10 Movies Directors Didn't Want You To Understand

10. Only God Forgives

If you've seen much of Nicolas Winding Refn's recent output, you'll probably be aware that that he loves to troll the audience, deliberately eschewing narrative conventions in favour of head-scratchingly surreal detours.

This was most prominently felt in 2013's Only God Forgives, Refn's follow-up to his art-house action hit Drive.

The film, reuniting Refn with Drive's star Ryan Gosling, was marketed as a similarly-motivated effort for the martial arts genre, melding a slow pace and minimal dialogue with shocking bursts of violence.

But Refn abjectly refused to just give viewers Drive 2.0, and more than that, he deliberately imbued the film with a number of abstract, psychologically opaque scenes.

Most notably, there's the unforgettably odd sequence in which protagonist Julian (Gosling) cuts open his dead mother's (Kristin Scott Thomas) stomach and places his hands inside.

While you can try to absorb Only God Forgives as a simple crime thriller about crime and punishment, it's clear that Refn wanted to alienate as many fans of Drive as possible with this self-consciously nutso surrealist romp.

But nothing in the film itself is quite as inexplicable as Refn insisting to director William Friedkin (The Exorcist) that the movie is a masterpiece. Ever the troll.