There’s a twist, I went top 12 instead of top 10! Shocker!
Plot twists are fun, and I don’t know if there’s a movie experience quite like a plot twist that you’re not expecting. Just the shock, and its ability to blow one’s mind.
By the letter of the law, a plot twist is “introducing a radical change in the direction or expected outcome in a work of fiction.” The word “radical” is a bit subjective, but the idea is that we are led to believe one thing, and then the rug gets pulled out from under us. This can happen in many ways, most commonly:
-Identity mix-ups – the idea someone is not who we think they are.
-Someone we think is dead is actually alive.
-Someone we think is alive is actually dead, or not real.
-Location/Time tricks – The setting is not where/when we think.
-Master plan – The events have all been orchestrated by someone, unbeknownst to our protagonist/us.
-Characters being unexpectedly bad or good, counter to how we’re led to believe they are.
-Everything is just a dream, or all in someone’s head.
-Two people being the same person.
When one of these concepts is executed well, all of the signs could be there, but the wool is still over our eyes. Once it is removed, it is glorious.
Perhaps more than any other post, SPOILERS, ahead. Not only is the actual plot twist a spoiler, but just knowing that a movie has a plot twist is a spoiler. So…if my only reader doesn’t want any of these movies ruined, they should stop here…
To the list!
Most honored of honorable mentions: These two are worth mentioning because they’re probably 2 of the 5 most culturally impactful plot twists of all time. The first is the ending of Planet of the Apes, which I have never seen. A group of astronauts land on a planet that is ruled by apes. They think they are on some far away planet when it is ultimately revealed that they’re on earth, just several years in the future.
The second honorable mention is perhaps the most famous, from Empire Strikes Back, where it is revealed that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father. That is the most famous line/scene in the most famous movie franchise of all time. I have only seen the movie once myself, but it is likely the most culturally relevant twist of all-time.
12). Inside Man (2006) – The Twist: The lead bank robber has been holed up inside the bank, and one week later, walks right out the front door, as he said that he would.
Inside Man is an awesome flick, and one of the best bank robbery movies in recent memory. The actual mechanics of the heist are genius, they basically create chaos for the hostages on the inside and the police on the outside. They make all of the hostages dress the same and move rooms for the purpose of disorienting everyone involved. They stage what turns out to be a fake execution of hostages, so that the police take them more seriously.
What ultimately happens is that everyone involved in the heist, except for Dalton (Clive Owen; second coolest movie character ever named ‘Dalton’, btw), exits the bank with the hostages, all dressed the same way. The police question everyone, but are unable to determine who was involved in the heist. After authorities search the bank, it doesn’t appear any money or valuables were stolen. What the hell? How is this the “perfect bank robbery?” Where is Dalton, since we don’t see him talking to cops?
It turns out, Dalton is in a place that’s “like a prison cell”, but not actually a prison cell. He is hiding behind a fake wall that they built in the bank’s supply room. One week after the heist, he emerges and, as he told Detective Frazier (Denzel), he walks right out the front door. It also turns out that they weren’t targeting the bank’s money, but rather, the contents of a safety deposit box that is not among the bank’s inventory. The box belongs to the bank’s owner, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), and it contains evidence of war crimes he committed by doing business with the Nazi’s, as well as a lot of diamonds that he had stolen from a Jewish friend that he betrayed.
Bonus points for:
a) Dalton had a team for the heist, and the fact that we didn’t know who any of the others were until the very end is also a testament to the brilliant chaos of the heist.
b) The title is “Inside Man”, which makes you think that they had someone working for the bank that helped them with the heist, but in a twist, the title is more literal, that the man was hiding inside the bank all along.
11). No Way Out (1987) – The Twist: Lt. Commander Farrell is “Yuri”, a Russian mole for the KGB.
This could be recency bias, but I saw this movie for the first time within the last year, and not only did I really like it, but I was shocked by the twist. The most interesting thing about this twist is that it is completely unnecessary to the movie, but it still adds something, which is an odd combination.
