10 Mind-Bending Thrillers That Will Melt Your Brain

1. Inception

Christopher Nolan's Earth-shatteringly original sci-fi follows the efforts of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to see his children again. Cobb is a dream infiltrator, using proprietary military technology to enter people's dreams for the purposes of corporate espionage, and this job has Japanese businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) asking him to influence a rival businessman (Cillian Murphy) to break up his company in the wake of his father's death. In return, Dom will be given safe passage back to the U.S. - he is presently a fugitive - but implanting an idea in someone's mind is extremely challenging, and it requires Cobb to perform Inception; to penetrate an idea several layers deep into the man's subconscious.

Cobb assembles a gang, and then we learn the mechanics of dream exploration, such as the fact that each time the characters establish a further dream within a dream, it becomes less stable and also liable to more prominent time dilation. By the time they penetrate the fourth layer, Limbo, they risk getting stuck there forever, where their minds will essentially be turned to mush. Furthermore, Cobb has to contend with the haunting presence of his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), in his subconscious, which threatens to sabotage the whole thing.

In the end, though, Cobb manages to implant the idea successfully, and narrowly escape with his sanity. However, the ambiguous final shot leaves it unclear as to whether Cobb is still awake or dreaming - it is left for us to decide... Which brain-melter is your favourite? Are there any other head-scratchers we missed? Let us know in the comments below.