WARNING: Spoilers are in this movie review, so if you are to read it, be weary that the movie that is on here may be one that you haven’t seen, and will therefore ruin it if you are to see it.
Those who actually read my reviews and lists may be saying “why do you repeat some lists you have already done?” Well, random viewer #1, it is because I change my opinion a lot (as you would know if you are a reader of my reviews). I believe that movie twists are important, and in all of my movies that I have written or plan to write, there is some sort of a twist, and so it is inspiring to me, the film twists, over the years, mainly because of the ability of the films to truly make your spine tingle. So here are my top 5 film twists ever (redone, of course):
5. Identity: The child ends up being the side of the killer that is making him kill, and he kills Amanda Peete, then takes over the man as he is being driven to be set free, and kills Alfred Molina and the driver.
4. The Others: Nicole Kidman and her children end up being dead, and the “ghosts” are the people living in the dwelling that is haunted by Nicole Kidman and her children.
3. Psycho: Norman Bates is dressing drag as his mother. He kills the woman in the end in the famous shower scene.
2. TIE
> Vanilla Sky: It’s a dream and in the end, he wakes up by opening his eye to the sound of Penelope Cruz… but when does he wake up? The ending is great and allows you to really make the ending your own.
>The Usual Suspects: Kevin Spacey IS Kaiser Soze!
>The Sixth Sense: Bruce Willis is actually dead.
1. Dogville: Nicole Kidman is running from the mobsters because she is actually the daughter of the head of the mob, not on the run from them. The mobsters kill the whole town because of how they treated her, Kidman and the mobsters then return home, ensuing in the end.
A Best Twists Ever list that does NOT include Oldboy or Fight Club? Twists that weren’t just shocking but redefined the reality of the movie we had watched and elevated the story to a completely new place. Weak.
No, Oldboy had a surprising ending, but the fact remains that the movie took it down and this is not about “oh, that was a cool twist,” but how the movie wrapped around it. Same goes for Fight Club. The whole time, you weren’t supposed to be wondering “How are Tyler and Edward Norton connected” until right before you found the twist out. The movies on my list are more about substance (though Cyborg Girl might have been an honorable mention). The movies on the list are all derived from the plot making you think “well, why is this like this?” Like with “Dogville,” you are wondering the whole time why, the whole time, Kidman is running from the mob. And in the Others, you are wondering why the ghosts are haunting her the whole time. Though the Sixth Sense’s twist was completely unsuspected, the whole time you were wondering why the relationship between Willis and his wife were both so distant. Same with Usual Suspects, Psycho and Identity. See what I mean?
I agree, JC. Fight Club had hints throughout the movie of the ending. And, while some may have been shocked the first time around watching it, you had to go “Oh, that makes sense… I should’ve gotten that.” And as for Oldboy, it wasn’t so much a twist but just overall unsettling. I have to agree that Dogville is number one on this list for me, too. GREAT choices!!
You may disagree but here is my case for why Oldboy and Fight Club are far, far more substantive then you’re giving them credit for here.
*spoilers*
Olboy is a classic revenge movie. The genius of it’s twist is 2 fold. 1) the shocker that he was tricked into sleeping with his own daughter – the photo album reveal of this is still one of my favorite twist reveals ever. It does not come out of nowhere, but locks perfectly into the story and causes it to loop around to why he was kidnapped in the way he was in the first place. 2) the underlying twist being the revelation that Oh Dae-Su spreading a nasty rumor about his captor’s sister was what got her to kill herself. So the movie does a revenge movie reversal and forces you to wonder if the guy you’ve been rooting for all this time is really the bad guy, or really got what he deserved. Questioning the very nature of the revenge movie.
Fight Club’s twist is even more rich. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton are revealed to be the same person is what is usually repeated as the twist. And that is true, but what is also true is that Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden is the guy the narrator WANTS to be. Doubling back to the “what makes a man” theme at the beginning and tracing through the entire movie, Tyler is the hyper-macho magazine cover image of a man Norton thinks he needs to be to be a man and get the girl (Marla Singer). He is the mascule ID. The antidote to Norton’s Ikea shopping femenization. It takes the whole theme of man’s femenization by consumerism, and the depth of the narrator’s obsession with it to a whole new level.
Both of these twists are crucial to the story and the themes of their movies. The movie’s couldn’t exist without them.
It’s odd, my reaction to The Sixth Sense was the same as people claim there reaction to Fight Club was. I was like “oh he’s dead, ok.” and “he only talked to the kid. That works”. And I was done with it.
Well, I think that the movies were both awesome, please certainly don’t get me wrong on that, but the point is that they were just so… its not that I ever would have expected them, but the fact is that they are just too un-guessable. Its only fun when you can guess about the twist. The way Oldboy’s twist was done was brilliant and the whole idea of the reverse-cycle twist was quite extraordinary, but as I said before, you could not have guessed that the rumors drove to such an ultimatum, and you weren’t ever really thinking “hey, that chick might be his daughter,” which is a VERY good twist, but just not in my top 5. Maybe a #6 tie (with Fight Club, of course). Its not that I don’t respect the movies, because I truly do, it is just that they aren’t in my mind the best. And that’s what opinions can do. Ain’t that a bitch?