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".

Time Bandits (1981, UK)

Tin Cup (1996)

The unconventional ending of this hit sports comedy about golf told about how headstrong, middle-aged pro golfer Roy "Tin Cup" McAvoy (Kevin Costner) threw away his chance of winning the PGA's US Open in North Carolina on the 18th hole, when he needed a birdie to win, and par to force a playoff ("This is everything, ain't it? This is the choice it comes down to. This is our immortality"); on the sidelines, his love interest, a clinical psychiatrist named Dr. Molly Griswold (Renee Russo), encouraged him: "Go for it, Roy! Just knock it on"; rather than getting to the green in two shots and playing it safe, he attempted a near-impossible, all-or-nothing shot; when his first shot landed him in the water hazard, his caddy Romeo Posar (Cheech Marin) wanted him to "go up there, we'll take our drop, we'll tie, we'll win it in a playoff," but Roy refused -- he continued to shoot the same difficult shot, missing each one and landing in the water hazard; he broke the record for strokes, causing further consternation and embarrassment from the announcers and fans with each failure; finally, Molly laughed hysterically and yelled: "He's crazy. Oh, God. He's right. You're right, Roy! Just knock it on! Let her rip!"; on the twelfth shot (his last ball before being disqualified), he miraculously made the shot into the hole ("That was a twelve"), causing a massive celebration; when Roy came to his senses, he realized, aghast: "I just gave away the US Open," but Molly put his reckless performance in perspective: "That was incredible. That was the shot of the tournament. My God, did you hear the people?...It was the greatest twelve of all time. No one's gonna remember the Open five years from now, who won, who lost, but they're gonna remember your twelve! My, God, Roy, it was... Why, it's immortal! I am so proud of you"; when smug, play-it-safe, conservative golfing nemesis David Simms (Don Johnson) told him: "I gotta hand it to you. When you go down, you go down in flames," Roy responded by kissing Molly and carrying her away, and also retorted with a smile: "Nice par, David"; later, Roy was reminded that he was still an automatic entry for next year's U.S. Open

To Die For (1995)

Total Recall (1990)

Trois Couleurs: Rouge (1994, Fr./Pol.)

12 Monkeys (1995) (aka Twelve Monkeys)

In this circular story, time-traveling, mentally unstable prison convict James Cole (Bruce Willis) was sent back in time from the virus-plagued, post-apocalyptic world of 2035 to 1996. His mission was to find a cure for a horrible virus that had killed 5 billion people and forced humanity to live underground (the surface of the Earth was unlivable), in exchange for being pardoned. Note: It is entirely conceivable that the film was just an expression of Cole's deep psychosis. His initial belief was that an underground organization called the "Army of the 12 Monkeys" spread the virus; Cole's many time travels first went awry when he ended up in Baltimore in 1990 and was placed in a mental institution where he met eccentric, insane animal activist Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the son of prominent virologist Dr. Goines (Christopher Plummer), and was treated by psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe); the delusional Cole also time-traveled to the WWI era in France, and then to late 1996, where he and Dr. Railly eventually joined together in Philadelphia when she began to believe his story and both attempted to discover the cause of the virus; by film's end, it was revealed that Jeffrey Goines and his "Army of the 12 Monkeys" were never the cause of the worldwide plague that was released in December 1996 - they were instead just "a bunch of dumb kids playing revolutionaries" who freed wild animals from Philadelphia's Garden Zoological Society (and locked Dr. Goines in the gorilla cage) the night before Dr. Railly and James had donned disguises (he glued on a mustache, and she dyed her hair blonde) so that they could fly together to a dream vacation destination - the Florida Keys; at the airport, they both realized that red-haired, pony-tailed bio-terrorist and "apocalyptic nut" Dr. Peters (David Morse), Dr. Goines' assistant for security, had just taken a sticker-covered carry-on suitcase through security in front of them that contained live samples of the deadly virus; when gun-brandishing Cole pursued the madman through security (with Dr. Railly not far behind), he was gunned down by airport police as madman Peters escaped and boarded his plane to San Francisco and other worldwide cities to unleash the virus; Cole's repeated dreams/memories were now made clear - as a young boy (Joseph Melito), he had witnessed the shooting (and his own death), with his newfound lover from the 1990s Dr. Railly grieving above him - who at one point knowingly noticed young Cole when their eyes met; the film concluded with Dr. Peters seating himself on an airplane next to a woman who introduced herself as Jones (Carol Florence): "I'm in insurance" - she was also one of the female scientists from the future who was guiding Cole's time travels; it was a hopeful sign that she would retrieve a pure sample of the virus and bring it back to the future as a backup plan to help save the world

