The 25 most iconic movie plot twists of all time ranked
When it comes to the big screen experience, I think we can all agree that a well-executed plot twist can really deliver some movie magic.
It's a make or break component of many films, with the likes of David Fincher and M. Night Shyamalan becoming synonymous with the trope.
And if it's done well, a shocking twist can send your head spinning and spark a joy like no other. But which are the most memorable in cinema?
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From iconic blockbusters to modern day smashes, the UNILAD team has scored 25 of the most popular flicks with well-known plot twists out of 100, and it's safe to say one or two caused a bit of a debate in the work chat.
I'm sure a few flicks are already springing to mind as you read this, so without further ado, here's our verdict.
Spoilers ahead, obviously.
25. Last Night in Soho - 22.5%
Plot: The time-travelling thriller follows aspiring fashion designer Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) who finds herself able to return to 1960s London. But things aren't quite as dreamy as they seem when sinister cracks start to show and she begins to have visions from the past of a young woman named Sandie (Anya-Taylor Joy) being killed in the bedroom she now rents.
The twist: The big bombshell in the flick comes as Eloise's elderly landlord Mrs. Collins reveals she is Sandie - and no, she didn't die. In fact, the men Eloise was seeing in her visions were actually Sandie's murder victims whom she killed after they tried to force themselves on her.
24. Primal Fear - 50%
Plot: The movie follows defense attorney Martin Vail (Richard Gere) who is representing shy altar boy Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) after he's charged with killing an archbishop. In the end, Aaron is found not guilty on the basis he has Dissociative Identity Disorder and that it was one of his alters called Roy that committed the murder.
The twist: At the end of the movie Aaron shockingly admits to Martin that he does not in fact have the disorder and that he's simply just a sociopath called Roy, meaning Aaron never really existed.
23. Citizen Kane - 52.5%
Plot: When publishing mogul Charles Foster Kane comes out with a mysterious final word - 'Rosebud' - before his death, a journalist sets about unpicking what it really means.
The twist: It's revealed that 'Rosebud' wasn't anything to do with a person or place, but was actually Kane's childhood sled, shining a light on the message underpinning the whole plot - the most important things in life don't come from money.
22. The Wizard of Oz - 59.1%
Plot: Dorothy (Judy Garland) is caught in the eye of a tornado and lands in a magical world called Oz where she meets Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion while on her way to the Emerald City in the hopes of finally getting back to Kansas.
The twist: Turns out that the 'magical' Wizard of Oz is in fact a fraud. His lie is exposed when Dorothy's dog Toto tips over a screen, revealing the Wizard is no more than an ordinary man who arrived in Oz a long time ago by hot air balloon.
Clues you may have missed: We know that Dorothy's trip to Oz all turned out to be a dream, but one scene at the beginning of the film appears to foreshadow the Wizard of Oz's scam.
At the start of the movie, Dorothy runs away from home and encounters Professor Marvel, who it turns out is a fraudulent fortune teller. Professor Marvel is the same actor who later plays the Wizard of Oz, who, of course, also turns out to be a fraud. It's a minor detail, but a nice touch nonetheless.
21. American Psycho - 59.4%
Plot: Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a finance bro by day and psychopath killer by night. But soon enough, his blood thirsty fantasies spiral out of control as he embarks on a chilling killing spree.
The twist: After Bateman confesses to all his crimes, he returns to the apartment of one of his victims, only there's no trace of any of the murders he committed, begging the question: was it all just in his head?
20. Us - 66%
Plot: The psychological horror from the mind of Jordan Peele follows Adelaide Wilson and her family as they are attacked by a mysterious group of people dressed in red. Terrifyingly, the Wilsons soon discover that the strangers are exact lookalikes of them who call themselves 'The Tethered'. They act like them, have the same thoughts as them, but they don't speak - apart from 'Red', who is Adelaide's doppelgänger.
The twist: First, we learn that The Tethered were created by the government as part an experiment - they share a soul with their above-ground double, meaning everything their normal-world counterpart did, they did too. The Tethered have no free will and are cursed to simply just live the same life as their above-ground twin.
But the real gut punch comes after we discover who Adelaide really is. As we know, when she was a child she saw her double in a fun house mirror. But it's revealed that The Tethered version of Adelaide actually reached out and dragged the real-world Adelaide into the underground basement where she chained her and swapped clothes before walking back upstairs. In short, the Adelaide we'd been rooting for and following for the entire movie is actually The Tethered version, AKA Red.
Clues you may have missed: One clue lies in a flashback Adelaide has of getting lost in the mirrors as a child. After she's found, she's sat in her parents' car when it begins to rain, to which she responds with wide, shocked eyes - presumably because she's never seen rain before.