Without the twist, No Way Out is a really good thriller:
Lt. Commander Farrell (Kevin Costner) works for the Secretary of Defense, David Brice (Gene Hackman). Farrell starts seeing a woman who is also having an affair with a married man, who happens to be his boss, David Brice. After Farrell and Susan (the woman he’s seeing) come back from a weekend away, Brice shows up. Farrell runs out the back door, and in the dark, the two men see each other, although Brice can’t make out that it’s Farrell.
As inferred from the clip above, Brice ends up accidentally killing Susan. He goes to his consigliere’s house to alert him of what happened. Brice plans to confess, believing that the other man can ID him. However, his consigliere (Will Patton) decides that rather than turn himself in, they could claim that the other man is a suspected KGB sleeper agent code-named “Yuri”. This way Susan’s death could be made a matter of national security and “Yuri” could be killed “in the line of duty” – aka they invent a bogus reason to figure out who the other guy is, and they kill him. After locking down the Pentagon (where they work), Brice eventually admits to killing Susan, and Farrell is free to go.
The crazy thing about this is that even though “Yuri” was unrelated, and being used as a cover-up, Farrell is Yuri! After everything is cleared up at the Pentagon, it seems like the movie will end. Farrell gets brought in for questioning, and it turns out everyone in the room is working for the Russian government. It was seemingly immaterial to the story, but then adds an additional layer, the idea that Farrell seduced Susan to try and find out intel about Brice. This of course does not matter for 99% of the movie – Farrell didn’t kill Susan, and there was no reason to believe she was connected to Yuri, except that she was!
10). Scream (1996) – The Twist: There are 2 killers.
I have a special place in my heart for this movie. I’ve said it before on this blog, but it is the only movie that truly scared me, and it hit me at just the right time.
The key reason this is such a great twist is because up until this point, slasher movies had usually featured a single killer. While there are crimes committed by duos or gangs, serial killers usually operate alone. Ghostface obviously looked the same every time it appeared on screen, and therefore no one had any reason to think that there would be 2 killers. They had a few red herrings in there, with suggestions that the killer could be Dewey, or even the school principal, and I think by keeping the viewer busy trying to figure out who it is, it distracts them from the idea that it was a 2-person job.
In retrospect, it seems sort of obvious. Even just the idea that Ghostface would be on the phone with a prospective victim, and then could attack them from inside their house without the victim hearing him talk on the phone would suggest that there had to be more than 1 person involved. Ghostface covers a lot of ground, and it would be impossible for one person to be in as many places simultaneously. Due to the sheer number of places Ghostface appears to be, there is actually a fan theory that they got some help from a third person, one who would end up being the killer in Scream 3. Nevertheless, this simple twist catches people off guard, and holds up over time.
“Surprise Sidney!”
9). Memento (2000) – The Twist: Leonard Shelby accidentally killed his wife via too many insulin injections, and also has been killing criminals for a full year under the guise of the of the victim’s being his wife’s killer.
Woah, a lot to unpack here. Memento is a very underrated, twisty thriller about a man with anterograde amnesia, meaning that he is unable to form new memories. This movie has a very unique structure, with two timelines, one being told in reverse to mimic the amnesia (since Leonard can’t form new memories, and doesn’t remember what happened since a head trauma ), and one being told forward.
Leonard Shelby (Guy Pierce) is in search of the man who raped and murdered his wife. As he gathers evidence, with his condition, he has to get tattoos (of his notes), leave himself notes on paper, and take pictures. Even with these notes, he can’t possibly remember everything he’s learned, or the context in which he learned it. There is a guy named Teddy who helps him a bit with the case, finding leads or people of interest. Reminding him of what he “knows”. They are searching for a man named “John G”.
