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These films found brilliantly clever ways to ensure you rewatched them.
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00:00There are so many movies out there begging to be watched that, of the perhaps thousands
00:05of films you might watch in your lifetime, how many of them are you actually going to
00:10revisit more than once?
00:13We all have our faves that we can watch again and again of course, but there are also some
00:17ingenious ways that filmmakers have encouraged audiences to rewatch their work.
00:23Beyond being merely just good, these films all had some nifty tricks up their sleeves
00:28to heighten audience engagement and perhaps even make a repeat viewing feel totally necessary.
00:34I'm Ewan, this is WarCulture and here are 10 Genius Ways Movies Made You Rewatch Them.
00:4110.
00:42To Watch With Knowledge Of The Twist
00:44Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense and so on.
00:49This goes for basically any movie with a shockingly entertaining twist, because if a film manages
00:55to bamboozle audiences with an all-timer rug pull, it's pretty much required viewing
01:00to quickly watch the picture again with the full context of its story in mind.
01:04Take Fight Club.
01:06Watching it with the prior knowledge of who Tyler Durden actually is completely changes the experience
01:11in a totally fascinating way.
01:14Similarly, knowing what's coming in The Usual Suspects or The Sixth Sense forces you to engage
01:19with the film in entirely different terms.
01:22Though some lesser twist movies don't offer up much reason for a second viewing, especially
01:29if the twist feels tacked on or strains the bounds of the narrative's credibility, the
01:33better ones become practically transformative the next time you watch them.
01:37On a repeat viewing, it often becomes clear how the big twist was basically hiding in plain
01:42sight, and the filmmakers might even be slightly winking at you about it the entire time.
01:48Number 9.
01:49To follow the secret alien invasion subplot?
01:52Searching.
01:532018 thriller Searching uniquely takes place entirely on computer screens and smartphones.
01:59And while there's sure value in rewatching the film to see all the clues pointing to
02:04the identity of the person behind the disappearance of protagonist David's daughter, a closer look
02:08reveals an entire subplot secretly taking place.
02:12Yeah, shortly after the film's release, fans began to report that, amid the sheer bummer
02:18bombardment of visual information displayed on screen at any time, there were numerous
02:23sustained references to an alien invasion taking place in the background of the story.
02:29Keep your eyes fixated on the various news websites, YouTube thumbnails, and social media
02:34comments shown throughout searching, and you'll see countless blink and you'll miss it mentions
02:39of alien sightings, the discovery of an electromagnetic anomaly on Earth, and NASA having an emergency
02:47meeting with the White House.
02:49Filmmakers Anish Shaganti and Sevahanyan initially included a few of these references as a bit of
02:55a joke, but they ultimately expanded the running gag into a genuine fleshed out story running parallel
03:01with the main kidnapping plot, prompting many fans to rewatch the movie and comb through
03:05every single shot looking for more clues.
03:09Number 8 To Luck for the Demon
03:11Paranormal Activity
03:13If the Blair Witch Project pioneered the idea of inviting viewers to catch glimpses of its
03:19titular entity throughout a shaky assemblage of handheld camera footage despite there actually
03:24being no visible monsters at all, Paranormal Activity took the idea and stuck it on a tripod.
03:30So much of the original Paranormal Activity is comprised of locked-off shots of strange,
03:35possibly paranormal phenomena unfolding in and around the bedroom of protagonist Katie and Micah.
03:41As the happenings become increasingly unexplainable, the audience is practically begged to scan around
03:47the frame, searching for even the faintest glimpses of the invisible demon interacting with the
03:52environment. And this might well be the main reason to rewatch the movies, as the franchise mastered
03:58the art of letting audiences do most of the scaring themselves with their own imaginations.
04:03Did you see a shape moving in the dark in the upstairs hallway? Did the bedsheet just move by itself?
04:07Paranormal Activity is a brilliant exercise in both economic filmmaking and scoring repeat business.
