2022 offered plenty of releases with plot twists that seemed to have come out of the blue: Either taking Fresh‘s romantic journey turning into a cannibal feast, or Men‘s chilling atmosphere giving space to straight-up body horror as an example, viewers were left dumbfounded at these movies’ courage to go nuts.
Reddit users have their picks about plot twists that have come out of nowhere, some of them effective to the narrative and others simply ruining the entire movie.
Sorry To Bother You (2018)
Sorry To Bother You starts as a lighthearted comedy before getting dark all of a sudden; it follows a black telemarketer who discovers the magical key to success, which propels him into a macabre corporate reality. It’s an effective satire on consumerism and class struggle, but it takes these themes to an extreme when the protagonist is exposed to a shocking experiment that turns humans into half-horse humanoids.
mikeyfreshh claims, “I watched Sorry To Bother You like 3 years ago and I still have not recovered from that twist.” The movie quickly gets comfortable in its absurdity and delivers a final punch line in the most over-the-top way possible.
The Mist (2009)
The Mist follows the inhabitants of a small town as a thick fog hiding bloodthirsty creatures envelops their surroundings. Trapped in a supermarket, a father and his 5-year-old son discover that humans might be an even greater threat. With that set-up, the movie balances a creative cosmic horror setup with the dangers of religious fanatism.
The Mist nails its final scene with a gutwrenching twist: after killing the remaining survivors, including his son, to avoid suffering at the hands of the creatures, a traumatized father offers himself to the monsters, but instead of a horrific death he actually finds the U.S. army restoring order and the mist dissipating. A Redditor claims, “I was not ready for that ending.”
Orphan (2009)
Orphan tells the story of a married couple shaken by a recently-stillborn baby. In an attempt to fill the void generated by the incident and stabilize their wedding, they decide to adopt a 9-year-old girl… who is actually a serial killer.
Orphan‘s surprising twist reveals that the little 9-year girl adopted is in fact a 33 years old psychopathic woman with a hormone disorder, granting her childlike features. It’s a twist as effective as it is unexpected, giving the movie that final shock that grants a positive feeling about it, just as truckturne5164 states, “the movie is just ok, but that twist is absolutely insane.”
Now You See Me (2013)
Now You See Me plays with the concept of magic quite well, introducing a team of illusionists who pull off inventive bank heists with their unique tricks and reward their audiences with money. With an FBI agent and an Interpol detective on their heels, the movie quickly becomes a fun action thriller.
kappa23 sees Now You See Me‘s out-of-the-blue plot twist as unnecessary, and many fans agree that the ending almost ruins the whole movie. In the final moments, the FBI agent played by Mark Ruffalo is revealed to be the face behind the team of illusionists, gathering them in an attempt to get revenge for his father’s death. Bringing up plot holes to the story and offering an anti-climatic conclusion to the film, it’s a plot twist that feels detached from the overall story.
The Visit (2015)
A deleted user mentions the end of The Visit as his pick for a plot twist that came out of the blue. The movie follows a brother and sister who are sent to their grandparents’ remote farm for a weekend trip. As the two siblings begin to suspect their grandparents harbor disturbing secrets, they desperately contemplate a chance to escape.
M. Night Shyamalan is famous for his surprising twists but they are often hit or miss. The Visit was another divisive movie by him, but denying the absolute shock of finding out how that elderly couple isn’t in fact those children’s grandparents is almost impossible.
The Departed (2006)
The Departed is one of the best gangster movies of the 2000s, following both the gangster and the detective in each other’s roles. In the film, an undercover cop and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other while making dangerous business with an Irish gang in South Boston.
Mentioned by a deleted Reddit use, the out-of-the-blue moment happens at the clímax of the movie, when DiCaprio’s character, the real detective, gets the upper hand over the mole and proceeds to arrest him as they both get in an elevator. When they arrive at the rooftop, another fake agent comes out of nowhere and shoots the cop in the face, marking the beginning of a massacre. Just like the mole at the elevator, viewers are left in a state of complete shock.
The Prestige (2006)
“Plot Twist” could as well be Christopher Nolan’s middle name, because the ease in which he inserts jaw-dropping twists in his stories is quite remarkable. Suggested by Thefinalwerd, The Prestige’s twists are one of a kind because of the drastic way they change the narrative; viewers follow the intense rivalry of two magicians as they desperately try to get the upper hand over one another.
What seemed like a simple, yet thrilling story of competition gives place to a series of unexpected revelations when the methods used by each magician to perform a “teleporting” trick are unfolded; one of them peformed alongside his secret twin brother, while the other resorted to a wicked machine that created copies of him.
The Matrix (1999)
The feeling of watching The Matrix for the first time is something unforgettable for many, especially when viewers go without any prior knowledge about the story. As thatcambridgebird describes, “the twist of what the Matrix is, and how machines use humans, was a pretty big surprising moment which I personally didn’t see coming when sitting in the cinema.”
The Matrix starts off as a typical sci-fi thriller, following the computer hacker Neo running away from powerful agents who desperately want to get ahold of him. The story soon unravels into something much bigger, offering a disruptive twist: the reality humanity lives in isn’t real; they’re all stuck in a simulation while serving as sleeping slaves to dominant machines.
The Others (2001)
Brought up by WritingUnicorn2019, The Others offers a peculiar take on the traditional haunted house story. Nicole Kidman plays a religious woman living in a darkened old family house because of her two children’s rare sensibility to light. When they suspect mysterious spirits are lurking in the shadows, the mother resorts to extreme measures to protect her children from any harm.
The Others is the kind of movie viewers have to watch twice to fully understand. At first, the gutwrenching revelation that the mother and her children are the real ghosts, and the house is haunted by them seems to come out of the blue, but all the hints were there from the very start.
Predestination (2014)
Predestination follows a top temporal agent in his final assignment: pursue one clever criminal who has outsmarted him throughout time. The biggest twist is that the agent is in fact chasing his own tail, but there’s more; he’s not only his biggest enemy, he’s also his own son, mother, and father at the same time. These mind-bending revelations are unraveled in a surprising way, leaving viewers wanting for more of such a disorienting, yet creative time paradox.
releasethepr0n claims, “everyone discovers at a different, but the way the idea develops in your mind and you go ‘oh no… it can’t be. Could it?’ is really fun.”
