A symbolic movie that makes the viewer think

Rating: 10/10 (2 May 2005)

When I saw this movie for the first time there was only one thing I could say after watching this film: Wow! There are two types of movies out there,
1.) a movie that you watch just to be entertained. If this is the type of movie you are looking for, then don't watch this movie, because while the story is easy to follow and it is highly entertaining, you will be challenged to think after viewing.
2.) a movie that challenges the viewer to think on an intellectual level. This is a more rare type of movie, and my personal favorite. As you have probably noticed, these movies get terrible reviews and are soon forgotten. This group includes "Instinct" and "Sphere" While Tom Cruise goes through the whole recalling past thing and thinking that his face is disfigured the movie portrays how we recall the occasional bad thing from life and manifest it upon ourselves to be a "dominating" part or our lives. In the end we discover that this horrible mutation we have brought ourselves to believe is us simply is a dream. The leap from the building symbolizes the awakening from our manifestation and progress into a later part of our life. On a simpler level, viewers are proposed with the idea that life as we know it is a dream and that perhaps this interaction with others is a construct developed by our own comatose state in order to keep us rational.
The thing that makes this movie different from others in its group is while "Instinct" challenges the idea of reform in our ways of life, and "Sphere" challenges the idea of manifested self-destruction, "Vanilla Sky" challenges the idea of our outlook on life and how we manifest our past traumas onto ourselves to destroy ourselves.