Who doesn't love a good plot twist? Plot twists always make a movie more interesting. They can elaborate on the world of the movie, get audiences talking as they leave the theater, and ultimately give everyone a new perspective every time they rewatch the movie. Plot twists always spice up a story, and the best of the best keep people talking for years.
However, just because a plot twist elevates the story and ideas of a movie, that doesn't mean they always make sense. Filmmakers are only human, and, naturally, holes in the movie's logic are bound to pop up every now and again, especially when massive plot twists are thrown into the mix. That doesn't make the movies or even the twists themselves bad, as evidenced by the fact that many of these movies are considered some of the best movies ever made. That doesn't excuse their logic, however.
6 The Sixth Sense
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M. Night Shyamalan's breakout movie starred Bruce Willis as Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist who begins evaluating the young Cole Sear, a young boy who has the ability to see and communicate with ghosts. The big twist is that at the end of the movie, it's revealed that Malcolm himself has been a ghost the entire time, having been shot and killed in the movie's prologue. It's a shocking twist that changes the way audiences see the movie, and gives the movie a satisfying and emotional conclusion.
On closer inspection, however, the twist doesn't quite make sense. If Malcolm has been dead this entire time, wouldn't he have noticed everyone grieving over him? And wouldn't he notice that not a single person has interacted with him over the course of an entire year? This even includes Cole's mother. One would think that a child psychologist would speak with the parent before speaking with their child. Yet Malcolm takes on Cole as a client without once speaking to his mother. Somehow, none of this hits Malcolm as being strange or odd. The Sixth Sense is still a great movie that executes its twist masterfully, even if it only works in the confines of its own story.
5 Fight Club
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Despite being highly controversial and polarizing, Fight Club has managed to garner a dedicated cult following, turning it into the pop culture icon it is today. The movie stars Edward Norton as the unnamed Narrator who begins hanging around Tyler Durden, a soap salesman with a hardcore attitude and disdain towards society. The two begin a "fight club" which soon devolves into a terrorist organization. At the end of the movie, it turns out that the Narrator and Tyler are actually the same person, leading to a tense and mind-boggling final confrontation.
Fight Club has a cool twist, though it starts to fall apart if viewers really start to think about it. With Tyler and the Narrator being one and the same, it means to everyone else, the Narrator has been talking to (and sometimes fighting with) someone who was never really there. Normally, this would be a massive red flag, so it's somewhat hard to believe that such a person would successfully rally up enough men to start a club, let alone a terrorist organization.
4 Saw
Violent, shocking, and disturbing, Saw managed to captivate horror fans everywhere with its intricate traps and horrifying gore. The movie follows two men trapped in a bathroom who must endure several dangerous and violent tests from the infamous "Jigsaw killer" in order to escape. Lying in between them is the corpse of a man who has killed himself with a gun. Or at least, it would appear to be. In the movie's final moments, the "corpse" stands up, revealing itself to have been the Jigsaw killer all along.
It's surprising, to say the least, but also somewhat unconvincing. For this to work, the Jigsaw killer, or John Kramer, would have had to lie perfectly still for the entire duration that the two men were trapped in the room. Kramer was betting a lot by assuming that neither of the two men would notice the "corpse" breathing in the middle of the room. Kramer would also have to be sure not to make a single sound throughout the entire duration of the tests. And, ultimately, what exactly was the point of Kramer lying on the floor the whole time anyway? It's a cool ending, but a definite head-scratcher.
3 The Empire Strikes Back
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It's the most famous scene in the entire Star Wars franchise, as well as one of the most iconic lines and plot twists in movie history. In the sequel to the unexpected hit, the evil Darth Vader famously reveals to Luke Skywalker that he is, in fact, Luke's father. While it may be common knowledge today, the scene shocked fans and moviegoers everywhere in 1980. While it's certainly a famous scene, unfortunately, it doesn't quite add up with the previous movie. George Lucas initially didn't plan to have Darth Vader be Luke's father, so, as expected, some aspects of the two movies don't line up.
In the first movie, Vader either knew that his own son was living peacefully on Tatooine and for whatever reason didn't do anything about it, or somehow never made the connection until somewhere in the second movie. If he didn't want Luke involved in the Empire, then his last-ditch efforts to convert him to the dark side in this scene aren't well thought out either. Did Vader really believe that Luke would join him after he killed his aunt and uncle, killed Obi-Wan Kenobi, destroyed Leia's home planet, and chopped Luke's hand off? This line of thinking isn't quite in character with the iron-fisted villain audiences had been following for the past two movies. Fortunately, it's such a huge bombshell that hardly anyone really notices, and The Empire Strikes Back still manages to be a high point in the Star Wars saga.
2 Citizen Kane
In spite of its initial mixed reception, Citizen Kane is often argued to be the greatest movie ever made. It tells the life story of the fictional businessman and politician Charles Foster Kane from the point of view of his loved ones after his death. When no one can figure out what Kane's final word, "rosebud", meant, reporters search through Kane's life to figure out why such a word meant so much to Kane. While the characters never discover the significance of "rosebud," the audience does. In the movie's final moments, it's revealed that "rosebud" is the name of the sled Kane owned as a child, symbolizing Kane's desire to return to a simpler time.
The problem is that the entire plot hinges on an impossibility. No one is actually in the room when Kane whispers "rosebud," meaning that no one could have possibly known what his last words were. There's also the fact that Kane had hundreds of people working in his mansion. It's hard to believe that not one person would have seen the sled and put two-and-two together. Citizen Kane is still one of the best movies of all time, even with this relatively small oversight.
1 The Usual Suspects
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One of the most famous twists in movie history comes from Bryan Singer's 1995 mystery movie The Usual Suspects. In the movie, Kevin Spacey plays Verbal Kint, who survives a gun massacre and is taken in by the police for questioning. Kint then relays his story as one of several small-time criminals who got roped into a plot orchestrated by criminal mastermind Keyser Soze. After Kint leaves, the police discover that Kint was actually Keyser Soze the entire time, and that the majority of the events that he told them about were made up. He was simply stalling until he could get released on bail and disappear.
The twist that most of The Usual Suspects was fictional even in the world of the story is a huge shocker, but it also doesn't quite make sense. The movie establishes that Soze would go to great lengths to make sure that no one can recognize him, yet he still allows himself to be caught by the police. Even after he leaves, a fax containing the composite sketch for Soze comes in, meaning now the entire police department knows who he is. There's also the fact that Soze was incredibly lucky that the fax didn't show up during his story. It's still a brilliant twist, even if it doesn't quite feel like the mastermind the audience has been led to believe that Soze is.