The Two Jakes (1990)

The main plot device in this convoluted sequel to Chinatown (1974) directed by actor Jack Nicholson, and set in post-war Los Angeles, was an incriminating wire recording of a tryst that wasn't supposed to be fatal. It was recorded by LA private detective J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) for his client: real estate developer of B&B Homes "Jake" Berman (Harvey Keitel), to 'incriminate' Berman's 'unfaithful' wife Kitty (Meg Tilly) who was having an affair in the Bird of Paradise Motel in Redondo Beach with Berman's own real-estate business associate Bodine. In the opening scene, Berman shot Mark Bodine (John Hackett) in cold-blood as he fled into the motel's bathroom. In the tape recording, a mysterious reference to Katherine Mulwray between the two adulterers stirred up memories of the past for Gittes. [Katherine Mulwray, the blonde teenaged daughter of the earlier film's tragically-killed heroine Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) - Jake's former client and lover, was sired by incestuous rape by her tycoon father Noah Cross (John Huston).] By film's end, it was revealed that Gittes had been set up in the murder-for-profit scheme. The murder could not be considered justifiable homicide because Berman had deliberately killed his partner - he had a gun conveniently planted under a chair delivered to the room - in order to commit pre-meditated murder of Bodine, a capital crime. For business reasons, partner Bodine's will excluded his sexpot widowed wife, Lillian Bodine (Madeleine Stowe) and named "surviving partner" Berman the sole beneficiary of B&B Homes' enormously profitable real estate business (tract housing in San Fernando Valley). Her attorney Chuck Newty (Frederic Forrest) stated that she was entitled to her husband's wealth if the murder could be proven to be pre-meditated. Did Berman plan the murder with his wife Kitty in order to collect money from the deceased partner's share? - if true, this would also make Gittes an unwitting accomplice to murder. During convoluted developments in the plot, Gittes discovered that Berman's tract housing subdevelopment, located in an orange grove (the same irrigated location that Gittes visited in the original film), was also being surreptitiously drilled for its vast underground resources by greedy oil baron Earl Rawley (Richard Farnsworth), Bodine's business associate. In a preliminary court public hearing regarding the recording, the tape was played, but the evidence was obviously tampered with by Gittes to hide Berman's cold-blooded guilt and to protect Mrs. Berman ("splashing Katherine Mulwray's past all over the LA Times wouldn't do anybody any good"); red-haired Kitty was actually the elusive blonde Katherine Mulwray - which Gittes figured out when he realized that she dyed her hair red; through various legal and title documents, Katherine was shown to be the original owner of the orange grove and of the mineral rights to the subdivision land, but was forced to sign over a quit-claim deed to the land only to criminal nightclub owner Michael 'Mickey Nice' Weisskopf (Rubén Blades), Berman's gangster associate, on July 17, 1946. Bodine was blackmailing Berman about the real identity of his wife, threatening to expose her if she didn't sign over the mineral rights - and Bodine was also, as Berman jealously admitted, engaged in a real affair: "He was f--king my wife". That was the real motivation in killing Bodine. Gittes perjured himself in court to protect the daughter of the woman that he was unable to protect in the first film. Berman also divulged to Gittes that he was terminally ill (with advanced syphilis viewed on X-rays and under a microscope, unsuccessfully treated with radium implants which were also causing cancer) - but had not told his wife Kitty about his condition. To ensure that she would definitely inherit his real-estate fortune (his intention all along) - he deliberately and suicidally blew himself up and ended his life in one of the development's tract homes by lighting a cigarette in the volatile, natural gas-filled environment after a shaky earthquake. In the film's final scene, Gittes spoke to Kitty/Katherine about their mutual pasts as she left his office, in the final line of dialogue: "It [the past] never goes away" (Jake's belated answer to her earlier question: "Does it ever go away, the past?")

