In any movie, an effective plot twist is so much more than a last-minute reveal. To truly blow a viewer’s mind, a filmmaker has to lay the tracks for the surprise to feel not only satisfying but earned. Although “It was all a dream” may have stunned audiences the first time around, the twists that stand the test of time are supported by the many plot points that led to it.
The best in cinematic misdirection shows that while audiences want to be one step ahead of the main character, it can be even more enriching to be shocked and put all the puzzle pieces together at the end. Those puzzle pieces, however subtle or obvious, make watching a great twist movie an experience to take in again and again.
10 A Tale of Two Sisters Executes a Now-Overused Plot Point With Grace
Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters operates like a messed-up fairy tale. After the young Su-mi is released from a psychiatric facility, she is reunited with her withdrawn younger sister Su-yeon, her distant father, and their cold stepmother, Eun-joo. The sisters struggle to reacclimate to the family, still tense from the untimely death of their mother. Visions of a dead girl plague Su-mi, and Eun-joo seems to be getting crueler and more vindictive toward Su-yeon.
Toward the end of the movie, Eun-joo’s cruelty reaches a fever pitch, seemingly beating Su-yeon to death in a bloody sack. When Su-mi’s father comes home, it’s only her that’s left in the house, showing that Su-mi has Dissociative Identity Disorder, having fabricated a more villainous version of Eun-joo in her mind. The breaks from reality peppered throughout the movie suggest that something is seriously awry in the lakeside home, but each one could mean any number of strange causes. Many movies and TV shows have used the idea of “multiple personalities,” but A Tale of Two Sisters makes the twist ever more fascinating by incorporating layered family dynamics and actual supernatural elements.
9 Chinatown’s Reveal Shows That Some Twists Should Maybe Stay Secret
Chinatown is regarded as one of the best neo-noir movies of all time. The complex plot follows private detective Jake Gittes as he follows a lead that the Los Angeles water supply is the subject of a bidding war between greedy landowners and opportunistic city politicians. Along the way, Gittes encounters the beautiful and mysterious Evelyn Mulwray, the widow of a murdered LA Water and Power representative and the daughter of the wealthy and influential Noah Cross.
Chinatown, like many noir movies, is about delving into the ugly underbelly of society. Gittes, played by a swaggering but shifty Jack Nicholson, finds many avenues into that world via Evelyn, who seems to be lying about her relationship with Cross. The big reveal is that she is both Cross’s daughter and the mother of his child. Any great detective story thrives on clues, but the fatalistic approach to these disturbing clues makes Chinatown an unforgettably of-the-moment piece of hard-boiled fiction.
8 Gone Girl’s Amazing Amy Became an Icon of Unhinged Independence
Based on Gillian Flynn’s Novel
Gone Girl is a story of dueling unreliable narrators: Nick, a former journalist who moved himself and his wife to Missouri, and Amy, a former magazine quiz creator who has become a reluctant homemaker. When Amy dramatically disappears, public opinion of Nick mutates from a victim of tragedy to a potential murder suspect.
With typical David Fincher precision, the twist comes at the near exact midpoint of the movie, as Nick’s investigation reaches a major turning point: the uncovering of Amy’s diary, filled with concerning anecdotes of discontent and abuse. In a chilling monologue, the audience learns that Amy is indeed alive, but maybe not well. She’s spent months planning the history of a relationship gone wrong. The lead-up to the reveal is expertly executed, leaving just enough clues that the story of Nick and Amy’s marriage may be too perfect. Fincher and author/screenwriter Gillian Flynn know exactly how much people want to read into true crime stories, and Gone Girl turns every cliché on its head.
7 Parasite’s Twist Unearthed Subterranean Class Warfare
Bong Joon-ho stunned audiences across the world with the downward spiral that is his 2019 movie, Parasite. The parable follows the working-class Kim family as they scheme their way into the wealthy Park family’s home. Each Kim joins the Park’s staff of housekeepers, framing and pushing out the long-employed Moon-gwang in the process. As more of the Kim family cons their way into the upper crust, more of the old crew are fired, but not without further implications.
A strange interlude in the movie shows the Parks’ young son claiming to have seen a ghost lurking in their basement. The first of several twists in the movie is that during Moon-gwang’s employment for the Parks, her husband had been living in a secret bunker under the swanky house. While the disarmingly frightening ghost scene foreshadows the twist, it’s the movie’s razor-sharp focus on its themes that makes it so effective. Every scene shows that there is an interminable struggle between the wealthy and the working class, and the twist shows that some of the most intense struggles happen under the noses of both parties.
6 Oldboy Gave Parents Everywhere a New Nightmare
Based on the Manga by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi
The twist of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy is often the first thing that people learn about the once-elusive thriller. Oldboy follows Oh Dae-su, a family man who is mysteriously imprisoned for 15 years, and then randomly released back into society. A fundamentally changed man, Dae-su then initiates a bloodthirsty hunt to find his captors and take his revenge. Along the way, he meets Mi-do, a chef with whom he forms an alliance and a tense psychosexual relationship.
The finale sees Dae-su in the lair of his captor’s boss, a wealthy former schoolmate of Dae-su’s who seeks to exact vengeance of his own. The remarkably unsettling scene shows that Mi-do is in fact Dae-su’s long-estranged daughter. The visceral gut punch of the ending is intensified by the hints expertly lain throughout the plot. It is immediately clear that Dae-su is a father forever changed by his bizarre circumstances. On top of it all, no part of Dae-su and Mi-do’s relationship feels normal, with each interaction layered with untapped psychological baggage.
