Greatest Movie Twists, Spoilers, and Surprise Endings: Avid filmgoers often speak about seeking rare movie surprises in the movie-going experience, such as discovering films that have cunning plot twists, a shocking surprise ending, a surprise revelation about a particular character, or some other unknown or unsuspected narrative element. Compiled here in this comprehensive collection is a detailed set of films with the greatest movie twists, spoilers, and surprise endings.

Note: The films that are marked with a yellow star are the films that
"The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films".

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

The Island (2005)

Jacob's Ladder (1990)

In the prologue of this psychological thriller, Vietnam vet soldier Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) suffered a serious bayonet wound to the stomach, and was helicoptered out of the fighting zone to an army hospital. The film led one to believe he survived, but in reality, he died in combat on an operating table (revealed in the final scene). Singer's horrifying, hallucinatory visions of horned creatures and demons were the fantasies and dreams of a dying (or dead) man (experiencing death-bed visions) who couldn't accept his death and was unwilling to let go. Throughout the film, there were foreshadowings of his death - a palm reader named Elsa (S. Epatha Merkerson) told him: "You're already dead"; and during a horrific experience in hell/purgatory where he was taken on a gurney, he was bluntly told by an Evil Doctor (Davidson Thomson) in the blood-stained underworld hospital that he was dead ("You've been killed. Don't you remember?"); his guardian angel/chiropractor named Louis (Danny Aiello) counseled him about hell being like purgatory: "Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life. Your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul...So the way he sees it, if you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearin' your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freein' you from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it, that's all. So don't worry, okay? 'K? Relax...relax. Relax." Before accepting his own death, Jacob needed to be reconciled with the fact of the death of his young 6 year-old son Gabriel (uncredited Macauley Culkin) while he was still in Vietnam, when he remembered /imagined Gabe's death by an automobile when the young boy was picking up baseball cards he had dropped in the middle of the street while walking his bicycle. Jacob also had a secret rendezvous with 'hippie chemist' Michael Newman (Matt Craven) who told him that his battalion had been secretly given a dose in their C-rations of an experimental psycho-reactive drug (code-named 'ladder'), to counteract the effects of combat-induced post-traumatic stress, but instead caused the soldiers to kill each other. Although there may have been a government conspiracy, Jacob's hallucinations upon his return to NYC were not caused by the drug, or battle stress, but because he wasn't freeing his soul. In the next-to-final scene (in his old apartment bathed in golden light), Jacob finally accepted his own death. In the climax, Jacob spotted his dead son Gabe, who was playing with a red music box (playing "Sonny Boy") on the stairs - the boy looked up and greeted him with: "Hi Dad!" As they hugged, Gabe reassured his father: "It's OK" - followed by Gabe telling him: "Come on, let's go up" - meaning their ascension up the staircase into the golden light. Jacob's death on an operating table in Vietnam was then revealed, as an army doctor stated: "He's gone. He looks kind of peaceful... He put up a hell of a fight, though." The final screen stated: "It was reported that the hallucinogenic drug BZ was used in experiments on soldiers during the Vietnam war. The Pentagon denied the story."

Jagged Edge (1985)

Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003)
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004)

Writer/director Quentin Tarantino's blood-soaked, very violent action and grindhouse film (a revenge fantasy), contained numerous pop cultural references and stylized violence - it was another cinematic homage to the genres he loved most: kung-fu and martial arts (chopsocky) films, crime dramas, Japanese anime, B-movies, blaxploitation, Hong Kong action films, samurai sword epics and 'spaghetti' westerns. The film's main plot was revenge of an assassinatrix (or hit-woman) named the "Bride" (Uma Thurman) (aka Black Mamba), widowed (and left childless) after her presumed 'death' on her El Paso, Texas "dress rehearsal" wedding day after an attack on the chapel by four members of the DiVAS (the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad - an elite group that she belonged to, led by her unseen boss Bill (David Carradine)). In the film's opening sequence, set right after the massacre in the chapel, Bill wiped the Bride's bloody face with his monogrammed handkerchief, as he told her, "Now, Kiddo, I'd like to believe that you're aware enough even now to know that there's nothing sadistic in my actions. Well, maybe towards those other jokers, but not you. No Kiddo, at this moment, this is me at my most masochistic." As he cocked his pistol, she replied: "Bill, it's your baby," but he put a bullet into her head anyway. It appeared that everyone, including her unborn child, were murdered as well as members of the bridal party. However, the Bride survived the attack although she was comatose for four years (when she awoke from her coma, she cried out, "My baby, my baby!") She created a Death Hit List of five that she would target: the four DiVAS, and finally Bill.

