10 Controversial Plot Twists That Ruined Movies

Many film genres have a variety of storytelling tools available to keep the pressure not only on their characters but also on their audience. One of the trickiest tools to use is the plot twist because it relies on both the shock of the reveal and the steps taken to set it up. A twist that feels like it came out of nowhere can work, but examining a good story will show how the creators fed us the right information to get us cozy enough to be shocked.

And then, sometimes, that twist doesn’t stick the landing. Sometimes it fumbles execution so badly that it ruins the entire movie. It’s hard to come back from that. Ryan Reynolds building a billion-dollar empire out of his horrific no-mouth reveal as Deadpool in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is a fluke that speaks to the actor’s determination to rebuild his character. But usually, the movie in question becomes a cautionary tale. 

These are 10 of the worst plot twists in modern movie history, with reveals so stinky that it’s hard to love the rest of the movie. But don’t ever feel judged if you still love one of these bad surprises. Movies are for everyone, and we all have our secret garbage favorites. Spoilers ahoy!

Some fans argue that the first half of “Hancock,” which sees Will Smith as its titular amnesiac antihero, is still pretty good. We’re not here to say they’re wrong, but the twist into the second half is so rotten that it’s hard to bring this thing to movie night. If you want a stellar first half of a movie, stick with “Full Metal Jacket.”

Hancock’s homeless superhuman would fit in with “The Boys,” but unfortunately, he’s just a lone schmuck. Or is he? After he accidentally befriends a PR guy and gets to meet his family, the movie takes a turn for the garbage disposal. The PR guy’s wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), is actually another superpowered immortal! As we sit, numb from our lack of shock and dulled by her exposition of some “Highlander”-themed backstory, we soon take the second blow: Mary is actually Hancock’s soulmate! She left him years ago when he first became an amnesiac.

This leaves us with an unsolvable paradox. On the one hand, good for Mary, as Hancock’s clearly a jerk. On the other, the statistics of partners leaving a relationship the second the other gets sick are depressing. Put together, “Hancock” is a thoughtless movie balanced on a failure of a twist that detracts from an already edgy exploration of a shoddy superhero. Thank goodness director Peter Berg still thinks a “Hancock” sequel is a long way off.

M. Night Shyamalan’s gift is in building whispery but rich atmospheres, ripe for Gothic-style twists and turns. He’s created some genuine thriller classics like “The Sixth Sense,” but by the time “The Village” came out, there were questions on whether he could consistently keep his shtick up. The answer is, for the most part, yeah, not really.

“The Village” has a lot going for it, with an excellent cast that includes Sigourney Weaver, Joaquin Phoenix, and William Hurt. Bryce Dallas Howard shines in an early performance that casts her as a naive villager sent on a frightening mission for the medical supplies needed to save a life. Yet the twist that the movie hinges on — that this village is an off-the-grid, post-9/11, “the old days were better and safer” dystopia-as-utopia — is wonky enough to turn this flick into a guaranteed way to start a fight at your monthly film club. It’s a movie that can still be enjoyed for its cinematography and historical costuming, but it’s difficult to defend where it goes with its plot.

Make a movie with at least a half-dozen plot twists piled on top of each other. Wedge in an “Oceans 11” plot with stage magicians. Throw in a weak conspiracy theory about ancient Egypt just to annoy the spirit of Umberto Eco, who did all of this better in “Foucault’s Pendulum” and still had time to drag Dan Brown before he died. Then give the lovable Mark Ruffalo the worst gig of his career. Congratulations, you made a terrible movie that still somehow got a sequel. No wonder this country’s in trouble.

One key to making a character’s big twist land is to ensure that their behavior is consistent with that character. Ruffalo, as an FBI agent named Dylan Rhodes who’s chasing these rogue street magicians for big reasons of his own, is not consistent. There are scenes of him alone where his behavior doesn’t match who he is at the end of the movie. He’s not performing for anyone (except the audience, which is a cheating no-no), and offers no foreshadowing for his actual motives. So for him to abruptly reveal himself as the actual mastermind behind everything is bad storytelling. We were never given a chance to pick through the clues. The real illusion of this movie is acting like it was giving us a mystery to play with. Boo.

