I love a good twist in a movie. Something you never saw coming and changes everything. And in many ways makes the movie even better then it already is. I decided to list the best plot twists in movies.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!
Parasite (2019)
The Plot: We follow the poor Kim family, whose members attach themselves one by one to a rich family in Seoul.
The Twist: Once inside, they learn the Park family’s former housekeeper, Moon-gwang, is keeping a secret in the basement: her husband. She then learns the Kim’s secret too. All this leads to a bloody massacre that plays out at the Park’s son’s backyard birthday party. In the end, the Kim’s patriarch, Ki-taek, stabs and kills the Park’s patriarch, Park Dong-ik. Ki-taek goes AWOL, but the final twist of the film reveals that he is now living in the Park’s now-vacant basement.
Arrival (2016)
The Plot: A linguist works with the military to communicate with alien lifeform after twelve mysterious spacecraft appear around the world.
The Twist: We aren’t watching a linear film. We’re watching a palindromic film. As. Dr. Banks hacks the heptapods’ language, we learn their means of communicating aren’t linear; they know the ending as they’re writing the beginning. Applying the revelation to the film’s narrative, when Dr. Banks gives birth to her daughter, she knows she’s giving birth to a baby who will die young. She knows how her baby’s story will end before it begins.
The Descent (2005)
The Plot: A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.
The Twist: Main girl Sarah is the one that survives. She drags herself out of the cave and into her SUV. She managed to get out, up until her friend Juno appears in the passenger’s seat. And then we get back to the cave, where Sarah still is. It was a dream and Sarah still has to fight for her life.
Identity (2003)
The Plot: Stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during a nasty rain storm, ten strangers become acquainted with each other when they realize that they’re being killed off one by one.
The Twist: It turns out that the little boy is the killer. This is explained as we learn each of the ten strangers stranded at the roadside joint are manifestations of a man who suffers from an extreme case of dissociative identity disorder. The boy is one of those personalities.
Gone Girl (2014)
The Plot: With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, Nick sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent.
The Twist: After learning that Nick cheated, Amy meticulously planned her disappearance to make it look like Nick killed her. Later, when she decides to return home to Nick, she gets artificially inseminated with Nick’s semen to ensure he stays with her. She is one sick woman.
Atonement (2017)
The Plot: Thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister’s lover of a crime he did not commit.
The Twist: Cecilia and Robbie never had a life together; Robbie died in the war, while Cecilia died in a bombing in London. As an old woman Briony wrote a book in which they lived happily ever after as remorse.
Citizen Kane (1941)
The Plot: Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scrambled to uncover the meaning of his final utterance: ‘Rosebud’.
The Twist: ‘Rosebud’ was the name of Kane’s childhood sled, proving the tycoon did have some sentimentality.
Planet of the Apes (1968)
The Plot: An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet in the distant future where intelligent talking apes are the dominant species, and humans are the oppressed and enslaved.
The Twist: The film’s final scene sees George Taylor, the surviving astronaut, stumbling across a half-sunken Statue of Liberty on the shore, realizing he has been on planet Earth all along.
Psycho (1960)
The Plot: A Phoenix secretary embezzles forty thousand dollars from her employer’s client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a Norman Bates under the domination of his mother.
The twist: Norman Bates murdered his mother years before, then developed a split personality that made him believe he is his mother. He murdered Marion disguised as his mother.
Chinatown (1974)
The Plot: A private detective hired to expose an adulterer finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.
The Twist: Evelyn reveals her sister is also her daughter, which means she had an incestuous relationship with her father.
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
The Plot: After the Rebels are brutally overpowered by the Empire on the ice planet Hoth, Like Skywalker begins Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued by Darth Vader and a bounty hunter named Boba Fett all over the galaxy.
The Twist: Luke abandons his training to save his friends from Vader but ends up fighting the Sith Lord. This is arguably the most famous (and most mis-quoted) film line of all-time: “No, I am your father”.
The Usual Suspects (1995)
The Plot: Sole survivor Verbal Kint tells of the twisty events leading up to a horrific gun battle on a boat, which began when five criminals met at a seemingly random police line-up. The legendary criminal Keyser Söze is behind it all, but no one has ever seen or met him.
