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There are some movies that are great the first time around. But then there are the rare few where the ending changes everything. Because now that you’ve seen how it all ends, it reframes everything you just watched and gives it a whole new meaning. And the second time around, it gets infinitely better.
Some have third-act plot twists where you suddenly see every clue hiding in plain sight. Others are just so dense that one viewing couldn’t possibly catch it all. Here are seven movies that are good on the first watch and flat-out masterpieces on the second.
7
‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ (2022)
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Image via A24</figure>
This one starts out as a regular whodunit. A group of rich friends get together for a hurricane party; they play a murder game, and then people start dying for real. One by one, the group begins to turn on each other as they try to find the killer before it’s too late. It’s a pretty standard setup, and it plays like one right up until the end.
The big reveal is that there was no killer at all. The first death was just an accident, and every death after that was either another accident or someone killing a friend out of pure paranoia. It’s so well done that you never realize it in the moment. The movie moves so fast that you don’t have time to stop and think, and then you watch it again and see how perfectly the premise was set up. They’re all dying on their own, and you were too busy keeping up to notice.
6
‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ (2023)
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Image via Sony Pictures Releasing</figure>
Across the Spider-Verse is an absolute sensory overload on the first watch. It’s a treat even the first time around, no doubt, but there’s so much going on that you won’t pick up on most of it until you’ve watched it over and over again. Take the opening, for example. The film starts with a colorful sequence of Gwen’s voiceover as she plays drums, and you think she’s recapping the last film. But only after you’ve finished the movie do you realize she wasn’t recapping Into the Spider-Verse. She was recapping this movie. The film basically started at the end, and that opening even shows off major plot points from later, like Miguel explaining the Spider-Verse to Miles and a shot of the fully powered-up Spot.
The Spider-Society sequence took four years to animate, and it is bursting with so many references and little jokes that you possibly can’t catch everything on first viewing. For example, every Spidey variant wears the tech on their wrist, but Spider-Cat wears it around its tail. There’s even a background Spidey variant with a permanently misaligned suit texture, which pays homage to printing mistakes in old comics. Did you catch that one? Because most people don’t. And you even see Hobie stealing equipment from the Spider Society, which he then uses to build the dimensional travel device he later leaves for Gwen.
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within
about five minutes and has never stopped. - This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every
single person in your life would be. - The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you
do with things you love. - The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the
arguments are about to start all over again.
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something
enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it. - This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly
alarming, and it has good reasons for that. - Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all,
which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes. - Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make
that argument.
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a
grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that. - Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly
1980 with no sign of resolution. - The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score
and the look of a used and dented galaxy. - You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good
time.
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major
franchise still willing to say the future might be better. - The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that
makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else. - Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is
appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar. - You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you
will always find somebody willing to have it.
5
‘Tenet’ (2020)
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Image via Warner Bros.</figure>
Tenet is undeniably Christopher Nolan‘s most confusing movie to date. Even Robert Pattinson admitted that he didn’t understand it while he was acting in it! The film follows a nameless agent played by John David Washington who gets pulled into a mission involving objects and people moving backward through time, and it is a film that basically requires a rewatch just to make sense of it.
Once you know the endgame and all the secret character motivations, it gets much easier to digest. Granted, the sound mix doesn’t get any better. But the action is top-tier and so much more thrilling when you’re not constantly trying to figure out how this world works and why what’s happening on screen is happening.
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‘The Sixth Sense’ (1999)
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Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures</figure>
Right up until the end, The Sixth Sense is a fairly decent horror movie about a kid who can see ghosts. You see the movie from the perspective of a child psychologist who encourages the kid to listen to the ghosts and help them resolve whatever unfinished business keeps them tied to the earth. That is, until you find out the psychologist had been dead all along.
That’s why the film gets so much better on a rewatch. You can see all the subtle ways it misdirects you into never realizing he was dead. He goes to an anniversary dinner at a very public restaurant, so it never even crosses your mind that he doesn’t exist. But his wife completely ignores his attempts at conversation, and the waiter never acknowledges or serves him. And whenever he gets close to his wife, her breath fogs in the cold air, and she pulls her clothes tighter, a classic sign of a ghost’s presence. All the signs were right in front of you the entire time.
3
‘Shutter Island’ (2010)
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Image via Paramount Pictures</figure>
Shutter Island follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) as they travel to a fortress-like mental institution for the criminally insane to investigate the mysterious escape of a patient. The whole film plays like a top-tier crime thriller where something always feels off. And then the ending reveals that Teddy was actually a patient at the hospital all along. His entire investigation was a staged role-play therapy devised by his doctors to break his delusion and save him from a lobotomy.
That’s why a rewatch is so much more rewarding. When Dr. Sheehan (who’s actually Chuck) is mentioned by name early on, a nearby patient looks directly at Ruffalo’s character. Chuck also struggles to unholster his gun like he’s doing it for the first time, because he isn’t actually a trained U.S. Marshal. In another blink-and-you-miss-it moment, a woman drinks from an imaginary glass and sets it on a table. Then, in the following scenes, a real glass keeps appearing and disappearing, which highlights Teddy’s broken sense of reality.
2
‘Midsommar’ (2019)
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Image via A24</figure>
Midsommar follows Dani (Florence Pugh), a young woman reeling from a devastating family tragedy. She tags along with her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) and his friends to a once-in-ninety-years midsummer festival in a remote Swedish village. The film starts as a bright, flowery, folk getaway but gradually turns into a nightmare once the villagers’ rituals begin.
And of course, it’s creepy the first time around, but it gets so much more horrific on a rewatch. Before the film even begins, we see a creepy folksy tapestry covered with intricate designs. But once you’ve seen the film, you realize it reveals all the important events to come. And that keeps repeating for the rest of the movie. There are murals and tapestries all over the backgrounds, and on a rewatch they take on a whole new meaning because you realize they depict the horrific things that are about to happen. These characters’ fates were right in front of them (and you) the entire time.
1
‘The Hateful Eight’ (2015)
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Image via The Weinstein Company </figure>
The Hateful Eight follows eight stranded strangers trapped in a lodge during a severe blizzard in post-Civil War Wyoming. The Hangman (Kurt Russell) is transporting a chained outlaw, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to have her hanged. And he’s convinced that at least one of the people in that lodge is her accomplice and intends to break her free. It’s a slow burn that feels like a stage play, and it’s full of paranoia and bloody Tarantino chaos.
But once you’ve seen the movie and you know the secret motivations and what happened before they all got there, it gets so much funnier. General Sanford Smithers’ (Bruce Dern) face when you first meet him, sitting grumpy in that chair, is so much funnier on the second watch. Every bit with the fake letter is downright unhinged. And then watching everyone who was secretly Domergue’s accomplice put on their performances is hilarious. It’s a completely different viewing experience.
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