.avif?trim=0,0,0,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Significant archaeological site could be washed away by the 2100s – UK Times")
Whether it’s the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, the head-in-a-box payoff at the end of Se7en or even Charlotte being outed as a fake Welsh person on The Traitors, some of our most memorable screen experiences have involved devastating plot twists.
The perfect bait and switch, however, is hard to pull off. Poorly executed, it can ruin an otherwise thoroughly OK-ish movie.
From Tim Burton’s ill-fated Planet of the Apes remake to Will Smith’s wobbly superhero thriller Hancock, cinema has seen its fair share of terrible twists down the years.
Even M Night Shyamalan, Hollywood’s de facto “master of the plot twist” ever since 1999’s The Sixth Sense, has been known to indulge some terrible left-field twistery – as this list will show.
Read on for The Independent’s ranking of the 12 worst plot twists in cinema…
12. Now You See Me (2013)
This Ocean’s Eleven-style heist flick featured a Rat Pack-esque quartet of magicians – led by Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson – using a box of tricks to dazzle and hoodwink all around them. But then came the terrible rabbit from the hat, as it was explained that Mark Ruffalo’s doltish FBI agent, Dylan Rhodes, had been the one orchestrating the team’s daring crimes all along. It was a cheap stunt that the film had in no way foreshadowed – less a feat of conjuring than a clumsy handbrake turn.
11. Planet of the Apes (2001)
There was a lot wrong with Burton’s remake of the 1968 science fiction classic (Helena Bonham Carter’s chimpanzee prosthetics for starters). But the final insult came at the end, as Mark Wahlberg is beamed back to the present day only to discover that the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, is carved in the likeness of ape ruler General Thade (Tim Roth). Although the twist is never previously hinted at, it appears that Thade utilised the same technology that projected Wahlberg’s character into the far future to travel back in time and alter the course of history. It was a lame shock that threw logic out the window – and fell far short of the genuine horror of the Statue of Liberty reveal at the conclusion of the original.
10. Iron Man 3 (2013)
Ben Kingsley and the Marvel universe seemed made for one another when it was announced that the Oscar-winning character actor would play Tony Stark’s archenemy, the Mandarin. Yes, Marvel would have to acknowledge the racial stereotyping and anti-Asian sentiment that had been an unfortunate component of the Mandarin in its comic-book version. But surely the studio could devise a clever way of doing that while allowing Kingsley to fully display his dramatic powers? Sadly, it did not. The twist was that the Mandarin was in fact unemployed Liverpool actor Trevor Slattery – an excuse for Kingsley to roll out his “scouse” accent and one last letdown in an already underwhelming film.
9. The Village (2004)
Like a one-hit wonder desperate to get back on Top of the Pops, Shyamalan spent a stretch of his career trying and failing to live up to the mind-bending rug pull at the end of The Sixth Sense. One of his more notorious attempts was The Village, where a remote community of Amish-like farmers lives in terror of monsters who come at night. How horrifying. Until it is revealed that the village exists in the present day. The “monsters” are just the town elders dressing up to keep the young folk, such as Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard, in line.
8. Identity (2003)
John Cusack’s career was already in decline when he starred in James Mangold’s faux-Hitchcock whodunnit. However, there was no coming back from the twist at the end of Identity, where we learned that all the main protagonists – including Cusack – were the different personalities of a man with dissociative identity disorder. Sillier yet, the seemingly innocent child character, Timmy, was in fact a homicidal maniac orchestrating a string of murders, so that his “personality” would win out.
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7. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016)
The best thing about this undercooked Harry Potter spin-off was Colin Farrell as a deliciously wicked villain, Percival Graves. What fun it would be to follow him through future entries in the franchise. But then came the unfortunate transformation of his character into dreary wizard Grindelwald – played by a wildly disinterested (and, in the latest sequel, eventually re-cast) Johnny Depp.
6. Wild Mountain Thyme (2020)
Like a hellish version of Father Ted, this misty-eyed Oirish comedy had plumbed the depths long before the final denouement. However, an atrocious film somehow became worse as audiences learned that the source of shy love interest Anthony Reilly’s woes was… that he was convinced he was a honeybee. Having starred in the 50 Shades trilogy, Jamie Dornan knew all about keeping a straight face in challenging circumstances. But not even he could sell the tale of a humble farmer who believed he was actually a diminutive winged insect.
5. The Tourist (2010)
By the end of the Paris and Italy-set thriller The Tourist, it was painfully clear Angelina Jolie and Depp had less spark than a wet box of matches. But the chemistry-deficient road movie was revealed to have an extra level of ridiculousness as we learned that Depp’s character was, in fact, Jolie’s lover and the on-the-run criminal with whom she has been communicating via hand-written notes. It’s just that – owing to extensive plastic surgery – she hadn’t recognised him.
4. Lucy (2014)
Scarlett Johansson was at the peak of her action heroine powers when Luc Besson cast her as a telekinetic secret agent immune to pain. She handled the action scenes fantastically – but not even prime ScarJo could sell the final swerve in the storyline as her character ascends to a higher state of consciousness (by using 100 per cent of her brain capacity) and then downloads her personality to… a flash drive. From molten screen presence to firestick, it was an anti-climax that hit like a roundhouse to the solar plexus.
3. Hancock (2008)
Until the halfway point, Peter Berg’s revisionist superhero film functioned as a playful showcase for Smith. He had fun getting jiggy with it as a misunderstood crime fighter who could fly faster than Superman and punch harder than Batman. But then the script flipped alarmingly as it was revealed Smith’s character, John Hancock, was an ancient alien of godlike strength, and that Charlize Theron’s Mary – married to Jason Bateman, who played Hancock’s PR advisor – was his immortal and all-powerful love interest. The twist wasn’t daring so much as deranged, and the film never recovered.
2. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
The already unseemly dead horse-flogging that was the Disney Star Wars trilogy somehow outdid itself in the final instalment with the big reveal that Daisy Ridley’s Force-wielding protagonist Rey was the granddaughter of the still-living Emperor Palpatine. This is despite the fact that Palpatine was a) not a noted family man and b) had definitively and without question died in Return of the Jedi when Darth Vader chucked him down a reactor shaft. “Somehow, Palpatine returned” is the explanation offered by Oscar Isaac’s character. OK, then.
1. Serenity (2019)
Remember when terrible television tried to salvage unsuccessful plot lines by revealing it was “all a dream”? This dire thriller from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight raised the ante by putting Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in a maritime caper that turned out to be…a video game. It was the worst thing Knight has ever done, which is saying a lot if you suffered through later seasons of Peaky Blinders or his grimdark take on A Christmas Carol.
Still, Knight was unapologetic, claiming he had consciously set out to push filmmaking boundaries – and fully anticipated the flak that came his way. “Whenever you do that, whenever you do something different, you divide the audience,” he said. “I’ve had terrible reviews and I’ve also had fab reviews from people who I respect and admire, so it’s a bit of both.”