The Twist: After the police let Verbal Kint go, they realize he’s actually Keyser Söze.
Se7en (1995)
The Plot: Two detectives, rookie David Mills and veteran William Somerset, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.
The Twist: The murdered, John Doe, offers to lead the detectives to the final two bodies that complete the seven sins. When they arrive at a location in the middle of the desert, Somerset receives a box from a deliveryman. Inside the box is the head of Mills’’ wife Tracy. Doe admits he murdered her out of envy, the sixth sin, and challenges Mills to murder him, making wrath the seventh and final sin.
Primal Fear (1996)
The Plot: Alter boy Aaron Stampler, who suffers from multiple personality disorder, is accused of murdering a priest, and the truth is buried several layers deep.
The Twist: Stampler doesn’t actually have the disorder, his true personality is that of the sociopathic Roy.
The Game (1997)
The Plot: After wealthy banker Nicholas is given an opportunity to participate in a mysterious game, his life is turned upside down when he becomes unable to distinguish between the game and reality.
The Twist: The game turns out to be nothing more than an actual game. Nicholas’ brother Conrad orchestrated the entire thing to prevent Nicholas from ending up like his father.
Fallen (1998)
The Plot: Homicide detective John Hobbes witnesses the execution of serial killer Edgar Reese. Soon after the execution the killings start again, and they are very similar to Reese’s style. Hobbes begins trailing a copycat killer, who reveals himself to be the demon spirit Azazel, who can inhabit the different bodies of people through touch.
The Twist: In the final showdown, Hobbes kills himself to take down Azazel, but the demon possesses a cat wandering nearby. The narrator who ‘almost died’ wasn’t Hobbes, but Azazel using Hobbes’ voice.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The Plot: The Young boy Cole can see dead people and seeks help of the disheartened child psychologist Malcolm Crowe.
The Twist: Malcolm Crowe is actually dead.
Fight Club (1999)
The Plot: An insomniac office worker (the unnamed narrator) and soap maker Tyler Durden form an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more.
The Twist: The narrator is suffering from dissociative identity disorder. He and Tyler Durden are the same person.
American Psycho (2000)
The Plot: Wealthy New York City investment banking executive Patrick Bateman hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.
The Twist: In the final scene, Bateman learns many of his victims are supposedly still alive. He may have imagined everything.
Memento (2000)
The Plot: Leonard suffers from short-term memory loss and attempts to track down his wife’s murdered.
The Twist: Leonard’s wife survived the home invasion, but he accidentally killed her later by giving her an overdose of insulin.
The Others (2001)
The Plot: Grace lives in her darkened old family house with her children, who are photosensitive. She becomes convinced that the home is haunted.
The Twist: Grace and her children are the ghosts. She murdered them and herself in a moment of insanity but never realized it.
Donnie Darko (2001)
The Plot: After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, troubled teenager Donnie Darko is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.
The Twist: At the moment the apocalypse is supposed to take place, Darko travels back in time, dying in the crash on his bedroom.
Secret Window (2004)
The Plot: Successful writer Mort Rainey is in the midst of a painful divorce and is stalked at his remote lake house by would-be scribe John Shooter who accuses him of plagiarism.
The Twist: Mort is Shooter. He suffers from dissociative identity disorder. Mort is responsible for the strange occurrences, and when his wife and her lover arrive with divorce papers, he kills her.
The Village (2004)
The Plot: Townspeople in the secluded 19th-century village of Convington fear ‘those we don’t speak of’; monsters who roam the surrounding forests.
The Twist: Convington exists in modern times. It was founded by a group of people attempting to escape the suffering in the outside world. The tale of ‘those we don’t speak of’ was created to discourage the villagers from leaving.
Saw (2004)
The Plot: Two strangers, who awaken in a room with a dead body on the floor and no recollection of how they got there, soon discover they’re pawns in a deadly game perpetrated by a notorious serial killer called Jigsaw.
The Twist: The dead body in the middle of the room isn't quite dead yet. It is in fact Jigsaw himself.
The Prestige (2006)
The Plot: After a tragic accident, stage magicians Alfred Borden and Robert Angier engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion while sacrificing everything they have to outwit each other.
