25 best conspiracy movies ever

Enemy of the State (1998)

A typically swish direction job from the late Tony Scott serves this technothriller well, as Will Smith’s whistle-blowing lawyer feels the full force of NSA spooks sent to stop him revealing evidence of a crime. After seeing the levels of surveillance available to the government here, you may want to invest in a tinfoil hat or two.

Changeling (2008)

Clint Eastwood’s movie is based on a true story. Angeline Jolie stars as a mother whose kidnapped son is returned to her – except the boy is not really her son, but another child put up by a corrupt LAPD eager to see the case solved.

Green Zone (2010)

Bourne buddies Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass team up once again in this highly-charged thriller set in occupied Iraq. Damon’s character is hunting for WMDs in the war-torn country, but the intelligence he’s being given is always inaccurate – there’s definitely something fishy going on with the higher ups. Based on true events but slightly boxed in by its desire to work as an action movie, Green Zone was filmed in Spain and Morocco and given an extensive CGI makeover to bring Baghdad to life.

The X-Files (1998)

The movie of the TV show about conspiracies, The X-Files slots in between seasons five and six and concerns a deadly extraterrestrial virus that threatens to wipe out the human race – and as always, all roads of Mulder and Scully’s investigation lead to the mysterious Cigarette-Smoking Man. The scene where a drunken Mulder urinates on a poster for Independence Day was included as a dig at the Roland Emmerich movie, which X-Files creator Chris Carter detested.

All The President's Men (1976)

The true story of one of the major conspiracies of our time, the Watergate affair, Alan Pakula’s movie stars Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. While covering what appears to be a minor break-in at the Democratic Party HQ, they stumble into a plot that reaches the highest echelons of the US government.