What A Twist!
You never forget a good twist that you didn't see coming. These movies left audiences' jaws on the floor—were you there in the theatre for any of them?
MAJOR spoilers ahead!
Saw (2004)
A photographer and an oncologist wake up in a dank bathroom, each of their ankles chained to a pipe, with a body lying between them. They find two hacksaws, too weak to cut through the cuffs—but more than enough to make it through bone.
Plot Twist
As Saw progresses, we learn more and more about Jigsaw, the man who had trapped them in his game. Then, at the film's climax, just as one of the men has finally sawn off his foot and escapes, the body in the middle of the room suddenly stands up.
The man reveals himself to have been Jigsaw the entire time, just as he slams the door shut while the final victim screams.
Shutter Island (2010)
Leonardo DiCaprio is a duly-appointed Federal Marshal investigating the disappearance of a woman who drowned her three children at Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane in Martin Scorsese's 2010 psychological thriller.
It quickly becomes clear that something at the hospital isn't right. Why do some of the patients seem to know Leo already?
Paramount, Shutter Island (2010)
Plot Twist
DiCaprio's walls fall down when he realizes he wasn't duly-appointed by anyone to do anything: He's a patient at Ashecliffe. That woman who disappeared was his wife—whom he'd killed when he found out what she'd done. The entire "investigation" was a role play by the hospital staff, hoping they'd be able to cure him.
They couldn't. The film ends with Leo heading to his lobotomy.
Paramount, Shutter Island (2010)
Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood (2019)
Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood blurs the line between fiction and reality, with Leonardo DiCaprio's fictional Rick Dalton living next door to real-life Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski on Cielo Drive.
The Manson Family is hanging over the movie, because everyone knows where it's going—but Tarantino had a little surprise in store.
Sony, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Plot Twist
What if the story we all know had a happy ending? What if a Hollywood movie star had thwarted the Manson family, roasted them up with a flamethrower, and Sharon Tate had survived? Sounds like it would be a fairy tale ending to a tragic Hollywood story—and a great twist ending for a movie!
Sony, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Gone Girl (2014)
Ben Affleck has famously had his issues with the media over the years. He has been perceived as insincere, uncomfortable, and occasionally openly hostile. That's why he's the perfect fit as a man who seems insincere, uncomfortable, and occasionally openly hostile after his wife disappears.
But did he do it? The truth ended up being WAY crazier than anyone was imagining.
Plot Twist
No, Ben Affleck did not have anything to do with her disappearance—but she sure wanted it to look that way. It turns out that his wife, Rosamund Pike, is a sociopath who faked the entire thing to escape her life and frame her cheating husband. But the BIGGER twist is when she slices open Neil Patrick Harris and runs home to Ben.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist who starts working with Cole Sear, a nine-year-old who claims to see ghosts walking through the world, invisible to the living.
Buena Vista, The Sixth Sense (1999)
Plot Twist
At first, Crowe thinks that Cole is schizophrenic, then he slowly comes to realize that the boy is telling the truth about the ghosts. But that wasn't even the twist: Bruce Willis has been a ghost the whole movie.
The twist is NOT, as Charlie Kelly believes, that the guy with the hair was Bruce Willis the whole time.
Buena Vista, The Sixth Sense (1999)
Planet Of The Apes (1968)
Charlton Heston's George Taylor is one of three astronauts on an experimental, faster-than-light voyage that crash lands on a strange planet, estimated to be in Orion's Bellatrix system, in the year 3978. They quickly realize that intelligent apes rule this world, while mute humans are treated as beasts.
Twentieth Century, Planet of the Apes (1968)
Plot Twist
It's one of the most iconic endings in Hollywood history, so it's impossible to imagine what it was like to see this twist in theatres: Exhausted and on the run, Taylor finds the remnants of the Statue of Liberty, realizing that he's on Earth. Humanity nearly wiped itself out, and the apes rose up to rule thousands of years later.
In other words: He was wrong, and it was Earth all along.
Twentieth Century, Planet of the Apes (1968)
Remember Me (2010)
Remember Me is a sweet, sad, romance movie starring Robert Pattinson at the height of Twilight mania. Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin fall in love. It's lovely—until the final scene brought a twist that NO ONE saw coming.
Plot Twist
At the end of Remember Me, Pattinson's sister goes to class and her teacher writes the date on the board: September 11, 2001. We then see Pattinson looking out the window in his father's office—in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Fight Club (1999)
Edward Norton's insomniac protagonist is sleepwalking through life when he meets Tyler Durden, played by peak, 1998 Brad Pitt. Norton and Durden start a Fight Club (don't talk about it), before a psychotic Durden quickly makes things spiral out of control.