04:14Number 7 By Being Wildly Open to Interpretation
04:18Donnie Darko and Mulholland Drive
04:21A surefire way to make people rewatch your movie? Make it confusing as hell. Or to be more generous
04:26to the filmmakers involved, leave it open to interpretation. Such that when the audience
04:31leave the film scratching their heads, they feel obligated to revisit it for a second look.
04:36Perhaps the two most blatant semi-mainstream examples of this in cinema history are Donnie Darko
04:42and Mulholland Drive. Both popular, brilliantly crafted pictures whose surreal, dreamlike narrative
04:48trajectories practically guarantee that nobody's going to have made full sense of them after a
04:52single watch. However, because the filmmaking and the performances are absolutely hypnotic,
04:58and that goes double for Mulholland Drive, which is David Lynch's masterpiece, viewers are less
05:03likely to blame each feature's confusing nature on the film itself, but rather crave a second,
05:09third, or maybe even a fourth viewing to try and soak in every last detail and fully appreciate
05:15what's going on. In Lynch's case, he's largely refused to offer much elaboration on Mulholland
05:20Drive's Trixie narrative, ensuring it continues to live on as an endlessly rewatchable curio without
05:26a clear, definitive meaning. Of course, if you're not as bothered by the answers and just want to
05:32submit the experience of the film itself, which I kind of enjoy more, it's also perfectly valid.
05:386. To watch it in chronological order, Memento
05:42Christopher Nolan's Memento is one of the most ingeniously premised thrillers of all time,
05:47revolving around Guy Pearce's Leonard Shelby, a man suffering from anterograde amnesia as he
05:53attempts to solve the mystery of his wife's death. Nolan visualises Leonard's amnesia through a
05:58deviously non-linear narrative, with one sequence of scenes taking place chronologically, while the other
06:04plays out in reverse order, and the two finally meet in the movie's climax. Even for the more attentive
06:10viewers out there, it's a heady stew of a feature that damn near requires at least one additional
06:16viewing to glean everything Nolan's doing. But Memento also goes one step further than this,
06:22as the film's DVD release features a special version of the picture in which the story plays out
06:27in entirely chronological order. While there's definitely a strong argument to be made that
06:33watching the film chronologically is actually not great due to the story clearly not being designed to be
06:38ingested this way, it is nevertheless a fascinating way to encourage people to revisit it in a highly
06:44unconventional new format. 5. To Find Every Easter Egg
06:50Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse
06:52Easter eggs are extremely common in any modern franchise movie, because there are few things fans
06:59love more than keeping their eyes peeled for dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of nods, visual and otherwise,
07:06to the wider IP. For some, fanservice is one of the big reasons to buy a film when it hits home video,
07:11which is kind of baffling to me, but you go chase your bliss. On that front, there is simply no
07:17greater example of this in modern times than Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, an epic animated
07:23marvel that, for all of its visual splendor worth seeing on the biggest screen possible, also feels
07:29tailor-made for the freeze frame treatment at home. Almost every single shot of Across the Spider-Verse
07:35has a neat stylistic detail or reference to wider Spider-Man lore for fans to fixate on, and while
07:41most of them will breathlessly rush past you on an initial viewing, on repeat watches you can pause at
07:47will and seek out every single detail packed within a given frame.
