20. They All Did It – “Murder On The Orient Express” (1974)
While undoubtedly she was the purveyor of some of the most celebrated twist endings in 20th-century lore through her various series of mystery novels, Agatha Christie has been rather underserved by, or perhaps her own brand tends to overwhelm, her big-screen incarnations. The chief notable exception is Sidney Lumet‘s adaptation of Christie’s enjoyably preposterous ‘Orient Express,’ and not only because the film is stuffed with such high-wattage star power it practically supernovas. It’s also because the twist in this tale is really one that deserves singular treatment, as it’s a sly subversion of the “it’s the last person you’d expect!” trope that Christie herself had pioneered. As laboriously detailed in the borderline-camp climactic reveal (and it’s fun to see a rigorous talent like Lumet let loose a bit), the reason there were 12 stab wounds of varying depth in the body is that 12 different people inflicted one each — making every single one of the other occupants of the carriage the man’s murderer.
19. The Wizard — “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)
You remember it for the songs and the bright Technicolor world, for its witches and lions and scarecrows and flying monkeys, but you forget that “The Wizard Of Oz” is also enormously subversive in a way that belies its status as an all-time family favorite. Perhaps the most subversive moment is at its end, when Dorothy and co. finally reach the Emerald City and find the wizard, seemingly a floating green head behind a fiery organ. But then Toto pulls back the curtain and exposes that the Wizard of Oz is really an old jumped-up con man with no real magical powers. If you don’t know the story, it’s a genuine shock, and the subtext — believe in yourself, not the man in the sky — is sort of remarkable for something that’s nearly 80 years old at this point.
18. His Girlfriend Was Buried Alive And Now He Is Too – “The Vanishing” (1988)
Any fan of George Sluizer‘s low-budget, cleverly nasty Dutch-language original could, upon watching the useless Hollywood remake (that Sluizer also directed) add another “twist” to this list: i.e. that the director would pointlessly lose the exact thing that made his original film so great — GOTCHA! In the original, our hero has spent the whole film on a quest, not even for revenge, but to understand — and even experience — what happened to his girlfriend after she disappeared years ago. The mild-mannered, seemingly ordinary man who killed her as part of a kind of intellectual exercise eventually obliges, and the suffocating claustrophobic horror we share as the boyfriend wakes up buried in a tiny box has to be one of the most sickening endings of all time — especially as, on one level, it’s exactly what he asked for.
17. He’s Rescued – “The Mist” (2007)
It’s already among the grimmest endings of all time when Thomas Jane discovers that even the last resort of a quick death won’t be available to all five of the survivors, fleeing the unspeakable horror that lurks in the mist, as he’s only got four bullets. It then gets exponentially grimmer as we hear a far-off rumble and he kills the others, including his eight-year-old son, and sits a moment in the car with their bodies. But when he stumbles out into the mist and, instead of the interdimensional alien whatsits, the shape that looms up before him turns out to be that of a rescue vehicle full of survivors, that’s when half the audience wanted to murder director Frank Darabont and the other half (the section we were in) wanted to give him a medal for breathtaking, jawdropping gall. Bravo.
16. She’s Not A Child, But A Psychotic 33-Year-Old Estonian Woman With A Growth Disorder – “Orphan” (2009)
What looked like another forgettable evil-child horror movie, intended to fill theaters until something bigger came along, proved in “Orphan” to be a hugely pleasurable surprise. Partly because of committed performances by its cast; partly because of the stellar direction of Jaume Collet-Serra, who does this kind of unrepentant pulp better than almost anyone; and partly because of its outrageous, virtually unguessable twist ending. To begin with, it feels like a ‘Bad Seed‘-type movie, with two parents (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard) adopting a nine-year-old Russian child (Isabelle Fuhrman) who has an alarming propensity for violence, having attempted to kill one of their other children. But she is not possessed, or the devil, or anything like that. She is, in fact, a 33-year-old Estonian woman with a hormone deficiency that lets her pose as a child, who has killed nearly a dozen people. It’s maybe inelegantly delivered in some respects, but it’s absolutely unexpected, and leaves you giggling with glee at the ballsiness of the choice.
