Summary
- Inception remains a fresh and ambitious sci-fi film that explores the possibilities of dreams and the human mind.
- The movie excels in its complex dream theme and technical achievements, with mind-boggling special effects and disorienting camera movements.
- Inception is one of the few movies that messes with the minds of its viewers, and there are other equally memorable films that do the same.
Over a decade later, Inception still feels completely fresh in the sci-fi scene, standing out as Christopher Nolan's most ambitious project to date. The film explores the many possibilities of dreams and the human mind by telling the story of Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a fugitive-thief whose specialty is infiltrating his targets' subconscious and stealing important ideas. One day, he's hired to do the opposite — implement an idea in his target's mind — for the prize of seeing his family again.
Inception not only nails its complex dream theme, but also excels in every technical achievement. It effectively builds layers upon layers of dreams with mind-boggling special effects, backed up by camera movements that aim at disorienting both the characters and the audience as the conflict escalates: the unforgettable zero gravity scene was shot using practical effects so that it could look as realistic as possible onscreen. Few are movies that mess with the minds of its viewers like Inception, but these 20 can be equally memorable.
20 Shutter Island (2010)
Released in the same year as Inception, Shutter Island marked a huge year for DiCaprio in a lead role. Set in 1954, the horrors of World War II continue to overwhelm the heart of his character, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, a veteran who investigates the disappearance of a patient in a mysterious hospital for the criminally insane.
How It's Like Inception
If Inception follows DiCaprio building a reality of his own, Shutter Island brings DiCaprio determined to deconstruct everything he perceives as real. The film delivers a significant shift of style in Martin Scorsese's career, exploring a different crime thriller tone that evoked the gloomiest noir thrillers of the 1940s-1950s. At the end of the day, even the mystery is not what it seems, and the ambiguity of events leads to two movies inside one. Stream on Prime Video
19 Paprika (2006)
In Paprika, therapists can use machines that enable them to enter their patients' dreams, accessing important messages from the subconscious that would otherwise be inaccessible. When the device is mysteriously stolen, young therapist Paprika enters the dream world on an ethereal journey across the incomprehensible universe of the human mind.
How It's Like Inception
Paprika commits to an intense visual experience, and just like Inception, it's fueled by dreams' multilayered nature. However, it benefits from being an animation, reaching extremes that would've never been conceived in a live-action movie. Here, the possibilities are genuinely endless, and the images get as psychedelic as they can get. Rent on AppleTV
18 Mulholland Drive (2001)
Mulholland Drive is the cinematic equivalent of waking up from a beautiful dream and realizing it wasn't real, coming to terms with the dispirited mood of real life. In the movie, a mysterious car accident prompts two strangers to cross paths in LA: an aspiring actress and an amnesiac woman. As they unite in search of answers, the glamour of Hollywood's appearance gives space to the rotten mechanisms within.
How It's Like Inception
David Lynch is no newcomer to the world of dreams, and he understands the texture of the unthinkable like no other. From background characters taking over key roles to exterior beauty revealing layers of horror inside, Mulholland Drive sustains its diverging storylines with the chaos of contrast. Stream on Paramount+
17 Source Code (2011)
In Source Code, a time span of eight minutes becomes a world of its own when Captain Colter Stevens begins to revive the same final moments of another person's life over and over again. He soon learns he's part of an experimental project and must investigate this same limited window of time in search of the terrorist who caused a tragic train wreck.
How It's Like Inception
Source Code plays out like a good old mystery thriller, with the main characters (literally) fighting against time to gather enough clues until the train crashes and the same eight minutes restart. However, there's equal interest in dissecting the characters, from Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) to the passengers of the train, even though the audience comes to know they're already dead. The result is an exploration of a new realm of existence, and how, perhaps, it's not death that people tend to fear, but rather the possibility of complete loss of consciousness. Stream on Max
16 New Rose Hotel (1998)
New Rose Hotel is technically an intense thriller about cyberconspiracies, biological threats, and corporate horror, except viewers never get to see that. They are left with scraps of the bigger picture, cloistered in claustrophobic hotel rooms with characters that are merely pawns in a grander scheme. It essentially follows two businessmen using a beautiful woman to steal secrets from their rival.
