Today's Top 10: Best Twist Endings in a Spot

The Others


A clever subversion of the haunted house movie, written and directed by Alejandro Amenábar. A woman, Grace (Nicole Kidman) and her two kids who suffer from extreme photosensitivity live reclusively in a country mansion in post-World War II Britain. Three mysterious servants show up and weird stuff starts going down. The family sense there are "others" in the house, making Grace increasingly paranoid and skittish. Then the dead dad arrives.

The twist:

Turns out the family are themselves the ghosts, and the "others" are new tenants living in the house. The servants died of TB and Grace has smothered her kids and shot herself.


Fight Club


Aka "Stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself?". David Fincher's morally ambiguous thriller builds a nightmare world of support group addicts, emasculated males and underground punch-ups which culminate in the anarchist movement Project Mayhem, spearheaded by Brad Pitt's charismatic Tyler Durden and Edward Norton's narrator.

The twist: 

Things are getting out of hand and Tyler's gone missing. Only it turns out the narrator and Tyler are disassociated personalities in the same body. The narrator has to shoot himself in the face to get rid of Tyler for good.



Remember Me

Here it is: In the absence of any time-marking signposts, viewers are led to believe that Remember Me is set in the present — but it's really 2001. At movie's end, after having a fight with de Ravin, Pattinson's character takes an elevator to his father's 92nd-floor office on a bright September morning, looks out the window, and watches helplessly as American Airlines Flight 11 hits the building. That's right — Robert Pattinson dies in 9/11.



The Crying Game


Neil Jordan's drama set during the Troubles is a serious political drama, though it's most notorious for its mid-film twist. Forest Whitaker plays black British soldier Jody, captured by the IRA in rural Northern Ireland. Stephen Rea is Fergus, the IRA man left to guard him.

Fergus and Jody bond and after Jody is (accidentally) killed, Fergus goes to London to find Jody's girlfriend to fulfil a promise he made to his hostage. He meets her, they fall in love but…

The twist:

When they get naked for the first time, Fergus discovers she's transgender. There follows a story of love and loyalty, though what most people remember is the unexpected wang.




The Sixth Sense


Okay EVERYONE knows this twist now, and thankfully The Sixth Sense is a film which holds up to multiple viewing regardless of its about-face. Bruce Willis plays Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist in a dying relationship who is working with a troubled child (Haley Joel Osment) who claims to be able to see dead people.

Crowe works with Cole, encouraging him not to be afraid of the walking dead and helping them to move on. The dead people don't know they're dead – you know where this is going. Fortunately before M Night Shyamalan became 'Mister Twister' and everyone came to expect it, The Sixth Sense delivered a total emotional gut punch – even without the surprise it's still one of Willis' most moving movies.

The twist:

He's like, dead.




Orphan


Jaume Collet-Sera's messed up psychological horror has one of the weirdest twists ever, and it only (just about) works because of the masterful performance by Isabelle Furhman. She plays a 9-year old Eastern European child adopted by parents Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard after their own child is stillborn. Only there's clearly something up with her. She knows way more about sex than she ought to, she's handy with a hammer and bad things happen when she's around.

The twist:

When the couple investigate further they eventually discover she's actually an insane 33-year-old woman with a hormone disorder that stunts her growth. She moves from family to family pretending to be a kid so she can seduce the dads. As you do.


Scream 


Horror master Wes Craven knew the drill when he directed 1996’s Scream, which, in many ways, is a love letter to the horror genre itself. Though Billy seems to be the prime suspect, we’re led to believe that he’s innocent; the killer calls while Billy’s in jail, and near the end of the film Ghostface kills him. Darn, and we thought it was Billy all along. As we find out, however, [spoiler] Billy’s “blood” is corn syrup—“same stuff they used in Carrie for pig’s blood”—and he’s alive, thanks to help from his accomplice, Stu. Even more shocking, however, is the plot twist reveal that Billy and Stu are also responsible for the rape and murder of Sidney’s mom Maureen, who had been having an affair with Billy’s dad.


The Village 


A community situated near Pennsylvania in the 19th century is surrounded by a forest with red-hooded monsters who prevent people from leaving the village.
The plot twist: The village exists in modern times and not the 19th century. Along the way it is also discovered that the people of the community created the monsters in order to discourage anyone from leaving the village.



Se7en 



Released the same year as “The Usual Suspects”, in “Se7en” we follow an investigation by two detectives, the almost reformed William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and the young and recently transferred David Mills (Brad Pitt). They investigate a series of crimes representing the seven deadly sins. The investigation leads them to John Doe who ends up surrendering and claiming his guilt.




The plot twist: John Doe leads the detectives into the middle of the desert where – he says – there’ll be the final two bodies representing the missing sins. When they arrive, Somerset, receives a box from a deliveryman and inside there is the head of Mill’s wife, and Doe admits he murdered her for envy (the sixth sin). Mills, out of wrath (the seventh sin), murders John Doe. Like in “The Usual Suspects”, this is another twist brought by Mr. Kevin Spacey.


10.


Saw



Two random guys are kidnapped and locked in a dirty room by a guy named “Jigsaw”, who leaves them cryptic messages in order to play with the characters’ despair as he challenges them to complete a task or die.
The plot twist: Jigsaw was the “lifeless” corpse lying in the middle of the room between the two guys from the beginning.





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