In the conclusion of the film, it was revealed that the Bride (aka Arlene Machiavelli - the fake name on her marriage certificate) was Bill's former lover, and he was disturbed by her secret pregnancy, her move to El Paso, and her planned wedding to Tommy Plympton (Christopher Allen Nelson), a used record store dealer in El Paso. The Bride, real-named Beatrix Kiddo, tried to escape the assassination-business (and Bill) when she found out she was pregnant (she wanted to keep the baby a secret so that Bill wouldn't claim it: "She deserved to be born with a clean slate. But with you, she would have been born into a world she shouldn't have. I had to choose. I chose her"), and then settle in El Paso, Texas. When she disappeared, he became jealously enraged - he ordered her assassination and also pulled the trigger on her head, and then unbeknownst to her, cut out her unborn child (in utero) and lovingly raised the daughter himself. [The last line of Vol. 1 provided this hint from Bill: "Is she aware her daughter is still alive?"] The Bride met her four year-old child, named B.B. (Perla Haney-Jardine), who obviously loved her father, for the first time, in their final confrontation in his hacienda. He had told B.B. that Mommy was asleep, but that one day she'd wake up and come back to her (B.B. confirmed this: "I waited a long time for you to wake up, Mommy"). They all played at being a family for awhile and Bill made a sandwich for the girl. Beatrix ultimately sought revenge against the estranged Bill, claiming that she had "unfinished business with him." To kill him, she used "the five point palm-exploding heart technique" taught to her by martial arts master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), and he died after taking five steps on his back lawn. Then, she departed with B.B., and the next morning, felt conflicting emotions (both grief and laughter) over the death of Bill, as she lay on a motel bathroom floor while hugging a stuffed animal ("Thank you, Thank you"), and then hugged her child as they watched Saturday morning cartoons in the adjoining bedroom together ("THE LIONESS HAS REJOINED HER CUB AND ALL IS RIGHT IN THE JUNGLE").

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Klute (1971)

Knowing (2009)

Alex Proyas' sci-fi action disaster thriller was set up with the opening of a 50 year-old elementary school time capsule with letters written by Lexington, Massachusetts schoolchildren in 1959; the letter of sad, slightly disturbed schoolgirl Lucinda Embry (Lara Robinson) was selected by precocious schoolboy Caleb (Chandler Canterbury), the son of recent widower, MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage). The piece of paper had seemingly random numbers scrawled on it, and although Koestler believed in the randomness of the universe, he deciphered the numbers as meaningful and logical. He believed that a series of numbers in the letter, such as 911012996, referred, like Nostradamus, to "every major global disaster for the last 50 years in perfect sequence" (the World Trade Center disaster, the Lockerbie terrorist jet bombing on 12/21/88 when 270 died, the 168 people who died in the Oklahoma City bombing on 4/19/95, other plane crashes, car pileups, and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or the South Asia tsunami, etc.), and then figured out that the numbers were in exact sequence by date, body count (2,996 died on 9/11), and then GPS positional coordinates (latitude and longitude). The recent death of his wife Allison by smoke inhalation in a Phoenix hotel room while on a business trip was included on the list - an additional hint that his own son Caleb had been chosen by Lucinda to receive the prophecies. In fact, Caleb was met a few times by silent bleached-blonde, silent Nordic individuals in dark coats, "whisper people" (who also spoke to Lucinda through telepathy) who handed him a smooth black rock (a sign of the aliens' presence whenever seen in the film) - and he was allowed to envision a future event as a dream: a woodland wildfire consuming stampeding deer and moose. There were three more deadly events about to happen in the near future, and John was an eye-witness to each of them - first, a realistically-fiery commercial plane crash near Boston's Logan Airport as he was driving on a clogged freeway, in which 81 died, due to an increase in electromagnetic radiation that fouled controls - according to reports. He also foretold a Worth and Lafayette St. (Manhattan) subway train derailment crash-collision that he again participated in. During his inquiries, Koestler met up with Lucinda's daughter, a single mother named Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne) who had a daughter named Abby (also Lara Robinson). Caleb and young Abby instantly became friends, although Diane at first rebuffed Koestler, but then met up with him again and admitted that her mother Lucinda had always warned her that she would die on October 19th (the last listed event). Together, they drove to Lucinda's abandoned mobile home trailer in the woods where her mother had died of a drug overdose (in 1988), and guessed (and found evidence) that the final numbers: 10190933 were actually EE="everyone else" written backwards, signifying that there would be no survivors in the final catastrophe on October 19, 2009. [Because Lucinda was rushed when writing the letter, she didn't complete it, and had left off a few final coordinate numbers - including the death of Diane and the entire world. John discovered that the final set of numbers, scratched by Lucinda's fingernails on the inside of a closet door in the school, were the coordinates of Lucinda's house, the only safe place to go.] Outside the mobile home in the film's ending, John was told by his son and Abby (who was also experiencing whispers) that the mysterious black-suited figures who had been following both of them thoughout the film ("the whisper people") had been trying to protect Caleb and Abby, and that the two children had been chosen to leave Earth (each with a rabbit) to start over on another planet, but Caleb's father could not join them because he couldn't hear their whispers ("But we have to go with them. They won't hurt us....They've been protecting us all along, Dad. They sent a message ahead of them to prepare the way, and now they've come for us...They've chosen us so we can start over. So everything can start over...He's saying only the chosen must go, those who heard the call"). The "whisper people" were revealed as four luminescent creatures with wing-like wisps of light emanating from them. After a heartfelt goodbye with his son, and the aliens' departure in a massive spaceship shaped like Ezekiel's Wheel (from a Biblical drawing of Ezekiel's "chariot vision"), Koestler traveled back to New York City to reunite with his estranged religious father Reverend Koestler (Alan Hopgood) (and with his mother and sister Grace (Nadia Townsend)) before the solar flare incinerated all life on the planet. A view from space showed that more than one spaceship took off from Earth. The last event was cataclysmic and apocalyptic - a disaster of worldwide proportions due to a massive, unstoppable solar flare (energy bursts that destroyed the Earth's ozone layer) that consumed the NYC skyline and Times Square (and soon the entire Earth), prefaced by chaos in the city's streets. The final shot of the film was of the two Boston surburban kids, Caleb and Abby, in pure white robes, running through a field of alien filament grass toward a beautiful, white crystalline tree - a tree of life in Eden? The reveal of the "whisper people" and the final scene on the alien planet (with spaceships landing) was controversial among viewers and critics for its religious implications, and the fact that the movie never clearly stated whether or not the "whisper people" were meant to be aliens, celestial angels, or some representation of both - and probably contributed to the film's cool reception.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

