10 More Awesome Plot Twists That Totally Saved Terrible Movies

10. Esther Is Dead - Orphan: First Kill

For the most part, this prequel to 2009's wonderfully unhinged horror film Orphan provides a pretty by-the-numbers origin story for psychopathic serial killer Leena Klammer (Isabelle Fuhrman), yet also completely blindsides viewers with a wildly unexpected mid-film twist.

First Kill shows Leena - a 31-year-old woman with a growth-stunting pituitary disorder - escaping from an Estonian psych ward and then posing as a missing American girl, Esther.

This leads to her being "reunited" with her mother Tricia (Julia Stiles), father Allen (Rossif Sutherland), and brother Gunnar (Matthew Finlan).

And while it's fair to assume that the rest of the movie will simply play out similarly to the first with Esther turning psycho on her new family, things are a little more complicated than that.

Once a detective discovers who "Esther" really is, she's suddenly saved by Tricia, who shoots him dead. Tricia then reveals that she knew Leena was an imposter the entire time, because the real Esther was killed four years earlier during an argument with Gunnar.

To protect her son, Tricia covered up Esther's death while keeping her husband totally unaware. Basically, this seemingly totally normal mother is actually a femme fatale in her own right and quite the savage match for Esther.

It's at this point that an otherwise goofy and unconvincing prequel few were asking for actually perks up, showing it had at least one good idea tucked up its sleeve.