The 10 Most Confusing Thrillers of All Time

Some thriller movies take a little more effort from the audience to fully understand their complex stories.

Movies are made as an escape route from our daily lives. We go to the movies to live in this new, fresh story for a couple of hours in hopes of being entertained. Every once in a while, however, a movie comes along that leaves us pondering. We sit in our seat, as the credits roll, pondering what the heck we just watched.

When we get home, we sprint to YouTube and search "the ending of ____ explained" or "the meaning behind _____" in order to fully understand the film. These films are thought-provoking, confusing, and require multiple watches. Here are the 10 most confusing thriller films of all time:

To kick things off, one of the more rewatchable, confusing thrillers of the 2000s is Christopher Nolan's narrative-bending film Memento. The film, based on a short story by Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan Nolan, follows a man named Leonard (Guy Pearce) with short-term memory loss who tries to track down and avenge the man who killed his wife. His memory fades over a short period of time. To combat this, he takes pictures of important people, places, and things with a Polaroid camera, gets tattoos of significant information on his body, and writes down handy notes.

What makes this film unique, and confusing, is Nolan's narrative structure. He wanted the audience to be in the head of Leonard. In order to accomplish that, he decided to split the movie into two separate narratives. The bulk of the film is told in colorsequences, which tells the story backwards. Since each scene is told in backwards chronological order, Nolan and his editor cut it in a way so that the end of the nextscene matchups the beginning of the previous scene. The rest of the film is told through normal chronological black-and-whitesequences. The color sequences start at the end of the story, while the black and white sequences start at the beginning, and both narratives converge and meet in the middle of the story by the end of the film.

Memento is a film that requires your full attention when you watch it. Even if you commit that attention, chances are there are details that you missed, requiring you to watch again. With new information becoming apparent, Memento is one of those films that gets better and better each time you revisit it.

Related: Christopher Nolan Movies, Ranked from Good to Best

A staple in mind-bending cinema, Shutter Island is a 2010, Martin Scorsese-directed psychological thriller based on the novel of the same name by author Dennis Lehane. We follow a twisted tale of two U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) as they investigate the disappearance of a patient at a distant hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island. The tension begins early as the two investigators approach the once Civil War-era fort by boat. The fog is thick, providing a sense of uneasiness as they reach the hospital. Off the bat, you can tell there is something wrong about the place.

Shutter Island is deeper than an investigation film. It uses an untrustworthy narrator to blur the lines of reality and delusion. We dive deep into Teddy's mind, and as the film continues, we start to question the truth behind Teddy's own perception. Shutter Island with its twists and turns, psychological manipulation, and ambiguousness makes for one of the most confusing thrillers of all time.

Brandon Cronenberg, son of famed director David Cronenberg, is no stranger to experimental cinema and that doesn't change with his second feature film Possessor. Possessor is a 2020 sci-fi body horror flick that tells the story of an assassin named Tasya Vos (played by Andrea Riseborough). Her method for assassinations is ground-breaking and unconventional; she uses a new form of technology that allows her to control the body of individuals in proximity to the target to carry out the murders, leaving behind zero trace of her involvement.

The film's central plot kicks in when Tasya infiltrates the body of Colin (Christopher Abbott), the boyfriend of the daughter of Tasya's next target, John Parse (Sean Bean). Things become rather complicated as she dives deep into Colin's mind, finding it uncharacteristically difficult to control the host body, while simultaneously battling with her own purpose and identity. Possessor is a hypnotic, gory, visually-stunning take on the meaning of identity as Tasya struggles to keep the identity of her occupation a secret, but also the identity of her cruel, apathetic personality.

Enemy is a Dennis Villenueve-directed psychological thriller based on the novel "The Double" by José Saramago. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the roles of two doppelgängers: Adam Bell, a college professor who notices an actor, Anthony Claire, who looks exactly like him in a movie. After discovering this doppelgänger, Adam becomes obsessed with Anthony's private life, following him everywhere he goes in attempt to learn more about his life. When they meet, they attempt to swap lives, thinking they can pass as each other. This dynamic adds many layers to Gyllenhaal's terrific dual performances.

The film ends with a super ambiguous final sequence, leaving audiences unsure about the realities the two identical men live in. Whether it is a take on the subconscious mind, a dual identity within one single person's psyche, or an infinite loop of continuously repeating experiences, the true meaning of Enemy has been intentionally up for debate since its release in 2013.

Related: The Best Jake Gyllenhaal Movies of the 2010s, Ranked

Oldboy is an all-time action thriller classic that will have you googling "ending explained" immediately after viewing. The Park Chan-wook-directed film follows a man's journey of vengeance after being imprisoned and tortured for 15 years by an unknown group of people. In the climax of the film, a lot is thrown at you, leaving many people puzzled and confused. The film's heroine Oh Dae-su is mysteriously imprisoned, unsure of who captured him, why he was captured, or even where he is. Dae-si is given a small hotel-like bedroom, in which he can't leave. He uses this isolated time to practice and perfect martial arts in hopes to use it to escape and track down his captors, completing a relentless rage of revenge and answers.

