12 Sci-Fi Movies That Purposefully Mess With Your Head

The Wachowski sisters were once critical darlings for their contribution to mind-bending genre cinema, with 1999’s The Matrix being hailed as a landmark for the sci-fi genre on the cusp of the new millennium. However as more instalments in the franchise were released and the backstory of the series became increasingly labyrinthine, the sequels soon fell out of favour with critics even as they continued to impress at the box office.

Cue 2009’s genre-defying epic Cloud Atlas, an adaptation of the singularly strange novel of the same name by British author whose six storylines run from the nineteenth century through to the distant future of the twenty fourth. The same actors play different characters, or possibly the same souls in different bodies, in an ambitious sprawling epic which hopes to move between timelines in order to illustrate some essential truths about humanity and our connection to each other.

As you may have guessed from that description, the film flopped at the box office and failed to connect with audiences, though critics have since said the massive multi-story movie has its merits.