19. Get Out - 67.5%
Plot: Jordan Peele's Get Out revolves around a Black man named Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) as he travels to meet the affluent white family of his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). While things seem to be getting off to a great start, suspicions start to grow and Chris finds himself in the middle of a sinister conspiracy.
The twist: It prevails that Roses' family are actually a part of a cult called Order of the Coagul which auctions off and experiments on Black men and women, trapping them in something called 'the Sunken Place' - a mental purgatory which renders individuals powerless and oppressed, allowing the family to use their bodies for their own gain.
Clues you may have missed: There are several instances where Peele foreshadows the mind-bending twist but perhaps one of the most subtle is in the opening song of the horror.
The movie opens to the sound of 'Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga' by Michael Abels which features Swahili lyrics, some of which translate to "Brother, listen to the ancestors – run!" and "Watch your back. Something's coming," sending out a chilling warning as Chris can be seen packing his car for the fateful trip.
18. Gone Girl - 68%
Plot: Adapted from the Gillian Flynn novel of the same name, the thriller follows the aftermath of Amy Dunne's (Rosamund Pike) mysterious disappearance as focus quickly turns to her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck).
The twist: Slap bang in the middle of the flick it's revealed that Amy is very much alive and had orchestrated her entire disappearance so that her 'murder' could be pinned on her husband, whom she discovered had been having an affair.
17. Se7en - 68.2%
Plot: Detectives David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) investigate a murderer - John Doe - who is using the seven deadly sins as inspiration for his sickening crimes.
The twist: It turns out Doe has a final murder to commit, but he's already done it. Harrowingly, we discover he's killed Detective Mills' wife, spurring him on to fulfil Doe’s plan of completing the seven sins by murdering him in revenge and in turn making him victorious even in death.
Clues you may have missed: Towards the end of the film Detective Mills is told that his wife tried to call him. But earlier on, Mills asked her not to call him at work which she has listened to up until this point. This gave a really subtle hint that something bad had happened to her.
16. Orphan - 70%
Plot: The 2009 horror centers on a couple who adopt a nine-year-old girl called Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) following the tragic loss of their unborn child. But things soon take a turn when Esther starts exhibiting some disturbing behavior.
The twist: It turns out Esther was far from an innocent little girl and was actually a 33-year-old murderer with a growth disorder which resulted in her seemingly child-like appearance.
Clues you may have missed: Firstly, Esther never took off the ribbons she had tied round her neck and wrists, which we later discovered were from her escaping a straight jacket. She also always locked the bathroom door and refused to go to the dentist, which we now know was out of fear her ruse would be uncovered.
15. Saw 1 - 70%
Plot: Two men wake up in an abandoned restroom opposite a dead body with instructions to kill each other or face sinister consequences. The pair learn they are the latest victims of the Jigsaw serial killer, but doing as they're told doesn't mean the nightmare is over.
The twist: When Adam (Leigh Whannell) manages to kill his captor and goes looking for the key which will unlock the chain around his leg, he instead finds a cassette tape revealing Zep (Michael Emerson) was simply another victim of Jigsaw who was following the rules of the 'game' to try and get the antidote to the poison put in his body.
The nightmare doesn't end there though, as the corpse in the room rises from the dead to reveal himself as the real Jigsaw, AKA John Kramer.
Clues you may have missed: While the twist is decently buried, there are a couple of subtle clues foreshadowing what was to come.
Firstly, Zep's character can be heard coughing throughout the flick, hinting at the fact he turned out to just be another pawn in Jigsaw's twisted game after being poisoned.
Another hint centers on the 'X marks the spot' direction left by Jigsaw. While this does indeed lead to more clues, when the camera pans from above the room, it looks as though John Kramer's body is laid out in the shape of an X too.
14. The Prestige - 70.7%
Plot: The Christopher Nolan epic chronicles the rivalry of magicians Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) as they attempt to one-up each other with increasingly extravagant and impossible tricks.
The twist: 'The Transported Man' trick is far from what it seems after we learn Angier is using Tesla's tech to duplicate himself each night, meaning the real Angier actually died the first night the trick was performed.
Clues you may have missed: One of the biggest clues comes during the film's opening sequence. During the opening shot, we see a pile of Angier's top hats tossed on the floor near Tesla's lab, hinting at the role cloning would later play.
13. The Others - 70.7%
Plot: Nicole Kidman stars as a mother called Grace Stewart who is forced to grapple with the terrifying presence of supernatural forces in her Victorian mansion home.
The twist: The ghost story gets completely turned on its head when it's revealed it's actually Grace and her kids who are the ghosts. In a harrowing turn of events, it turned out Grace murdered her children before taking her own life as she struggled to deal with her husband's presumed death in World War II.
