Top 7 twist endings that sucked
Top 7 twist endings that sucked
Jul 24
A good twist will immediately set your mind spinning. You sit there in the darkened theatre with your jaw agape, breathlessly going over the last two hours of your life and combing through those memories for some kind of clue. The best twists will encourage repeat viewings; the very best twists will serve to enrich the thematic conent of the film.
The other side of the coin is the bad twist: the kind of twist that makes you go “Huh?” The worst case scenario is that the final twist is a cheap shot, a retread of a dozen other twists, or an obviously easy way out of a tricky situation. The very worst twists invalidate the entire film’s existence — such as the rightly-hated “It was all just a dream!” twist.
Here is a list (by no means exhaustive) of the film twists that annoyed me the most:
7 – Remember Me (2010)
Robert Pattinson spends a most of the movie trying to un-estrange himself from his distant father, Pierce Brosnan. He finally manages to pin him down for a meeting, to reconcile their differences. They agree on a time and a place. Pattinson arrives early, but Brosnan, as always, is late. Pattinson looks out the window, and the camera tracks out to reveal he’s halfway up the World Trade Centre. We find out the date — 11 September 2001 — and the film fades to black. I guess that’s one way to solve familial relationship problems, but it’s no way to end your movie.
6 – Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008)
The infamous “space between spaces” line came after the all the fridge-nuking and monkey-swinging, and as such isn’t the target of as much vitriol as those earlier indications of inanity. But it is still mind-bogglingly stupid. The Indiana Jones movies have always had a creeping sense of the supernatural about them – Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull took it a step too far.
5 – Planet Of The Apes (2001)
People often forget that Tim Burton made The Planet Of The Apes. They’re too busy swooning over Edward Scissorhands and … well that’s it, actually. People often forget how awful the twist ending of The Planet Of The Apes is, too, because it doesn’t make a lick of sense. Mark Wahlberg travels into the future, hangs out with some cranky apes, comes back to his own time, and finds … the planet overrun by cranky apes. This sucks twice as hard because the twist of the original Apes was so much better.
4 – Saw (2004)
The first time I watched Saw, I guessed that the genial old fellow in the hospital was the killer, purely because the camera lingered a beat too long on him in the first act. What I didn’t know was that he could paralyse himself for extended periods of time, and stop his breathing, in order to convince two people in the room with him that he was a corpse. That’s an impressive skill. So impressive a skill, in fact, that it’s quite clearly bullshit.
3 – Inception (2010)
Inception was such a cortical strain that it really needed a powerful finish in order to validate all the hard work your poor cerebellum did over the past two and a half hours. What we got instead was a cheap trick, a sleight of hand that denied the film a real sense of purpose or higher meaning. Nolan delivered such a satisfying twist in Memento that we all thought he couldn’t possibly fail. Then, he did.
2 – Most M Night Shyamalan movies (2002, 2004, 2008)
It started with Signs: aliens for whom water is like acid is to us. It’s like humans landing naked on Venus and complaining about all the sulfuric acid everywhere — that is, outrageously stupid. Plus, biologists have shown that water is one of the few reliable mediums for live to get started in. So chances are, any alien life-form (especially if it looks suspiciously human-shaped) we come across will be water-dependant, not -intolerant.
Then there was The Village: all those monstrous beasts you spent the entire film evading were just people in fake-looking suits! And also you’re living in the modern world, but you’re trapped in the woods so that you’ll never escape and find out that science can cure all your illnesses! The twist ending ruins the movie, drains any sense of horror, and causes your empathy for the characters to dissolve in seconds.
Finally, there was The Happening: turns out all plants everywhere in the world have evolved a very specific airborn neurotoxin that breaks down the brain’s inhibitions! And it only applies to one species out of ten million — us! There are so many things wrong with this — including the implication that plants are sentient — that The Happening officially destroyed what little faith I had in M Night Shyamalan to deliver anything resembling a half-decent movie any more. I didn’t even watch The Lady In The Water — did that have a stupid twist as well?
1 – All those mid-noughties thrillers that tried to copy Fight Club
People watched Fight Club. A lot of people. Some of them were filmmakers. Forgetting that so many other people had also watched Fight Club, these filmmakers decided to pull the same final-reel twist over and over again in the following decade that it became something of a running joke.
Hide And Seek: the menacing killer is the protagonist’s (Robert DeNiro) split personality. Secret Window: the menacing killer is the protagonist’s (Johnny Depp) split personality. The Number 23: the menacing killer is the protagonist (Jim Carrey), before he got amnesia. Perfect Strangers: the mancing killer is the protagonist (Halle Berry) — the kicker is that she knows what she’s doing — and keeps doing it anyway.
The rash of mid-00s twist-based films has finally abated, and hopefully we can look forward to films that offer decent, rather that deficient, twists.
What final-reel twists bugged the hell out of you? Did you think Inception‘s twist was that bad, or am I crazy? Any thoughts are welcome and appreciated.
(WARNING: spoiler-ridden!)Personally I found the Inception ending was perfectly fine. I think it is open to interpretation, thus giving you a chance to look at the film's entire premise, and think for yourself what happens next. Personally I think his Totem stops, but it is fun to think “what if?…”.
