9 Movies With Way Too Many Plot Twists
Know the one that's one too many.
A good twist is about more than just shocking the viewer. Sure, that’s the intended effect, but it’s always about making the audience rethink everything they’ve learned, and to read between the lines.
They enrich the story instead of undermining it, and the classic twist endings – think The Usual Suspects, Memento or The Sixth Sense – work because the story was building towards them. They didn't just pull something out of their backside.
On the flip-side, there’s nothing more annoying than a film that tries to outsmart the viewer – often by throwing out random plot turns – and only succeeds in boring them. Some screenwriters think the key to a good story is surprise, and compensate for a lack of compelling characters by introducing a shocking event every ten minutes or so.
This is a sloppy way to tell a story, and it gets tiring watching a film tie itself into knots for no good reason. Sometimes it becomes so ridiculous it’s almost funny, which surely wasn’t the intention. Here are some of the worst offenders.
9. Color Of Night
A movie that’s best remembered for all the sexy sex, Color Of Night is also home to some insane plot twists. It stars Bruce Willis as a psychiatrist investigating the death of a friend, and he takes over his late pal’s therapy group to see if he can spot the killer.
Willis investigates each patient looking for clues, even though a massive one is staring him in the face; the young “guy” in his group is quite clearly a girl in disguise. More specifically, it’s Rose, the mysterious lady he’s been seeing. Apparently, a terrible wig and some glasses are enough to obscure this.
It turns out everyone in the group is also seeing Rose, but the movie still treats it like a shock when he realises “Richie” is Rose. She then reveals her brother is the killer, for reasons that are too damn complicated to explain here.
It's all very lurid and trashy, which is probably why it's earned a bit of a cult reputation.