Seen I’m Thinking Of Ending Things on Netflix? Didn’t have a clue what was going on? Fancy being even more confused?
Here are 7 movies that make no damn sense.
7. Xanadu (1980)
With the exception of an enormously catchy theme song, nothing about Xanadu makes a lick of sense. Olivia Newton-John stars in this sci-fi/romance/musical thing where it seems the filmmakers forgot to tell a coherent story.
The plot follows a struggling artist (Michael Beck) who falls in love with a beautiful girl (Newton-John) who is also a Greek goddess from the future (?).
Playing out in what seem to be a series of disused warehouses and empty rooms, this is a film that’s either a work of bewildering genius, or just a bad, bad mess.
Read a full review here.
6. Border (2018)
As strange as cinema gets, this Swedish romantic drama seems perfectly normal for the first half, and then proceeds to turn on you in the most bemusing and shocking way possible.
A story that follows two people with a heightened sense of smell who find a connection through their differences with everyone else. Morphing from romantic drama into a fantasy tale in its latter stages, Border takes folklore and legend to a mind-boggling extent.
Certainly an eye-catching watch and not lacking in depth, Border is not a bad film, but it takes a direction that you’ll never see coming, ultimately doing away with its real-world tendencies as it builds to a flabbergasting finale.
Read a full review here.
5. Cats (2019)
A contender for one of the worst movie musicals ever made, Tom Hooper’s baffling big-screen adaptation of Cats is strange for all the wrong reasons.
Told entirely through song, the film’s story is near impossible to follow, with a barrage of random celebrities wearing digital fur intermittently appearing on screen for what seems like no good reason.
Couple that with some of the ugliest visual effects in recent memory, CGI glitches that included Judi Dench’s human hand appearing on her feline character, and horrifying scaling issues that make the cats as small as mice in some scenes, and as big as people in others. There’s no point trying to follow what’s going on, because you’ll never find any semblance of sense.
Read a full review here.
4. Wrong (2012)
From legendarily eccentric director Quentin Dupieux, Wrong is a film that deliberately tries to confuse you, no matter how hard you try to make sense of it.
The story of a man who loses his dog, the movie turns strange very quickly, as the seemingly search turns into a mind-bending, life-altering affair that includes sci-fi drama, private detectives, shifting personalities and more.
Everybody who watches this film understands it differently. Does the dog actually exist? Does it even matter? Was the movie ever about a dog in the first place? I don’t know, and nobody else does, making Wrong an infuriating yet forever memorable piece of weird-out cinema.
Read a full review here.
3. I’m Thinking Of Ending Things (2020)
The almost unintelligible comedy-drama that has everybody talking, Charlie Kaufman’s discombobulating I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is the sort of film to send even the sanest viewer mad.
What starts out as a fairly simple affair slowly begins to unravel, as increasingly inexplicable shifts in reality begin to occur in a way that unnervingly doesn’t seem too strange at first.
Leaving you in the dark as you try to suss out some kind of story or themes from whatever is happening on screen, Kaufman’s latest film is an undeniably mesmerising one, but a work of impenetrable proportions.
Read a full review here.
2. Mulholland Drive (2001)
The ultimate example of director David Lynch’s mind-bending style, Mulholland Drive is an era-defining masterpiece in the eyes of many, and an unintelligible nightmare for many more.
Following an aspiring actress as she arrives in Hollywood, the movie tells a gripping and mysterious story interlaced with brief moments of total weirdness. Then, just when you think you have a hold on what the movie wants to say, Lynch rips that out from underneath you with a totally perplexing final act.
Undeniably masterful in its ability to grab you, the artistic ingenuity of Mulholland Drive should never be understated, but with oddly familiar yet totally unfathomable twists and turns in its latter stages, the film is either a work of pure genius that mere mortals cannot comprehend, or an insane, maddening affair.
Read a full review here.
1. Rubber (2010)
Stay with me on this one. Rubber, from Wrong director Quentin Dupieux, is the story of a tyre that goes on a murderous rampage in the desert, while onlookers watch from a distance.
Robert (the tyre) kills people with the power of his mind, leading to a massive police chase while he continues to evade capture. Meanwhile, the story periodically cuts to a group of people watching the action as a movie through binoculars from a far-off hill.
That plot synopsis doesn’t make any sense, and frankly, there’s no way to make it do so. A totally insane piece of film that’s in no way enjoyable and in every way exhilarating, Rubber is a movie that will break your brain like no other. You’ll hate it and you’ll love it, but you won’t have the faintest idea why.
Read a full review here.
