10 Genius Ways Movies Made You Rewatch Them
7. By Being Wildly Open To Interpretation - Donnie Darko/Mulholland Drive
A sure-fire way to ensure people rewatch your movie? Make it confusing as hell, or more generously to the filmmakers, leave it "open to interpretation," such that when audiences leave the film scratching their heads, they feel obligated to revisit it for a second look.
Perhaps the two most blatant semi-mainstream examples of this in cinema history are Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive - both popular, brilliantly crafted pictures whose surreal, dreamlike narrative trajectories practically guarantee that nobody's going to have made full sense of them after a single watch.
However, because the filmmaking and the performances are absolutely hypnotic, viewers are less likely to blame each feature's confusing nature on the film itself, but rather crave a second, third, maybe even fourth viewing to try and soak in every last detail and fully appreciate what's going on.
In David Lynch's case, he's largely refused to offer much elaboration on Mulholland Drive's tricksy narrative, ensuring it continues to live on as an endlessly rewatchable curio without a clear, concrete meaning - though there are some highly plausible fan theories.