5 Don’t Look Now Blurred the Line Between Solace and Dissociation
Based on the story by Daphne Du Maurier
Don’t Look Now, the 1973 movie directed by Nicolas Roeg, is the story of two parents dealing with the death of their young daughter. After relocating to Venice, John and Laura Baxter, played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, begin to experience a series of strange events. Laura consults with a spiritual woman who claims to be able to communicate with their daughter, and John sees a figure in a red raincoat around the city, the same coat that their daughter was wearing when she drowned.
Thinking their daughter may have survived somehow, John chases after the figure. When they’re finally face-to-face, John sees that it’s not their daughter but a knife-wielding female dwarf. At that moment, the dwarf slits his throat, and he realizes that the visions that he’d been having were premonitions of his death. The ending comes as a major shock, as it pulls the rug out from under the audience. The lengthy lead-up and visions put the viewer on John’s side, hoping that there is some way to find a happy ending after tragedy. But the twist shows that chasing after false notions of a simpler life can be even more dangerous than facing the unimaginable truth.
4 Arrival Proved That a Twist Can Be Hopeful
Based on the story by Ted Chiang
Denis Villeneuve’s debut into science fiction, Arrival, opens with a tragic sequence. Linguist Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) watches as her daughter slowly dies from illness, the somber scenes intercut with moving shots of the two playing together. After this, the main plot is set into motion, wherein Louise is tasked with developing a language to communicate with recently-landed aliens. After successfully establishing a correspondence with the help of physicist Ian Donnelly, the aliens grant her the ability to see beyond time, experiencing the past, present, and future at once.
The scenes of Louise’s daughter are then understood to be moments from her future, not her past as audiences are inclined to have assumed. The daughter is Louise and Ian’s, and despite the devastating outcome, Louise chooses to build her family. Plot twists are often associated with disturbing or unsettling changes in the status quo. But Arrival has a deeply moving twist that recognizes the hardships of an ordinary life, but reinforces the importance of truly living it, all the good and all the bad.
3 Citizen Kane Entered the History Books With an Innovative Plot
Orson Welles’ legendary debut feature, Citizen Kane, is a search for the humanity of deceased newspaper baron Charles Foster Kane. Kane’s dying word, “Rosebud,” sends a journalist on a hunt for its meaning. Is it the name of a spurned lover? A gift he meant to give? Or merely the musings of a senile man? His past unfolds in flashbacks, stories provided by Kane’s business associates, ex-wives, and anyone who may have insight into his personal life. It’s one of the most discussed movies of all time, and for good reason.
The mystery propels the story at a shockingly quick speed, with each flashback providing a puzzle piece of the uncommonly ambitious man’s motivations. In the final moments, it’s revealed that “Rosebud” was merely the name of his childhood sled, which he played with as his parents signed him away to a boarding house. A symbol of the joy of childhood and the simplicity of a bygone time, the twist is a gut-wrenching reminder that even the most illustrious figures in history must deal with the traumas of early childhood. Perhaps the most thought-provoking piece of the finale is that no character ever learns the meaning of Rosebud, confirming that Kane will remain a mystery for years to come.
2 The Sixth Sense Is One of the Most Rewatchable Thrillers of All Time
M. Night Shyamalan’s reputation as a twist-obsessed filmmaker begins with The Sixth Sense. Following a traumatic home invasion incident, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe works with Cole Sear, a precocious nine-year-old who has visions of ghosts. As the two grow closer, and Malcolm’s attempts to reach out to his distant wife continue to fail, he realizes he is just another of Cole’s many ghosts who was killed in the home invasion. While the twist itself is shocking, the patient and deliberate reveal makes it classic.
First, Shyamalan shows that Malcolm’s wife has his wedding ring, which Malcolm thought that he had been wearing for months. Tearing off his jacket, he sees that he has a still-bleeding gunshot wound in the stomach. Throughout the movie, Cole is the only character who holds a conversation with Malcolm after the opening scene. As the second-highest-grossing movie of 1999, behind only Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the twist of The Sixth Sense was bound to become widely known. But even now, the reveal feels perfectly told as ever.
1 La Jetée Laid the Groundwork for Decades of Soulful Sci-Fi
Chris Marker’s 1962 short film is perhaps best known today as the basis for Terry Gilliam’s gonzo 1995 thriller, 12 Monkeys. But thanks to its avant-garde style and unforgettable ending, its legacy extends far beyond Gilliam. La Jetée tells the story of a post-apocalyptic prisoner who undergoes time travel experiments to save their war-torn world. In these bouts of time travel, he recalls the image of a man being killed at an airport. He also forms a romantic bond with a woman, and when his prison agents decide their experiment is over, he rebels and returns to find her. Only then does he realize that the image of the man dying was the image of his own death at the hands of his captors.
Not only is the twist heartbreaking, but it’s also elegantly hinted at throughout the 26-minute short. One of the first images in the short film is the twist itself, an act of tremendous confidence on the part of Marker. As he approaches the end of his life, he quickly realizes that it will always end this way. La Jetée is a testament to the power of simple audiovisual storytelling; what is seen might not be the truth, and what is heard is just as dubious. Beyond both senses exists a truth that everyone will face: the end of their lives. But the pursuit of love can help us to lessen that fear, as the protagonist attempts.