8 Insanely Complex Movies That Will Blow Your Mind

6. Cloud Atlas

Coherence Movie
Warner Bros.

Cloud Atlas, that weird film everyone remembers being either fantastic or terrible and has largely fallen into realms of obscurity despite having a huge release, is an ambitious movie if nothing else. Spanning five generations as the same soul is reincarnated across time and shaped to be a better person, six stories and timelines intersect and develop out of order - leaving it up to the watcher to assemble the pieces into a whole and figure out their relevance to each other.

The Cloud Atlas Sextant recurs frequently as an anchoring point, but considering we're jumping between post apocalyptic Hawaii and 19th century sea voyagers, it really isn't that much help to decoding the various strings of narrative as they braid themselves into a giant knot.

Since it was originally based on a book, those familiar with the material will have a much easier time - but talking strictly from a film standpoint, as a three hour movie, there's a lot of time spent catching up and making presumptions before anything gets resolved at the end. It's still a fascinating ride, and one that offers more intrigue the more times you commit to watching it, and remains an absolutely bonkers effort for a massively budgeted Hollywood release.

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