Movies With Plot Twists That Feel Tacked On

Palpatine returned.

This meme line appeared unexpectedly, undoing much of what happened in the previous movie in the third.Star Wars.This affects the trilogy and Anakin's redemption arc from the first.

This was part of an elaborate, often unpopular, effort to change much of what was unpopular about.The Last Jedi.This includes linking Rey's unknown parentage to the villainous emperor from the previous trilogies.

From its release, the 2019 Matthew McConaughey vehicle...Serenity.Serenity gained notoriety for its absurd twist ending. McConaughey plays a fisherman in Plymouth Island, caught in a plot to knock off his ex-wife's abusive new husband.

The catch is this: It is all a video game. In the film's 'real world,' McConaughey's son is a computer programmer whose father died in Iraq, and he wrote this instead of talking to a therapist.

Post-.Scream.Slasher movies like 1997's...I Know What You Did Last Summer.These films lack amazing twists. The second movie in that series already had a big twist; however, the direct-to-video third installment...I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.This film still beats the sequel.

Moving the setting to Colorado, the three-quel leaves all original cast members. A new story starts where pranksters copy the 'Fisherman' slasher from prior movies and then end up dead.

The twist reveals the killer is the one from the first movie, now undead and also in Colorado for some reason.

Twist endings usually belong in psychological thrillers.Remember Me.However, it is a 2010 romantic drama that has a notorious twist.

For its runtime, Robert Pattinson and Emilie de Ravin play star-crossed lovers. They meet under false pretenses but fall in love. The movie shows their relationship and family issues before revealing the setting is 2001 and Pattinson's character dies in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.

Despite a cast with Bruce Willis and Halle Berry, the 2007 thriller...Perfect Stranger.Perfect Stranger seems to have faded from many people's attention. This might stem from its weak twist ending.

A twist relying on the audience being kept out of the loop about what characters know rarely works well. This film shows this: the audience sees Berry's character investigating Willis's wealthy ad exec because she thinks he killed her childhood friend.

The twist shows Berry's character actually committed the act and tries to blame someone else, which makes much of the earlier film feel pointless.

On any list of worst twist endings, the protagonist was the killer all along usually shows up. Alexandre Aja's 2003 movie uses this tired cliché badly.New French Extremity.breakoutHigh Tension..

Here's howRoger EbertdescribedHigh Tension.'s twist reveals one of the two women trying to escape a slasher turns out to be the villain: ‘…Something I think is not possible, given our current understanding of the laws of physics.’ He called the twist a plot hole that is ‘not only large enough to drive a truck through, but in fact does have a truck driven right through it.’

When a movie's plot comes from a hit Wham! holiday song of the same name, you likely won't get good writing. Still, viewers were not ready for this 2019 romantic comedy (starring Emilia Clarke) to take the song this literally.

For most of its run time,Last Christmas.Last Christmas seems like a standard holiday rom-com. Clarke's character falls for a stranger named Tom who appears and disappears at odd times.

Only near the end do we learn Clarke's character got a heart transplant the year before, saving her life. That heart came from Tom, who was a ghost the whole time.

The Number 23.is a 2007 psychological thriller starring Jim Carrey in a rare serious role. Most moviegoers say this is not the problem with the film. The problem traces back to its unlikely twist.

Carrey plays a man who gets a book by an unknown author (pen name “Topsy Kretts”) about the “23 enigma.” Carrey's character obsesses over the book and the number 23, trying to find the author while sinking deeper into paranoia.

Carrey's character wrote the book himself, but he developed amnesia and forgot about it.

Gaslighting variations appear in psychological thrillers. One popular type involves a character having memories no one else shares, while everyone else claims they are delusional. This happens inThe Forgotten., a 2004 thriller starring Julianne Moore as a mother whose son died in a plane crash; one day she wakes up told she never had a son.

She is right, and everyone else tries to fool her, but the reason for the elaborate trick is where the film fails for many viewers. She seems to be the subject of a large experiment run for “them”—some inhuman agency likely from outer space.

There is dedication to your ideals, and then there is whatever the people inThe Life of David Gale.David Gale, a disgraced professor and activist against capital punishment, has a story in the 2003 film. Unfortunately, Gale is also a convicted criminal, imprisoned for assaulting and killing another activist.

While Gale waits for execution, he agrees to sell a reporter his story.

The film ends with a twist: the audience learns the entire event was a setup. The deceased colleague actually killed herself and staged the murder to look like a homicide, allowing an innocent man to be executed and discrediting capital punishment.

Gale participated in the setup, intentionally taking the blame so they could leak that he was innocent of the crime.

For its first half, Will Smith's 2008 superhero film unfolds.HancockAudiences expected a serious-comedy take on the superhero. Smith plays a superhuman who is powerful, depressed, and alcoholic. He befriends a PR guy who tries to fix his image.

The twist reveals the PR guy's wife (Charlize Theron) is also a superhuman. She and Smith's character are immortals who marry. They lose their powers and become mortal if they spend too much time together, which caused Smith's character to forget everything earlier.

That is quite a lot to say.

M. Night Shyamalan's filmmaking career became synonymous with big twists.He became known for big twists ever since his 1999 hit.Since his 1999 breakout hit.For many viewers, these twists offered little payoff early on, starting with Signs.Signs appeared in 2002.What started as a tense alien-invasion thriller broke down for many viewers due to a series of third-reel revelations. One major revelation shows the invading aliens are deathly allergic to water, making invasion of Earth seem a bad idea due to our atmosphere's composition.It came out in 2002.

This alien-invasion thriller started tense and slow. Third-reel reveals broke it for many viewers. For instance, the invading aliens are deathly allergic to water. This makes invading Earth look like a bad idea because of our atmosphere's makeup.

A good twist should shock or surprise. It should make the rest of the story make sense, not less. Louis Letterier's 2013 heist film hits this mark better than most.All of that is fine. What strains audience belief more than the unlikely heists is the final reveal: the FBI agent tracking the magicians is actually the mastermind behind the whole operation.For much of its runtime, the 2003 film Identity ran.

The film's unlikely heists are fine. What stretches belief more is the last-act reveal. The FBI agent tracking the magicians is the actual mastermind.

For most of its run time, 2003'sIdentityThis film reimagines Agatha Christie's classic whodunit.And Then There Were NoneTen unrelated people get trapped at a motel in a rainstorm. They get picked off one by one.

A second plot runs through the main story: the trial of a mass murderer who might have...Dissociative identity disorder..

Only at the film's end do these two plots collide. The audience learns the characters in the first plot are just the distinct personalities of the character in the second. The homicidal personality tries to knock the others out. The reveal of which personality is the bad one is equally silly.