10 Movies With Mind-Bending Plots

When it comes to critical praise, Spanish director Luis Buñuel stands among a select group of world-wide film-makers who are universally acknowledged as the greatest of all time. He wrote, produced and directed many enduring classics, and will be known to many as the co-creator, alongside surrealist painter Salvador Dali, of the experimental short film, Un Chien Andalou (1929) one of the earliest examples of its kind, infamous for a shudder-inducing razor-blade-across-an-eyeball moment.

Exterminating Angel, made some three decades later, sees the director in top form, delivering an equally sharp critique of the aristocracy. The protagonists are Señor Edmundo Nóbile and his wife Lucía, together with the esteemed guests they invite to dinner at their lavish mansion. The assembled characters retire to the music room, where the party drags on into late evening, then night, and eventually early morning as the guests find themselves inexplicably unable to cross the threshold and leave.

This turns into a bizarre survival situation, as both food and water being to run short. Tempers explode, arguments ensue and factions emerge as one member of the group, Dr. Carlos Conde, struggles to prevent a full-on descent into madness. It's a wonderful set-up, acutely observed. The finale is as shocking as it is unexpected.