Modern “James Bond” actor Daniel Craig will happily be the first to tell you that the franchise isn’t high art. It may even be a stretch to suggest it’s of some ephemeral higher nerd rank than a comic book series, especially when one of the better “Bond” stories is, in fact, a comic book series. That said, it’s no fun to see a twist on the level of a really bad ’90s superhero comic infest the Craig-era Bond movies. Worse that it involves the award-winning “Inglourious Basterds” star Christoph Waltz doing his best with the worst incarnation of Ernst Blofeld to date.

“Spectre” not only retcons some pretty solid modern “Bond” movies into chess pieces for the newly revealed (and also classic) terrorist organization Spectre, but it shoehorns Blofeld back into continuity after a rights issue had forced these same previous movies to create fresh plots and motivations without him. Although original plans had Ralph Fiennes’ M revealing himself as the main villain of “Spectre,” things turned out differently on-screen. Blofeld drops his version of “Somehow, Palpatine returned” and reveals that he, raised alongside the orphaned and adopted James as a brother, is actually Spectre’s infamous leader. It does not land with the gravitas of Darth Vader’s long-ago pronouncement of paternalism. It’s more like a strained post-Thanksgiving poot.

There’s plenty to argue about regarding M. Night Shyamalan’s superhero trilogy. “Unbreakable” remains the stand-out; sometimes too dark and ponderous, but enriched with a genuine love for the art of comics and a good twist. “Split” rides or dies on James McAvoy’s phenomenal performance. But “Glass,” which attempts to use Samuel L. Jackson’s supervillain as its narrative crux, doesn’t wrap things up as well as a fan could hope.

A late-game reveal that there’s been a secret superhuman suppression agency is both too familiar to the world of comics and dropped without any foreshadowing. Glass’ attempt to take them on is some nice antihero stuff, but Shyamalan is also trying to bring the tactic that weakened “Signs” into play as the movie reaches its climax: are these superheroes really all that? Working class hero David Dunn (Bruce Willis) leaves us with this unwanted question as one of America’s overpaid and over-armed militant cops causes him to drown in a puddle, as water is his only weakness. But we’re not here to discuss the villainy of police violence versus superheroes. Or are we? By the end of “Glass,” nobody knows what it all means anymore. We won’t lie, though. We’d still line up for another movie in this universe.

Talking about a “Harry Potter” property these days is an unwanted minefield. From J.K. Rowling’s bullying of trans people (an issue weighing down the upcoming Max series reboot) to the myriad issues surrounding stars Johnny Depp and Ezra Miller, it’s just one more rotten nut to crack that the “Fantastic Beasts” sub-franchise went sideways in its second outing. Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) had a nice thing going in the first film, where his job was to find, well, fantastic beasts before the muggles figure out there’s a vastly more interesting world out there. Thanks a lot, Newt.

The franchise then shoved Dumbledore and the pre-Voldemort villain Grindelwald into the mix. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” brings Grindelwald (Depp), whose slightly less tedious twist overburdened the previous film, into the foreground while apparently turning the Dumbledores into the Potterverse’s answer to the Skywalker clan. Ezra Miller, previously introduced as troublesome lad Credence with a fondness for dangerous bugs, goes through some sort of badly narrated transformation from “some dude” to a member of the magic-supremacist clan Lestrange to, somehow, being Albus Dumbledore’s brother. The explanation is too nonsensical to summarize and offered in a series of flashbacks that insult the legacy of “Rashomon,” but we can tell you it gets even worse in the sequel, “The Secrets of Dumbledore.” If you care. Which we don’t.

There aren’t a lot of nice things to say about where Kevin Spacey is with his career and his reputation these days, but it does make it easier to talk about the bad movies he’s done. “Pay it Forward” is one of those smarmy human interest movies that came off better when done in 52 minutes for an after-school special back in the ’80s. Its premise is simple: be kind to each other. This is fine, but we have to have a special young man and his special teacher and his sad, special mother teach it to us via sad scenes where we’re just not convinced of the innate goodness of the human spirit.

