10 Recent Movies That Totally Trolled Audiences

Even for those well-acquainted with Yorgos Lanthimos' singular, aggressively odd filmography, his most recent film Kinds of Kindness was... something else alright.

Despite being sold on the strength of its spectacular central cast, led by Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Willem Dafoe, Kinds of Kindness is a three-part anthology film where the ensemble cast plays a different character in each story.

There's no real thematic reason for Lanthimos to recycle actors beyond his own amusement with the idea, which when combined with all the usual Lanthimos-isms - stiff dialogue delivery, jarring editing choices, and unsettlingly off-key music - makes for arguably his most bewildering, challenging film to date.

It feels like Lanthimos is begging audiences to dig down deep in search of wider meaning that may or may actually be there at all. 

That is to say, the filmmaker spent $15 million of studio money to basically mess with viewers and their expectation that a movie should make some sort of sense, even at a mere abstract level.