If you’re looking to strike up some meaningful conversations and debates with your friends, the following are five mind-bending movies you absolutely must see.
Watching movies is not only a great way to pass the time and entertain yourself, but it’s also a great kick-starter for some wonderful conversation with friends and family. Sometimes you just want to talk about a great movie you loved, a great actor you saw, or a great plot twist that occurred.
But other times, you’ll see a movie that is so mind bending you can’t help but discuss some crazy ideas. For example, is time travel actually possible? How powerful are our dreams? Is there an afterlife?
If you’re looking to strike up some meaningful conversations and debates with your friends, the following are five mind-bending movies you absolutely must see.
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Aside from the mind-bending plot of this movie, you should consider seeing it to view Jim Carrey in something other than a comedy. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind follows a man named Joel who learns that a Dr. Howard Mierzwiak can help people erase memories. Joel decides to contact the doctor in order to erase memories of his past girlfriend, Clementine. But as Joel undergoes the process, he soon realizes that his memories go far beyond what he imagines, and he instead tries to break free of the procedure.
2. Memento
Sometimes the mind-bending part of the movie isn’t an action that occurs, but how the story is told. Memento is a wonderful movie that will certainly spark conversation because it is told backwards. Throughout the movie, you follow Leonard as he copes with memory loss and uses tattoos and notes to not only remember who he is, but determine who killed his wife and left him for dead. You’ll be hanging at the edge of your seat during this movie, and you’ll certainly wonder about the actions you would take if placed in Leonard’s shoes.
3. Inception
Inception is a great story about our subconscious and just how safe our mind and thoughts truly are. In Inception, you follow Dom Cobb, a thief who has stolen the secrets of others while in their dream state and used them for his own personal gain. Throughout his career as a thief, he has lost everyone he loves, but he is given the chance at redemption. Instead of stealing people’s memories, he is asked to plant one. If he can pull off this task, he will have his life back. But the question is, can he do it?
4. The Sixth Sense
We often wonder what happens after we die, and we often wonder if ghosts really do exist. The Sixth Sense follows a young boy named Cole as he works with his therapist, Dr. Malcolm Crowe, to work through his visions and encounters with ghosts. But just when you think you’re about to get all the answers, the movie hits you with a major plot twist that will have you questioning your own experiences.
5. The Matrix
If you’re into science fiction, action or intellectual twists, then The Matrix is a great movie to watch. The movies are told through the eyes of Neo, and in his world, reality isn’t something that simply exists. Instead, the reality you experience is a sensory response to certain stimuli, and you can change this reality through the use of other forces. What’s best about this series of movies, though, is that every time one question gets answered, more appear, making this a great movie to use for conversation with friends.
Meyling Lau is a freelance writer with the skill to combine personal experience and research into entertaining, educational articles on a wide range of topics.