15. He’s Dead – “The Sixth Sense” (1999)
It’s true that the mark of a great twist is whether you can rewatch the film knowing what’s coming and still be satisfied that you weren’t cheated, but it’s only in rare cases that a film’s twist gives you the urge to rewatch the movies as soon as possible. M. Night Shyamalan, for all his subsequent transgressions, pulled off that feat in magnificent style in “The Sixth Sense,” which is an involving story about redemption and a doctor helping a troubled little boy understand his nature the first time you watch it, and an involving story about grief and a troubled little boy helping a doctor understand his nature the second time you watch it. Now, if Shyamalan’s “Split” turns out to be a return to this sort of form, then he’ll have pulled off career twist to rival even this, his best creation.
14. They’re Going To Sacrifice Him – “The Wicker Man” (1973)
There’s a certain quality of queasy horror that Robin Hardy‘s seminal “The Wicker Man” deals in, one that owes a debt to the British horror tradition of Hammer and so on (not least the casting of Christopher Lee). But if there’s one thing that sets it apart, it’s that “The Wicker Man” has an absolute killer of an ending, in which the pompous, starchy policeman (Edward Woodward) investigating the Summerisle cult and the disappearance of a young girl, realizes that in fact he is the virgin about to be sacrificed to whatever pagan Gods they worship. It turns a straight-up occult horror into something much more subversive and satirical.
13. She’s A He – “The Crying Game” (1992)
The reason so many twists are kept for the very end of the film is that it can be hard for the story to regain its balance after a sudden shock, but the notable exception to this rule is when the film itself is concerned with how the characters respond to the sudden upsetting-of-the-apple-cart. And it’s that that makes the twist in Neil Jordan‘s IRA thriller both so surprising and so satisfying: Not only are we not expecting, at this relatively early stage, anything so shocking as the full-frontal shot that reveals Dil (Jaye Davidson) to be transgender, but the whole rest of the movie pivots around that moment as Stephen Rea‘s misguided IRA foot soldier finds some measure of redemption through her, and the memory of the British soldier he befriended.
12. She’s A Vengeful Killer – “Audition” (1999)
Takashi Miike‘s finest hour, the deliriously sick and twisted “Audition,” gets a whole lot sicker than the scene below, but this is the moment at which, with a distinct lurch, the whole focus of the film shifts from being about a callously entitled older man pursuing a pretty, innocent, if somewhat mysterious young girl, to suggesting that perhaps the depravity is far more weighted to her side than his. The film will devolve into scenes of dismemberment, garroting and vomit-eating, but probably it’s at its most chilling when our own assumptions about victimhood and femininity are challenged by the stillness with which she waits for the call, the muffled thump inside the sack, and her tiny smile when the phone finally rings.
11. He Just Banged His Daughter – “Oldboy” (2003)
There’s a reason there are multiple incest-related twists on this list — it still feels like one of the few things more shocking than a murder, and it evokes some of the oldest stories we have, Greek tragedies like “Oedipus Rex” for one. But aside from one (see below), “Oldboy” is the best at capturing the sick, horrified vibe that you get from the best of those Greek tragedies. Choi Min-sik’s Oh Dae-su is released after 15 years in private captivity and sets out on a mission of vengeance, falling in love and sleeping with a younger woman, Mi-do (Kang Hye-jung), in the process. But when he finally catches yup to his captor Lee (Yoo Ji-tae), he’s told that the woman he’s just slept with is actually his daughter, now grown. That this act has been instigated by a man who Oh had, in high school, witnessed sleeping with his sister, causing a scandal that resulted in the girl’s suicide, only makes the sense of nausea greater.
