Movie plot twists that changed the movie business (14 Photos)

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LucasFilm/20th Century Fox

There’s no shortage of movies that try to surprise their audiences with some pretty funky twists and turns. When done right, they can completely change the way you view an entire film. Saw for example was one hell of a twist, that no one ever saw coming, and it made you want to rewatch carefully.

While it was executed masterfully, it wasn’t without precedent in the business and it’s certainly not the best twist in history. For that, you’d have to look at these films.

These movies not only offered a cinematic parlour trick, but changed the game for the movies that followed.

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LucasFilm/20th Century Fox

The “No, I am your father” cliffhanger introduced extended narratives
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
Prior to the 80’s and this particular film, sequels were generally a do-over of the original, with minor changes in setting, plot and casting. Why fix what ain’t broke, right? But Empire changed all that. Not only did it pick up on elements that were started in A New Hope and dropped seeds that didn’t get fleshed out until Jedi.

Then, the sequel also offered this cliffhanger, and made audiences wait 3 years to find out the repercussions. The thought of making people wait for this was previously inconceivable and started the idea of an extended narrative; one whole story that took multiple movies to tell.

Without this, we’d never have gotten the LOTR trilogy or Avengers: Infinity War.

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Universal Pictures

Killing your star and changing the lead character
Psycho
Unlike most movies, the plot twist doesn’t come at the end here, but within the early middle. Also, it’s Janet Leigh, and she gets brutally stabbed. Now what?

This twist transforms the film. We were attached to this secretary who made a mistake and was gonna repair it, and now, we have to reorient our focus to someone else; the polite but disturbing motel owner, perhaps.

This was the first film to introduce the audience to a false protagonist – a hero that’s identified to us, that we’re told to root for. Killing them off fucks with our sense of security and expectations and leaves us unsettled and uneasy.

Craven did this second-best with the opening of Scream.

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20th Century Fox

A twist that obscures the actual setting of the movie
Planet of the Apes
We all know this twist, and it’s one of the best examples of misdirection. We assume, as does George Taylor, that we’re on a different planet. Revealing that this is a post-apocalyptic Earth reshapes everything and serves as a gut-punch of hopelessness.

While misleading the viewer hasn’t become the most common twist out there, it’s been used especially well in Alex Proyas’ Dark City and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village.

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Gramercy Pictures

Making a film a classic, only because of the ending
The Usual Suspects
In any other world, this film would have been a decent one, got a bit of attention, and the world would have moved on. It’s a crime caper; those are a dime-a-dozen. But that ending twist, it really elevates the film and makes it memorable.

When the twist is this good, no one really cares about the complicated details and story. A lot of films have tried to replicate this formula, with some success, but none as good as Singer’s film.

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Buena Vista Distribution

Revitalizing an entire genre
The Sixth Sense
I mean, you can’t overstate the importance of this twist. It was essentially a sleeper hit, with a low budget and zero pre-release hype. And it crushed it.

The success of this film encouraged Hollywood to take chances on other low-budget ghost films like Paranormal Activity, the Conjuring & Insidious

Meanwhile, Shyamalan became the guy with the best ending twists (most of the time).

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Paramount Pictures

Setting the template for the re-emerging villain
Friday the 13th
After tons of sequels, copycats and parodies, it’s easy to forget how important this film really is. The audience was legitimately fooled by the ending, thinking it was over. Then, before a fade to black – Jason pulls Alice into the water.

While the last grab technique wasn’t new at the time, this film perfected the idea and created a whole new sub-genre of monsters jumping out at the end.

I mean, we’re sick of it now, but in 1980, it was bonkers.

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RKO Radio Pictures

The inspiration for the twist ending
Citizen Kane
Honestly, if you haven’t seen this film, you’re missing out. The entire film documents the rise of the mercurial Charles Foster Kane, who utters the word “Rosebud” on his deathbed.

While the journalist in the film never discovers what the word means, we as the audience to, and it changes the entire film. This was his last vestige of innocence, before his life changed for the worse.

This demonstrates that the smallest little twist, can re-contextualize an entire film.

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Paramount Pictures

Bleak and twisty endings are ok for horror films
Rosemary’s Baby
Not every film has to have a jump scare or a happily resolved ending. This film shows Rosemary embracing her devil-child, despite being revulsed by it. Either it’s because she knows that resistance is futile, or she’s become enthralled by the evil neighbours. Either way, it’s a bleak and depressing ending.

In the 50 years since, plenty of filmmakers have taken inspiration from the movie’s depressing and resigned ending; most recently Ari Aster with Hereditary or Jordan Peele’s Get Out.

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Warner Bros

Redefining the Film Noir genre
The Maltese Falcon
This film is considered to be the first true film noir. It’s got the high contrast lighting and dark shadows, asymmetrical shot compositions, snappy dialogue and a femme fatale.

And the twist ending where Sam Spade falls in love with the woman who killed his partner, and still turns her in, is a downer. Especially because no one would have suspected she did it.

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Show East

Reminded the Western market that Asian films were fantastic
Oldboy
This is easily one of the most compelling and fucked up thriller plots I’ve ever seen. It’s so dark and twisted, and not something we’d normally see on this side of the globe.

Thanks to this film and the daughter twist in the end, North American audiences are going back into Asian horror, and thrillers in general. Parasite owes a lot of it’s success to Park Chan-Wook.

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Filmsonor/Vera Films

Influenced the suspense genre, and Hitchcock specifically
Les Diaboliques
This French film about a cruel headmaster of a boarding school, his wife, and his mistress is a mindfuck. You think the ladies are conspiring to kill an adulterous man, but the true story is far more insidious.

This film was watched multiple times by Alfred Hitchcock when writing both Psycho & Vertigo, and there’s even a typewriter scene that directly influenced Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

The French really had a way with building suspense and breaking traditional story norms.

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Decla-Bioscop

An unreliable narrator in film is a creepy twist
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
This German expressionist film uses a framing device where a man named Francis is telling an astonishing tale to a stranger. In it, he relays the story of the evil Dr. Caligari and his sleeping subject, who may or may not be a murderer. We later find out that Francis is a mental patient and Dr. Caligari is the asylum’s director.

This film is notable for two reasons. The first is that it’s easily one of the first ever horror films. It’s got a scary protagonist, a sense of menace, and a scary environment.

Secondly, it introduces a narrator we can’t trust. Until now, this had been the stuff of literature. This idea was then used in a vast number of films since, including American Psycho, Shutter Island & Life of Pi.

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