Twentieth Century, Fight Club (1999)
Plot Twist
Brad Pitt looked too perfect to be true—because he was. Only Norton could see him. His sleep-deprived subconscious created "Tyler Durden".
Norton's character thought he'd been sleeping. Really, he'd been sleepwalking, and when he did Tyler Durden took control, building an entire fanatical army of frustrated men without Norton realizing it.
Twentieth Century, Fight Club (1999)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Disabled con artist Roger "Verbal" Kint, in one of Kevin Spacey's most iconic roles, is one of two survivors of a disaster on board a ship in the Port of Los Angeles. The entire movie takes place in flashback, as Kint explains what happened to the FBI.
Focus, The Usual Suspects (1995)
Plot Twist
Kint's story is filled with twists and turns, centered around a mysterious Turkish crime lord named Keyser Söze. In the end, Kint walks free—as the FBI officers realize that the entire story he told...was completely improvised, based on random items that Kint, the real Keyser Söze, saw on a bulletin board behind them.
Focus, The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
In 1977's Star Wars, the world discovered Darth Vader: the monstrous tool of the Empire who does the Emperor's bidding and killed both Luke Skywalker's father Anakin and his mentor, Obi Wan Kenobi.
At the end of the sequel, Luke finally found himself face-to-face with his greatest enemy.
Twentieth Century, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Plot Twist
Darth Vader: Luke, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy.
Luke: I'll never join you!
Darth Vader: If you only knew the power of the Dark Side. Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.
Luke: He told me enough! He told me *you* killed him!
Darth Vader: No. *I* am your father.
Luke: No. No. That's not true. That's impossible!
Darth Vader: Search your feelings, you *know* it to be true!
Luke: No! No!
Twentieth Century, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Se7en (1995)
Se7en seems pretty straightforward at first. Grotesque crime scenes based on the Seven Deadly Sins. But when the villain suddenly reveals himself halfway through the movie, everything you think you knew gets thrown upside down.
Plot Twist
Kevin Spacey shouting "Detectiiiiiive!" and turning himself in halfway through Se7en wasn't even the biggest twist in the movie. The biggest twist is in a box in the final scene:
Everything that happened was part Spacey's plan—including putting Brad Pitt's wife Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box, pushing Brad Pitt to shoot him. Envy and Wrath, the final two sins.
The Prestige (2006)
Christopher Nolan has built an entire filmography out of plot twists—and The Prestige might be the twistiest of them all. The biggest mystery in the movie is how Christian Bale, one of two rival magicians, performs a seemingly impossible "Teleporting Man" illusion.
At the beginning of the movie, Michael Caine asks, "Are you watching closely?" Because the twist was hiding in plain sight the whole time.
Touchstone, The Prestige (2006)
Plot Twist
Early in the movie, Bale sees an old magician who spends his entire life pretending to be disabled just to pull off a trick. Total commitment to the craft. That was the secret the Bale's trick, too.
A body double is the easiest way to do a teleporting man trick—and that's what Bale did. The key was, he's actually a twin. Two identical men, sharing one life.
No one in the world knew the truth but them—and that's why Bale's trick seemed too good to be true.
Touchstone, The Prestige (2006)
The Village (2004)
You very quickly get the sense that something just is not right in the creepy, 19th-century village that M. Night Shyamalan created. First of all, it's surrounded by a forest, where dwell creatures that the village elders call "Those We Don't Speak Of".
But the creatures were not what you might have expected.
Touchstone, The Village (2004)
Plot Twist
It turns out we aren't in the 19th-century at all—we're in the modern day! The Village was founded by a history professor, and all the elders came from regular society. Their life in the village is entirely by choice, and the "warnings" from the creatures have all been the elders' doing.
The extra twist? Our protagonist, finally learning the truth, willingly stays in the village.
Touchstone, The Village (2004)
Atonement (2007)
Atonement is a story of love persevering over impossible circumstances. A young Saoirse Ronan sees James McAvoy and Keira Knightley kissing, but doesn't understand it. She claims McAvoy was attacking Knightley, and he's arrested, and later forced into the Army to fight in WWII.
Saoirse eventually finds the two of them living together and she apologies for what she did, but they don't accept her apology. It's bittersweet—but it's only setting you up for the final gut punch.
Plot Twist
We learn at the end that Saoirse Ronan's character made up the ending where McAvoy and Knightley were living together and she confessed what she'd done. In reality, she never got to apologize, McAvoy and Knightley never saw each other again, and both of them lost their lives in the war.
You thought it was sad, but it was much, much sadder.
The Others (2001)
Nicole Kidman is a mother living in a big, dark house in 1945. Her children are hyper-sensitive to light, so she keeps the house dark at all times. Her daughter tells her that a young boy named Victor, his parents, and an old blind woman have been visiting her.
Soon, it becomes frighteningly clear that the house is haunted—but not by who you think.
