10 Movies Designed To Give You An Existential Crisis

4. Boyhood

Richard Linklater's Oscar-winning drama conveys how relentlessly time marches on in the most ingeniously literal of means, with Linklater shooting the film over 12 years such that we literally see protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane) come of age over the course of the movie.

Though Mason's journey is a mostly hopeful one even as it compresses more than a decade of time into almost three seamless hours, it's more the arc of his mother Olivia (an Oscar-winning Patricia Arquette) that's likely to leave viewers breaking out in hives.

In perhaps the film's most memorable scene, Olivia breaks down as Mason is preparing to leave for college, lamenting that life has passed her by so quickly, and that she's edging closer to death so much faster than she thought.

As she puts it so beautifully and brutally, "I just thought there would be more."

For any parent whose kids have recently "flown the nest," it's sure to hit with sledgehammer force, while for everyone else the sheer blink of an eye in which time unfolds will prove plenty unsettling.