12 Dumbest Movie Plot Twists Of 2016

A good plot twist should enrich a story instead of distracting from it. There’s a reason the twists in Memento, The Usual Suspects or Seven are so shocking; because we’re invested in the plot and characters, and the reveal shakes their world and ours. This contrasts with the twist in something like Tim Burton’s Planet of The Apes, which adds nothing and is more confusing than shocking; and really, really dumb.

Sadly not every film can pull off a twist reveal with grace, with 2016, in particular, having a line-up of rug pulls that do more harm to the narrative than good. They take the viewer out of the movie and create more questions than they answer. It could be that they undermine the logic of the story, or instead of clearing something up the twist just adds more questions.

Here’s a dozen of the year’s dumb plot twists, and the reasons why they end up hurting the movie.

Don’t Breathe is a taut thriller that surprised everyone by being a sizable sleeper hit, and there’s already talk of a sequel. Director Fede Alvarez previously helmed the Evil Dead remake, a film designed to make audiences wince uncontrollably at a line-up of icky setpieces.

He tones down the cartoonish reliance on gore for Don’t Breathe, but one scene, in particular, takes the nastiness too far. A twist midway through reveals the blind man the thieves came to rob is keeping his daughter’s killer in the basement, having impregnated her with a turkey baster so she could bear him a replacement child.

While he accidentally shoots her, he plans for the female thief to bear him another replacement instead. This whole twist is intensely gross and added purely for shock value. Just like the moment she squirts the baster into the blind man's mouth, it leaves a bitter taste.