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We love a great drama. Have zero issues with an ugly-cry tearjerker. And will never say no to an all-time best comedy. But when it comes to the ultimate big-screen, small-screen, any-screen experience, we LIVE for the art of the cinematic reveal, a.k.a. the movie plot twist.
Usually delivered as a fun surprise in the third act, this effective trickery on the part of the screenwriter and director throws viewers for a loop, pulling the rug out from underneath them, and when done exceptionally well, results in that elusive spark every filmmaker tries to achieve: movie magic. Ahead, some of the best plot twists in movies to date. And, yes, there are spoilers.
For more roundups, check out the scariest horror movies of all time, the most anticipated shows of 2024, and where to stream all the 2024 Oscar nominees.
Barbarian (2022)
The Plot: In town for an interview, Tess arrives at her Airbnb to find it’s been double-booked and is currently occupied by Keith, a kinda nice, but kinda creepy dude who refuses to leave.
The Twist: Mid-movie, there is a slight genre-shift that adds to the film’s intrigue and layers of twists, but ultimately, the biggest reveal is that it’s not Keith who Tess should fear. It’s the deformed mothering creature being held captive in the dungeon under the rental.
Decision to Leave (2022)
The Plot: While investigating the murder of a man who was found at the base of a mountain, married detective Jang Hae-jun falls in love with Song Seo-rae, the dead guy’s wife.
The Twist: Yes, Song is the killer, and her husband isn’t the only victim. But the most profound reveal in this gorgeous and devastating romance has to be the ending. Song’s decision to leave—her decision to commit suicide and the ways she decides to leave—sees her dig a hole on the beach, climb in, and patiently wait for the tide to erase her forever.
Get Out (2017)
The Plot: Rose Armitage, a white woman, brings Chris Washington, her Black boyfriend, home to meet her parents. Once there, Chris senses something off with the white folks.
The Twist: The Armitages are part of a sick cult that auctions off Black people to wealthy white buyers who then surgically transplant their consciousness into the "genetically advantaged" bodies they purchase.
Les Diaboliques (1955)
The Plot: The wife and mistress of an abusive boarding school headmaster hatch a plan to get rid of him forever. But even in death, the tyrant continues to haunt them.
The Twist: He’s not dead. He’s pretending to be a ghost to scare his wife to literal death so he and his mistress can be together.
Missing (2023)
The Plot: June loves her mom, Grace, but she also can’t wait to have the house to herself as her mother heads to Colombia with her new beau. Worried when her mother doesn’t come home on time, June turns to the interwebs and Grace’s digital footprint to track her down.
The Twist: The architect behind the kidnapping plot is June’s dad.
Saltburn (2023)
The Plot: Oliver Quick, a nobody Oxford student, gets the invitation of a lifetime to spend the summer with the ridiculously wealthy and prominent Cattons at their sprawling estate called Saltburn. Funny thing, though: One by one, they all end up in the ground.
The Twist: All the death and destruction was part of Oliver’s diabolical plan.
Soylent Green (1973)
The Plot: In a dystopian future where Earth is ravaged by climate change, overpopulation, and pollution, a detective uncovers the truth of Soylent Green, the people’s main food source.
The Twist: Soylent Green is made out of human remains. It’s involuntary cannibalism forced on the masses by a powerful corporation.
The Skin I Live In (2011)
The Plot: After his wife commits suicide following traumatic injury from a fiery car crash, a plastic surgeon does some sort of revolting synthesized magic to turn a young woman he keeps locked up at his secluded estate into a nearly identical version of his dead wife.
The Twist: The young woman is actually a young man with troubling ties to the doctor’s daughter.
The Third Man (1949)
The Plot: Carol Reed’s legendary film noir stars Orson Wells, Joseph Cotten, and Alida Valli in a thriller about a novelist who investigates the death of his friend, Harry Lime, in postwar Vienna.
The Twist: Harry Lime is alive! And that’s just the first twist. The film ends with another.
They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
The Plot: An unlikely trio—Fontaine, a drug dealer; Yo-Yo, a sex worker; and Slick Charles, a pimp—team up to expose an underground government conspiracy that involves controlling, cloning, and experimenting on a fictional neighborhood's Black population.
The Twist: Fontaine is the operation’s mastermind. As for the Tyrone twist, we’ll leave that fun reveal for you to uncover.
Parasite (2019)
The Plot: The poor Kim family leave squalor behind to infiltrate the affluent Parks’ home.