Unbreakable (2000)

The Usual Suspects (1995)

Valmont (1989, Fr./UK)

In director Milos Forman's romantic drama based on Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' classic 1782 novel about seduction - a boudoir soap opera set in the baroque period, scheming and devious widow Marquise de Merteuil (Annette Bening) made a two-part bet with a former lover - womanizing playboy and philanderer Vicomte de Valmont (Colin Firth): first, the seduction of the married, honorable, and virtuous Mme. de Tourvel (Meg Tilly), and second, the deflowering of virginal 15 year-old convent-educated Cecile (Fairuza Balk) before her arranged marriage to the Marquise's own unfaithful lover, the older Gercourt (Jeffrey Jones), in order to cuckold him; as part of the prize bargain for the wager, if Valmont succeeded, the Marquise agreed to give her body to him ("Anything you want"..."your body"); Valmont seduced ingenue Cecile while he helped her write a love-note to her young crush - her 17 year-old harp music teacher Chevalier Danceny (Henry Thomas), by pulling up her skirt and raping her from behind (off-screen); he also inflamed the love-suppressed desires of Mme. de Tourvel who allowed herself to be seduced and abandoned (but returned for one more night); when Valmont came to claim the Marquise's body as payment, she reneged in a scene during her bath, and refused to honor her bargain, claiming it was "just a joke" ("Am I something that one wins as a wager?") while he argued: "I won and I have the right to collect my prize!"; however, she later appeared to acquiesce to him ("Isn't it lonely when there's no one to share your secrets with?...Would you like to share my latest secret?"), but cunningly revealed that she was sleeping with Danceny, and had vengefully told him that Valmont had taken his love's virginity ("Cecile lost her virginity in your arms"); this set up the final scene of a one-sided, futile fencing duel of honor between Danceny and an inebriated Valmont, leading to the latter's quick death (off-screen) and burial - with all of his female conquests paying their respects at his open coffin and grave; before her marriage to Gercourt, Cecile also whispered to Valmont's elderly aunt Madame de Rosemonde (Fabia Drake) her secret -- that she was pregnant with Valmont's child, and she received the reply: "My angel, my sweet angel"

Vanilla Sky (2001)

