10 Mind-Bending Thrillers That Will Melt Your Brain

5. Memento

The first of two Christopher Nolan movies on this list, Memento revolves around Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia, meaning he cannot store new memories, a side-effect of an assault by two men which resulted in his wife's death.

Scenes of Shelby conveying this to us are depicted in black and white, while the scenes of him investigating in colour are played in reverse order, as we see him tattooing himself and taking polaroids in order to remember the various steps of his sleuthing. Shelby ends up killing Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), the man he believes is the escaped assailant called John G. Soon enough, however, flashbacks reveal that Leonard has been confusing aspects of his life with Sammy Jankis, a case study of his (he's an insurance investigator), and that his own wife in fact survived the attack but died of an insulin overdose due to his amnesia.

The film ends with the presumption that Leonard essentially created this puzzle as a coping mechanism of dealing with his error, and the film ends with him firmly committed to that vision.