A film has a high-concept premise if that premise can be summarized quickly, and particularly so if that simply summarized premise sounds instantly intriguing and/or novel. Sometimes, a high concept is just simple, like with Jaws, which can be summed up with: “A shark terrorizes a coastal town and three men try to hunt down the shark.” But then a few other high-concept movies have premises that are more out there, but still pretty easily to summarize.
That’s what the following ranking will hopefully demonstrate. These movies are generally simple on the surface, but tend to get a little wilder and less predictable as they go along. Or, they might introduce a simple yet over-the-top idea and just keep finding new ways to further it, making the extraordinary feel rather straightforward and perhaps surprisingly logical. These movies all play by their own rules, are all attention-grabbing, and all manage to successfully tell the story their premises promise.
10
‘It Follows’ (2014)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
Image via RADiUS-TWC
High-concept premises work well with the horror genre, as the aforementioned Jaws shows. But, for something a little more recent, how about It Follows? This one is, essentially, about what would happen if a sexually transmitted disease was some kind of supernatural monster that pursued those who came into contact with someone already afflicted. It does indeed follow them, and one way to get it off one’s trail is by passing it along – through sex – to another person.
The entity moves slow, but never stops pursuing, which allows It Follows to have a ton of dread, tension, and occasional outright horror. The whole idea might sound too ridiculous to work, but it’s executed surprisingly well, and is another great horror movie that is successful at being scary and engaging, but also has the horror elements be a stand-in for something that’s more mundane, yet still unnerving in a realistic/grounded manner.
9
‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ (2010)
Directed by Edgar Wright
In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the titular Scott Pilgrim doesn’t literally fight the entire world, but he does clash with a fair few people in it. Maybe he clashes with everyone in his world, in some way or another, largely because he has to fight – and defeat – all the exes that the love of his life has, all through quite literal battles that are stylish, fun, and over-the-top.
Scott Pilgrim doesn’t literally fight the entire world, but he does clash with a fair few people in it.
It might be tempting to call it a style first, substance later sort of movie, but Scott Pilgrim vs. the World does also have a good amount of heart to it, and there’s some stuff to unpack if you want to get in-depth about it all. It’s also quite amazing how much it packs into a simple – and easily summarizable – movie, with a ton of characters, and most being played by well-known actors, or up-and-comers who would really blow up later in the 2010s popularity-wise.
8
‘Speed’ (1994)
Directed by Jan de Bont
Speed is about a bus that has to maintain a certain speed, because if it doesn’t, it’s rigged to explode, killing everyone on board. And it’s not just any bus; it’s a bus in the notoriously traffic-heavy city of Los Angeles, so everyone is naturally stressed out and obstacles are constant, especially for the film’s protagonist (Keanu Reeves), who has a history with the terrorist (Dennis Hopper) behind the whole bus situation.
It’s an unapologetically fast-paced action movie, and one of the best of its kind from the 1990s. There are a few more things going on narratively to keep it interesting, but that central hook that Speed has is what matters most. It sounds compelling on paper, and then the way it’s executed on screen makes it even more so. It’s up there among the most thrilling movies of its decade for sure.
7
‘Godzilla: Final Wars’ (2004)
Directed by Ryûhei Kitamura
If you ever wanted to see Godzilla take on most of the foes he’d already fought in a single movie, then Godzilla: Final Wars is the film for you. It was made to commemorate 50 years of the Godzilla series, and though some noteworthy opponents are absent (like King Kong and Mechagodzilla), a large number do show up for rematches, some of them being comically short in duration.
That’s because this iteration of Godzilla is also super powerful, and he absolutely annihilates the 1998 version of Godzilla, which is, humorously, one of his many opponents. That’s all there is. There’s an alien race wanting to take over the planet, they make various monsters attack various cities, and Godzilla is like, “Nah, not on my watch.” And it’s ridiculous but also glorious, being easily one of the wildest and most entertaining films in the Godzilla series.
6
‘Looper’ (2012)
Directed by Rian Johnson
Looper asks what would happen if you were forced to kill an older version of yourself sent back in time, with the conflict boiling down to a man named Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) having to clean up the mess made when he fails to kill the older version of himself (Bruce Willis). But he’s signed up to kill his older self; it’s part of what his group of assassins all agree to do.
