When you watch movies, you want to be immersed and get a break from 𝐆reality, so sometimes that means a good sci-fi fantasy, action comedy, or even a horror movie. But maybe you prefer critical thinking when you watch movieꦯs, ones that are filled with more mind-bending and confusing storylines that make you question everything that's going on.

Psychological thrillers represent the best genre for that experience. Great psychological thrillers have plenty of twists and turns, make excellent use of unreliable narrators, and even introduce sci-fi elements to throw things for a bigger loop. Below are some of the best movies guaranteed to mess with your m൩in🌞d.

10 Vivarium

With Vivarium, you're in for a trippy suburban experience about a couple, Tom and Gemma, who are searching for a new home in a neighborhood of identical green houses, soon finding themselves unable to get out of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the maze of homes. They always find themselves back at the house they were just being shown, but꧅ now with a baby dropped off at their front do💖orstep.

Tom and Gemma are⭕ forced into raising the child on the condition that they can leave, but the boy grows really fast and seems unnatural, even mimicking them. The entire situation is very surreal, bizarre, and weird, and through all the minℱd-bending and confusing story beats also lies a message about settling down and parenthood.

9 Existenz

David Cronenberg is known for dark and disturbing body horror movies, and Existenz is a highly underrated one where body horror and mind-bending sci-fi meet. Here, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:🐓the main protagonist is a game designer named Allegra Geller, who maꦡde the futuristic VR game Existenz, which is activated by connecting an organic fleshy console through a port in your spine🔯.

Existenz does a great job of never allowing you to know what's real and what is still the game wor🐷ld until the very end, while at the same time introducing some unique organic weapons and interesting ideas about the future of virtual reality games. The visuals are classic Cronenberg, and you have a fantastic lead duo of Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law.

8 Heretic

Heretic was one of the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:best horror movies of 2024, thanks to Hugh Grant's shocking performance as a manipulative, religion-disproving serial killer.ཧ Grant's Mr. Reed will mess with your mind throughout the film, and you'll start to feel as helpless and confused as the main protagonists, two female Mormon missionaries trapped in his twisted mind games.

The movie devotes some of its runtime to well-researched discussion and critique of religion with some clever analogies, but overall, Heretic is creepy and disturbing and throws in so many plot twists that have you believing one odd t♋hing after another. The movie is also written and directed by the writers behind A Quiet Place, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods.

7 Beau Is Afraid 💝

Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:is also from A24, and it stars Joaquin Phoenix as an anxiety-ridden man literally terrified and paranoid of everything. Seeing as it's from the director be♚hind Hereditary and Midsommar, the sound design and camerawork are the film's strongest aspects, masterfully keeping you on edge and making you feel the same anxie𒁃ty and tension as Beau.

The movie is abou♏t Beau's struggle to get home to see his mother, with whom he has a troubled relationship. You might start to suspect that everything Beau sees playing out in front of him is a manifestation of his anxieties and parꦍanoid thoughts, and all of it runs for three hours.

6 🍷 The Machinist ♔

Christian 𝐆Bale is , having a skeletal-like build to really commit to the character of an emaciated man with insomnia. This film puts you inside the world of paranoia and confusion of Bale's Trevor Reznik, a factory machine worker who eventually causes an accident where a co-worker loses an arm.

Trevor keeps seeing a man he calls Ivan, who apparently exists only to him, and experiences lapses in his memory. He also frequently visits a sex worker named Stevie, who's more like a friend to him, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. If you thought Bale's unr🐼eliable narrator Patrick Bateman in American Psycho was well-ಌcrafted, just wait for the twist in The Machinist.

5 Inland Empire 💞

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Legendary filmmaker David Lynch makes the most mind-boggling original films that deal with intense psychological material, and we're thankful to him for that. Inland Empire is even more confusing and experimental than Mulholland Drive. It's a movie that runs for three hours about ⭕an actress losing her grip on reality while also caught in a time paradox.

Laura Dern's Nikki is filming a project with Justin Theroux's Devon, where she learns their movie was previously unfinished in Poland due to the lead actors being murd💯ered. You follow Nikki as she goes through a surreal, distorted, reality-altering odyssey, while also cutting back to a Polish sex worker watching TV, including a show about a family of anthropomorphic rabbits.

4 Jacob's Ladder

Tไhe film🔴 Jacob's Ladder is a genre-bending film of psychological horror, thriller, romance, and war. The main protagonist is Tim Robbins' Jacob Singer, a Vietnam War veteran seemingly suffering from PTSD and receiving troubling hallucinations of monsters that threaten him and his girlfriend. It's an eerie trip of a movie with some truly immersive and masterful editing.

Jacob's Ladder keeps you constantly guessing about what's going on with Jacob and questioning whether he's still in the war, in New York, or in some other dimension entirely, with the movie cutting between his near-death as a soldier and his present life. The creatures, ༒story, and horror atmosphere were so🦂 influential that they even inspired Silent Hill.

3 Donnie 🐠Darko

Donnie Darko remains one of the trippiest and most mind-bending psychological thrillers toꦍ mess with you. The movie begins with a plane engine falling through the roof of a house, which happens to land in the bedroom of Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Donnie Darko. Meanwhile, a creepy bunny-costumed character named Frank tells Donnie the world will end.

Donnie soon begins dating, but also continues to be visited by the bunny, who influences him negatively. Donnie sees a therapist, and you're led to believe these are hallucinations from schizophrenia or some other psychological condition, but then there's a paradoxical twist that makes you question the reality of it all, so🤪 maybe Frank doesn't seem so out of the ordinary.

2 Coherence

Coherence puts a mind-bending spin on a dinner party evening with your f🐎riends. Everyone is gathered together with news of a comet passing over the Earth, but then things get very mysterious. After a power outage, the friends encounter a group of people who are identically matching their appearance, as꧙ though they are doubles, with only subtle differences in their glowstick colors.

What's most significant about this movie is its extremely low budget of $50,000, but extremely high concept sci-fi of quantum coherence and alternate realities that manages to be as great an experience as any higher-budget film. The dialogue is mostly improvised, and the camera makes it feel like a lower-qua𒈔lity film, but Coherence is a noteworthy watch.

1 C🦩addo Lake

Caddo Lake is a missing person mystery-thriller told through a twisty, mind-bending premise of a lake that has portal-like tears that di🌳splace you throughout time. It's also produced by M. Night Shyamalan, so you should expect a very mind-blowing twist from Caddo Lake as well, which is what makes it the top contender in this category.

Caddo Lake follows the main characters, Ellie and Paris, as Ellie discovers the time-travel phenomenon of Caddo Lake and realizes that her little stepsister Anna got trapped in time and tries to find her and bring her back. Paris frequents that same lake but in a different t♛imeline from Ellie, creating a brilliant and well-written paradox story.