How It's Like Inception
It might sound suspicious to claim that what makes New Rose Hotel interesting is precisely its lack of interesting moments. Every single element of the narrative that happens to put it in motion happens off-screen. In this way, the movie perfectly tackles the longing for true human connections in a world reduced to immaterial transactions. In this modern world, humans don't ever get to see anything — they just watch. Stream on The Criterion Channel
15 Twelve Monkeys (1995)
12 Monkeys
- Release Date
- December 29, 1995
- Cast
- Joseph Melito , Bruce Willis , Jon Seda , Michael Chance , Vernon Campbell , H. Michael Walls
- Runtime
- 129
Twelve Monkeys delivers a more intricate, intense take on Chris Marker's short film, La Jetée, leaving the romance in the background to focus on the sci-fi elements it brought up decades ago. In the film, a convict from the year 2035 is sent back to the past to investigate the origin of a virus that has wiped out a good chunk of the Earth's population. However, when the time traveler is presumed to have lost his mind, he's locked up in a mental asylum.
How It's Like Inception
A stellar cast led by Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, and Madeleine Stowe brings a complex web of conspiracy to life, where the past and present are directly connected. Just like Inception, Twelve Monkeys explores all the good elements of a human tragedy, though it focuses on themes that surpass human comprehension. It also works as a reminder that time travel's biggest curse isn't even the consequences, but rather humanity's inherent condition of remembering things. Stream on Starz
14 +1 (2013)
Even with its original premise, +1's low production value and divisive reception prevented it from becoming a hit, but the movie is filled with refreshing ideas about the chaos of encountering different versions of oneself. In the film, a group of drunken college students bear witness to a strange phenomenon, as duplicates of themselves mysteriously appear at a party, turning a fun night out into a complete nightmare.
How It's Like Inception
+1 is the equivalent of Project X and Inception having a baby, playing out like two distinctive movies until the different concepts collide. Sci-fi stories often rely on a bureaucratic method of explaining the inexplicable, but in +1, there's no time to actually process things: these characters find themselves at a wild, alcohol-fueled party. The result is a series of impulsive decisions that quickly escalate the idea of encountering clones into a violent mess. Stream on AMC+
13 Vanilla Sky (2001)
In Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise plays a man who has it all: wealth, beauty, and reputation. When he finally opens himself to the possibility of love, a car accident renders him disfigured and wary, and he begins to suspect reality is no longer what it seems. The movie does a great job of making the viewers question every image on-screen, sending them into a spiral of paranoia, just like the desperate main character.
How It's Like Inception
Vanilla Sky explores the concept of lucid dreams, and how dangerous it can be to find self-awareness in a place where reality is but a vague idea. The movie is a remake of Alejandro Amenábar's Abre los ojos and rightfully brings Penélope Cruz on board to play the same character she did in the Spanish-language original; a great choice for a character who's supposed to attract all the eyes toward her. Stream on Paramount+
12 Mr. Nobody (2009)
Mr. Nobody
- Release Date
- November 6, 2009
- Director
- Jaco Van Dormael
- Runtime
- 138
As the title indicates, Mr. Nobody doesn't really have a character. The multiple main characters are all played by Jared Leto, named Nemo, and can essentially be the same person, but that's up to the viewer's interpretation. The audience gets to see younger and older versions of Nemo, all of them differing from each other due to the choices that made him what he is in the present. It's quite a cool concept nicely executed, asserting that, as long as one doesn't choose, anything is possible. However, if one fails to choose, one is nobody.
How It's Like Inception
Mr. Nobody is the closest thing to an adaptation of the Ship of Theseus paradox ever made: this enigma raises the question whether an object is still an object even after having all its original components replaced. On this basis, Mr. Nobody seems to ask the same question, replacing the ship with a human being: is Nemo still Nemo after all the seemingly insignificant choices that drastically set the other versions of him apart? Stream on Hulu
11 Memoria (2021)
Memoria
- Release Date
- September 30, 2021
- Cast
- Tilda Swinton , Elkin Díaz , Jeanne Balibar , Juan Pablo Urrego , Daniel Gimenez Cacho , Agnes Brekke
- Runtime
- 2hr 16min
Every Apichatpong Weerasethakul movie is completely mind-messing, but done in such a subtle, delicate fashion that the unknown is quickly dismissed with familiarity. It's the case with Memoria, a sensorial journey centered around Jessica Holland, a Scottish orchid farmer visiting her family in Bogotá. She spends her days wandering the city alone, troubled by a mysterious loud sound that, apparently, only she is capable of hearing.
