Entertainment
10 Most Unpredictable Movies of All Time
A movie can be predictable and still be great. It sometimes matters more in the moment, whether something could happen, more so than it matters whether weird things actually happen, if that makes sense. The ambiguity of it all – and the possibility that certain characters might not make it, for example – is instrumental, especially when the film is high-stakes and/or part of the action, thriller, or horror genres.
With the following movies, though, a lack of predictability seemed particularly important to those writing and directing. These are some of the most unpredictable movies of all time, where very little is seen as off-limits, in terms of where the narrative could – and does – go. Spoilers will be avoided as best as possible, just in case you’ve not seen any of the movies (the most you’ll get by way of plot details are things that happen in, say, the first third of any given movie).
10
‘Psycho’ (1960)
Psycho does have to be included here. Like, pretty much no one is going to watch it for the first time in 2026 and be genuinely surprised by what happens, just because of how famous the big twist here is, and then there’s at least one other twist that’s also likely to be spoiled… you probably know what you’re in for. It’s a bit like The Empire Strikes Back, in that regard (and the fact that there are sequels to Psycho also doesn’t help).
Still, it’s famous for being surprising, and even if that fame has now led to it no longer being surprising, you can’t get to that “everyone already knows how it plays out and ends” territory without being very surprising with how it plays out and ends in the first place. Of course, people could be nice, and still talk about Psycho in the way the preceding 152 words have done, but the world is not nice, and some people aren’t, either. Alas, poor spoiler. I knew him, Luke’s father.
9
‘Body Double’ (1984)
With Body Double, Brian De Palma seemed keen to outdo himself, his earlier thrillers, and then the twistiest films Alfred Hitchcock ever directed, too. De Palma was making quite a few Hitchcockian movies around this time and, to his credit, Body Double is probably even more surprising and twist-filled than Psycho, which remains feeling like Hitchcock’s least predictable film (again, acknowledging that the twists are more well-known nowadays).
That doesn’t make Body Double a better movie, and maybe it’s even a bit too aggressive with all the weird and wild directions it wants to veer into narratively, but the attempt to do it to such an extent is admirable. It also ensures Body Double is a film that defies being summarized. It just unfolds, keeps going to strange places, and eventually ends, leaving you feeling undoubtedly discombobulated.
8
‘The Last Stop in Yuma County’ (2023)
Since it’s so underrated overall, it feels the hardest to talk about The Last Stop in Yuma County, out of all the movies here. This is the one you’re probably least likely to have seen, and so saying too much about the premise would effectively be a more impactful spoiler than saying too much about the other movies here. And that does make things tricky, when you’re sitting behind a keyboard and you’re aware you have to say something.
But whoa, we’re halfway there. 87 words down, maybe about 90-ish to go? The Last Stop in Yuma County begins as a movie about robbers trying to make a getaway, which leads to a Dog Day Afternoon-style hostage situation, and then some other wild things happen, which ensures the film ends up in a very different place, eventually. There are other familiar elements here, if you’ve seen your fair share of crime/thriller films before, but The Last Stop in Yuma County remixes them all in genuinely surprising ways, and is a good one to watch if you think you’ve seen it all, crime/thriller movie-wise.
7
‘Sorry to Bother You’ (2018)
There’s a good deal of absurd, surreal, and disturbing humor throughout Sorry to Bother You, with it being one of the bolder and more in-your-face comedy/satire films of the past 10 or so years. It’s a fever dream film about a Black telemarketer who finds some success in his job by putting on a “white voice,” but then he makes certain discoveries about his job, the people he works for, and other things.
It’s hard to know what to say about some of the places Sorry to Bother You goes. There are things in this movie that can’t be unseen, and mentioning such things would both spoil the movie and probably be alarming to certain readers. So, if you feel up for something weird, and like to see satirical movies that actually push boundaries and don’t lean on humor of a mild or safer variety, then it’s probably worth taking the plunge into something like this.
6
‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)
Quentin Tarantino does like to make his movies surprising, proving a keenness to do so right from his feature-length directorial debut, since Reservoir Dogs was a heist movie that didn’t really show the heist itself. Some of his later films are also surprising in terms of how they’re willing to brazenly rewrite history, which you get in hard-to-ignore ways in the likes of Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Still, it might be Pulp Fiction that has the most by way of surprises, or a sense of anything being possible at any point in the story (or stories). There are several main storylines here, some of them intersecting in odd but fitting ways, and then a good deal of non-chronological storytelling to keep you unsure about the whole thing – and the way it’s going to play out – even more.
