20 Recent Movie Twists That Fell Completely Flat

20. Black Phone 2 - The Grabber Killed Finney & Gwen's Mother

One of the most annoying trends in modern Hollywood is this: everything always seems to be connected. Secret family members, unearned call-backs to past stories, it's all so annoying! 

Black Phone 2 features one of the most jarring recent examples of this. Thankfully, it didn't go down the route of the Grabber (Ethan Hawke) being the protagonists' lost brother or something ridiculous like that, but it did reveal that the Grabber killed their mother, who was previously believed to have committed suicide. 

This fell flat because it was the epitome of a twist for the sake of it that added nothing whatsoever to the story. In fact, it undermined it. The idea that the Grabber was a random, unrelated force of evil that protagonists Finney and Gwen (Mason Thames & Madeleine McGraw) encountered by pure misfortune within a seemingly normal neighbourhood was far more powerful. 

Additionally, their mother's apparent suicide due to her psychic visions had been an important part of the first film, as it made the siblings frightened of the supernatural gifts that motivated their alcoholic father to abuse them, yet these very gifts ended up saving Finney's life. Therefore, their mother's death not being a suicide after all retrospectively undermined the first movie too. 

Black Phone 2 was surprisingly alright as unasked-for horror sequels go, but it would've risen even higher had this empty call-back been left on the cutting room floor.