The Twist: Once inside, they learn the Parks’ former housekeeper, Moon-gwang, is keeping a secret in the basement—her husband. She then learns the Kims’ secret too. All this leads to a bloody massacre that plays out at the Parks’ son’s backyard birthday party. In the end, the Kims’ patriarch, Ki-taek, stabs and kills the Parks’ patriarch, Park Dong-ik. Ki-taek then goes AWOL, but the final twist of the film reveals his whereabouts: He’s taken up shop in the Parks’ now-vacant basement.
Us (2019)
The Plot: A family’s beach vacation takes a violent turn when they learn they’re being hunted by some very curious doppelgängers.
The Twist: Matriarch Adelaide Wilson, who is clearly wrestling with a secret for a good chunk of the reel, turns out to be the imposter doppelgänger, with Red, the uninvited murderess, serving as the actual Adelaide Wilson. Adelaide’s identity was stolen as a little girl when she was abducted at the very same beach decades earlier.
Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019)
The Plot: Two dudes—Rick Dalton, an aging star from TV westerns, and his stunt double, Cliff Booth—live out their bromance in the Manson-era ‘60s.
The Twist: Three would-be Manson family killers storm into Rick’s Hollywood Hills mansion, where Cliff—high on acid—is there to welcome them. A brutal brawl, the wrath of a Pit Bull, and the fury of a flamethrower later, and revisionist history rewrites Sharon Tate’s fate. She doesn’t die. The Manson killers do.
Arrival (2016)
The Plot: When a dozen alien aircraft land on earth, a linguist, Louise Banks, is recruited to work with the military to decipher the reason for their visit.
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 ever begins. Further, she names her baby Hannah, a palindrome.
Coco (2017)
The Plot: A little boy named Miguel has guitar skills in his bones, but his family forbids him from any kind of music. To mend this generations-old taboo, he travels to the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, the famous singer Ernesto de la Cruz.
The Twist: While mingling with the dead, Miguel meets Héctor, a sad sap trying to reconnect with his family. The big reveal, however, discloses that Ernesto murdered Héctor, and that Héctor is actually Miguel’s great-great-grandfather, and Coco’s father.
The Descent
The Plot: A squad of all-female spelunking enthusiasts dive into a bat-infested cave inhabited also by some very hungry humanoids the director calls Crawlers.
The Twist: Main character Sarah is your final girl, dragging herself out of the ground and speeding away in her SUV from the bloody entombment she just experienced. Until, not so fast, an apparition of antagonist Juno riding shotgun jerks Sarah out of her own mania and puts her right back into the cave where she really is. The camera fades to black. And we hear the Crawlers drawing near.*
*This is the director’s final cut of the film. U.S. audiences were treated to a diluted ending in theaters.
Identity (2003)
The Plot: The guests of an interstate motel in the Nevada desert quickly learn there’s a homicidal killer among them, as they’re getting knocked off one by one.
The Twist: The murderer is the little boy—which is explained as we learn each of the 10 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: When his seemingly perfect wife Amy goes missing, philandering Nick becomes the prime suspect.
The Twist: After learning Nick cheated, Amy meticulously planned her disappearance to make it look like Nick killed her. Later, when she decides to return home to Nick (after seducing, then murdering, an old ex-boyfriend to make it look like he kidnapped her) she gets artificially inseminated with Nick's semen to ensure he stays with her.
The Departed (2006)
The Plot: Billy Costigan goes undercover within the Irish mob to implicate sadistic boss Frank Costello. Meanwhile, Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan, a dirty cop secretly doing Costello's bidding, tries to hunt out the "rat."
The Twist: Sullivan determines Costigan's identity, shooting him in the head in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it sequence. After Costigan's funeral, Sullivan returns to his own apartment, where Costigan's handler, Staff Sergeant Sean Dignam, is waiting to kill him.
Atonement (2007)
The Plot: Briony Tallis has a crush on the son of her family's housekeeper, Robbie; when she walks in on her sister Cecilia having sex with Robbie, Briony misinterprets the situation. Later that night, she blames Robbie for an assault on her cousin Lola even though she didn't witness the attack. Robbie is sent to prison, later joining the army to fight in World War II, while Cecilia becomes a nurse. Years later, Briony, feeling guilty for derailing Cecilia and Robbie's lives, visits them in their apartment to apologize, but they turn her away.
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 repentance.
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