Oldboy is a fast-paced, thrilling tale about the true meaning of freedom and the many different perspectives surrounding revenge. It contains one of the most glorious, epic fight sequences of recent memory, and ends with a couple of twists that will absolutely demand a rewatch.

Christopher Nolan makes his second appearance on this list with the 2006 complex magic film The Prestige. Nolan embarked on this adaptation in a hiatus period between the first two films of the Dark Knight trilogy. It tells the story of magicians Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) who indulge in an intense professional rivalry in competition of superiority over each other, which spans their entire lives. After being partners for many years, their differences inevitably split the two perfectionists apart. They continuously try to one-up each other in their acts, testing the practical and technological limits of magic. They try to sabotage each other's sets, learn each other's secrets, and use outside sources to enhance their acts.

Nolan's non-linear structure makes for a pretty confusing film that, like all of his movies, demands a rewatch. Using many intelligently engaging plot devices, Nolan leaves the audience guessing and on the edge of their seats until the climax of the film, or in magic terms, "the prestige."

Mulholland Drive is a complex, neo-noir dreamscape created by David Lynch in 2001. It tells a surreal, unsettling take on the dark side of Hollywood, showing the uncomfortable manipulation and sacrifices it takes to make it in the entertainment industry. Like many complex films, Mulholland Drive offers a dual narrative structure. One of the storylines follows Betty (Naomi Watts) and Rita (Laura Harring). Betty is a wide-eyed, Hollywood-hopeful aspiring actress who has recently made the life-changing move to Los Angeles. Rita is an amnesiac woman who survived a near-deadly car crash on Mulholland Drive. Together, they embark on a journey of Rita's identity, which bends the boundaries between dreams and reality. The other narrative involved film director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) who faces pressure amongst the Hollywood elites when casting for his upcoming project.

The meaning of Mulholland Drive is one of the more engaging, popular discussions in the history of cinema, offering many different interpretations. The most popular one is the dream theory, which basically states that the entire film is one long, drawn-out dream sequence meant to represent the dream factory of the Hollywood film industry. This hypnotic film is definitely worth the watch and will definitely leave you up all night binging YouTube videos, such as this informative analysis by LondonCityGirl.

Who says you need a big budget to make a compelling movie? It can be argued that there aren't many films that embrace the independent, DIY film scene better than Shane Carruth's 2004 time travel project Primer. Primer is about four engineering friends, Aaron, Abe, Robert, and Phillip, who are working on a new invention that they plan and build inside Aaron's garage. Primarily operated by Aaron and Abe, they discover one day during a test that a protein inside the unit has multiplied significantly faster than it should have, leading to the discovery that this new invention could potentially be used as a time machine.

Primer portrays a seemingly-realistic take on what it would be like if a group of friends stumbled upon one of the greatest scientific feats in humanity's history. The science behind the film is extremely complex, and each experimental use of the machine opens up another unique timeline, leading the entrepreneurs into a paradox that they might not be able to get out of.

Nocturnal Animals is an adaptation of Austin Wright's novel Tony and Susan, which stars Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Tom Ford. It is also a dual narrative film with an ambiguous ending, leaving audiences engaged from beginning to end, and begs to be dissected and revisited. The film weaves together two interlocking narratives: one that is set in the real world and one that is set within the words of a mysterious novel.

Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) is a high-end art gallery owner who receives a manuscript for a novel from her ex-husband of 20 years prior, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). Her narrative alternates between her day-to-day life and her reading the novel. The other part of the film contains a story within a story, where we travel inside the words of the novel. The novel follows a man named Tony Hastings (also played by Jake Gyllenhaal) whose family vacation turns violent and deadly.

The novel is meant to play as a metaphor for how Edward views their failed marriage. Susan's past life and her current life ravel in a harpoon of pain, regret, and guilt in this thrilling revenge tale.

With a massive cult following, Donnie Darko is a Jake Gyllenhaal-lead psychological thriller directed by Richard Kelly. Gyllenhaal plays the character Donnie Darko, a troubled teenager who suffers from mental health issues and sleepwalking episodes. Due to his paranoid schizophrenia, Donnie begins to be plagued by visions of a large, terrifying bunny rabbit named Frank who tells Donnie that the world will end in 28 days, six hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Frank then hypnotizes Donnie into committing a series of crimes.

Donnie Darko is one of the defining surrealist films of the 2000s. It tackles fascinated concepts such as time travel and parallel universes. If you enjoy thought-provoking cinema, then Donnie Darko is the perfect movie for you.