10) Midnight Special – World Upon A World
Midnight Special doesn’t exactly attempt to conceal its fantastical nature before its big reveal finale. It’s just that Jeff Nichols, always an understated filmmaker that deals in character details and situates his movies in what appears to be our real world, keeps things typically low-key. We see Jaeden Lieberher’s Alton Meyer shuddering rooms and apparently summoning meteor showers using what appears to be a telekinetic ability, but it’s small stuff.
Then, just as the movie is about to end, Alton opens some portal and reveals to Kirsten Dunst’s mother character, and to us, that there’s another world secretly resting on the top of our own. A parallel universe right alongside the one we know. It’s where the film suddenly veers into all-out sci-fi, and it doesn’t even entirely work – think the jarring ‘alien’ sequence at the end of A.I. – but for sheer “WTF?!” value it deserves recognition here.