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)

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Klute (1971)

L.A. Confidential (1997)

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)