No Matter How Many Times We Watch, These 5 Sci-Fi Movies Will Never Make Sense

Sci-fi movies are often some of the most confusing to decipher, especially for casual fans watching them for the first time. There are some sci-fi movies that anyone can enjoy and understand, whether it is a space epic like Star Wars and its franchise or a light-hearted time travel movie franchise like Back to the Future. A perfect example of a film on the other end of things is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which sees a man travel through space and seemingly time, battle an evil AI, and possibly find the origins of the human race. However, what it all really means is never made clear.

Incredibly, there are some other sci-fi movies that make even less sense and are almost impossible to understand, and even the directors, in some cases, chose to leave it up to the viewers to understand what happened on their own.

5) Predestination (2015)

Predestination is a 2014 Australian sci-fi thriller from Michael and Peter Spierig, the filmmakers behind the brilliant vampire movie Daybreakers and the 2017 horror sequel Jigsaw. While both of those movies are straightforward, Predestination is a mind-trip that is almost impossible to understand. Daybreakers star Ethan Hawke returns and stars as a time-traveling agent who is sent on his final mission before his retirement to stop a terrorist.

The fact that this is a time travel movie should tell most sci-fi fans that there is more to it than it might show on the surface. That is because, as with many films in this subgenre, once the hero makes certain moves, it creates a paradox that changes everything. When the big twist at the end reveals that most of the major characters are the same person, but from different points in time, it throws the entire movie out of whack. The detective is the terrorist, and Jane is John, and this movie takes multiple watches to untie the narrative.

4) The Fountain (2006)

Darren Afonossky is a director who normally doesn’t like to let his viewers off easily. Anyone who watched his psychological thriller mother! knows that he uses illusions and parables almost more than he uses a straight narrative storytelling device. This is a big reason that his sci-fi romantic drama The Fountain is such a difficult movie for mainstream audiences to wrap their minds around.

The film takes place in three time periods, with the same actors playing different people in time. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play characters bonded by love across time and space, from a conquistador and his queen, a scientist and his cancer-stricken wife, and a traveler who is on a universal journey with his lost love. How these storylines tie together is the confusing part, and this is yet another movie that requires multiple screenings to tie things all together, and even then, it is one of the most confusing plots in the sci-fi genre.

3) Stalker (1979)

A lot of fans were confused by the events taking place in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, that movie was straightforward compared to the sci-fi film that came out a decade later called Stalker. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, this Soviet sci-fi movie was released in 1979 and follows the “Stalker” who leads two clients to a restricted site known as the “Zone.” Here, people are supposed to have their innermost desires granted.

However, there is a lot going on here, and almost none of it makes sense. This movie is not just a confusing sci-fi flick, but also a fantasy movie that adds in psychological, dramatic, and philosophical themes to offer up a story that leaves the viewers either in deep thought or extremely confused. A true arthouse movie, this is a slow-burning film that forces patience, and then offers up symbols and esoteric themes rather than straight answers at the end. It is a tale about the darkness in people’s hearts and how that affects anyone’s dreams from really coming true.

2) Tenet (2020)

Christopher Nolan has been asked about the meaning behind Tenet and what the science of the movie says. He refuses to answer, and according to Nolan, it doesn’t really matter. That can be really frustrating for viewers, but Nolan also doesn’t care. When asked about the spinning top at the end of Inception, he once again says it doesn’t matter because it should be up to the viewer to decide. For Tenet, that creates a frustrating experience.

Nolan straight-up said that viewers are not meant to understand Tenet, and they are just meant to enjoy it. The main character doesn’t have a name (called “Protagonist”), and there is confusion about who he really is, even at the end. The time variation of going backward in time is confusing, but it is necessary for the plot. It’s also impossible to hear what characters are saying, even though most of the dialogue is intentionally confusing as well. If Nolan doesn’t care about understanding the movie, how can the viewers?

1) Primer (2004)

Primer is not only one of the most confusing sci-fi movies ever made, but it might be the perfect example of an arthouse movie that comes off as feeling superior to its own audience. Shane Carruth, who has mastered making high-brow arthouse movies, wrote, directed, produced, starred in, edited, and did the music for this time-travel film. What resulted was the most complex time-travel movie ever made.

Two engineers discover time travel, and then the two wrestle with what to do with the device now that they know they can go back and change things in the past. Carruth intentionally made the story confusing and overly complicated, and when the time travel created variants of the characters, it became impossible to follow as well. Dealing a lot with the science of quantum mechanics, this is not an easy release for mainstream audiences, and it offers up the most confusing sci-fi movie ever made.

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