soap maker form an underground fight club that evolves into much more.
Arrival (2016)
Denis Villeneuve‘s existential sci-fi film Arrival has a linguist (Amy Adams) working with the military to communicate with alien lifeforms after twelve mysterious spacecraft appear around the world. Villeneuve makes the audience connect with the aliens through a very grounded, humanistic lens. After watching this, you’ll feel as if your life is so small and insignificant compared to what could possibly be out there.
Donnie Darko (2001)
Donnie Darko is a morally ambiguous sci-fi mystery that will keep you guessing until the very end. After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes. Director Richard Kelly showed how Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) responded to a voice in his head telling him what to do. The first time you watch this, it’ll be difficult to understand, but once you watch the ending, everything makes sense. And watching it for a second or third time will make you appreciate what was done.
Nightcrawler (2014)
In Nightcrawler, writer-director Dan Gilroy wanted to highlight the life of one man named Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is a con man desperate for work. Without much schooling, he weasels his way into the world of L.A. crime journalism. He blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story. Bloom becomes a product of his environment as the darker the crime story turns, he gets lost in all of it.
Interstellar (2014)
A Christopher Nolan film is almost always intricate and confusing thanks to his brother Jonathan co-writing the screenplays with him. This sci-fi drama is layered and heartbreaking in the end once you realize you don’t have enough time in the world and life just passes you by. In this film, a team of explorers travels through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity’s survival. What begins as a standard space exploration mission turns into something much darker and more haunting.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The Sixth Sense is the movie that put M. Night Shyamalan on the map. This thriller has one of the best twists that changed the game for the structure of the genre. When a frightened, withdrawn Philadephia boy who communicates with spirits seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist, his treatment isn’t that conventional. This is still one of his most talked about movies and has the famous line, “I see dead people,” delivered perfectly by Hayley Joel Osment.
Se7en (1995)
Before Fight Club David Fincher made Se7en which is still one of the better neo-noir thrillers to raise the bar in the 90s. Writer Andrew Kevin Walker wrote an intricate story about two detectives; a rookie and a veteran, who hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives. As they uncover each sin and the scene of the crime, they question the serial killer and his morals as to why he would even go out of his way to structure the kills this way.
Looper (2012)
Before Rian Johnson entered the Star Wars universe he created a mind-bending action thriller. In the year 2074, when the mob wants to get rid of someone, the target is sent into the past, where a hired hitman awaits. Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is sent back to “close the loop” by sending back Joe’s future self for assassination. On paper, this sounds like a very complicated story and almost impossible to translate to the screen, but Johnson makes it so engaging because of the choices Joe makes in his life.
Black Swan (2010)
Director Darren Aronofsky is known to capture the obscurity of life through different perspectives. After Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, and The Wrestler, he decided to really dip into horror territory with Black Swan. Natalie Portman is haunting as a committed ballerina who struggles to maintain her sanity after winning the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Not only does she struggle physically with the strenuous practicing, but it affects her mental head space in wanting perfection. Even though it is incredibly dark, it shows what dancers go through without that perfect mask on.
Memento (2000)
When Jonathan and Christopher Nolan work together there is greatness ready to be made. Memento is about a man with short-term memory loss who attempts to track down his wife’s murderer. To this day, no one can understand how the Nolan brothers were capable of making this film work backward and forward in a fragmented storyline. It is truly one of the most ambitious films in Nolan’s filmography. Once you finish it, you’ll want to watch it again from the beginning to understand how this was made.
Do you have any other recommendations for Thought-Provoking Films? Let us know!
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