People always talk about the best plot twists in movie history because they’re just so iconic. Think about the greatest reveals in cinematic history and a few immediately come to mind. Darth Vader revealing to Luke Skywalker that he’s his father in The Empire Strikes Back, Tyler Durden explaining the truth about who he is in Fight Club, the truth about who Keiser Soze is in The Usual Suspects, Jigsaw getting up from the floor in Saw, and the fact that Bruce Willis was a ghost in The Sixth Sense are among the most memorable.
Most of those twists, including many of the greatest to ever appear on the big screen, come near the end of the movie. They reconceptualize the way you view the project and shock you, while often making the film better overall. However, some of the best twists in history didn’t actually come at the end of the movie. Many of them happened at about the halfway point of the project and totally change everything about the film.
These twists have the ability to even shift the genre that we’re seeing. They could take a Western and turn it into a horror film or make a comedy become a thriller. Sometimes, they’ll even just shift a horror movie from one concept to another and it always catches you by surprise. A few movies pull this trick off better than others.
One Cut Of The Dead (2017)
Not a lot of people know about One Cut of the Dead because it’s a relatively small film made on a tiny budget. However, those who have seen it understand how good it is, as the movie holds an impressive 100% certified rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The first half centers on a crew that’s making a low-budget zombie movie, only for real zombies to attack them.
That sets up something quite fun, but about halfway through, things change and we get a flashback that also involves the personal lives of the characters. It shows pre-production aspects that explain how certain things went wrong on the technical side of things. It sheds new light on what we’ve seen to that point.
Full Metal Jacket has such a tone shift about halfway through that it feels like two totally different war movies. The first half of the Stanley Kubrick film follows several Marine Corps recruits during their training. We see the dehumanization that these recruits go through and then the movie throws you for a loop as one of the main characters takes his own life in shocking fashion.
Instead of sitting with what happened, the movie then jumps ahead in time to these men actually taking part in the Vietnam War. It shows another harrowing side to war, which allows Full Metal Jacket to be kind of be two great war films in one. Not many movies can pull that off.
Barbarian (2022)
Barbarian is an interesting horror flick because you know that it’s going to be scary going in, only for it to deliver several stunning twists. Zach Cregger’s film starts with a woman arriving at an Airbnb, only to find it’s already occupied by a man. Right off the bat, it’s unsettling because you fear for the woman and a few odd things occur to make it worse.
She eventually investigates a deep, almost hidden, basement in the home, where the man runs up to her and is attacked by something that’s hard to see. Then, the movie totally shifts and tells the story of the guy who owns the home. It all comes together masterfully and leads to a fantastic ending, helping Barbarian stand out as one of the best modern horror movies.
Parasite (2019)
At this point, plenty of people have seen Parasite thanks to the high praise it received. The film made history at the Academy Awards as it took home the prizes for Best Picture, Best International Feature Film, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Director. However, people likely didn’t expect what they got when they checked out the movie.
The initial setup centers on a poor family who find ways to infiltrate the lives of a wealthy family by getting various jobs with them, from tutor to driver. When the big twist that sees the old housekeeper reveal that her husband had been living in a bunker under the home comes, it takes this dark comedy down the road of being a thriller where you never expect what happens next.
From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Considering it has been around for 30 years, the twist in From Dusk Till Dawn is well known. In fact, most people might not consider it much of a twist because they now go into it knowing that it’s a vampire flick. If you don’t go in knowing that, you’re in for an unexpected change.
The film begins by following two brothers who bring a hostage with them as they look to cross into Mexico. They stop at a saloon where they end up getting caught in a battle with vampires. The concept was so well done that it even helped inspire one of the best movies of our age, Sinners.
Gone Girl (2014)
If you read the Gone Girl novel before seeing the movie, then you knew the twist was coming. Without that though, you were in for a true shock. Gone Girl starts by centering on the investigation into the disappearance of Amy Dunne, with her husband Nick becoming the prime suspect.
Midway through the film, we get the iconic “cool girl” monologue, which shifts the perspective to Amy and explains that she set up the entire thing to get out of her relationship. The movie goes down some truly wicked paths from there and the end result is one of the best movies in David Fincher’s storied filmography.
Psycho (1960)
Considering it’s one of the most iconic horror films in history, the twist in Psycho is known by pretty much everyone today. It’s actually the kind of unexpected movie moment that changed things for the genre going forward. Most of Psycho focuses on a young woman on the run after stealing money and she ends up at Bates Motel.
There, she takes a shower and is brutally murdered, though we can’t tell who it is. From there, the film pivots to center on who committed the murder and gives us a look at Norman Bates, who runs the hotel. Psycho isn’t done with the twists either, as the reveal of the murderer is truly shocking.
The Handmaiden (2016)
Park Chan-Wook makes some captivating movies and The Handmaiden might be his greatest work. The first half of this thriller sees a Korean girl get hired as a handmaiden to a wealthy Japanese heiress as part of a scheme to steal the woman’s inheritance. About a third of the way through, everything changes.
We learn that the heiress has her own scheme that totally changes the tone of the movie. There’s then a third huge twist that changes things again going into the third act. It’s hard to think of a movie with more standout twists than The Handmaiden, which is a critically fantastic movie as well as a staple of LGBTQ+ cinema.