StudioCanal, The Others (2001)
Plot Twist
The house indeed was haunted—by Nicole Kidman and her two children. The "ghosts" were actually the living family that moved into the house after Nicole Kidman lost her mind and, well, you can guess.
StudioCanal, The Others (2001)
Scream (1996)
You spend all of Scream trying to follow the clues to figure out who Ghostface really is. Just when you think it's going to be Skeet Ullrich's character, Billy, BAM, Ghostface bursts in and and pokes him full of holes. Now we have no clue who it is—but we're right in the palm of Wes Craven's hand.
Plot Twist
It's simple, yet effective: There were two Ghostfaces the whole time. Billy and Matthew Lillard's Stu. They're fans of horror movies, and they'd been tormenting Neve Campbell by playing the horror movie hits the whole time. At least they get what's coming to them in the end.
Malignant (2021)
Annabelle Wallis starts seeing a mysterious, seemingly superhuman figure in black attacking people in her dreams—but when she wakes up, it all happened for real. She's chasing down the truth—and it ends up being much closer than she was expecting.
Warner Bros., Malignant (2021)
Plot Twist
Just as the audience is starting to expect that Annabelle Wallis is secretly the villain, the truth comes out, and it's WAY more grotesque than that. Wallis absorbed her twin brother Gabriel in the womb, and he's been growing as a tumor in the back of her head ever since, until he was finally able to take over her body and get revenge.
Warner Bros., Malignant (2021)
Arrival (2016)
When enormous alien craft appear all over earth, linguist Amy Adams, who just lost her daughter to an incurable disease, is one of the scientists sent to investigate. The enormous, octopus-like creatures in the ships communicate in strange, ring-like messages that no one can understand.
Only, Adams starts to understand it...and then things start getting strange.
Plot Twist
As Adams untangles the alien language, time starts acting strangely. She starts seeing things out of order. Then, she finally understands: The aliens don't experience time linearly like we do: They see all of time at once. When Adams decodes the language, the past and the future start to overlap for her.
It's only then that we learn that the entire movie took place before her child was even born. She could see the future: See the illness, losing her daughter, her husband leaving her, everything. And she did it anyway.
Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Lucky Number Slevin opens with Bruce Willis telling a story: A man tried to pull one over on the mob by betting on a fixed race. To set an example, the mob offed the man, his wife, and his son.
As the movie plays out, Josh Hartnett's Slevin Kelevra, who's just looking for his friend Nick, learns more and more about this criminal underworld—but maybe he already knew just a little about it to begin with.
MGM, Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Plot Twist
Remember that fixed horse race? The horse the man had bet on was named...Slevin. Turns out, Josh Hartnett has been the man's son the whole time, saved by Bruce Willis in an act of mercy. He tells us this right about the time he's taping plastic bags over mob bosses Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley's heads as revenge for his parents.
MGM, Lucky Number Slevin (2006)
Soylent Green (1973)
It's the year 2022, and overpopulation, global warming, and pollution have destroyed the environment. The rich still live in luxury, with access to clean water and natural food—while the poor live in squalor and have to rely on the Soylent Corporation's Red and Yellow wafers.
But then Soylent releases new a Soylent Green, made from oceanic plankton that's more nutritious and delicious than any of the slop they used to sell. How'd they do it?
Plot Twist
The entire environment was destroyed, did you really think they were making enough plankton to make something as delicious and nutritious as Soylent Green? Of course not.
Soylent Green is people. Yummy.
Ex Machina (2014)
Domnhall Gleason wins a contest to spend one week with his company's eccentric CEO, Oscar Isaac. When he arrives, he learns that Isaac has built a humanoid robot: Alicia Vikander. Gleason starts to sympathize with Vikander, while Isaac continues treating her like property.
You're expecting Gleason to side with the robot—but all is not what it seems.
Plot Twist
Vikander succeeds in taking out Isaac and earning her freedom. She tells Gleason, with whom she's formed a relationship, to wait for her. But in the final moments of the film, she coldly traps him and leaves by herself: She had been manipulating him just to escape the entire time.
Serenity (2019)
Nothing in Serenity seems to make much sense. Matthew McConaughey is a fisherman on the idyllic Plymouth Island. Then his ex-wife Anne Hathaway suddenly appears and offers him $10 million to off her new husband. And why are all the people acting so weird?
Plot Twist
The twist of Serenity is that it turns out the world of the movie...is a video game. After Matthew McConaughey, a U.S. Marine Corps Captain, lost his life in Iraq, his son built a new version of him in a video game. Then he had his "dad" try to off his new stepdad in the game. And the twists aren't even over.
McConaughey does manage to off the stepfather in the game...which gives his son the courage to do it for real! The movie ends with the son awaiting trial while he starts working on a new video game with his dad.