5
‘One Cut of the Dead’ (2017)
One Cut of the Dead does indeed begin with one long take without a cut, and said take plays out for more than half an hour. It’s meta, because it’s about the filming of a one-take zombie movie, and then the people filming that one-take zombie movie have to deal with an apparent actual zombie outbreak. Chaos ensues, though there is an eventual cut, and then the second half of the movie becomes something else.
Okay, not entirely something else in a Chungking Express or anthology movie sort of way, but it’s more conventionally presented, and then it addresses some of the odd things about the original “one cut” in interesting, surprising, and oftentimes hilarious ways. One Cut of the Dead is easily one of the best Japanese films of all time, and probably a highlight for cinema in general, at least as far as the last decade or so of releases go. Seeing it knowing as little as possible beforehand makes for an undeniably fantastic experience.
4
‘After Hours’ (1985)
While it’s generally a comedy, After Hours is also stressful in a way that makes it function quite well as a thriller, and then there are parts where the humor’s dark enough that it almost starts feeling like more of a psychological drama. It’s about a man who tries to go on a date one night, but everything that could go wrong goes wrong, and then once everything that could go wrong does go wrong, a few other things present themselves out of nowhere, and they go wrong, too.
The protagonist has no idea what he’s doing or why bad things keep happening to him, and you’re along for the whole nightmarish ride as the viewer, too. After Hours is one of those “anything can happen at any point” sort of films, with making such a film being an undeniably effective way to keep people on their toes, and to maintain a sense of unpredictability throughout.
3
‘Red State’ (2011)
There’s an unpredictability to Red State in a meta sense, because it represented Kevin Smith straying further from comedy than he ever had before. Prior to 2011, he’d done a dramedy with Jersey Girl, and a fantasy/comedy of sorts with Dogma, but Red State is decidedly more serious and intense stuff, and then it’s also surprising because of what actually happens throughout the film.
It does ultimately take you on a very unpredictable ride for 88 minutes, honestly almost feeling like two or three shorter movies strung together.
It shifts gears a lot, to put it mildly. To say more would be ruining things, and Red State is overlooked enough that it feels worth staying quiet about certain parts of the movie. It’s mostly a horror/thriller/drama movie, but then it also functions a bit like a gritty action film at times, too. Red State is admittedly imperfect at realizing everything it’s going for, but the ambition here is hard to deny, and for better or worse, it does ultimately take you on a very unpredictable ride for 88 minutes, honestly almost feeling like two or three shorter movies strung together (not in a bad way, though).
2
‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)
If you go ahead and read about Everything Everywhere All at Once, it arguably gets wilder, because it was originally envisioned as a movie that could’ve starred Jackie Chan in the Michelle Yeoh role. That potentially could’ve worked, but it also feels right that Yeoh ended up in the central role, because it’s the defining performance of her career so far (which is saying a lot, when you’re talking about someone who had a central role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
As for what Everything Everywhere All at Once is about, it bounces around the multiverse and almost every genre it can, being a family dramedy that’s also about a battle to save not just the universe, but multiple universes. You don’t really know what you’re in for next, at any given point, with the whole film being equal parts silly, profound, gross, confusing, funny, and cathartic, and then it does all that while making some kind of sense… somehow.
1
‘Paprika’ (2006)
Potentially the most relentless movie here, in terms of pacing (and that’s saying quite a lot), Paprika is intentionally hard to keep up with. People jump in and out of dreamlike worlds, or literal dreams, or a bit of both, and it’s not always clear who’s where and doing what, but most people seem to want a device that lets therapists access the dreams of their patients, all of them wanting it for different reasons.
Paprika takes the idea of such technology, has various characters caught up in a conflict that involves said technology, and then goes a bit wild with it all for about 90 minutes. It’s willing to shake things up every minute or two, usually without warning, and that makes it a dizzying and, for the most part, ultimately thrilling experience. Rewatches help, but also aren’t guaranteed to make Paprika make much more sense than it did the first time around.
Paprika
- Release Date
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October 1, 2006
- Runtime
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90 minutes
- Director
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Satoshi Kon
- Writers
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Seishi Minakami, Satoshi Kon
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Megumi Hayashibara
Paprika / Atsuko Chiba (voice)
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Tohru Emori
Seijiro Inui (voice)
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