Writer/director Cameron Crowe's film was a remake of Open Your Eyes/Abre los Ojos (1997, Sp.) by director Alejandro Amenabar opened with soaring birds-eye views of New York City; the first spoken words were from Sofia Serrano (Penelope Cruz): "Open your eyes. Open your eyes" - a recording on the alarm clock CD of wealthy, good-looking, and privileged David Aames (Tom Cruise), heir to his family's publishing empire, who awoke and then drove into a vacant Times Square area in a black Jaguar - he then awakened from the dream to more words of "Open your eyes" spoken this time by accompanying blonde girlfriend or "f--k buddy" Julie Gianni (Cameron Diaz); the 32 year-old Aames, charged with the crime of murder and wearing a latex facial mask to cover a facial disfigurement, was relating his dreams and his life story (told in flashbacks) to psychologist McCabe (Kurt Russell); after stalking David outside Sofia's apartment, the jilted Julie deliberately crashed her car, killing herself and seriously injuring him as a passenger - causing him to enter a coma for almost a month with serious facial and body injuries; but he told new friend Sofia upon their next meeting in the park about his horrible dream of the accident: "But I survived with my arm and my face reconstructed. And what's worse - I can't wake up", although in voice-over (speaking to the psychologist), he revealed it was a dream: "My dreams are a cruel joke. They taunt me. Even in my dreams, I'm an idiot who knows he's about to wake up to reality. If I could only avoid sleep. But I can't. I try to tell myself what to dream"; placed in a cell, he wore a facial prosthetic-mask to hide his deformity; with his disfigured and scarred face, he met Sofia at her dance studio and later called, saying: "I'm back in your life," while his best friend Brian Shelby (Jason Lee) recognized a difference in him: "The new guy is s--t"; after a night on the town at a discotheque with Sofia and Brian, he drunkenly told Brian: "Tomorrow, I'll wish I was dead" -- prophetic words; he fell asleep drunk in the street - and was awakened with the phrase whispered by Sofia: "Open your eyes"; from here on, the film was a virtual reality dream with Sofia and others ("We created our own world together"), while David suffered unsettling disjunctions, dreamy wish fulfillments, and bewildering reality flips (e.g., his face changed from being deformed to being completely healed after his doctors performed a restorative facial reconstruction surgical procedure, Sofia became his girlfriend and they made love in a nude scene, but Sofia was sometimes transformed into his obsessive ex-lover Julie, etc.); during love-making with Sofia, she also asked, tellingly: "Is this a dream?" and he answered: "Absolutely" as they kissed; later, he became crazed and out of control when his own face turned back into its hideous form and when Sofia 'changed into' Julie (although she claimed she was Sofia); after being booked, although David thought he had only beaten up Julie, he was accused of her murder - the reason for his imprisonment in a psychiatric penitentiary (for the criminally insane awaiting trial); the true nature of his 'reality' or 'dream' world was first brought into play when he was advised by a 'technical support' representative of L.E. (or Life Extension) at a bar: "You must overcome your fears and regain control" and then reminded that he had signed a contract with L.E.: "You and I signed a contract, David"; a continual thread throughout the film was the remarkable story of Benny the dog who was frozen for three months and thawed out to live a normal life -- this miraculous recovery was advertised by a cryogenics company called Life Extension (or L.E.), claiming it could do the same for humans; David's psychologist also asked: "Can you tell the difference between dreams and reality?"; David recalled that he had repressed his killing of Sofia when she wouldn't 'turn back' into the 'other' Sofia - deranged, he smothered her with a pillow while making love to her (crying out: "I don't wanna see your face"); his psychologist reasoned that his guilt about the way he treated Julie led Sofia to turn into Julie ("Your feelings of responsibility or guilt over Julie might have easily turned Sofia into Julie") - and he would be tried for murder, and would plead his innocence in the trial as "temporary derangement"; at the end of the film, David was permitted to visit the high-rise offices of the L.E. company with his psychologist, realizing: "I think I've been here before"; the company advertised "a journey of reawakening after the preservation of the human body at extremely low temperatures"; LE representative Rebecca Dearborn (Tilda Swinton) explained how the company offered after-death immortality: "Your anguish, your discontent, even your death is no longer necessary in a traditional sense. Whatever malady hides behind that mask is temporary. Within an hour of your passing, LE will transfer your body to a vessel where you will be sealed and frozen at 196 degrees below zero"; David had also signed up for an optional component called Lucid Dream: "the cryonic union of science and entertainment" -- "Upon resurrection [after death], you will continue in an ageless state, preserved but living in the present with a future of your choosing. Your death will be wiped from your memory. Your life will continue as a realistic work of art painted by you, minute to minute...a living dream, Life: Part Two"; he also learned that his subconscious might play "tricks" on him, but the risk was worth it: "This is a revolution of the mind"; abruptly, David ran from the office screaming: "I want to wake up!...It's a nightmare...Tech support!" - and Edmund Ventura (Noah Taylor) from the Oasis Project (formerly Life Extension L.E.), whom David had earlier seen at the bar, appeared and formally introduced himself: "We first met 150 years ago...Everything is your creation" and David was soon to face a "true moment of choice" -- David was told about when the "Lucid Dream" began - when he fell down drunk on the pavement after being at the discotheque: "That was the moment you chose for the splice. The end of your real life and the beginning of LE's Lucid Dream" during which time he was frozen and dreaming; he was also told: "You sculpted your Lucid Dream out of the iconography of your youth - an album cover that once moved you..." and other pop cultural artifacts (fatherhood in To Kill a Mockingbird, the love triangle in Jules et Jim, etc); what really happened was erased or replaced from his memory: "You never saw Sofia again...You longed for Sofia. You shut yourself away for months. You were alone. You couldn't stand the pain anymore, the headaches..." and then took a drug overdose and killed himself (on 12/26/2001 at the age of 33) after signing a contract with L.E.; on the rooftop (with the sky a vanilla color - his mother's favorite time of day), Edmund further explained: "Your subconscious did create problems. Your dream turned into a nightmare"; David was then given the choice of returning to his Lucid Dream or entering into "the world out there...just like Benny the dog" although in the future, he was cautioned: "the sweet is never as sweet without the sour"; before facing his last fear - of heights - before leaving the dream world forever by jumping off the building, David first conjured up best friend Brian and then Sofia, and kissed her farewell ("I'm frozen and you're dead. And I love you") and then said: "I'll see you in another life when we are both cats"; he turned back while perched on the edge of the building, and then jumped; an instant before he hit the ground, the film projected more pop-cultural images of his life and then a strange woman's voice (a nurse?) soothed him with: "Relax, David. Open your eyes..." as his eye opened, in close-up

See earlier write-up for Open Your Eyes/Abre los Ojos (1997, Sp.)

The Vanishing (1988, Neth./Fr.) (aka
Spoorloos/Untraceable)