One thing that happens a few times throughout the investigation is that Leonard references a story from his days as an insurance claims investigator. The reason the story comes up is because he was investigating a guy named Sammy Jankis, who suffers from the same condition that he does:
After Leonard denied the claim for Jankis, Sammy’s wife was having a hard time dealing with the debt and the frustration of the situation. Based on Leonard’s claim denial, she wanted to test Sammy to see if he was faking. After a while she put him to the ultimate test; she was a diabetic, and Sammy used to give her the necessary insulin shots. One day, Sammy gave her the shot, she turned back the clock, to see what he did when the clock showed that it was (again) time for her shot. Would his “love” for her allow him to overcome his condition and remember that he already gave her the shot? It didn’t, he wasn’t faking, and she ultimately overdosed on the insulin after too many shots.
So, we have a confused Leonard, constantly on the hunt for John G. We’re as confused as he is because we’re learning information as he does. All we know is, someone raped and murdered his wife, and in an attempted defense of his wife, he suffered a head trauma the resulted in amnesia. This is all stuff we believe to be true. All until it is revealed that Teddy is actually a cop. He has been telling Leonard details under the guise that they’re finding John G, when really, he is just using Leonard to get rid of various criminals. Apparently, they found and killed the murderer one year prior.
Although Leonard has amnesia, and believes he is avenging his wife, he is racking up a body count, and is seemingly a bit less noble than we had realized. Then comes the kicker, the story about Sammy Jankis was really about Leonard. It is a fabrication he has concocted in order to deal with his guilt over accidentally killing his wife. A tricky and windy movie, we walk out feeling much like Leonard: a bit hazy on the details.
“Now where was I?”
8.) Oldboy (2003) – The Twist: Mi-Do is Dae-su’s daughter. Dae-su was kidnapped as revenge for outing a love affair between classmates of his who were siblings, leading one of them to take their own life.
This is a twist that has apparently been done a couple of times before, though not in any movie I had ever seen prior. The impressive thing to me about this twist is that the movie is building toward something big, and the climax has to live up to the rest of the plot.
The movie starts when Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years. One day, he is released, without ever knowing why he was kidnapped in the first place. That’s a crazy way to start a movie!
As a viewer, we know that we are going to find out why this happened, and the reasoning has to pass the smell test. For such an elaborate and torturous situation, Dae-su must have really angered someone. The motive for the kidnapping is one thing, but the twist is nuts.
Dae-su goes on a quest to figure out why he was kidnapped. Along the way, he meets Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang), a young lady who joins him on his quest. Their relationship turns romantic. It turns out, this was all part of a plan.
Their meeting was more or less arranged, and they were both hypnotized to be triggered by certain stimuli, causing them to fall in love with the person responsible for said stimuli. Unfortunately, Dae-su has been brainwashed and tortured so much in the last 15 years (multiple times a day), he forgot his previous life, a life in which he had a wife, and a daughter…a daughter who was very young when her father disappeared, and doesn’t really know what he looked like.
To be fair, the whole master plan idea would’ve felt a bit silly, but for the severity of the twist. If the villain just kidnapped Dae-su, it wouldn’t have worked for me. What happens is so over-the-top that the plan feels justified, not morally, but in terms of magnitude. A real shocker.
7). The Sixth Sense (1999) – The Twist: Dr. Crowe has been dead the whole time.
Unfortunately, I had the twist spoiled for me prior to seeing the movie, but I remember this movie was huge when it came out. Mainstream movies like this didn’t usually have a twist this jarring. The Sixth Sense was not only popular at the box office, but was nominated for Best Picture at the 1999-2000 Oscars, a rare feat for a supernatural Horror/Thriller. M. Night Shyamalan was being lauded as the next Spielberg.
Looking back, it seems a bit silly because 1) We see Dr. Crowe (Bruce Willis) gets shot in the beginning of the movie, and 2) Shyamalan’s follow-up movies often contained a big plot twist, but were nowhere near as good as that of The Sixth Sense. There are some that believe if this were his third movie, rather than his first movie, and we had an expectation of a twist, this would’ve been less monumental. That’s certainly a fair argument, but not totally relevant, because it was Shyamalan’s first movie, and the twist holds up nicely.