07:514. By being ridiculously prophetic – Contagion
07:57Steven Soderbergh's pandemic thriller Contagion was well received by critics and performed solidly at
08:02the box office when it released in 2011, though at the time it was generally accepted to be a mid-tier
08:08effort from the director and ended up fading from the public consciousness in short order. However,
08:14Contagion's popularity surged in 2020 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the film going viral,
08:21as many pointed out the shocking similarities between its depiction of a viral outbreak
08:25and the one that actually happened. But this was no mere accident, as Contagion was tirelessly
08:31researched by screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who consulted with both the World Health Organization
08:37and medical experts while penning the script. More than that though, Burns also perfectly predicted
08:43the frustrating human response to the scenario, both in terms of mass hysteria and how ill-intentioned
08:49grifters would capitalize on the panic for their own material gain, with Jude Law's conspiracy
08:54theorist character peddling a fake cure. Following the film's resurgence in popularity,
09:00Burns expressed surprise at so many considering the picture to be prophetic. Speaking to The
09:06Washington Post, Burns said the following, quote,
09:09It is also surreal to me that people from all over the world write to me asking how I knew it would
09:15involve a bat or how I knew the term social distancing. I didn't have a crystal ball, I had
09:20access to great expertise. So if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence
09:26in the public health experts who are out there right now trying to guide us. While it's incredibly
09:32difficult for films to quote unquote predict future events with any real certainty, Burns clearly did the
09:38meticulous legwork when writing his script, resulting in a feature that, as is ultimately unfortunate,
09:44has aged exceptionally well. 3. To catch every sight gag, Airplane
09:51Airplane is one of the funniest movies of all time, and while nobody would call its brand of humour
09:57subtle, that's entirely the point. In the grand tradition of genre parodies, Airplane populates almost
10:03every single shot with at least one thing that's funny, and often multiple funny things in one
10:10frame. In fact, the frame is often so densely filled with sight gags in both the foreground and
10:15background that it's impossible to catch them all on a single viewing. And so, Airplane and features
10:20like it encourage viewers to return for additional helpings, not just because they're hilarious and
10:25make us feel great, but also because there's so much more hilarity to seek out in the periphery.
10:30Fun fact, a totally scientific study in 2012 claimed Airplane to be the funniest film ever made,
10:37registering an average of three laughs per minute. Though, given the sheer density of gags strewn
10:42throughout, that's very clearly lowballing it. 2. To figure out who the killer is in each scene,
10:49the Scream franchise. There's one very simple reason why all but one of the Scream films have had at least
10:57two killers. Well, it immediately boosts each movie's rewatch value. Once you sat through a
11:03Scream picture once and found out who the killers are, it can be a ton of fun to rewatch each film
11:08and try to figure out who carried out each killing. Though the Ghostface attire obviously cloaks its
11:14wearer from head to toe, there are sometimes physical tells which make it clear who is doing
11:18the slashing in a given scene. And while some of the slayings could only be carried out by one
11:24character because the other is accounted for at the time, many death scenes help keep things ambiguous,
11:29allowing fans to endlessly speculate on who killed who throughout the franchise.
11:34Knowing the identities of the killers and then revisiting the movie to make sense of who was
11:39running the Ghostface attire at any moment is a total blast. Also, while we're here, which Ghostface is
11:45your favourite? Are you a Stew guy? An Amber fan? Let me know down in the comments below.
11:51And number one, to revisit it at a different age, Boyhood and Toy Story.
11:58Coming of age movies focused on the relationship between a child and their parent or parents invite
12:03the audience to revisit them in an altogether more poignant way because how you engage with them
12:08as a younger person compared to how you relate as an older adult will be very different. And that also
12:14goes for movies that are impacted by different life experiences. They're going to grow with you
12:19the same way that you are growing up yourself. Take Richard Linklater's Boyhood, which chronicles
12:25protagonist Mason's transition from childhood into adulthood from the ages of 6 to 18, as was captured
12:31by Linklater over the course of 12 years in real time. Watched in younger days, you'll surely find
12:37kinship with Mason, but come back to it today, a decade later, and you may well connect more with the
12:42experiences of Mason's parents, played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette respectively.
12:47Granted, Boyhood is literally only 10 years old, so for many it might be a little while longer before
12:54it truly connects with them on a different level from that first viewing. But the same can be said
12:58for other popular movies with coming of age elements, like Toy Story or American Graffiti. Watching the
13:04original Toy Story as a kid yourself and identifying with Andy is an entirely different experience to
13:09watching it 20 or even 30 years later, and maybe even being a parent yourself, where you'll likely
13:15see it through the eyes of Andy's mother instead. The late great Roger Ebert once famously called
13:20cinema The Empathy Machine. Honestly, is there any better expression of it than this?
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