12 Sci-Fi Movies That NOBODY Understands

12. Upstream Color

Directed by the aforementioned Primer helmer Shane Carruth, 2013’s Upstream Color manages to outdo the director’s earlier effort in terms of sheer strangeness. This is mostly due to the fact that (we’ve been reliably informed that) a sufficiently advanced understanding of physics and maths can, conceivably, make sense of Primer’s complex internal machinations, whereas the stream-of-consciousness seen in Upstream Color has no such skeleton key hidden somewhere.

Impossible to decipher, this hypnotic flick follows a man, a woman, and a whole bunch of pigs as it tracks the journey of a possibly alien parasite—but that limited description barely scratches the surface of this strange and strangely beautiful flick’s layers, a complex maze of potential meanings designed to be pondered by film students for eons to come.