Crowe spends a lot of time with a patient, Cole (Haley Joel Osment), who is struggling because he can see dead people, and they bother him. Upon re-watch, you can find little Easter eggs setting up the finale, and the whole thing checks out.
It is a thrilling movie, as the audience can also see the dead people, and we’re “treated” to jump scares from the bothersome spirits who are haunting the poor kid. All the while, Crowe is trying to reconcile with his wife, with little success, of course, because he is dead.
As moviegoers we have to trust what we see, and even though there were enough clues to support what ultimately happened, we assume that if we see another person on-screen, they’re probably a real person.
6.) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – The Twist: Andy escapes from Shawshank prison.
Shawshank is not commonly mentioned among the movies with great plot twists, which I don’t understand, because I did not see the escape coming at all!
The amazing thing is that we don’t even really get a hint of an escape. The reason they are able to get away with this twist without really providing a hint ahead of time is that they are able to parallel the twist with another possible outcome for the character. In this case, the parallel arc is that Andy commits suicide.
Leading up to the escape, the movie does a great job of making it seem like Andy (Tim Robbins) is losing hope. He has the “Get busy living or get busy dying” chat with Red (Morgan Freeman), where he seems like he’s reached his breaking point . There’s the build-up where his friends are talking about how he seems really down, and Heywood (William Sadler) admits that he gave Andy some rope upon request…
There’s the morning roll call, and Andy doesn’t come out of his cell. The authorities are walking toward his cell, and everything is pointing to suicide – I wasn’t even considering escape as a possibility. Andy had been in prison nearly 20 years, and escape was not referenced or spoken about once throughout the entire movie. That’s the genius of this twist. If a prisoner is at his wit’s end, he has two choices 1) “Get busy living…” aka attempt to gain freedom, 2) “…or get busy dying”, die, literally or figuratively.
Given that there was a fork in the road, the story takes us down one path, without hinting at the other. The fact that this other path is equally viable to the one that is suggested is the reason we don’t feel cheated when they pull the rug out from under us. Shawshank is a terrific movie leading up to that point, and the satisfying, frankly relieving twist makes it one of the best movies of all-time.
5.) Gone Girl (2014) – The Twist: Amy is alive and has set Nick up for her murder. Also, later on she murders Desi and decides to go back. I suppose her being pregnant at the end too.
Gone Girl was a best-selling novel and although no one spoiled the actual twist for me, media outlets and people couldn’t seem to resist mentioning that there was a big twist. So, I was prepared for something crazy to happen. Unfortunately, that probably makes me underrate how fantastic this twist was.
We see the meet-cute, they fall in love, and get married. The relationship gets rocky, and then on the morning of their anniversary, Nick (Ben Affleck) comes home to find his house in disarray and no sign of his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike). He calls the police, and we discover, along with Nick and the police, all of the evidence that points to him as the murderer.
Unsurprisingly, a missing beautiful blonde woman is a huge story in the town, and nationally. Especially since there was an easy person to pin it on. As the media circus develops, we’re with Nick as he tries to figure out what happened. We’re pretty sure he’s innocent, we were with him that morning at his bar, and it seems unlikely that he took care of it before that, though not impossible.
There is more and more evidence of their marital troubles as well as the potential for Nick to have a motive to get rid of his wife. We’re not quite sure what Nick is going to do. And then, about halfway through the movie, the scene changes, just like any other transition, and we see Amy driving. Again, I unfortunately knew that there would be a twist in the movie, and therefore was not particularly surprised when this happened, but for some, this was mind-blowing. I’ve spoken with my only reader about the book, and I’m told that their mind was blown as well when they got to this twist.
A slightly lesser twist that I was more shocked by is when she kills Desi later on in the story. I’ve written about this in other posts, but Amy is hiding out at his place, and she has made such a mess back in Missouri that there’s no way she can go back. So, what does evil Amy do? She kills Desi, in a very sudden and horrible way. There is a seduction, they are fornicating, and in the middle of it, she cuts his throat with a box-cutter. The musical score is fantastic in that scene. Definitely a shocker.
