As any great story medium does, the movie industry has a proud track record of shocking twists, from classics like The Big Sleep to genre-defining thrillers like Se7en. Ensuring viewers keep the ending in their memory long after the credits roll, these films have secured their place in Hollywood history for their conclusions. The last 25 years, in particular, created some of the most unexpected imaginable endings.
Many directors make a point of ending their films on a twist, but not everyone lands. While some are underwhelming for audiences, others can play into popular tropes too much, becoming overly predictable. The fact that it’s so easy to screw up a good subversive ending only makes these stories all the more impressive for how well they leave viewers shocked and confused.
The Others Upped the Ante On M. Night Shyamalan
Set in the wake of World War II, The Others tells the story of the wealthy Stewart family as mother Grace tries to keep her house in order following the loss of her husband in the war. To care for her children, who suffer from a condition that makes them allergic to light, she hires a trio of housekeepers. However, shortly after they move in, she begins experiencing paranormal phenomena, causing her to question whether her home is haunted or her new workers are sinister.
The Others is a haunted house movie distinctly made in the post-Sixth Sense era of horror-thriller cinema, pushing its audience to question who, if anyone, is undead. After almost traumatizing the audience through some of the eeriest storytelling imaginable, the ending leaves them heartbroken. People familiar with this era of supernatural thriller might be able to guess how it turns out, but it’s still the perfect inversion of its genre.
The Prisoners Twist Is As Good As Se7en
Prisoners begins when a pair of girls are abducted from their small town community, driving their parents into a frenzy as the police investigate. After the main detective, Loki, lets a prime suspect go free, one of the fathers, Keller Dover, becomes obsessed with proving his guilt to find the kids. To get answers, he takes him captive, where he plans to torture the truth out of him before the children perish.
Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Prisoners can best be described as the Se7en of the 21st century, creating a dark no-win dilemma for its protagonists. It isn’t so much finding out who the killer is that makes the twist so devastating, but rather realizing just how much the antihero played into their plans. Above all else, it’s a masterclass in subverting a genre, flipping the revenge thriller on its head for something that makes the audience question their enjoyment of it.
Arrival Is Mind-Bending Sci-Fi That Would Make Stanley Kubrick Proud
Made in the tradition of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Arrival begins with a fleet of alien ships entering Earth’s atmosphere. Hovering around random locations, the interstellar vessels are investigated by a linguist, Louise Banks, and a physicist, Ian Donnelly. When they make contact with the aliens inside, they attempt to understand their language, all while the audience sees flashbacks of Louise’s time as a mother.
Central to the communication between humans and aliens is the revelation that the latter don’t have a linear perception of time, instead seeing past, present, and future events simultaneously. When the audience realizes how this comes to affect Louise, it makes for one of the most tragic twists in cinema, one that makes them see a different story upon second viewing. It’s a brilliant yet haunting realization that honors the best of science fiction,
Kill Bill’s Cliffhanger Proves It Was Better Off In Two Parts
In 2004, Quentin Tarantino moved on from crime stories to his first action story when he created Kill Bill, casting Uma Thurman as a vengeful assassin dubbed “the Bride.” Driven to rage by the murder of her unborn baby and her own shooting, she wakes from a bullet-induced coma and sets out for bloody justice. Her quest leads to one man: her old flame and the father of her child, Bill.
Despite wanting to tell his story as a single, four-hour epic, Tarantino’s project was split into two parts, something that made Vol.1’s twist land so much better. When the audience hears Bill’s haunting question to Sophie after her torture at the hands of the Bride, it leaves them desperate to learn more. The art of a good cliffhanger has always been hard to square, but the Pulp Fiction director absolutely nailed it here.
The Mist Is Simply Devastating
The work of Stephen King has influenced some of the greatest films of the last five decades, but none went as dark as Frank Darabont’s The Mist. The story is set in the small Maine town of Bridgton, where a mysterious fog brings a wave of monsters, forcing residents to seek shelter in a supermarket. As artist David Drayton tries to keep his son safe, he’s forced into an ultimatum: stay and certainly die, or flee with a chance of escape.
