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Greatest Movie Twists Part 2 |
 are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films". |
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.
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Greatest Movie Twists Part 2 |
are the films that "The Greatest Films" site has selected as the "100 Greatest Films". |
| (alphabetical by film title) - Part 2 Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 |
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| Film Title | Brief Scene Description | Example |
April Fool's Day (1986) |
In this tongue-in-cheek slasher horror film, eight college students who liked to play April Fool's jokes on each other, met during spring break at the secluded island home of hostess Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman), to celebrate her 21st birthday (on April Fool's Day) during a 'bloody unforgettable’ weekend; the oddly-behaving Muffy reportedly had a deranged twin sister named Buffy who was in an institution; one by one, the students died (off-screen) by decapitation, throat cutting, castration, stabbing, and hanging, with one suspected killer being the injured ferry worker from the film's opening; only Kit (Amy Steel) and Rob (Ken Olandt) were left at film's end, chased by the suspected killer Buffy into the living room, where she found all the others resurrected and alive; it had all been an elaborate hoax or ruse for April Fool's Day, explained when Buffy showed that the knife wasn't sharp - causing the freaked-out Kit to scream; Muffy explained that there was no Buffy, and that the entire weekend had been a test for future bed & breakfast 'murder weekends' she was planning for the mansion; in an additional twist, librarian Nan (Leah Pinsent) - supposedly angered by Muffy's reference to an abortion - slit the throat of soused Muffy when she returned to her bedroom - but then revealed that the knife and blood were fake as she smiled at the camera/audience |      
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| Arlington Road (1999) |
Widowed college history professor Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) became convinced that his nine year-old son Grant (Spencer Treat Clark) had been kidnapped by his white supremacist, structural engineer surburban Virginia neighbor Oliver Lang (Tim Robbins) - a dangerous extremist; when he saw the boy in a van heading towards FBI headquarters, he drove his car through the barricades and into the underground parking lot of the FBI building; he discovered - too late - that his neighbor had set him up and duped him with a destructive bomb planted in the trunk -- which exploded and killed him, and wounded and killed many others; the resultant news coverage blamed him as the criminal, although the real criminal was his terrorist psychotic neighbor; this film's twist ending was similar to the one in The Parallax View (1974) |  |
Atonement (2007) |
The film's plot centered on fanciful, manipulative 13 year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan) who mistakenly identified and accused her sister Cecilia Tallis' (Keira Knightley) 'secret' boyfriend, servant/cook son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), of 'raping' her 15 year-old cousin Lola Quincey (Juno Temple). [Later it was revealed that houseguest/chocolate tycoon Paul Marshall (Benedict Cumberpatch) was actually making love to Lola, and a few years later married her, but the act was misinterpreted by the young Briony as 'rape'.] Robbie was dragged off to jail and then released to join the British forces at the start of World War II. At the end of the film, older, terminally-ill (with vascular dementia) novelist Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) was interviewed about her latest and last book - an autobiographical work titled Atonement - when she confessed as an act of penance that much of the end portion of the novel was fabricated in order to bring the two lovers together and make amends. However, she told the interviewer it was "the absolute truth, no rhymes, no embellishments." A scene of reconciliation between 18 year-old nursing student Briony (Romola Garai) and her estranged sister (and Robbie) was "imagined, invented," in which Briony promised to make a written apology and officially recant her false accusation. However, both Robbie and Cecilia died during the war, never to experience the happiness they desired. Robbie died of septicemia on the last day of the Dunkirk evacuation before returning home, and Cecilia died a few months later when bombs flooded the London underground tunnel where she was seeking shelter. The final scene was an idealized look at the lovers cavorting on the beach near a beach house, as Briony stated: "So in the book, I wanted to give Robbie and Cecilia what they lost out on in life. I'd like to think this isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness. I gave them their happiness" |     
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| Audition (1999, Jp.) |
A shocking transformation and character reversal was the almost-unbelievable plot twist in this film: seemingly-demure, virginal and dutifully-humble 24 year-old 'auditioned' bride-to-be Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina) turned into a vengeful, sadistic torturer who exacted her revenge on middle-aged, lonely widower Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi); she first drugged and temporarily paralyzed him (with a syringe), and then terrorized him with acupuncture needles (stuck into his eyelids) and piano wire (used to amputate or wire-saw off his left foot), before she herself broke her neck (and became paralyzed from the neck down) after a fall down stairs |   |
