A Glean movie guide
Mind-Bending Psychological Thrillers
Question everything you see.
Dive into reality-distorting puzzles and unreliable narrators that demand a second viewing.
Handpicked for this guide
The movie list
- 01
Memento
A fragmented, reverse-chronological mystery that forces you to piece together a man's fractured memory.
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
- 02
The Prestige
A dark tale of rival magicians where the narrative itself is a complex, multi-layered illusion.
A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy -- full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
- 03
The Machinist
A haunting psychological descent into the mind of an insomniac who can no longer trust his own senses.
Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.
- 04
Paprika
A visually stunning journey through a world where dreams and reality collide, directly inspiring Inception.
When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patient's dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist can stop it and recover it before damage is done: Paprika.
- 05
The Game
A high-stakes thriller where the line between a harmless simulation and a deadly conspiracy is erased.
In honor of his birthday, San Francisco banker Nicholas Van Orton, a financial genius and a cold-hearted loner, receives an unusual present from his younger brother, Conrad: a gift certificate to play a unique kind of game. In nary a nanosecond, Nicholas finds himself consumed by a dangerous set of ever-changing rules, unable to distinguish where the charade ends and reality begins.
- 06
Tenet
A massive-scale espionage puzzle that uses time inversion to challenge your understanding of cause and effect.
Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
- 07
Predestination
A tight, circular sci-fi mystery that explores the mind-bending paradoxes of identity and fate.
Predestination chronicles the life of a Temporal Agent sent on an intricate series of time-travel journeys designed to prevent future killers from committing their crimes. Now, on his final assignment, the Agent must stop the one criminal that has eluded him throughout time and prevent a devastating attack in which thousands of lives will be lost.
- 08
Fight Club
A gritty exploration of psychological fragmentation led by one of cinema’s most iconic unreliable narrators.
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
- 09
Dark City
A neo-noir masterpiece where the very architecture of reality is manipulated by mysterious forces.
A man struggles with memories of his past, including a wife he cannot remember, in a nightmarish world with no sun and run by beings with telekinetic powers who seek the souls of humans.
- 10
Coherence
A tense, low-budget marvel that turns a simple dinner party into a terrifying puzzle of parallel realities.
Four couples gather for dinner the night a mysterious and powerful comet passes overhead.
- 11
Enemy
A surreal and unsettling look at identity that uses symbolic imagery to blur the lines of the subconscious.
A mild-mannered college professor discovers a look-alike actor and delves into the other man's private affairs.
- 12
Stay
A dreamlike, atmospheric mystery that captures the somber and reality-altering tone of Shutter Island.
Psychiatrist Sam Foster has a new patient, Henry Letham, who claims to be suicidal. In trying to diagnose him, Sam visits Henry's prior therapist and also finds Henry's mother -- even though Henry has said that he murdered both of his parents. As reality starts to contradict fact, Sam spirals into an unstable mental state. Then he finds a clue as to how and when Henry may try to kill himself, and races to try to stop him.