The Twist: Borden is actually two people, twins to be exact. And that’s how he pulled off so many of their tricks. Meanwhile, Angier copied his tricks by cloning himself with the help of Nikola Tesla, killing his clones after each trick.
Gone Baby Gone (2007)
The Plot: Patrick Kenzie and Angie Genaro, two Boston area detectives, investigate a little girl’s kidnapping. It ultimately turns into crisis both professionally and personally.
The Twist: The kidnapping was faked. The missing girl, Amanda, was living with the local police captain whose daughter died years earlier. He kidnapped her because Amanda’s mother was neglecting her. Patrick eventually makes the decision to report it and returns her to her mother, where Amanda is continued being neglected by her.
Shutter Island (2010)
The Plot: In 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a murdered who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane.
The Twist: Daniels is actually Andrew Laeddis, incarcerated at the mental hospital for murdering his wife Rachel after she killed their three children. the search for Rachel is a ‘game’ concocted to shake him from his insanity.
Us (2019)
The Plot: Adelaide, Gabe and their two children enjoy a serene beach vacation. It turns to chaos when their doppelgängers appear and begin to terrorize them.
The Twist: As a child, Adelaide suffered trauma, when she saw her doppelgänger. At the end we learn that Adelaide is the doppelgänger, also named Tethered, and the real Adelaide is the one stalking the family.
Oldboy (2003)
The Plot: After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must find his captor in five days.
The Twist: Along the way Oh Dae-Su meets cute sushi chef Mi-do, who he has a passionate relationship with. Only to later find out that she is his daughter.
Soylent Green (1973)
The Plot: In the world ravaged by the greenhouse effect and overpopulation, an NYPD detective investigates the murder of a big company CEO.
The Twist: Soylent green are little green wafers that are said to be made from high-energy plankton. It turns out that it is actually made from humans. Or as Charlton Heston explains: “Soylent Green is people”.
Get Out (2017)
The Plot: Chris, a young African-American, visits his white girlfriend Allison’s parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.
The Twist: When Chris finds hidden photos of Allison with other black boyfriends, even though she said he was the first black man she’d been with, and he recognizes some of the faces as current friends of her parents, he knows he has to leave. That’s when he also realizes he’s trapped inside a homicidal scheme to lobotomize black people and replace their brains with those of rich white people.
The Mist (2007)
The Plot: A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.
The Twist: David, his son and three other survivors are left in a car, knowing that they can never make it out alive. They decide on a mass suicide. David shoots all of them, including his son, but there is no bullet left for him. When he leaves the car, to sacrifice himself to the creatures, the mist disappears and the army arrives to save everyone.
The Crying Game (1992)
The Plot: IRA member Fergus promises to protect Dil, the girlfriend of a soldier his group has imprisoned, and soon begins an unexpected relationship with her.
The Twist: Dil is transgender, and was born male. Fergus’ love for her sees him take the fall for the shooting she commits.
The Departed (2006)
The Plot: Cop Frank Costigan infiltrates the organization of gang chief Frank Costello at the same time that criminal Colin Sullivan infiltrated the police force. And both soon suspect they have spies in their midst.
The Twist: Both end up dead. A shocking sequence sees Sullivan kill Costigan who believes he’s got away with it. Sergeant Sean Dignam sees to that in an equally shocking climactic scene.
Unbreakable (2000)
The Plot: David Dunn survives a train crash that kills 130 passengers, and begins to believe he may have special powers. His life soon collides with comic book store owner Elijah, who has a rare bone disorder, and helps David discover he has the ability to see the criminal acts of those he comes into contact with.
The Twist: Elijah is the biggest criminal of them all. When David shakes his hand at the end of the film, he sees that “Mr. Glass” is the mastermind behind numerous terrorist attacks, including the train crash he survived.
Action: Gladiator (2000)
Drama: Phantom Thread (2017)
Comedy: Yes Man (2008)
Animation: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
Romance: Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)
Horror: The Prodigy (2019)
Science Fiction: Ghostbusters (2016)
Crime: The Accountant (2016)
Thriller: The Departed (2006)
Documentary: My Octopus Teacher (2020)
Family: Beethoven (1992)