Lady in the Water (2006)

Writer/director/actor M. Night Shyamalan's fantasy thriller about the power of myth and the importance of community contained no traditional trademark "plot twist," although there was a mystery element about the roles of the many characters. It told about The Cove apartment manager in Philadelphia: stuttering Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti), who was hiding a tragic past (he was a doctor who had lost his family by murder). In the pool of his 5-story complex, he found pale-faced, red-haired Story, a "lady in the water" (a narf) (Bryce Dallas Howard) who was from the "Blue World." As an opening voice-over with crude animated illustrations had described, she had come to the land of men to help change the world and help lead humankind out of its troubled warring state, but she also had to return to her world. A fairy tale, told by one of the tenants, a Korean mother Mrs. Choi (June Kyoto Lu), brought Story's scary predicament and life to reality - she described a bedtime story about a scared young water-nymph, actually a Madam Narf, who wanted to journey back to her home via a giant eagle known as the Great Eatlon, although her first task was to be an emissary and impart a healing message. She was to locate and then motivate serious but unpublished political writer Vick Ran (M. Night Shyamalan) to complete his work (a book titled "The Cookbook") - an influential and important historical book that would one day inspire a young boy to read it and later become the President of the US. She was fearful of growling, grass-furred scrunts, beastly creatures in the grass who would consume her. The film's message was that there were different archetypal roles to be played by the talents of various apartment tenants to assist Story in getting home, but they needed to be matched up correctly during her departure ceremony. Eventually, they succeeded in identifying the proper roles: Heep = Healer, crossword puzzle master Mr. Dury's (Jeffrey Wright) son Joey (Noah Gray-Cabey) who could read cereal boxes = Interpreter, Hispanic family's five sisters + 2 others (the Korean college student (Cindy Cheung (Young-Soon Choi) and the writer's sister Anna (Sarita Choudhury) = Guild (7 Sisters), bodybuilder Reggie (Freddy Rodriguez) = Guardian, plus two witnesses: the intellectual bookish reclusive shut-in Mr. Leeds (Bill Irwin) = one whose opinion was highly respected, and Mr. Bubchik (Tom Mardirosian) = a man who has no secrets. As Story was about to be rescued by the eagle, the Tartutic monkeys in the trees attacked the wolfish-scrunt and killed it, and she was safely taken.

The Last Seduction (1994)

John Dahl's modern-day dark noir featured lethal, sexy, amoral, cold-blooded and brainy femme fatale Bridget Gregory (Linda Fiorentino), who used her sexual wiles to manipulate others; she first absconded with her physician husband Clay's (Bill Pullman) $700,000 of drug money (a deal which she masterminded), and fled to Upper State New York to the small town of Breston; Bridget, adopting the alias Wendy Kroy (an acronym for New York), convinced gullible stud Mike Swale (Peter Berg) into planning to murder Clay (who was trumped up to be an unfaithful husband/cheater and wife beater named Cahill); later, in the film's twisting plot, when Mike realized Bridget's deception ("So you were gonna have me kill your husband"), both Clay and Mike had teamed up and were going to double-cross her; however, she killed Clay by spraying Mace down his throat, after kissing him; she then aggravated Mike to rape her by first removing her pants and displaying old fashioned men's underwear, reinforcing Mike's fears of being homosexual, after his earlier unwitting and mistaken marriage to a trans-sexual named Trish (Serena); she then taunted him: "You shouldn't have told me you had never slept with a man before. Must have been some wild night, you got married so fast... "; she then angered him over his damaging relationship: "He had to keep the goods hidden for a whole two days. What did you think - that little bobbling thing at the back of your throat was a clitoris!? You married a man, you farm faggot!...I'm Trish. Rape me..."; she also self-incriminated him by surreptitiously recording their conversation and the crime/rape confessional role-play on a 911 call, including the accusation that she repeatedly screamed out: "You killed my husband!"; Mike was jailed while the slyly-smiling Bridget, a rape victim and widow, was free to escape with the cash in the back of a chauffeured limousine, as she burned the last piece of evidence - a slip of paper with the name "Cahill" on it

Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Fr/It.) (aka L'Année Dernière à Marienbad)