When sleep won't come, the worst thing to watch is something forgettable. You need a film absorbing enough to quiet a busy mind — but not so disturbing it keeps you awake for different reasons.
Go back far enough and you find films that had no idea they'd become classics. The 80s and 90s produced more of them than any other era.
Mystery cinema works because it turns passive watching into active thinking. Every frame is a question.
The wife of an American doctor suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form filling bureaucrats and a defiant, mysterious waif who knows more than she tells.
Bill Whitney is worried that he is different to his sister and parents. They mix with other upper-class people while Bill is more down to earth. Even his girlfriend seems a bit odd. All is revealed when Bill returns home to find a party in full swing.
A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry 'The Blade' Muldano, a Mafia hit-man. Before Jerome shoots himself, he tells Mark where the body of a Senator is buried. Clifford shoots himself and Mark is found at the scene, and both the FBI and the Mafia quickly realize that Mark probably knows more than he says.
After being hypnotized by his sister-in-law, Tom Witzky begins seeing haunting visions of a girl's ghost and a mystery begins to unfold around her.
When a group of trespassing seniors swim in a pool containing alien cocoons, they find themselves energized with youthful vigor.
The films here work because they respect the audience. Every clue is planted. Every reveal is earned. Nothing is arbitrary.
After clearing brush for the government, a group of men return to town claiming their friend was abducted. Despite no apparent motive or evidence of foul play, no-one believes their story and his disappearance is treated as murder.
When New York is caught in the grip of a sadistic serial killer who preys on patrons of the city's underground bars, young rookie Steve Burns infiltrates the S&M subculture to try and lure him out of the shadows.
Libby Parsons, wrongly convicted of her husband Nick's murder, thinks he is still alive. She survives the long years in prison with two burning desires sustaining her -- finding her son and solving the mystery that destroyed her once-happy life. Standing between her and her quest, however, is her parole officer, Travis Lehman. Libby poses a challenge to the cynical officer, one that forces him to face up to his own failings while pitting him against his superior and law enforcement colleagues, as she plunges into a desperate fight for justice, survival, and revenge.
A man obsessed with conspiracy theories becomes a target after one of his theories turns out to be true. Unfortunately, in order to save himself, he has to figure out which theory it is.
Samantha Caine is a small-town schoolteacher and mom with no memory of her life before washing up on a beach eight years ago. After a car accident and a violent home invasion trigger flashes of her past, she discovers she used to be a deadly CIA assassin. Teaming up with a wisecracking private investigator, Samantha must return to her old ways to take down the people who tried to erase her.
The best mind-bending films don't cheat. They follow their own logic rigorously — which is exactly why the rug-pull, when it comes, is so disorienting.
Few things are more satisfying than a mystery that respects your intelligence, plants its clues fairly, and still manages to surprise you.