10 Awesome Movie Twists In Not-So-Awesome Movies

Sometimes, even flawed or downright uninteresting movies can boast twist endings that truly elevate them. Twist endings are always a risky proposition. When pulled off perfectly, a twist ending can take a good movie into the realms of greatness. The likes of Fight Club and The Sixth Sense became cult classics precisely because their endings were so unpredictable but, in retrospect, so ingeniously foreshadowed throughout the preceding story. However, just as often, an otherwise-solid movie can be badly let down by a silly, overly complicated, or unnecessary twist ending.

The delicate balance is a hard one to get right, with many movies dropping their original premise to deliver a twist that probably looked great on paper but ended up feeling overblown and goofy. However, some movies manage to improve their lot with a clever twist. These are not necessarily outright bad movies, but they are solidly unspectacular efforts that would likely be forgotten if it weren’t for their wild conclusions. These movies prove that a twist ending can elevate a movie that doesn’t have much going for it, and improve a forgettable genre exercise with a well-placed, memorable shock.

10 The Entire Third Act Is All A Fantasy- Repo Men

2010’s Repo Men is a sci-fi thriller with a barbed satirical premise. In the near future, Jude Law and Forest Whitaker’s amoral organ repossession specialists take back the transplants that patients can’t pay off. However, Law’s antihero soon finds himself on the wrong side of this twisted healthcare system satire when he receives a costly transplant thanks to an accident at work. Like Netflix’s similar dystopian sci-fi Paradise, Repo Men devolves into a gunplay-heavy thriller that barely addresses its premise. Then, viewers learn the entire third act was a coma fantasy Law’s character experiences on a loop as his loved ones go bankrupt paying for his care.

9 Last Christmas He Gave Her His Heart – Last Christmas

2019’s Last Christmas is a schmaltzy romantic comedy that is too sour to be sweet but too cloying to convince as a cynical subversion of the genre. However, when Emilia Clarke’s depressed, underemployed heroine learns the truth about her handsome suitor Henry Golding, the movie unleashes a twist that is almost wild enough to justify its existence. The love interest she has pursued throughout Last Christmas is really dead. Thus, the reason that only she can see him is that, as any Wham! fan could have guessed, he gave her his heart last Christmas via a transplant.

8 The Apocalypse Actually Happens – Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

While the ending of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines might have thrown the rest of the franchise, it was worth it. Even though this second Terminator sequel has a lighter, sillier tone than its franchise predecessors, its finale doesn’t let up when it comes to sudden, brutal bleakness. Despite the best attempts of John Connors, the apocalypse actually happens at the end of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Almost everyone on earth dies in this blockbuster sequel’s finale, a genuinely shocking twist for a major studio sequel.

7 The Boy Is A Real Boy – The Boy

2016’s The Boy isn’t inherently flawed, but it is pretty dull. The premise of a house sitter looking after a creepy doll whose owners insist it is a real boy has potential, but most of the movie’s runtime is taken up by the heroine wandering from room to room and staring at the antique toy. However, a barnstorming third-act revelation saves this horror from the bargain bin. It turns out that the boy the parents want her to look after is not that creepy toy, but rather a grown man living in the walls. From here on out, The Boy is less Toy Story and more Black Christmas.

6 Calvin Makes It To Earth – Life

For most of its runtime, 2017’s Life feels like a lesser Alien sequel. A starry cast encounters a strange being in space, the alien is brought aboard to study its biology, and then it swiftly proceeds to kill the entire crew one by one. However, the sheer nastiness of Life’s twist ending makes it worth a watch. The alien escapes after all the crew’s sacrifices, likely dooming all life on Earth and rendering the hero’s willingness to end his life and save the rest of the world pointless.

5 They Were Dead All Along – Dead End

2003’s indie horror movie Dead End is an offbeat road movie that relies on black humor and subdued drama for most of its runtime. This grows tired fast, as there is only so long a viewer can spend listening to a group of squabbling family members sharing a never-ending drive home in the dark of the night. However, a few Lynchian flourishes hint that something is not quite right throughout Dead End, and the superb ending confirms this. The main characters aren’t just lost – they were dead all along – and their journey is a purgatorial one akin to Ambrose Bierce’s influential short story “An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge.”

4 The Orphan Is An Adult Woman – Orphan

While Orphan: First Kill’s big twist could also earn it a spot on this list, the original movie has a more impressively audacious reveal at its center. For most of its runtime, Orphan is just another one of countless killer kid movies. A couple adopts the eponymous orphan, the mother soon feels the child is deeply strange, and the oblivious father ignores this. However, the ending of Orphan upends proceedings completely by revealing that, for once, there is nothing supernatural afoot. It turns out that the 9-year-old villain is actually a middle-aged woman in disguise.

3 Every Character Is Really The Heroine – The Ward

2010’s The Ward saw horror maestro John Carpenter return to the genre that made him famous for one last scare-fest. The resulting movie is a solid if unmemorable slasher wherein the denizens of an all-female psych ward are picked off by a malevolent force. For most of its runtime, The Ward plays out like Girl Interrupted crossed with Halloween. However, the ending’s revelation that every other girl on the ward who died is one of the heroine’s many alternate personalities is a genuinely unexpected, clever twist.

2 It Is Set In Modern Times – The Village

Any of M. Night Shyamalan’s infamous movie twists could qualify, but The Village might be his most misunderstood outing. For most of its runtime, The Village seems to be a period horror about a secluded rural community’s dark secrets. However, The Village’s true nature proves that it isn’t so much the traditional horror movie viewers were promised, but rather a smart, strange satire of reactionaries yearning for an imagined simpler past. It’s offbeat and original if admittedly a hard sell for horror hounds.

1 It’s Just A Prank – April Fool’s Day

1986’s April Fool’s Day arrived at the end of the slasher boom and brought with it what is simultaneously the best and worst twist in the history of the genre. From the opening minutes of the movie, it seems obvious that April Fool’s Day’s ending will reveal that the murders are all a big prank. However, the slasher movie takes itself seriously enough that viewers are eventually dissuaded from this conclusion. Then it turns out that all of it -all the murders, all the accidents, the entire movie – was just a big April Fool’s joke, and April Fool’s Day is as absurdly silly as it initially seemed.