Finally, there’s the ending. We’re so conditioned to seeing the villain get their just desserts that it is a bit shocking to see Amy go back to Missouri, not be arrested, and then to trap Nick for life by getting pregnant. All in all, a great thriller with multiple twists that cannot be expected.
4.) The Prestige (2006) – The Twist(s): Both are related to how the Transported Man is performed by each respective magician – Borden and Fallon are twins, and Angier’s “Transported Man” machine clones him, while the original Angier dies in a tank below the stage.
Another entry for Christopher Nolan, another wonderfully dark movie about two rivaling magicians, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).
The rivalry starts off in earnest, with the former coworkers showing up to each other’s shows and sabotaging their rival’s tricks. Borden takes the upper hand when he develops a stunning new trick called the “Transported Man”. Eventually Angier takes the trick a step further. Both twists relate to how each magician is able to pull off the feat. Also, both were foreshadowed earlier in the movie.
Borden’s “Transported Man” is an illusion with two single doors spaced about ten feet apart on stage, and nothing in between them. It is shown that no one is behind either door. Borden walks through the left door and then “transports”, walking out the door on the right. Angier is blown away when he sees it. Cutter (Michael Caine), an engineer that works with Angier, is convinced that Borden must have found a double – that is, someone who looks just like Borden, who could walk out the door on the right and make it look like he transported. Angier insists that there is no way it could be that simple.
Angier actually finds a double for himself and is able to perform the “Transported Man” on his own. However, since he is the performer, he has to start the trick, and ends up below the stage, while his double walks out the door on the right and receives all of the applause and adulation. This drives Angier crazy, and long story short, he ends up traveling to Colorado Springs to commission Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) to invent a machine that could transport him. After spending a lot of time and money, Tesla is able to make the machine, but insists that it will only cause misery, and that it should be destroyed.
Angier goes back to London and performs his new trick, the “Real Transported Man”, where he steps on the machine, encounters some type of electrical current, and then appears to be transported across the room. The trick is heavily lauded, and Angier is back on top.
With Borden, Cutter was right, he uses a double. What we didn’t realize was that Borden’s engineer, a silent, bearded man named Fallon, is actually his twin brother. We see Fallon multiple times throughout the movie, but never for very long. The two of them are so devoted to the trick that they each play both parts (Borden and Fallon), in essence, each living two half-lives. One of them loved their wife, the other one loved their mistress. They both suffer, to some extent, in order to preserve the trick.
The twist with Angier has to do with the machine. In the opening title sequence, we are looking at a bunch of top hats on the ground. We have no idea why they are there, or why there are so many, but they are the key piece of foreshadowing of what’s to come. We find out that the machine Tesla made doesn’t just transport objects across a room. It clones them, sending the new object across the room. Every time Angier performed the trick, the he fell below stage through a trap door and drowned in a tank, while the clone appeared on the other side of the theater.
The Prestige is a great movie about the psychology behind rivalry and performing. Both men are completely devoted to their art and to being the best, to the extent that it killed them both, or 1.5 of them, “Fallon” is still alive. Given that both twists were hinted at earlier in the movie, it begs the question, “are you watching closely?”
3) Fight Club (1999) – The Twist: Tyler Durden isn’t real, he is an alternate personality created by the narrator.
This is the second David Fincher movie on this list, though to be fair, he didn’t write the source material for either one. Still, the twist is very well-executed. I will say, I heard about this twist before seeing the movie, unfortunately, so I did not feel its full impact.
As noted above in the entry about The Sixth Sense, if we see someone on-screen, we tend to assume they’re a real person in the movie. The kicker with this plot twist is that we saw Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) interact with other people. In The Sixth Sense, Dr. Crowe tries to interact with his wife, but she never responds. We think this is because they’re estranged, but obviously it’s because he’s dead and she can’t see or hear him.
