Movies You Need to Watch Wide Awake

If you’re anything like me, you do a considerable amount of your movie watching in bed, either on the local cable channel, Netflix, or your laptop. You also probably do a lot of watching towards the end of the day, most likely at night. Everyone does it. You curl up on the couch after dinner to watch a movie, the meal sitting warmly in your stomach, and before you know it your eyes are starting to close. For some of us, that’s the sign for bed. For others, it just means we need a cold glass of something to strengthen our reserve and to sit up straighter. We’re determined to get through the film, and determined we do.

The only problem is, we haven’t got a flipping clue what it is we’ve watched.

Most of the movies featured as evening fodder are easy to follow (and likely something we’ve already seen). But there are some movies out there that shouldn’t be tackled on anything less than a fully alert brain. Here are the movies I would suggest you tackle with nothing less than near-complete attention.

This is such a great little film that to not be awake for the whole thing would be missing its beauty and expression. The film jumps from the present to the memories of the main character, but even those memories might not be in the right order. Like the main character, the audience is left to helplessly grasp at straws and fragments of a life being erased. Unless you’re awake and following along, you’re more like likely to feel confused and frustrated than moved.

Audiences everywhere were captured by the creativity and ingenuity that went into making Inception, while others felt lost in the shuffle. Imagine trying to watch a movie about dreams while you’re halfway there yourself. The story itself isn’t too hard to follow, but once the characters start delving into layers of dreams, it takes some concentration to keep track of who is where and why nobody appears to be waking up yet. Despite the focus on dreaming, it’s strongly suggested that you watch this while you’re awake.

If you’re considering catching this during prime time with one eye open, let me stop you there. Not only does the story jump from front to back in spurts of time, but it starts from the end and works to the (sort of) beginning. The movie itself is amazing, but unless you’re paying attention with your brain firing on all cylinders, it’s easy to get lost between what is flashback and what is the reality.

Right around the time that Ryan Reynolds and Melissa McCarthy were becoming popular with audiences everywhere, they did a little film called The Nines. The story follows the lives of three different men and the people in their lives, and all three men are played by Ryan Reynolds. The story keeps you in the dark for the majority of the film and only begins to clear towards the end (in what I consider a brilliant twist). But unless you’re alert and ready to connect the dots as the pieces fall into place at the end, you’re going to be completely lost.