That’s a bit wild and out-there, sure, but in Looper, it makes for pretty great (albeit not quite flawless) science fiction. It pits two recognizable actors against one another, and yeah, they’re also technically the same person, which is weird, exciting, and creative. It’s got holes if you want to go digging for things to critique, but the same can be said for a lot of time-travel-related stories. This one finds a fresh angle to explore, and it largely works very well.
Looper
- Release Date
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September 28, 2012
- Runtime
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118 minutes
- Director
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Rian Johnson
- Writers
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Rian Johnson
5
‘Poor Things’ (2023)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
The plot of Poor Things centers on a young woman who’s been brought back from the dead, but with a catch: her brain is that of an infant’s, which means a fully-grown woman has to go through a rather twisted coming-of-age story. It’s funny at times, unsettling at other points, and never really anything but uncompromising, which is par for the course when it comes to Yorgos Lanthimos.
It is sick and a little twisted in ways both expected and unexpected, but Poor Things is also a movie with a good deal on its mind, and it has a lot to say thematically while telling a very “point A to point B” sort of story. It’s also visually spectacular, and for better or worse, it definitely takes one for a ride.
4
‘Being John Malkovich’ (1999)
Directed by Spike Jonze
Only the concept of Being John Malkovich could possibly be called “immediate,” since everything else is purposefully mind-bending at its mildest and existentially confronting at worst. Essentially, there’s a portal discovered that allows people to enter the mind of actor John Malkovich, and then a series of chaotic, sometimes funny, and always trippy events occur when different people enter – and re-enter – the portal in question.
Just when you think Being John Malkovich has reached its peak when it comes to either humor or horror, it’ll likely have something else to surprise or shock you. It’s another rollercoaster ride of a movie, and one that sticks in your mind long after it’s over… and it should, considering it’s all about one’s mind, perception of the world, and the confusing nature of identity itself, as a concept.
3
‘Swiss Army Man’ (2016)
Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
To say Swiss Army Man is probably not for everyone would be a massive understatement. It was directed by the Daniels, who made something a little better (and more crowd-pleasing) with 2022’s still quite weird Everything Everywhere All at Once, but Swiss Army Man is something else. It’s about the whimsical journey a lost man and a flatulent corpse go on, attempting to survive and get back to civilization.
Also, the corpse does more than fart, having a whole range of gross – yet weirdly helpful – abilities. And the farting corpse is played by Daniel Radcliffe, giving what is 100% his best performance to date, unironically. Swiss Army Man goes to some other more serious areas by the time its final act rolls around, but that short summary of the plot really does capture most of the movie, and the fact that something this out-there works for anyone at all is kind of a minor miracle.
2
‘The Substance’ (2024)
Directed by Coralie Fargeat
Standing as one of the few horror movies to earn a Best Picture nomination in the history of the Academy Awards, The Substance is long and certainly an unpredictable ride, but it starts simply enough. It’s about an aging celebrity who wants to look young again, and so she starts taking a strange drug that allows that to happen… sort of. There are rules for taking this substance, and consequences if/when such rules are broken.
The Substance gets wilder with body horror elements and questions about identity as it goes along, but the structure is pretty soundly established very early on, and a lot of it boils down to just seeing how bad things get. Along the way, The Substance is also darkly funny, sometimes upsetting, and persistently (and rather admirably) gross, working as a shock-and-awe hyper-satire.
1
‘Face/Off’ (1997)
Directed by John Woo
It’s always wild to comprehend the existence of Face/Off. It’s an extravagant action movie (even by John Woo’s standards) that has a premise involving Nicolas Cage and John Travolta playing two men, both at odds, who end up swapping faces. The tables are turned, and the bad guy suddenly looks like the good guy, and vice versa.
And both actors ham it up gloriously while technically playing two different characters, and that’s just the start of Face/Off’s overall ridiculousness. It commits wholeheartedly to the silliness of it all, and then throws in further over-the-top action sequences and, at one point, takes place in a comically advanced prison. There’s so much slow motion and scenery-chewing, and it’s all just wonderful, being one of the most bizarre – yet enduring – action movies released in a decade filled with bizarre, over-the-top, and explosive action films.
