10 Movies That Only Make Sense At The End

10. Memento

Christopher Nolan's noodle-baking mystery-thriller Memento thrives on the fact that both Nolan and protagonist Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) are holding something back from the audience.

The film's ingenious narrative structure unfolds in reverse-chronological order, interjected with black-and-white cutaways running in the opposite direction, all of which is intended to simulate to the viewer the sensation of Shelby suffering from amnesia.

As a result, the viewer's first path through Nolan's film is a mightily bewildering one, and though the narrative effectively snowballs context the closer it gets to its incredible ending, only in the film's final moments does it all tie neatly together.

With audiences following Leonard throughout the movie on his journey to catch his wife's killer, it all leads up to a sobering mic drop of an ending.

It's revealed that Leonard in fact killed his own wife accidentally with an insulin overdose, and in order to escape the guilt, has constructed an elaborate revenge narrative with which to deceive himself within his own amnesia-distorted mind.

As a result, Memento is a film which begs the audience to watch it again, because once you finally know what's up, the second go-around is far more richly rewarding.