Plot twisters
Plot-twist classic movies
Top 10 movies with mind-bending plot-twists you never saw coming.
- Wild Things
- The Sixth Sense
- Oldboy
- Memento
- Inside Man
- Angel Heart
- Les Diaboliques
- The Wicker man
- Identity
- Twelve monkeys
Remember the slap-your-forehead-in-dumb-amazement ending to The Usual Suspects? Well, don’t take your finger off the rewind button. Here are 10 more movies with killer plot twists.
WILD THINGS
Cross, double-cross, lies, betrayal… and that’s just the first half of this sizzling twisteroo. You may want to re-watch the Neve Campbell-Denise Richards love scene; and you’ll definitely want to keep watching past the credits as the plot continues to unfold.
THE SIXTH SENSE
A modern classic from twist-in-the-tail specialist M. Night Shyamalan (who also directed The Village). Bruce Willis and Hayley Joel Osment both see dead people… even if you won’t see the plot twist coming.
OLDBOY
A Korean thriller based on a Japanese manga, this one will mess with your mind all the way to the end… and what an ending it is. Locked in a hotel room of 15 years, Dae-Su emerges with plenty of questions. As you’ve guessed, he doesn’t like the answers he gets.
MEMENTO
In this one, the twist comes at the beginning – but the story’s told backwards, and the protagonist (Guy Pearce) has no short-term memory, so you’re still left hanging ‘til the bitter, bitter end.
INSIDE MAN
Despite the all-star cast (Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster) and an A-list director (Spike Lee), some of the finest work here comes from screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, who turns a standard bank heist thriller into a how’d-he-do-that? plot twist classic.
ANGEL HEART
A mad cross between a hard-boiled detective movie and an atmospheric horror film, this one has the mysterious Louis Cyphre Robert de Niro) hiring washed-up private investigator Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) to find a missing musician. Inevitably, things go wrong. And inevitably – why else would it be on this list? – there’s a creepy twist in the already-twisted tale.
LES DIABOLIQUES
Even if you can survive the subtitles and the black-and-white photography, you’ll be lucky to survive the ending. The ending of this 1954 French classic (do yourself a favour and skip the mid-90s Sharon Stone remake) is such a brilliant twister that the end credits even contain a message, imploring the audience not to tell their friends how the movie ends.
THE WICKER MAN
We’re talking about the 1973 cult classic, not the dodgy 2006 Nicolas Cage remake. An Scottish detective (Edward Woodward) goes to a remote island searching for a missing girl, only to encounter the local’s strange pagan rituals. It’s the type of movie that – thanks to its killer ending – seems better after you’ve watched it than while you’re watching it.
IDENTITY
Seven strangers (John Cusack, Ray Liotta, Amanda Peet and four others) are stranded in a motel in the middle of nasty rainstorm. Then they start dying, one by one. The final plot twist comes out of nowhere and hits you like a shovel over the head. Highly recommended. (The movie, that is… not the shovel.)
TWELVE MONKEYS
It’s a mystery how a movie starring Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis managed to become a low-key cult classic… but there’s mystery aplenty in this post-apocalyptic time-travelling thriller. The bigwigs demanded that director Terry Gilliam change the ending, but Gilliam refused – and the result is a mind-bending climax that’ll linger long in the memory.
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