10 Dumb Movies With Genius Plot Twists
When stupidity meets genius.
It goes without saying that a plot twist can either make or break a movie: get it right and a good film becomes great, but get it wrong, and a lousy twist can derail two hours of storytelling and character work in one fell swoop.
Then there are those rare stupid movies which manage to rustle up an ingenious, deceptively smart plot twist totally out of nowhere.
Though these movies are largely defined by their low-effort writing and braindead storytelling - sometimes intentionally so, to be fair - audiences were nevertheless blindsided by these genuinely smart, thoughtful, and surprising plot twists that came wildly out of left-field.
They might not necessarily save the entire movie, but they do at least prove that there was a kernel of creativity somewhere within the filmmaking process.
Ultimately, these twists are as effective as they are precisely because they represent such a sudden burst of clever storytelling in otherwise dumb, popcorn-munching movies.
In each case, these twists caused viewers to perk up and start paying attention in movies that were otherwise just aiming to please the lowest common denominator...
10. Brahms Was Living In The Walls - The Boy
2016's hit horror film The Boy revolves around an American nanny, Greta Evans (Lauren Cohan), who travels to England only to discover that her new job doesn't involve babysitting a boy, Brahms, but rather a life-size doll resembling him.
It's soon revealed that the real Brahms died in a fire 20 years prior, and this is the parents' way of coping. For the bulk of the movie, audiences are led to believe that the Brahms doll is going to come to life, Child's Play-style, and start terrorising Greta.
However, in the third act this is revealed to be nothing more than a red herring, because not only did Brahms survive the fire 20 years ago, but he's been living in the walls of the mansion seemingly ever since.
As spectacularly stupid as The Boy might be, and as daft as the subsequent showdown with Greta is, this was a terrific sleight-of-hand, luring in audiences to believe it was basically a lame cash-in on the Annabelle formula, only to become something else entirely.
Sadly the sequel, Brahms: The Boy II, bafflingly retconned this reveal entirely, re-jigging Brahms as a demonic entity literally living inside the titular doll.