Back to the Future (1985) |
The funny twist ending when panicked mad scientist Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd) suddenly returned to 1985 Hill Valley from the future year of 2015 in his silver DeLorean time machine vehicle, shouting: "Marty! You've gotta come back with me!...Back to the future!"; he forced reunited teenagers Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and girlfriend Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells) into his car, as Marty asked: "Wait a minute, Doc. What are you talkin' about? What happens to us in the future? Do we become assholes or somethin'?"; Doc responded with worries about their future children: "No, no, no, no, no, Marty. Both you and Jennifer turn out fine. It's your kids, Marty! Something has gotta be done about your kids!"; as Doc charged up the DeLorean and squealed out of the driveway, Marty noted: "Hey, Doc. We better back up. We don't have enough road to get up to 88"; Doc smugly replied with a famous line: "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!" - the DeLorean unexpectedly levitated into the air, then zoomed down the street, turned, and flew directly into the camera. |
  
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| Bad Education (2004, Sp.) (aka La Mala Educacion) |
Pedro Almodovar's noirish drama-thriller included a Hitchcock-like, Vertigo (1958)-inspired twisting identity plot in its 'story within a script' in the film; the major plot line was that successful Spanish filmmaker Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) was visited by his first-love interest -- his grammar school friend who had become a present-day writer named Ignacio Rodriguez (Gael García Bernal) (a cross-dressing transvestite with stage name Angel - a 'femme fatale' and pre-operative trans-sexual for sex reassignment surgery); Ignacio had brought him a short story/script called "The Visit" about when they were in school and had been abused by pedophilic Catholic School headmaster-priest Father Manolo (Daniel Giménez Cacho); a dark secret (and double-identity) was then revealed: "Ignacio" - who had been killed four years earlier - was being impersonated by his younger heterosexual brother Juan; Juan was assuming Ignacio's identity in order to seduce Enrique into having him star in his new film based on Ignacio's story; during filming on the set, another double-identity was revealed -- Senor Manuel Berenguer (Lluís Homar) -- actually Father Manolo with a new name/identity, described how he and Juan had teamed up to murder the real Ignacio (played by real-life trans-sexual Francisco "Fran" Boira in flashbacks), a harsh, unlikeable "femme" fatale who was blackmailing the priest about his molestation, by providing him with pure heroin for an overdose; in the coda to the film, Father Manolo was killed by a car driven by Juan |   |
Basic (2003)
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By the twisty conclusion of this violent thriller from director John McTiernan, all of the preceding complex circumstances, flashbacks, interrogations, and confrontations were almost entirely negated; the film's premise began with an elite Army Ranger training exercise that had been held overnight in a rainy Panamanian jungle, led by detested Sergeant Nathan West (Samuel L. Jackson) - there were only two survivors, white Ray Dunbar (Brian Van Holt) and seriously-wounded homosexual Levi Kendall (Giovanni Ribisi); savvy, unconventional, hard-drinking ex-Ranger and DEA Agent Tom Hardy (John Travolta) was called upon by base commander Col. Bill Styles (Timothy Daly) to aid by-the-book Captain Julia Osborne (Connie Nielsen) in questioning the two men; a number 8 with a circle around it was an additional unknown element in the mysterious case; after a few confusing run-throughs or flashbacks (derived from the differing and changing testimonies and far-fetched stories) of what may have transpired in the jungle that led to West's death and the deaths of four others, there were many startling revelations: (1) Ray Dunbar was not Ray Dunbar (who was African-American) - "Ray Dunbar is black" - he was actually white-man Jay Pike who had switched identities with Dunbar by swapping dog-tags, (2), Dr. Peter Vilmer (Harry Connick, Jr.), Osborne's lover, had been profitably selling drugs ("combat cocktails") at the base's hospital to ease soldiers' pain and had falsified drug tests to cover up, (3) when Hardy suspected that Styles was lying and had set-up West to be killed in the jungle, he forced Styles to admit to wrong-doing (drug-trading), including being responsible for Kendall's death by poisoning him in his hospital bed; also, when Styles offered Hardy a 40% cut of the profits if he kept quiet, Hardy refused, forcing Styles to pull out a gun --- causing Osborne, who had been watching the entire conversation from outside, to shoot Styles dead to protect Hardy; (4) although the case seemed closed, Osborne became suspicious of Hardy when he suggested: "all we gotta do is tell the story right" - this was further reinforced when she followed him and she saw Pike jump into his jeep as he drove into Panama City, and (5) at a basement club marked by an 8-ball, Osborne pulled a gun on Hardy, but was completely startled to learn the film's major switcheroo -- Hardy was the head of a special-ops anti-drug unit, orchestrating a conspiracy that had been targeting Styles and Vilmer (and drug-user Kendall) for illicit drug trade, and (6) West and the remainder of the soldiers in the training mission were alive - the question then became: was the elaborate hoax of a training exercise necessary?, and (7) they were all members of a reportedly "renegade" drug unit called "Section 8" - with fake ("ghost") names: "Nunez," "Castro," "Pike," and "Dunbar," and (8) because of Osborne's tenacity, she was offered a job as the film ended |      