The Mist manages to devastate its audience in every way possible, driving them to feel more hopeless than any other horror film. Its genius is that, once it’s revealed, things might not be so bleak for the world; David’s tragedy grows exponentially, leaving viewers with one of the few true fates worse than death. It’s horror at its finest, but the ending will leave those watching feeling every bit as hopeless as its hero, proving just how well Darabont understands cosmic terror.
Incendies Ends With A Twist People Wish They Didn’t Learn
Incendies begins when Canadian siblings Jeanne and Simon learn of the death of their mother, Nawal, who left them instructions to find their father and brother, the latter who was hidden from them. As they set out to track them down, the story flashes back to their late parent’s life in the war-torn Middle East, where she endured torture and sexual violence. When the story comes full circle, the twins realize their search is horrifically simpler than they realized.
The twist in Incendies is psychological trauma at its best and worst, leaving its audience feeling dejected and horrified when they realize the full picture. Villeneuve’s movie was basically designed to show people just how brutal and tragic war is, making everyone feel worse off for having learned the truth. In that sense, it’s nothing shy of genius, confronting those watching with a reminder of how far violence echoes into future generations.
Shutter Island Defines the Modern Psychological Thriller
Taking a break between gangster projects, Martin Scorsese brought audiences a murder mystery for the ages when he adapted Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island. The film follows a pair of US Marshals, Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule, as they journey to the secluded island-based Ashecliffe Hospital to find a missing patient. It doesn’t take long for the lawmen to suspect they’re being toyed with, especially as Daniels realizes an inmate is connected to a tragedy in his past.
Shutter Island has one of the most notorious endings of the 21st century, actually kicking off a trend that would later define psychological thrillers of the 2010s. Dealing with everything from false realities and conspiracies to identity crises, Scorsese’s movie is practically the face of its genre, and for good reason. The brilliance of its twist is that once people have watched it, they’ll never experience it the same way twice, always picking up on new clues that hint at the truth.
Split Understood How to Deliver A Stealth Sequel
In 2017, M. Night Shyamalan became the latest director to cash in on Hollywood’s fascination with “multiple personalities” when he made Split. The film follows the abduction of three high school girls at the hands of Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man whose body is inhabited by 24 distinct identities. As he terrifies and toys with his captives, the various individuals in his mind compete for dominance, all while the dreaded “Beast” inches closer to surfacing.
For Split, it wasn’t so much a core part of the story that took everyone by surprise, but rather the brief cameo of Bruce Willis’ character from Unbreakable, David Dunn. After fans of the subversive superhero movie spent close to two decades asking for a continuation, the brief scene had them more hyped than some of the greatest MCU flicks. Regardless of how people feel about Glass, the ending of the 2017 film is a masterclass in the art of the stealth sequel.
The Prestige Pulls Off the Best Magic Trick In Cinema
As Christopher Nolan’s career took off during the 2000s, he was able to bring audiences his adaptation of Christopher Priest’s The Prestige. Documenting a feud between two Victorian-era magicians, Angier and Borden, it follows both men on their separate paths to becoming world-renowned entertainers. To be specific, their tragic yet unique attempts to pull off a disappearing man act, each one damning the other to tragedy.
The dark ending of The Prestige finds its strength in how it reveals both men’s hidden tricks, equally tragic mirror images of each other. After Angier’s final confrontation with Borden, the audience sees the monsters both men became in their own ways, one driven to destroy his family, the other to commit murder. The ending wraps it up as the definitive magician movie of all time, causing the audience to realize they’ve been duped from the start.
Oldboy Is the Worst Kind of Family Tragedy
Korean cinema has earned the love and respect of American audiences over the 21st century, with Oldboy being one of the best, albeit darkest, examples. The film focuses on Dae-su, a man imprisoned by a rival for 15 years, only to escape and begin his quest for revenge and the search for his missing daughter. Along the way, he meets and falls for a woman, Mi-do, who helps him find the man responsible for his troubles.
Oldboy is the kind of crime movie most will only want to see once, and its twist is almost entirely responsible for that. When Dae-su finally confronts his enemy, the audience is exposed to one of the most sickening revelations imaginable, one so traumatic it leaves its heroes almost devoid of hope. Ending in the worst kind of family tragedy, Oldboy is the face of the dark side of thriller cinema twists, and one of the films that sparked the rise of Korean cinema in the US.