The 15 Most Confusing Movie Plotlines, According to the Number of Internet Searches


Have you finished watching a movie only to think, “What just happened?” You’re in good company, as there are many baffling movies out there that require an explanation. Whereas some films are deliberately designed to perplex viewers, others do so accidentally because of their complicated narratives and unreliable characters.


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A giveaway that a movie is confusing is when, after watching it, you immediately search the internet for an explainer. According to the entertainment website The Wrap, these are the 15 movies most searched for in 2022 using the film’s title and “explained,” ranked from the lowest to the highest number of searches per month.

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‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968)

Despite being more than 50 years old, Stanley Kubrick’s epic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey still ranks as one of the most confusing movies, garnering 4,200 internet searches per month. It seems audiences are still reacting as actor Rock Hudson did at the film’s premiere when he shouted, “What is this bull***t?” before storming out of the cinema.

2001: A Space Odyssey—especially the movie’s open ending—has been dissected, analyzed, and interpreted in many ways since its release. But leaving a movie open to subjective interpretation is bound to raise confusion levels. Putting its aesthetic beauty aside, the film’s slow pacing, three seemingly unrelated segments, and lack of character development further distance the work from its audience.

‘Inception’ (2010)

The first of Christopher Nolan’s films to appear on this list, the sci-fi action film Inception takes place inside a character’s mind, making it difficult to differentiate between real life and dreams. In other words, it’s confusing by design.

Nolan’s dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream narrative, with characters sharing an interconnected dream space, proved confusing for many viewers. An explanation of the movie was searched for 4,500 times per month throughout 2022.

‘Memento’ (2000)

Christopher Nolan, take two! The neo-noir mystery thriller Memento centers around Leonard (Guy Pearce), who has anterograde amnesia, meaning he suffers from short-term memory loss and an inability to form new memories.

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The film’s disorienting, nonlinear narrative is what messes with viewers’ heads. The story is presented in both chronological and reverse order. Thankfully, the chronological sequences are shot in black-and-white to set them apart, but that didn’t prevent 4,600 searches per month seeking answers about what the movie is about.

‘The Matrix’ (1999)

Generating 5,200 searches per month, The Matrix may have changed filmmaking forever, but it also left many people scratching their heads.

The now more-than-20-year-old cyberpunk action film revolves around the conflict between humans and machines. Grounded in the concept that reality is an illusion and has serious philosophical underpinnings, the movie led to many discussions about its allegory. When, in 2020, co-director Lilly Wachowski confirmed The Matrix was a transgender metaphor, the film made more sense, but, at the time, its complex themes, influences, and characters raised many unanswered questions.

‘Predestination’ (2014)

Predestination is a film about time travel. More specifically, the theoretical predestination paradox. A predestination paradox occurs when a person traveling back in time becomes part of past events and may even have caused the event that led to them traveling back in time in the first place. According to the theory, history is “predestined,” and those who travel back in time have no way of changing events—confused yet?

Movies about time travel are always liable to confuse viewers because past, present, and future events don’t happen in chronological order. Throw in a second theoretical paradox—the bootstrap paradox, which has to do with the act of self-creation; it’s fairly clear why there were 5,900 monthly searches by people trying to comprehend this movie.

‘Fight Club’ (1999)

Watching David Fincher’s Fight Club multiple times illuminates previously unseen themes, overtones, and foreshadows. But for viewers who’ve only watched it once, it resulted in 5,900 online searches a month asking, “What the—?”

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Fundamentally, Fight Club is a critique of the male response to society’s rampant commodification, but some aspects cause confusion. Here’s one example. Soap is used as a metaphor for the sacrifices made for the advancement of human civilization and, simultaneously, as a means of cleansing humanity of its consumerism. It’s not until the film’s twisty ending that the viewer’s confusion is somewhat alleviated…somewhat.

‘Arrival’ (2016)

Arrival explores the idea of time and how it’s perceived, stitching together present and future events into a single timeline. The movie’s reliance on placing time—already a confusing concept—in the context of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity is probably the reason why it has 6,000 online searches per month.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis proposes that a language spoken by a person influences their concept of reality and, in turn, affects culture. Note: this is a very oversimplified explanation of a complex theory. Although Arrival only adopts parts of the convoluted hypothesis, its inclusion is enough to bewilder viewers.

‘The Shining’ (1980)

Another older Stanley Kubrick movie that continues to confound, The Shining, brought in monthly online searches of 6,300 in 2022.