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| Director Paul Verhoeven's glossy erotic thriller opened with views (from all angles, including a reflection in a ceiling mirror) of a couple making love - the unidentified female (the film's brutal ice-pick murder suspect) was atop rock star Johnny Boz (Bill Cable), and elements of S&M were revealed when she tied his arms to the bedpost - before stabbing him to death with an icepick; in the film's final scene, prime suspect bi-sexual novelist Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) made love to SF police detective/lover Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) - in the midst of their coupling, she suddenly came down on top of him - her whole body stretched across his - he was motionless; the film teased the audience: was he still alive? had he been pierced with an icepick? When she rolled to the outer side of the bed, she half-turned and twisted around - was there something in her hand? As they kissed more passionately as she pulled him down to her body, the camera slowly descended down her side of the bed; when it lowered to the floor, the camera came to rest on a close-up of the murder weapon - a thin, steel-handled icepick; the finale of the ambiguous film arbitrarily left the inexplicable question of the guilt and/or innocence of the main character still up in the air --? |    |
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| Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993) |
The plot twist/spoiler in the downbeat and sad ending of this
animated version of the Batman tale was that the murderous, masked, and vengeful vigilante villain Phantasm
was not Carl Beaumont (voice of Stacy Keach), but his red-haired,
blue-eyed daughter Andrea (voice of Dana Delany) - using his voice and
assuming his identity to exact revenge on mob bosses led by Salvatore "The Wheezer" Valestra |
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Bay of Blood (1971, It.) (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve)
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Mario Bava's influential and controversial, bloody Italian horror-thriller (one of the first slasher films) told about numerous murders (over a dozen) related to the acquisition-inheritance of the deed to some lake-bayfront property; in the film's ironic final shocking scene, two of the film's murderers: Renata (Claudine Auger) and husband Albert (Luigi Pistilli) were abruptly shot-gunned to death as they stood at the trunk of their Mercedes; they were talking about how they had eliminated all competitors for the property: "the whole bay will be legally ours", and hugged each other with congratulations ("All's well that ends well") when a killer called out: "Mommy, Daddy!" and shot them dead; as the next blurry shot came into focus, it showed their two young children at a trailer window: a boy with the shotgun and a red-headed, pig-tailed girl next to him (uncredited Renato Cestie and Nicoletta Elmi) who gleefully said: "Gee, they're good at playing dead, aren't they?"; they ran down to the bay to play as the film ended |   
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The Bedroom Window (1999)
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Writer/director Curtis Hanson's Hitchcockian (Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much), plot-twisting romantic thriller began with a very simple premise that became more complex and problematic as the film unfolded; after bachelor-architect Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg) had sex for the first time with his executive boss Collin's (Paul Shenar) sexy French wife Sylvia Wentworth (Isabelle Huppert) in his Baltimore apartment after an office party, he was in his bathroom at 2 am when she heard screams coming from outside his second story bedroom window; she witnessed a brutal mugging of a young cocktail waitress, later revealed to be Denise Connolly (Elizabeth McGovern) - during the struggle, Sylvia saw the creepy serial killer face-to-face as she stood nude at the window; she told Terry the attacker was red-haired (with hair combed back into a ducktail), had pasty white skin, and was wearing a windbreaker; to hide the fact of their affair, Terry naively suggested that he would be honorable and report to investigative detectives Quirke (Carl Lumbly) and Jessup (Frederick Coffin) that he had seen the attacker, using her detailed observations as his own; during a line-up (when Terry was unable to make a positive ID) and a subsequent court hearing, second-hand witness Terry was shown by shrewd defense attorney (Wallace Shawn) to be an unreliable witness (without his contact lenses, he couldn't identify a red book at a distance of 20 feet in the