Clues you may have missed: During the film we learn the children have an illness which means they are photosensitive and therefore can't go out in the sun. In hindsight, this is actually because they're ghosts.
12. Memento - 70.8%
Plot: Insurance investigator Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) suffers from anterograde amnesia, meaning he is unable to make new memories. The last thing he can remember is his wife's murder after she was strangled by two attackers, so he uses notes and tattoos to hunt for who he thinks is responsible for her death. Soon enough, he realizes his quest for vengeance may have happened several times before.
The twist: The bombshell comes when we realize that Leonard's wife actually survived the initial attack, but not believing his memory disorder was real, she asks him to help her with her insulin injections. Having waited long enough for him to forget he'd given it to her, she asks him to do it again, thinking at this point he would confess it was all a lie. Except, it's not a lie, meaning Leonard heartbreakingly gives her the second shot, which causes her to overdose and die.
As for the people Leonard's has been killing out of vengeance, it turns out that the police man investigating his wife's case felt sorry for him over what happened, and decided to let him track down random men to kill in the hopes it would fix his memory.
11. The Village - 76.6%
Plot: The polarizing offering from plot twist veteran M. Night Shyamalan focuses on an isolated town which appears to be set in the 19th century and lives in fear of unknown monsters that reside in the surrounding woods, dubbed 'Those We Don't Speak Of'.
The twist: One of the director's most divisive twists, it's revealed that not only does the village actually exist in modern times, but that the supposed monsters in the woods which terrified residents were simply just elder villagers in costume attempting to scare the community into staying put.
10. Fight Club - 77.8%
Plot: The cult classic chronicles the story of insomniac The Narrator (Edward Norton) who meets soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Soon, Norton is embroiled in an underground fight club and soap-making scheme as the pair spiral out of control.
The twist: It turns out that Tyler isn't actually real and is simply the alter ego of The Narrator, living only in his mind.
Clues you may have missed: After they form Fight Club, there's one scene in the flick in which Tyler and The Narrator are on a bus together, but the eagled-eyed among us may have noticed only the latter actually buys a ticket. Of course, that's because we now know Tyler was never really there.
9. Planet of the Apes (1968) - 78.2%
Plot: A classic for many film buffs which has spawned several remakes and sequels, Franklin J. Schaffner's original follows astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) who crash lands on a planet home to highly-advanced apes which are keeping humans as slaves.
The twist: Eventually, Taylor stumbles upon the remains of the Statue of Liberty, revealing that the 'alien' planet was actually a post-apocalyptic Earth.
8. Unbreakable - 78.3%
Plot: David Dunn (Bruce Willis) miraculously survives a deadly train crash, only to be tracked down by a man named Elijah Price (Samuel L Jackson) who claims David has a superhuman ability to see the crimes of everyone he comes into contact with.
The twist: When Elijah asks David to shake his hand, it's revealed Elijah has actually been responsible for multiple terrorist attacks, including the train crash which happened at the start of the movie.
7. Parasite - 78.8%
Plot: Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning flick on classism follows the struggling Kim family who manage to weave their way into working for the wealthy Park family. Soon enough, all of the Kims have infiltrated the house working different jobs while pretending they don't know each other.
The twist: We get a bit of a double whammy with this one. While the Park family are away on a camping trip, the Kims discover the family's previous housekeeper has been hiding her husband from loan sharks in a secret bunker in the house that the Parks had forgotten even existed.
As the old housekeeper and the Kims find out about each other's sinister secrets, it sets off a fatal chain reaction that results in the Kim family patriarch having to go on the run from the police. Although, in a creepy parallel, we find out he hasn't been on the run but instead has been staying in the secret basement at the house all along.
Clues you may have missed: At one point the Parks' son Da-Song creates a 'self portrait' which frankly looks nothing like him, possibly due to the fact it's actually a drawing of the 'ghost' the little boy saw emerging from the basement below.
Another subtle nod comes after the Parks' housekeeper is fired when Park Dong-Ik tells Kim Ki-Taek that he noticed she would 'eat enough for two'. As we now know, this was because she was taking a second portion down to the basement for her husband.
6. Psycho - 79.5%
Plot: Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is on the run after stealing money from her employer when she checks into Bates Motel, owned by a man named Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). But things take a sinister turn after she's murdered by Norman's mother.
The twist: It wasn't Norman's mother who murdered Marion, but Norman himself. Horrifyingly, we learn Norman actually murdered his mother years ago and has adopted a second personality imitating her.
Clues you may have missed: Alfred Hitchcock did a pretty good job of leaving audience's jaws on the floor at the time, so there aren't a ton of hints that point to the big twist. One, however, is that any scene involving Norman's mother only contains her voice, suggesting she's not truly there.