I think it also reflects on the theme of “subjective reality”, where for those who find reality in their dreams, who are we to tell them that it's fake. Also, the fact the Cobb no longer cares, as he does for his children, shows that regardless of what happens with the Totem, that world is real to him.
I thought it was a very suitable ending to an amazingly entertaining and thought-provoking romp. It is the most fun I've had at the movies in a long time, and definently will be getting some return visits from me in the cinema. It's so rare to see an original script, deft direction and a credible ensemble working so well together, I think this film will be the hardest to beat for film of the year.
In regards to the other entries, I totally agree!
Yeah that whole subjective reality thing falls apart when you zoom out from the planet Earth and realise that the stars still burn, the galaxies still turn, and life goes on regardless of whether we perceive it or not; in a dream that probably isn't the case, the universe is localised to your consciousness.
So there is one true universe that actually exists; I personally wouldn't be satisfied living in anything other than the real thing. Which is probably why I reacted negatively to the ending.
Plus given Nolan's track record of robotic characterisation devoid of any real heart, it was especially annoying to be denied a solid conclusion to the character's journey, either way.
I don't think Inception had a twist ending. I don't think it was ever *supposed* to!
The rest of the list is interesting, though.
Totally agree. The point of the ending isn't whether the Totem stops spinning or not, the real conclusion is that Dom Cobb walks out of the room without seeing it for himself. So he has reached emotional closure and doesn't care whether he is in the real world, in limbo or in heaven.
But if we're talking about bad Nolan endings, how about The Prestige? He pulls the sci-fi concept of cloning out of the hat after his magicians have competed each other on a totally realistic level. I found that a real cheat especially when *combined* with the whole twin business, it's like two bad twists on top of each other.
Like I said, I get that it was about Cobb walking away and getting closure, but for the audience it was a cop-out. It was like reverse-irony, where instead of us laughing at the characters, the characters were laughing at us.
As for The Prestige, I hated that twist too, but mostly because I didn't get it, which is why I didn't bring it up.
Another interesting point for discussion would be if there is any point in “simple twist” movies in the current internet age. It is impossible to build mystique round a movie nowadays in the same way as Hitchcock did with Psycho. Nowadays everybody would know minutes after the premiere that Janet Leigh gets killed 30 minutes in and that Norman Bates did it.
So perhaps ambiguity is the new twist. Finish your movie on such a puzzling note that audiences will be discussing it for weeks instead of just shouting to everyone that Bruce Willis's shrink is actually dead and that the man in Crying Game is really a woman and then forgetting it.
Not forgetting, Finkle is Einhorn.
Now you mention it, I don't really dig twists that much. A big-twist movie has to play its hand close to its chest (especially in this internet age, as you say), and I'd much rather a film was open about itself and got an emotion out of me the old-fashioned way — with good characters and storytelling.
Then again a good twist can save a good film …
I loved your list, first off =) But I do disagree with your suggestion that Inception had a twist ending. There certainly was a twist in that movie: SPOILER (Cobb caused his wife to believe the real world was a dream, leading to her unintended suicide). But the ending is pretty cut and dry once you think it through: 1) Michael Caine appears, which would be the first time in the movie he was in a dream; 2) the kids are noticably older-looking, being taller before they turn around and 3) when the movie cuts to black, you can hear the sound of the top wavering. But I like that they didn’t show it fall, because even though the ending is clear, you still can ask “what if I’m wrong?” and it makes you think the movie through again.
I loved your list, first off =) But I do disagree with your suggestion that Inception had a twist ending. There certainly was a twist in that movie: SPOILER (Cobb caused his wife to believe the real world was a dream, leading to her unintended suicide). But the ending is pretty cut and dry once you think it through: 1) Michael Caine appears, which would be the first time in the movie he was in a dream; 2) the kids are noticably older-looking, being taller before they turn around and 3) when the movie cuts to black, you can hear the sound of the top wavering. But I like that they didn’t show it fall, because even though the ending is clear, you still can ask “what if I’m wrong?” and it makes you think the movie through again.
Also! Maybe I’m a big Nolan apologist, but The Prestige had a great ending for me. The twin was foreshadowed (when Michael Caine’s character suggested that Borden had a double, and the constant presence of the twin brother) and the pseudo-science as magic bit didn’t come out of nowhere, being as the movie took place in the same time period as books such as Frankenstein, Invisible Man and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the first instances of fringe science, if you will), and we spent a sizable portion of time watching Tesla develop the science in the movie. Good stuff =)
Also! Maybe I’m a big Nolan apologist, but The Prestige had a great ending for me. The twin was foreshadowed (when Michael Caine’s character suggested that Borden had a double, and the constant presence of the twin brother) and the pseudo-science as magic bit didn’t come out of nowhere, being as the movie took place in the same time period as books such as Frankenstein, Invisible Man and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (the first instances of fringe science, if you will), and we spent a sizable portion of time watching Tesla develop the science in the movie. Good stuff =)
You just made this list to sound “different” than others or you were over-drunk, INCEPTION??, SAW ?? THE VILLAGE ??, give me a break dude, you can simply label your list “Endings that I didn’t like” but saying they sucked really is weird, especially Inception which one of those open-endings which is liked by people who hate such climaxes.
You had loads of movie endings to put in this list, what about THE FORGOTTEN, THE GAME, LAW ABIDING CITIZEN ???..