Tyler Durden, on the other hand, stands in the middle of a group of men and makes speeches. Meatloaf’s character references him. Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) has an affair with him. On top of that, the narrator (Edward Norton) is present at the speeches, which makes it very difficult to predict that they’d be the same person.
Multiple personalities can be too easy of a twist in certain movies. It’s easy to have the main character have an alternate personality that they don’t remember, it’s as old as Jekyll and Hyde. Some movies run into trouble by not showing the actions of the alternate personality. The beauty of Fight Club is that Tyler Durden is treated exactly like a regular character, with plenty of screen time and interactions with other characters. This basically made the twist impossible to see coming, while at the same time, the explanation of the twist is good enough that is doesn’t feel like it’s out of left field.
2.) Psycho (1960) – The Twists: A) The movie is not a psychological thriller, but rather a slasher! B) The star of the movie gets killed half way through. C) Norman Bates’ mother is dead, he’s the one who has been killing people. D) The “monster” was a regular person!
The shower scene from Psycho is one of the most famous scenes in movie history. It is also one of the most functionally impactful scenes in movie history. Three of the four main twists are revealed in this one scene!
Although I was well aware of the shower scene and Norman Bates being the villain prior to seeing the movie, I didn’t really know the actual plot of the movie. Given that the change in the tone of the plot is one of the twists of the movie, it is important to set the stage:
Marion Crane (Janet Leigh, comfortably the biggest star in the movie), lives in Arizona and is having an affair with a California man who claims they can’t afford to get married because of his debts. She works as a secretary at a real-estate company, and is asked by her boss to deposit their client’s money at the bank ($40,000 cash, in 1960!). Although not a criminal, Marion decides to steal the money and drive to California so that her boyfriend can use the money to square his debts, and they can get married.
While stopped at a red light, she almost gets spotted by her boss while she’s leaving town. Later on, she pulls over to the side of the road and goes to sleep. Marion is woken up by a police officer, she behaves somewhat oddly and drives away. The cop follows her after this suspicious behavior. In order to lose the cop, she pulls into an auto dealership in California and trades in her car.
I give all of this background to say, right now, the emotional core of the movie is a thriller. Marion has stolen money and is making a run for it. Along the way she encounters the two main authorities who would stop her, a cop, and her boss. The music compliments the mood really well, as she’s clearly scared and a bit erratic, not sure if the crime has been reported, and whether the police are after her. Then…
A heavy rainstorm causes Marion to pull in to a motel on the side of the road. The only man working there is a boyishly handsome, nervous young fellow named Norman Bates. Marion joins Norman for dinner and then goes back to her room to take a shower. Prior to taking the shower, she wraps the stolen money in newspaper to hide it. As Marion washes off there is no music, just the sound of a shower. A shadowy figure approaches and then very abrupt, staccato-heavy music starts, and Marion is brutally stabbed to death in the shower.
The scene is most famous for breaking new ground on the violent and sexual imagery that was allowed to be depicted on-screen. However, it was also revolutionary for three of the twists that are listed above. First and foremost, it shifts the entire tone of the movie. We think it’s a thriller and are wondering if Marion will be caught by the police. It doesn’t even occur to the audience that she will be savagely stabbed to death by a stranger!
The scene also went against expectations for both the movie star and the “monster”. To that point, no mainstream movies, especially in the thriller/horror genre killed off the main star half way through. That was a shock. Also, as noted in the article linked above, the evil in horror movies was always a monster of some kind, whether Godzilla, Dracula, etc. Although we can’t see the murderer to know that it’s human, it seems pretty clear that this shadowy figure is a regular person who is just evil. Psycho was the first entry in the slasher genre.
Finally, the big twist, the one that everyone knows and thinks of. Norman Bates references his mother all the time, and we hear them having a conversation. In the second stabbing, the murderer is a figure with a woman’s long blonde hair. When Bates discovers Marion’s dead body he is shocked and almost throws up. Sure, he gets rid of the body, but his nerves sell us on his innocence. Of course, in the movie’s climax, we find out that his mother has been dead for years, and that it is Norman who dresses up like her and kills unsuspecting people.