5. The Usual Suspects - 80%
Plot: While being interrogated by police after becoming the sole survivor of a deadly shoot-out, suspect Roger 'Verbal' Kent (Kevin Spacey) tells the story of five criminals led by notorious mastermind Keyser Söze. He's eventually set free.
The twist: At the end of the flick, Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) begins looking around his office, relieved he's now solved the case with the help of Kent. But the calm is quickly shattered when he realizes several items in the office share names with the people in Kent's story. Suddenly, the penny drops that Kent is actually Keyser Söze - but it's too late, he's already gotten away.
Clues you may have missed: So small it was almost impossible to notice, at one point Verbal reveals that Söze’s parents are supposedly of German and Turkish decent - a rough translation reveals Keyser Söze means King Blabbermouth, a subtle nod Roger Kent's nickname Verbal. Satisfying!
4. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back - 84%
Plot: The second outing in the infamous sci-fi franchise follows Luke Skywalker as he attempts to become a Jedi warrior, while Princess Leia's Rebel Alliance fights the Galactic Empire.
The twist: Both iconic and highly quoted - you're probably already saying the words in your head as you read this.
During the movie's climatic battle Darth Vader reveals he's actually Luke's father, with the iconic twist changing the entire course of the franchise. Safe to say, the bombshell had a huge impact on both the course of the films and Star Wars fans.
Clues you may have missed: One of the biggest - albeit still pretty subtle - foreshadowings of Darth Vader's head-spinning confession comes as Luke hallucinates a fight which sees him decapitate Vader. But when he looks down, Vader’s mask has fallen off and underneath Luke sees his own face instead.
3. Interstellar - 84.7%
Plot: Kicking off our top three is Christopher Nolan's sci-fi epic, which follows farmer and ex-NASA pilot Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) who is tasked with joining a team of researchers to find a new planet for humans after Earth becomes inhabitable. Meanwhile, his daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain) is trying to solve the equation of gravity which would enable large groups of the population to leave the planet.
The twist: Murph finally solves her equation with the help of a 'ghost' which has been communicating with her through her book shelves. But it turns out that Murph's 'ghost' was actually her father in a time warp. I still get goosebumps from that one.
Clues you may have missed: A tragic but subtle hint at the mind-blowing twist comes in the form of the first comment Murph says to her father in the film: “I thought you were the ghost.”
Of course, this dialogue takes on a whole new meaning when you know the conclusion of Nolan's time-hopping flick.
2. Shutter Island - 86.1%
Plot: Leonardo DiCaprio stars as US Marshal Teddy Daniels who travels to a prison for the 'criminally insane' to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients.
The twist: In one of the biggest mic-drop moments in cinema, we learn that Teddy is actually a patient in the institution, while his police partner is his doctor. Teddy has been sent there due to murdering his wife - who had killed their three children - and has come up with the story of the missing patient to help him deal with the trauma. The staff decided to go along with it to see if it would help him accept reality and bring his buried memories to the surface.
Clues you may have missed: One of the biggest clues that points towards the infamous twist came in the form of a prop used throughout the flick. Every time Teddy goes to smoke a cigarette, someone else lights it for him. This is presumably because patients on Shutter Island aren't allowed to carry lighters on them.
Another clue comes during the scene where Teddy speaks to one of the other patients and the glass of water she asks for disappears when she takes a drink from it. This is possibly due to the fact Teddy has trauma surrounding water after the drowning of his children.
1. The Sixth Sense - 89.3%
Plot: Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) has the ability to communicate with the dead and consults with child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) to help him make sense of his strange power.
The twist: In what we've ranked as the most iconic twist in cinema history, it's revealed that Dr. Crowe has in fact been dead the whole time, having been killed during the robbery we see in the film's opening scene.
Clues you may have missed: Of course, one of the biggest giveaways of the shocking twist is that we literally see Dr. Crowe get shot during the opening sequence as his wife pleads with him to hold on. But there are some more subtle hints throughout the infamous flick.
Throughout the movie, we learn from Cole that ghosts don't realize they're dead - while that should've been an obvious giveaway, M. Night Shyamalan sprinkles it in there with so many other paranormal rules that it easily slips through the net for viewers.
One of the other nuggets comes during the anniversary dinner scene with Dr. Crowe and his wife. It becomes clear during the flick that their marriage has been deteriorating ever since the robbery, but when Dr. Crowe arrives at the restaurant late to their celebrations, his wife seemingly gives him the cold shoulder, ignoring his apologies.
Of course, we later realize she wasn't ignoring her husband, but she was actually the only one who was alive at the table.
Topics: Entertainment, Film and TV
Chloe Rowland