courtroom); but to satisfy his own curiosity and act as an amateur detective doing his own surveillance, he trailed after the released prime suspect, a red-headed shipyard welder named Carl Henderson (Brad Greenquist), the "Dumpster Killer," who had since murdered another co-ed the same night of the attack a few blocks away, and a third young woman (labeled the Dancing Girl (Sara Carlson) in the credits); when Terry became a suspect himself, he attempted to have Sylvia testify to the truth, but the cold-hearted woman refused and abandoned him ("You'll have to find some other way to solve your problems"); during a ballet concert, Henderson (who had realized Sylvia's connection to Terry, and that he could be identified by her) violently stabbed Sylvia to death, making it look like Terry committed the crime; on the run, Terry went to Denise who all along had realized his dilemma (that only his female partner saw the crime), and they both devised a foolish plan to ensnare the rapist by baiting him, thereby insuring Terry's innocence; Denise would masquerade as a loose woman ("I go in and try to set the hook") in Bud's & Joe's bar-pool hall in a seedy side of town (where she seductively fingered the tip of her pool cue), and then lure him back to her apartment (after he spied her address on her ID) so he could be caught in the act; the plan partially worked, but the authorities were late in arriving in the tense conclusion, while Denise had to be saved by a desperate Terry (who frantically drove a stolen police car to her place) and apprehended the rapist; in the film's conclusion with the film's last line, Quirke told them: "That was a stupid play you made tonight. You're lucky it turned out all right. You both are" |       
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| Being John Malkovich (1999) |
This inventive and original film began with the discovery, by desperate puppeteer and LesterCorp file clerk Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) on the 7 1/2 floor of his NY office building (Mertin Flemmer), of a mysterious portal in the file room that led directly into the mind of celebrity/actor John Horatio Malkovich (John Malkovich); the transport allowed him to experience the thoughts/sights of the mind of Malkovich for about 15 minutes, until being thrown out by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike; with sexy co-worker Maxine Lund (Catherine Keener), Craig decided to make a profitable nightly business out of the trip by charging $200 to customers, advertising: "Every Want to Be Someone Else?"; Schwartz' dowdy, pet-loving wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz), who had expressed an interest in being trans-sexual through surgery, also used the portal to have sex with Maxine while she was 'inside' Malkovich, and felt natural being within a man's body (she said: "For the first time, everything just felt right"; she also described the duality of the portal: "It's like he has a vagina, it's sort of vaginal... He has a penis and a vagina... It's sort of like Malkovich's feminine side. I like that"); in a lustful effort to win back Maxine and have sex with her (although she was in love with Lotte when inside Malkovich), Craig decided he would pretend to be Lotte while inside Malkovich - and further realized that while inside Malkovich, he could 'control' the host's words like a puppeteer; a side plot concerned Schwartz' boss, Dr. Lester (Orson Bean), who described how he had used the portal and lived for years in the body/host of people like Malkovich; Lester was planning to enter Malkovich's body with lots of other elderly friends on Malkovich's upcoming 44th birthday (before midnight when his vessel was most 'ripe') to all save themselves from death; as the story jumped forward eight months, Malkovich (with Schwartz inside) had reinvented himself as a reknowned puppeteer, and was married to an 8-months pregnant Maxine (she conceived when Lotte was 'inside' Malkovich); now that Malkovich was approaching the day of his 44th birthday, Dr. Lester kidnapped Maxine and threatened to kill her if Schwartz didn't leave the host body, so that they could take over inside Malkovich before midnight; after Schwartz complied with their demands and expelled himself, the mind/body of Malkovich was taken over by Lester and his cohorts; the film ended seven years later, with Malkovich (looking like Dr. Lester) married to Dr. Lester's hearing-impaired secretary Floris (Mary Kay Place), and Maxine's daughter, named Emily (Kelly Teacher), was now revealed to be the new host ("the newly formed infant vessel") for the future; and in the final scene at a swimming pool, Schwartz was shown to be 'trapped' in the mind/body of Emily - he had rushed back 'into' Malkovich so that Maxine could love him again, but entered after midnight, and therefore was stuck ("absorbed... trapped, held prisoner, if you like, in the host's brain, unable to control anything, forever doomed to watch the world through someone else's eyes") and unable to leave Emily's mind; Schwartz found himself powerless watching (through the eyes of an unaware Emily) as Maxine lived happily ever after with her new partner - Lotte; he kept repeating to Maxine: "Maxine! Maxine! I love you, Maxine! Oh, look away! Look away! Look away...look away...look away...look away..." |
     