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It’s well-known that horror writer Stephen Kinghated Kubrick’s re-interpretation of his story. Where King’s source material relied on the traditional distinction between good and evil – with evil represented by ghosts and demons – Kubrick took a more nuanced approach to the horror genre. The director placed little weight on the supernatural aspects emphasized by King in his novel, and, as a result, the film became more of a psychological experience. Viewers were given unreliable characters and an elusive open-endedness that increased confusion.

‘Nocturnal Animals’ (2016)

Racking up 6,600 searches per month by people asking “please explain,” it’s evident that Tom Ford’s second feature, Nocturnal Animals is a head-scratcher. The confusion arises because of the structure of the neo-noir psychological thriller. The movie is about Susan (Amy Adams), who’s sent a manuscript called “Nocturnal Animals” written by her ex-husband, Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). As she reads about Tony (also played by Gyllenhaal), the movie depicts the story as it’s told in the book-to-be.

The manuscript and the movie deal with infidelity and trauma, but revenge is the central theme here. Underpinning it all is the notion that our past always comes back to haunt us. The unanswered question—and, presumably, the one driving the internet searches seeking clarity—is: who is the real victim in this scenario?

‘Interstellar’ (2014)

Interstellar is simultaneously the most and least confusing of Christopher Nolan’s movies. True to form, Nolan adopts his convoluted narration, but in terms of narrative, Interstellar is much more straightforward than Inception. The high-level astrophysics overlaying the movie’s narrative perplexed audiences and led to 7,100 searches per month.

Featuring coordinates to a top-secret NASA base written in dust, aliens that exist in the semi-theoretical fifth dimension, wormholes, black holes, gravity, closed-circle time loops, and a seemingly supernatural bookshelf, Interstellar has it all.

‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001)

David Lynch is the reigning cinematic king of ambiguity and interpretation. With Mulholland Drive, Lynch’s typical surrealist approach is centered around an amnesiac woman trying to piece her life together after a car crash on the titular Southern Californian roadway.

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The movie is essentially a film about dissociation. It takes place on three interlaced, overlapping levels – reality, dreams, and the subconscious – that are never explained; it’s up to the viewer to decide what is what. It’s no wonder why Mulholland Drive generated 9,700 searches per month.

‘Donnie Darko’ (2001)

Understanding the cult hit Donnie Darko requires viewers to untangle the movie’s complex timeline. A complicated Tangent Universe—an alternate reality that exists separate from the Primary Universe we’re familiar with—is the foundation of the movie, which includes time travel, surreal symbolism, and a creepy six-foot rabbit named Frank.

Donnie Darko never explains why the Tangent Universe exists. A helpful website based on the fictional book “The Philosophy of Time Travel” by Roberta Sparrow goes some way in explaining the movie. But for viewers watching the movie without the benefit of this information, it is a confusing ride, as testified to by the 18,000 searches undertaken per month during 2022.

‘Shutter Island’ (2010)

Martin Scorsese’s films are usually historic tales and rides through diverse genres, but Shutter Island is different. A nod to the film noir and horror genres, the film is about U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is sent to Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a woman who drowned her three children. Sounds straightforward enough, right?

But Daniels is really Andrew Laeddis (an anagram of Edward Daniels), a delusional Ashecliffe inpatient who went insane after murdering his wife—the missing woman—and is convinced he’s there to investigate experiments conducted on patients. Laeddis’ treating doctor decides to conduct a role-playing exercise to snap him out of his fantasy, but it exaggerates his conspiracies. From this brief outline, it’s understandable how the movie was responsible for 31,000 online searches per month by viewers unsure about what was happening.

‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ (2020)

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by acclaimed writer-director Charlie Kaufman features Kaufman’s trademark concepts: dual identities, dream-like realities, and frustrated characters.

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Iain Reid’s novel, based on the movie, provides a literal explanation of what’s happening. Kaufman doesn’t. He takes major liberties with the source material and densely layers the entire movie with ambiguous signifiers that confound viewers, resulting in 50,000 internet searches per month.

‘Tenet’ (2020)

The number one spot for the most-searched-for confusing movie—with a staggering 70,000 searches per month—goes to Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. Once again, Nolan forces flummoxed viewers to comprehend tricky concepts in this labyrinthine sci-fi action thriller spy movie. Simply put, the film is about a former CIA agent (John David Washington) who’s learned how to manipulate time, a skill necessary to prevent a future world attack.

This movie is not about time travel; it’s about time manipulation (called “inversion”). Inversion happens when people or objects pass through a temporal turnstile. It gets confusing when complicated action scenes include inversion. And then there are scenes from the movie’s first half involving characters who’d manipulated time to “rewind” from the second half. Wait—what?

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