Historically, Psycho should take the top spot for completely subverting audience expectations in multiple ways, and creating a new genre of movies. However, on this subjective list, I have to dock it one spot because by the time I finally saw it, the main twist was already spoiled for me. Maybe that’s not fair or logical reasoning, but what can I say, “we all go a little mad sometimes.”
1.) The Usual Suspects (1995) – The Twist: Verbal Kint is Keyser Soze.
I love this movie. A popular source of twists can come from an unreliable narrator. In Fight Club, the unreliable narrator doesn’t realize that he’s not reliable. In Suspects, Verbal (Kevin Spacey) isn’t a narrator per se, but we’re hearing the events through his lens, and he is being deliberately incorrect.
There’s just something special about the twists that have been right in front of our eyes the whole time. They are more shocking and they reward re-watching the movie in order to see if there were any clues of what was to come, double-checking that the movie did the appropriate work to get to the shock.
Often with these types of twists, it is related to one of the main characters. Are they real? Are they dead? Keyser Soze combines the devotion aspect that we see from Borden in The Prestige, with the greatest improvisation skills of all time? Similar to how Borden had a twin, each living two half-lives to maintain the artistry of their trick, Keyser Soze established himself as a criminal with Cerebral Palsy, in order to get back at some other criminals who had screwed him over, and also to kill the one potential witness who could ID him for authorities.
Once caught, Verbal/Soze is interrogated by US Customs Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) and just strings together stories and offhand remarks based on things he’s seen in the room. For example, he starts talking about how he was in a barbership quartet in Skokie, IL, and then it is revealed that the company that makes the cork board on the back wall is based in Skokie, IL. In Verbal’s account, Keyser Soze’s right hand man is a guy named Kobayashi, and then it is later revealed that the coffee mugs they were using were made by a company called Kobayashi Porcelain.
We’re not shown all of these clues while Verbal and Cujan are talking, to be fair, so it would’ve been difficult to sniff out that level of detail. I think the thing that is remarkable once everything revealed is that we were just told a whole story and we don’t know how much of it is real, and how much was just Soze making up an alternate narrative for why the crime on the boat took place.
I’ve since watched this movie with people who were able to figure out the twist before the reveal. While that is disappointing, I don’t believe it is because the twist is too obvious. I think there are a couple of outside factors that have made it easier for people:
a.) For many of the years since this movie was released, Kevin Spacey has been the most famous actor in the movie, which to many watching now means that he must have the biggest and most important role in the story, which opens him up to greater suspicion. Back in 1995, Spacey was not as well-known as he is today, so it wasn’t as obvious that his involvement in the story would have to be major.
b.) The slasher satire Scary Movie (2000) ripped off the ending of Suspects. There was a character in the movie who seemed to be mentally handicapped, and then he ended up being the villain, and in a direct homage/parody he left a police station and straightened up his walk in the same way as Verbal. This always annoyed me because Scary Movie was supposed to spoof the teen slasher movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and The Usual Suspects was not one of those movies. So why incorporate it?
c. There have just been more movies with plot twists since 1995, which has conditioned viewers to expect the unexpected. Eight of the eleven other movies on this list came out after Suspects.
Alas, that’s the tragedy of this subset of movies. Twists are an enjoyable component to any story, and it’s very difficult to keep the lid on. As noted above, even if someone doesn’t spoil the exact twist, just knowing there’s a twist dampens its effect because then I’m watching the movie trying to figure out what it is. I hope they still keep writing stories with sharp twists, and that creative people are able to figure out how to best execute these stories.
Honorable Mentions: Shutter Island, Murder on the Orient Express, Interstellar, The Departed, Chinatown, Se7en, Primal Fear, Gone Baby Gone, Vertigo, The Machinist, Saw, Mulholland Dr., Lucky Number Sleven, Ocean’s 11, The Life of David Gale
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