{Inception opened in Seattle Friday, July 16 and is playing at the Metro, The Neptune, The Majestic Bay, The Big Picture (Seattle) and Thornton Place IMAX®}

I was a little nervous going in to this; mostly because Director Christopher Nolan’s lockdown on any and all information left us with a vague teaser trailer that made me think of the “tuning” in Dark City – but I needn’t have worried: Inception is mind-blowingly AWESOME.

The breakdown: Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are “extractors”, hired to thieve secrets from people’s dreams, and are contracted by one of their former victims to try something new: inception, AKA planting an idea instead of stealing one.

Getting inside someone’s dreams is a complicated process involving sleep machines, architects, and constantly defending oneself from that person’s subconscious defenses in the form of projections (the most beautiful one being Marion Cotillard as Mal, Cobb’s tragic wife).

So, to plant an idea in Cillian Murphy’s head, the team hires wide-eyed Ellen Page to architect dream mazes, a smarmy con man with great impersonation skills, and a pharmacist who can mix up the necessary potion to keep them all asleep for 10+ hours without waking up.

They only run into a few hundred problems, including specific rules they have to adhere to, a strict schedule to follow, murderous projections—and oh yeah, the fact that Cobb’s got a boatload of ISSUES that keep cropping up at the most inopportune times.

Without giving anything away; imagine watching a bank heist in someone’s brain, with layers upon layers upon layers (repeat) of deep meaning, suspense, action, mystery and ohmyfuckinggod-what-the-HELL-is-happening moments, and you can imagine what it’s like to watch Inception.

I know I definitely need to watch it at least ten more times so I can catch everything I might have missed—but I also know it’s more fantastic than I could have ever hoped.

Go see it, like NOW.