How It's Like Inception
Memoria invites the viewers to pay attention to the palpitations of our surroundings, with Tilda Swinton as the guide. The movie takes a genuinely fantastical turn halfway through, and the mysteries of the Earth are laid bare through the ancient forces of humankind's collective mind. Not Currently Available to Stream or Purchase
10 Last Night in Soho (2021)
Edgar Wright had always been keen on the absurd, but never really invested in intricate stories until Last Night in Soho. In the film, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World leaves comedy aside to tell a dark tale that alternates between the present day and the 1960s: young fashion stylist Eloise Turner is swept up into a nocturnal odyssey in '60s London, where she experiences life from the perspective of a gorgeous wannabe singer.
How It's Like Inception
The versatility of Last Night in Soho miraculously makes the movie both easy and extremely difficult to watch. The movie incorporates classic theatrical elements, pays tribute to the Giallo subgenre, and weighs these influences in subtle outbursts of horror that will appease even those who aren't fans of the genre. Yet all these concepts flow at ease as the secrets escalate: the mix of disorienting and dreamy sequences is a great addition to the mystery, the conclusion of which is hard to predict. Rent on AppleTV
9 Tenet (2020)
Tenet
- Release Date
- August 22, 2020
- Runtime
- 195
Just when fans thought Christopher Nolan had finally moved on from Inception, the filmmaker graced audiences with an equally thought-provoking thriller, Tenet. In the film, a skilled agent known simply as the "Protagonist" is assigned to a global-scale mission of international espionage, aiming to prevent dangerous people from taking advantage of a temporal weapon to commence a catastrophic war.
How It's Like Inception
Tenet is even harder to grasp in full than Inception, thanks to its utter detachment from reality — no wonder the main character doesn't even have a name. Things get further impenetrable when one realizes the movie completely disregards all the rules about time and space, treating the past, present, and future as a singular entity, happening all at once. Rent on AppleTV
8 Ink (2009)
Ink doesn't try to disguise its extremely low budget, but rather utilizes it in its favor, crafting an uneven mosaic of twisted imagery with powerful messages underneath. The film revolves around a mysterious creature known as Ink, who escapes with a young girl's soul into the dreamworld hoping to join Incubi, the group of supernatural beings responsible for the nightmares.
How It's Like Inception
A startling battle between good and evil takes place in Ink in the form of good and bad dreams. Ink, an unreliable protagonist, stands as the mediator between the two forces; unable to leave his humanity behind and prompted by the wish of accomplishing something big. It's a precious movie that doesn't let its limitations prevent it from telling a story bursting with otherworldly creativity. Stream on Roku
7 Solaris (1972)
Solaris (1972)
- Release Date
- September 26, 1972
- Director
- Andrei Tarkovsky
- Cast
- Natalya Bondarchuk , Donatas Banionis , Jüri Järvet , Vladislav Dvorzhetskiy
- Runtime
- 2hr 47min
The movies of Andrei Tarkovsky are filled with melancholy, longing, and reflections on the human condition. He manages to apply these haunting themes even in the depths of space, on Solaris, a planet capable of mirroring the human soul, displaying memories and emotions from the past as if they were part of reality. When psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to investigate, he quickly becomes obsessed with the images Solaris prepared for him.
How It's Like Inception
One shouldn't expect any conventional sci-fi narrative in Solaris, for what's so scary about its sci-fi elements — the alien planet and its mysterious projections — is how precisely they expose the sad truth about the human condition: living in memories can be so much more beautiful than witnessing a new day. Stream on Max or The Criterion Channel
6 Cloud Atlas (2012)
There's so much going on in Cloud Atlas that it's best to get a notepad and a pen before watching it. The basis of the story is the well-known concept of the "Butterfly Effect," in which a tiny action taken in the present day might lead to unmanageable consequences in the future. Cloud Atlas applies this idea to a narrative that spans from the 1850s to the year 2321, with multiple arcs taking place in six different eras.
