12 Sci-Fi Movies That Purposefully Mess With Your Head

Director James Ward Byrkit must have been influenced by Vincenzo Natali’s Cube, also included in this list, for his trippy debut feature. Coherence seems to tell the story of a young woman who is plagued by bizarre encounters the night of a comet’s passing over earth but re-watching the flick will illuminate a whole new layer of meaning for viewers willing to delve deeper into the mind-bending thriller.

What’s actually going on is - spoilers for the uninitiated - our protagonist Em is, along with her assembled friends, able to travel between alternate versions of their universe due to a split in the space-time continuum which has rendered it possible to travel between their versions of reality.

This leads to double crosses, escape gambits, and eventually even murder as each character attempts to leave one reality for another, with our nominal hero reduced to trying to destroy one of her doubles in order to assume her place and failing.