12 Greatest Red Herring Movie Endings

That damn spinning top doesn't mean squat.

By Jack Pooley /

Warner Bros.

A red herring is, of course, a classic narrative device intended to distract the audience away from a more important truth, and while it can often end up feeling rather lazy or cheap in the wrong hands, when it works, it really works.

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In the case of these 12 movies, each served up one or two tantalising plot threads which, in fact, turned out to be nothing more than a mere smoke-screen.

They were part of an ingenious act of misdirection on the part of the filmmaker, to lead audiences towards a specific trope, idea or narrative thread, only to snap back in act three and reveal a wholly different end-game.

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While these duplicitous reveals maybe left you a little frustrated the first time you saw them, repeat viewings make it clear just how damn ingenious they actually are, and how incredibly difficult it is to pull off such a deviously clever feat of mass audience manipulation...