How It's Like Inception
Such a bold approach is the Wachowski sisters' specialty, and Run Lola Run director, Tom Tykwer, joins in as a helping hand. It's easy to get lost in Cloud Atlas' interconnected stories, and the answer to that is to stop trying to differentiate the arcs and, instead, find what brings them together. The movie explores humanity's self-destructive nature and its efforts to find salvation over the centuries; a heartfelt attempt to come to terms with the flaws of existence. Rent on Prime Video
5 Primer (2004)
Primer
- Release Date
- October 8, 2004
- Cast
- Shane Carruth , David Sullivan , Casey Gooden , Anand Upadhyaya , Carrie Crawford , Jay Butler
- Runtime
- 78
Primer is an intricate puzzle that doesn't go easy on the viewers, delivering an immersive experience as if the narrative itself was dispersed in time — just like the characters. In the film, two amateur scientists come up with a device that enables them to time travel under a strict set of rules. First, they use it harmlessly to profit from stock trades. Suddenly, disastrous consequences threaten to shatter the lives of everyone around them.
How It's Like Inception
Primer is extremely methodical and exercises full control over its elaborate themes. It's never easy to deal with time travel, but when things get as complicated as they do in the movie, chaos takes over the narrative. It's the kind of really confusing movie no one understands on the first watch, yet it feels extremely rewarding when the jigsaw finally comes into place. Rent on Prime Video
4 Upgrade (2018)
Upgrade
- Release Date
- June 1, 2018
- Cast
- Logan Marshall-Green , Rosco Campbell , Richard Cawthorne , Michael M. Foster , Betty Gabriel , Harrison Gilbertson
- Runtime
- 96
Upgrade feels like a frighteningly humane take on Robocop, following Grey Trace, a man whose life takes a dark turn when his wife is murdered, and he's left paralyzed. Despite his dislike for technology in a world overtaken by it, Grey accepts to be tested with an experimental computer chip implant that grants him powerful abilities which he'll use to seek revenge.
How It's Like Inception
The movie deals with how much control of ourselves we grant technology, as Grey faces the consequences of gradually losing his consciousness to a machine. Upgrade offers a great blend of action and thriller with good portions of grisly imagery, addressing the human mind with ultraviolence both physical and psychological. Stream on Max
3 Coherence (2013)
As a group of friends gathers for a dinner party, the passing of a mysterious comet sends them into a frenzy of paranoia and despair. The lights go out, and the only house lit is the last one on the street: what they find there is beyond belief.
How It's Like Inception
Coherence has become popular among sci-fi enthusiasts despite its low production value, adapting the complex Schrödinger's cat paradox onto the screen. The setting is simple and familiar, and the movie takes place almost entirely in a single indoor location. Yet the eeriness that permeates the atmosphere makes up a terrifying enigma, setting up a gut-wrenching climax that verges on horror. Stream on Prime Video
2 Videodrome (1983)
Videodrome
- Release Date
- February 4, 1983
- Cast
- James Woods , Sonja Smits , Deborah Harry , Peter Dvorsky , Leslie Carlson , Jack Creley
- Runtime
- 87
Directed by one of the masters of body horror, David Cronenberg, Videodrome follows Max, the programmer of a tacky TV channel, who stumbles upon a bizarre broadcast featuring the most ghastly acts imaginable. Growing increasingly obsessed with it, Max gets more than he bargained for when he discovers the disturbing images displayed might be real.
How It's Like Inception
Videodrome is an invigorating piece of political allegory told in an unsettling fashion. It delves into how consumers already let media alienation go too far, and as of now, audiences have no option but to fall for it or act as pawns of the dark reality that awaits humanity. It might be Cronenberg's most hopeless movie, with a set of disturbing imagery that is just as mind-messing as the fictional Videodrome channel. Rent on AppleTV
1 Upstream Color (2013)
Those who liked the family drama subtext in Inception will have a blast with Upstream Color, a dreamlike narrative with strong sci-fi indications about a man and a woman, seemingly strangers to each other, connected by a series of bizarre experiences that lead them to a moment in time where they blend into one.
How It's Like Inception
It's almost as if Upstream Color took the implications of Inception's devastating final scene and made a whole feature film out of it; the power to leave viewers in awe is virtually the same. The same ambiguity that permeates the ending of Nolan's movie permeates Upstream Color's narrative in its entirety, resulting in images as mesmerizing as they are disquieting, for every passionate gesture in the film precedes a violent truth. Rent on AppleTV
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