There are a lot of great movies to choose from on Netflix, including some films that feature mind-bending adventure stories. Netflix has countless movies that come and go from the service every month, and along with the Netflix originals, there are also a lot of films they license from other studios. As a result, it is easy for people to lose track of what movies are streaming at any given time, but right now, there are plenty of great options to choose from, and this includes both fantasy and sci-fi films that have mind-bending plots that are often hard to follow.

From Netflix originals to some of the best cult classic sci-fi movies ever made, here is a look at some great mind-bending films you can watch on Netflix.

7) Spaceman

Spaceman is a Netflix original sci-fi movie starring Adam Sandler as an astronaut. This mind-bending movie is based on the sci-fi novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, by Jaroslav Kalfař. It tells the story of a Czech cosmonaut (Sandler) who is sent on a space mission to investigate a mysterious cloud of dust and particles just past Jupiter. He left his wife and unborn daughter to go on the mission, and he has lost contact with her while in space.

However, what happens next is where things get bizarre. Jakub meets what seems to be an alien life form that looks like a spider-like creature, who begins to communicate with him. The question is whether this is really happening or if Kakub is losing his sanity while deep in space. The film has Sandler primarily acting against the CGI alien, voiced by Paul Dano, and it’s an exploration of regret and loneliness

6) Mute

Mute mainly received negative reviews when released, which is disappointing because Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) has some great ideas under the hood of this sci-fi movie. The movie stars Alexander Skarsgård as Leo, a mute bartender who is searching for his lover, who has disappeared. The entire plot surrounds a twisted underworld with a tech-noir basis. The film is a mystery about what happened to Leo’s girlfriend and what it has to do with a criminal underground dealing with rogue surgeons and child abuse.

Jones wanted to make a film with the look and feel of Blade Runner, as he set it in a noir-like dystopian world. The film had an exciting connection, as it was the spiritual follow-up to his 2009 movie, Moon, which was a brilliant sci-fi film starring Sam Rockwell as a man stationed on a moon station who encounters clones of himself. That movie was a brilliant sci-fi release, and while Mute fell a little short, it deserves a better reputation than it has.

5) Upgrade

Saw screenwriter Leigh Whannell wrote and directed the cyberpunk sci-fi movie Upgrade in 2018, and it is available right now on Netflix. The movie takes place in the future, 2046, and an auto mechanic is on his way home with his wife in their self-driving car when they lose control of it, and it crashes. When they get out, some people are there who kill his wife and paralyze him by shooting him in the neck. When Grey gets a chance to walk again, thanks to a brilliant scientist and STEM implants, everything goes wrong.

The simple way of describing Upgrade is by comparing it to Venom, where the STEM implant has a mind of its own, and when it takes control, Grey can do superhuman feats. However, what this STEM implant is, and why this is happening, is where the movie starts to spin into the deeper mysteries. It is a mind-bending film that is all explained in the end, but the road there is great fun.

4) They Cloned Tyrone

They Cloned Tyrone is a hilarious, yet deeply confusing movie about capitalism, gentrification, and cloning, all done in a classic blaxploitation style. John Boyega (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) stars as Fontaine, a drug dealer who is killed, but then wakes up the next day with no memories of his death. He soon teams with a sex worker named Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris, The Marvels) and a man named Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) to find out what is going on in their neighborhood.

The movie received almost universal positive reviews, with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and it is a Netflix original, so it is there for anyone looking for a funny, mind-bending sci-fi movie with a strong message.

3) Synchronic

Synchronic is a former festival darling that was released and quickly forgotten, thanks to its coming out during the COVID-19 pandemic. The film stars Anthony Mackie (Captain America: Brave New World) and Jamie Dornan (Fifty Shades of Grey) as two paramedics who come across a person who overdosed on the designer drug, Synchronic. This drug allows a person to time-travel.

As with most time travel movies, Synchronic is a mind-bending tale of what happens when people go back and forward in time, but end up getting lost somewhere along the way. When the two men go back in time to find one of their daughters, it gets even more confusing, and nothing ends up as it seemed by the end. Despite its box office failure, the movie has a positive reputation, with a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes, and is currently streaming on Netflix.

2) Tenet

Christopher Nolan has never made easy movies for people to understand, and one of his most mind-bending, frustrating efforts was his 2020 release, Tenet. The film deals with time travel in a way that has never been done before. John David Washington stars as the “Protagonist” with no character name, who is called in to help a secret organization.

Robert Pattinson is his handler, and it is the entire style of time travel that is confusing here. This time travel has things moving backward through time and then coming into contact with attacks happening in the future. If you don’t pay close attention to the events in this movie, there is no way to understand the rules of time travel here.

1) Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is a cult classic movie that’s entire charm is that it is confusing and makes the viewer think. There was also a director’s cut that tried to explain too much, and it took away from the popularity of the film. However, the version of this mind-bending movie on Netflix right now is the original, and it is still as great as ever. Richard Kelly directs the film with Jake Gyllenhaal starring as Donnie Darko.

The film opens with Donnie sleepwalking in the middle of the night to the country and comes home the next morning to see that an airplane part fell from the sky and through his bedroom window. It turns out that Donnie was “supposed to die,” and he soon sees strange things that make him believe an apocalyptic event is coming unless she does something to stop it. Little makes sense, and that is what makes Donnie Darko so great.

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