The 13 Most Influential Plot Twists In Cinema History (original) (raw)

Plenty of movies try to surprise the audience with twists and turns, but the best twist endings can change the way you see an entire film. Whether it's a supposedly heroic character being revealed as a villain, a startling revelation about the film's reality, or the unexpected manner in which a mystery is solved, a good twist can turn a great movie into a certified classic.

Of course, not all twists are created equal. Plenty of bad movie twists have baffled audiences over the years. There have also been some so influential they not only impacted the movies in which they appeared but future movies as well. The hallmarks of a monumentally good twist are unpredictability and the addition of depth or relevance to the plot, both of which lead the viewer to rewatch the film to savor the set-up to the big reveal more closely.

The most influential twists of all time aren't just cinematic parlor tricks; they've made a significant, long-lasting impression on cinema as a whole.

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    Unlike many movies, Psycho's plot twist doesn't come at the end - it's somewhere near the middle. Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a secretary who embezzles money from work so she can pay off her boyfriend's debt. While driving from Arizona to his home in California, Marion stops at the Bates Motel. During a shower, a shadowy figure rips aside the curtain and slays her with a knife.
    The brilliance of this twist stems from its transformative nature. The audience grows attached to Marion and her journey from the film's start; when she's dispatched not even halfway into the runtime, the viewer must reorient their focus - perhaps against their will - to the polite but disturbing motel owner, Norman Bates. This abrupt change of subject contributes to the film's terror.
    Psycho was the first film to utilize a "false protagonist." Identifying the hero for the audience is a fundamental rule of filmmaking, and once broken, viewers may become deeply unsettled by the plot's ensuing uncertainty. Other movies would mimic this twist in later years; Scream, which offed A-list star Drew Barrymore in the opening scene, is a prime example.
    Director Alfred Hitchcock knew what he had. As part of Psycho's promotional campaign, he refused to allow anyone entrance to the theater once the movie had begun, an effective tactic for preserving the impact of his devious plot turn.
  • Actors: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam
  • Released: 1960
  • Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
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    In The Sixth Sense, Haley Joel Osment plays a young boy who can see the departed, and Bruce Willis plays the child psychologist attempting to help him. Audiences were flabbergasted when the ending revealed its unexpected conceit: Willis's character was a ghost the whole time.
    With a domestic box office of $293 million and six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, The Sixth Sense was nothing less than a career-making phenomenon. Because it was a sleeper hit that achieved success without pre-release hype, it encouraged Hollywood to take chances on other low-budget chillers, like Paranormal Activity, and brought ghost stories back into vogue, resulting in The Conjuring, The Others, and Insidious.
    Shyamalan, meanwhile, became known as the rare "name on the poster" director whose movies almost always end with a twist. Signs, The Village, Unbreakable, Split, and Glass are all films in which he pulled the rug out from underneath the audience in the concluding moments.
  • Actors: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg
  • Released: 1999
  • Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
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    In the final moments of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker duel in the central air shaft of Cloud City. Vader severs Luke's hand and attempts to cajole him into joining forces. Luke accuses Vader of slaying his father, which prompts Vader to speak a line that sent moviegoers reeling: "No, I am your father."
    As the film ends shortly afterward, audiences had to wait three years for the release of Return of the Jedi to find out whether the claim was true, and if so, what repercussions it would have on the epic story. Before Empire's release in 1980, movie sequels tended to adhere to the formula of the originals. They were essentially do-overs, with minor changes in setting or casting. The Empire Strikes Back was different in that it's intrinsically designed as the middle of a saga.
    It follows up on events from A New Hope, but also sets up elements that don't pay off until Return of the Jedi. The concept of an extended cinematic narrative was a total game-changer. The thought of making audiences sit on a cliffhanger until the next movie's release was previously inconceivable.
    In this regard, Empire set the stage for franchises like Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which similarly utilized an extended narrative to encourage sequel viewership. The Twilight Saga and The Hunger Games franchises also benefited from the trail Star Wars blazed. Likewise, imagining something like Avengers: Infinity War - which ends with half the characters getting wiped out - seems impossible without this precedent.
  • Actors: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Anthony Daniels
  • Released: 1980
  • Directed by: Irvin Kershner
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    In the 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston plays George Taylor, one of several astronauts who crash-land on a remote planet inhabited by highly evolved apes. The apes are not only capable of speech, but they have also created their own society. In the final scene, Taylor sees the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand and reaches the startling realization that the post-apocalyptic wasteland is Earth.
    Planet of the Apes serves as a classic example of misdirection. Viewers assume, as Taylor does, the story takes place on a distant planet; recognizing the hellscape as Earth reshapes everything preceding the twist, while simultaneously providing a resonating, punch-in-the-gut sense of hopelessness.
    The twist of misleading the viewer - whether about a story's location or period - has been used countless times since Planet of the Apes. In Alex Proyas' 1998 Dark City, the audience doesn't realize the city where the story occurs is floating in space until the protagonist inadvertently stumbles upon it himself.
    M. Night Shyamalan used a variation of the twist for his 2004 film, The Village; the movie appears to be set in the 19th century until the ending reveals the isolated characters are living in the modern era. These and other films built on the idea Planet of the Apes so brilliantly introduced.
  • Actors: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans, James Whitmore
  • Released: 1968
  • Directed by: Franklin J. Schaffner
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    In The Usual Suspects, police detective Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) interrogates Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey), the only survivor of a heist gone wrong. Kujan wants to determine the true identity of a dangerous mastermind named Keyser Soze, whom everyone fears but nobody has ever seen. After intense questioning, Kint is allowed to leave the station, at which point Kujan realizes that Kint was making up his story all along, using items on a bulletin board and the name on the bottom of a coffee cup to create details. The detective finally realizes that Kint is Keyser Soze.
    The above synopsis is simplified, to say the least. When the film came out in 1995, The Usual Suspects received criticism in some quarters for being overly complicated. Even veteran critic Roger Ebert admitted he couldn't keep up with it. Nevertheless, the twist ending was so mind-blowing that many people didn't care, giving the film a second wind as a word-of-mouth hit.
    The 6−million−budgetedindieflickwentonto[earn6-million-budgeted indie flick went on to [earn 6−million−budgetedindieflickwentontoearn23 million in North America and win Christopher McQuarrie an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The Usual Suspects became a cultural phenomenon, garnering spoofs on everything from Key & Peele to Cougar Town to the Kevin Hart comedy The Wedding Ringer.
  • Actors: Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Kevin Pollak, Pete Postlethwaite
  • Released: 1995
  • Directed by: Bryan Singer
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    Citizen Kane tells the story of powerful publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), a man rich enough to buy anything he could ever want. Just before he passes, he mysteriously utters the word "Rosebud." The last scene of the film shows Kane's belongings getting cleared out of his palatial estate. An old sled emblazoned with the word "Rosebud" is thrown into the furnace - the same sled 8-year-old Kane was seen playing with when he learned he was being sent away from his parents.
    The power of Citizen Kane's twist resides in the fact that, although the investigator never discovers the meaning of "Rosebud," the audience does. This revelation also changes the movie's entire perception, as well as the audience's understanding of the heretofore unlikeable lead character. Rosebud, we realize, is symbolic of Kane's life before it changed for the worse. He spent his entire adult life holding on to the last vestige of his innocence. In that split second, he becomes somewhat sympathetic.
    Released in 1941, Citizen Kane demonstrates the immense power of a well-concocted plot twist. Hailed by many as the best film ever made, its legacy has inspired countless filmmakers to attempt twists of their own.
  • Actors: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorehead
  • Released: 1941
  • Directed by: Orson Welles
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