Movies That Melted My Mind

This week I watched a couple of films that had me questioning my intelligence as they were so smart with such high-concept plots that at times I had no clue what was going on. This made me recall the other times I've felt like this. So I decided that I wanted to write about some films that have left me completely dumbfounded whilst watching them. I think as these as being mind melting as opposed to mind blowing (like films with great plot-twist endings).

Primer (2004)

I love movies that don’t start at the beginning. Movies that throw the audience into the deep end and leave it to us to figure out what the hell is going on. But Primer does this unique thing, where it throws its audience in the deep end and drowns us in a pool of ignorance. This film is hailed as one of the best low-budget sci-fi movies ever made because you feel like you’re completing a PhD while watching it. Despite its complexity and my need to search for an explanation video on YouTube afterwards, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The film shows that you don't need a large budget to make a good sci-fi you just need a good script written with passion.

Tenet (2020)

Not Nolan’s best film, but that doesn't matter as everything he makes is incredible. During Covid, I watched Tenet in the cinema and I remember after twenty minutes turning to my friends and asking: "Are you following this?". They said "no", and I was relieved as that meant that's how Nolan wanted us to feel. Nolan is the master of unravelling seemingly ungraspable plots to reveal a beautifully accessible and dramatic story and Tenet is no different. Tenet is a visual masterpiece and has one of my favourite onscreen bromances and the bromance alone makes it worth watching.

Men (2022)

Now I love Alex Garland. Well, I thought I did. Maybe I don’t know anymore. Maybe he needs some serious help because Men is some mind-boggling disturbing stuff! Men starts off like your conventional A24-style movie, with more questions than answers. However, as the film progresses you'll eventually realise in this world answers don't exist! There are only more questions. To top off the confusion there is a tonal shift that makes you think you are watching theatre of cruelty as opposed to contemporary film. Unlike the other films in this blog, I haven’t watched an explanation video about Men. For me, it’s clearly an abstract representation of the long-term effects of a traumatic relationship. But there are definitely other ways of going about that subject that are far less graphic!

Paprika (2006)

Paprika is a dream of a movie, literally. It was the inspiration for Christopher Nolan's Inception and managed to combine fantastic action sequences with heart-wrenching emotional characters. The film is so fantastical yet so grounded in real life. The reason it features in this blog is because Paprika’s world terrifies me! The line between dream and reality is so blurred that it’s not just the characters that struggle to identify what is occurring but the audience too. The trippy sequences, never knowing if it was the real world or a dream truly had my mind frazzled the whole time, and it was such an amazing experience. From my first watch, this became one of my favourite films, as it’s so complex and so highly detailed, I firmly believe that you’ll learn something new about the film with every single watch.

Shout out to Mother (2017), Donnie Darko (2001) and Momento (2000) for being mind melting as well, but these 4 a the top films that had my brain shaking in my skull.

Let me know what films had you questioning everything you knew about the universe while watching them in the comments below. Thanks for reading.