The ending is not subtle. Trevor (Haley Joel Osment), the architect of this proper New Testament parable about sharing, gets abruptly shanked by a bully and dies. The town wails about the unfairness of it all and promises to carry on his idea. The end. Yes, it’s that bad. It’s even more manipulative and saccharine than it sounds. It’s the movie equivalent of the real-life hitchhiking robot that was beaten into scrap in Philadelphia. It’s an accidental example of black comedy, and it hits even worse in modern times, where we know just how many of us wouldn’t vote for a half-priced rope if Jesus himself was drowning.

If you’re still wearing your orange Jayne hat, sit down, “Firefly” fans; it’s not that “Serenity.” No, this one stars Matthew McConaughey as a shaggy dog of a man, a real salt-of-the-earth fisherman with his own Moby Dick in the form of some trophy fish. His name is Dill. We’re not making that up. He’s eventually roped into drama, as his ex-wife re-enters the picture to beg him to save her and their son, Patrick (Rafael Sayegh), from the abusive new man in their lives.

None of that matters, because this is all some sort of terrible “Tron” rip-off where Dill (snicker) is just an NPC in cyberspace designed by Patrick to replace his father, a Real Man Who Died In Wartime. This is ridiculous to write. Dill can’t do anything in his “Reel Fishing III” state of existence to change reality, but apparently has enough sentience to figure out he’s an NPC and that he should go kill this dude anyway. Because his kid said so. Meanwhile, in real life, Patrick kills his stepfather and whips up his own happy ending with another home-brew computer game. You just know this kid would be into crypto now, and had a phase where you could invest in his Dill NFTs. He’d DM the Hawk Tuah girl. We could go on. Trust /Film’s previous review, and don’t watch “Serenity.”

Bad twists in midrange horror movies are one of those annoying things that exist and you have to just deal with it, like mosquitos in summer, or crunchy ice crystals forming in your Ben & Jerry’s. It’s less than great when those bad twists take real-world issues down with them in ugly ways. “Orphan” manages to fumble a lot of bags that need some reasonable handling, like the way it’s demonizing adopted kids and making a rare disease into a joke. It’s a bad “Twilight Zone” episode, one that Rod Serling would’ve cut because Talky Tina already did most of this better without punching down on anyone.

Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) is quickly adopted because this nice white family wasn’t happy enough with two kids and wouldn’t get therapy for the genuinely tragic experience of stillbirth. Nobody does their due diligence until after Esther has nearly killed everyone twice and creepily tried to seduce dad at least once, at which point some doctor overseas explains that the kid is actually a serial killer in her 30s. Esther, actually Leena, has Hollywood Hypopituitarism, where a real (and treatable) thyroid disorder somehow keeps this lady child pageant-ready for life. That’s not how any of this works, and anyone with a real thyroid disorder should be allowed to throw unsalted popcorn at this movie at every opportunity.

It’s well known by now that Robert Pattinson puts enough effort into his craft to make any performance of his watchable, even if that can’t redeem the movie in question. So when we say “Remember Me” is a cheap shot of a movie, a smarmy sobber with a shaggy dog ending so blatantly manipulative of America’s collective memory that you want to hold Rudy Giuliani personally responsible for this thing, it’s no reflection on Pattinson.

Why blame Giuliani? If you’ve somehow avoided knowledge of “Remember Me” (bless you in all things), it’s a fairly basic teenage romance drama with a lot of convoluted baggage, all of which goes up in smoke when a wham shot reveals that Tyler’s (Pattinson) dad works in the World Trade Center, and the day he finally visits Pop’s high rise office is indeed on September 11, 2001. The grimmest unlikelihood of this movie is that Tyler’s remains are recovered, identified, and buried in the family plot. At least 40% of 9/11’s victims remain unidentified, while scientists continue, to this day, to reunite the dead with their families. Not only is this movie another cheap weepie, but it’s also a little tacky.