12 Sci Fi Films That Will Melt Your Brain

Mother! director Darren Aronofksy is no stranger to a strange story. After all, we’ve already seen his name crop up earlier on this list with 2006’s ambitious trip The Fountain.

But before the helmer put together his downbeat dive into the depressing realities of drug addiction via 2000’s Hubert Selby Junior adaptation Requiem for a Dream, the director filmed what remains his weirdest work in 1998’s sparse, black and white Pi.

The flick follows an obsessive mathematician attempting to use number theory to make sense of natural order, but far from the dry bore that sounds like, this intense and chaotic film is an anxiety attack of jumbled edits and disconcerting sequences designed to blow your mind.

Despite plenty of later trips in his oeuvre, Aronofsky’s earliest is still his trippiest film—complete with (spoilers) self-lobotomizing ending.