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| The film ended with a mystical, incongruous conclusion (accompanied by off/on-screen voices) at the memorial funeral of Benjamin Turnbull Rand (Melvyn Douglas), with one of the pallbearers discussing the protagonist's bid for the Presidency: "I do believe, gentlemen, if we want to hold on to the Presidency, our one and only chance is Chauncey Gardiner") when totally innocent idiot Chance-Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers) blithely stepped onto a pond and literally walked on the water - he tested the depth of the water with the length of his umbrella - and then continued walking away from the camera; the final words of the film, delivered by the President (Jack Warden) at the funeral, were: "Life is a state of mind" |  |
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Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
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In this first sequel to the long-running series, in the final shocking concluding scene set in the post-apocalyptic year 3955 AD, telepathic, mind-controlling, subterranean-dwelling human mutants (with radiation-scarred faces) worshipped an ICBM nuclear missile - an atomic bomb (the 'Divine Bomb') - on an altar in the ruins of NYC's St. Patrick's Cathedral; as the bomb was being pulled down by orders from gorilla ape General Ursus (James Gregory), a gunshot, fatally-wounded Astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) begged with orangutan Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) to prevent a massive apocalypse: "It's doomsday. The end of the world. Help me"; Zaius contemptuously refused and scoffed: "You ask me to help you! Man is evil, capable of nothing but destruction." Taylor responded with his final words: "You bloody bastard..." and died with his hand outstretched - appearing to deliberately grasp for the red triggering control switch of the Alpha-Omega bomb and set it off; the doomsday weapon, with an ΑΩ (Alpha and Omega) symbol on its fin, detonated and destroyed the planet Earth (with a blinding white explosion); the film closed with the following voice-over narration (uncredited Paul Frees): "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star. And one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead." The pessimistic, downbeat film ended abruptly, without traditional closing credits. |
 
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The Big Clock (1948) |
After the murder of blonde mistress Pauline York (Rita Johnson) of clock-obsessed, ruthless, possibly homosexual, detestable New York Crimeways Magazine boss Earl Janoth (Charles Laughton) by jealously striking her on the head with a phallic-shaped, heavy metal sundial, his media executive and magazine journalist George Stroud (Ray Milland) (identified elusively by Pauline as "Jefferson Randolph" to protect him) was framed with the help of Janoth's right-hand man Steve Hagen (George Macready). In the ensuing cat-and-mouse game to find the killer (who was witnessed accompanying Pauline during the evening by many individuals), Stroud realized that all the clues pointed to him as the prime suspect although he attempted to steer the manhunt away from himself - with additional revelations, he was able to accuse Hagen as the killer in order to smoke out Janoth - this caused a raging Janoth to shoot Hagen (after he confessed: "Janoth killed Pauline") and then fall to his own death down the building's elevator shaft in his attempted escape |
  
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The finale to the twisted plot with multiple murders tied up many loose ends; hard-boiled detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) correctly laid out his suspicions to gambler Eddie Mars (John Ridgely) that unstable, nymphomaniac Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers) had killed her father General Sternwood's (Charles Waldron) missing companion Regan, out of jealousy over an imaginary relationship between Regan and Mrs. Mona Mars (Peggy Knudsen); Carmen's loyal sister Vivian (Lauren Bacall) chose to turn to her gambling acquaintance Mars to have him cover up the matter and "protect" her sister Carmen from guilt - and to prevent her sick father from any further suffering; with Mars' cold-blooded hired killer Canino (Bob Steele), Regan's body was hidden and the deception was set up; however, high-class blackmailer Mars also forced an overly-protective, well-intentioned Vivian to part with her gambling winnings and possibly offer sexual favors - and to keep police from learning the truth and investigating, he went even further by hiding his wife Mrs. Mars at Huck's Garage, to make it look like she had run away with Regan during their entirely conceivable affair; the uncovering of the web of secrets was followed by the murder of Mars by his own henchmen when Marlowe forced him to run outside Geiger's house (as he shouted vainly: "Don't shoot! It's me, Mars!") where his own men were laying in wait for Marlowe; Mars' death - signaled by bullet holes across the door and his collapse at the door, allowed Marlowe to protect Carmen (who was sent "away" to an institution) and Vivian by pinning the murder of Regan on Mars; and Marlowe was able to end up with Vivian |     |
(alphabetical by film title)
Intro
| Part 1 | Part
2 | Part 3 | Part
4 | Part 5 | Part
6 | Part 7 | Part
8 | Part 9 | Part
10 | Part 11 | Part
12 | Part 13
Part 14 | Part
15 | Part 16 | Part
17 | Part 18 | Part
19 | Part 20 | Part
21 | Part 22 | Part
23 | Part 24 | Part
25
