10 Amazing Movie Plot Twists That Never Get Talked About
2. Identity - It Was Timmy All Along
James Mangold has carefully constructed a very impressive career to date, which made the final Indiana Jones flick all the more disappointing, knowing that it came from such a talented director as Mangold. Nevertheless, he has proven himself as a master of genres with a vast filmography including action, biopics, comic book movies, westerns, and even a murder mystery - which is where the masterful 2003 film Identity comes into the fold.
Identity is a fantastic film topped off with an extraordinary, multi-layered twist. But to get there, Mangold takes the viewer on a journey of articulate misdirection.
From the outside looking in, the movie has a simple and somewhat recognisable premise in strangers who, trapped within a hotel by a vicious storm, are picked off one by one by a mysterious killer. We're no strangers to a plot device made infamous by Agatha Christie, but from the inside looking out, it's anything but your typical, run-of-the-mill murder mystery.
These 'ten strangers' are nothing but personalities construed and constructed within the mind of death row resident Malcolm Rivers, who is receiving treatment for dissociative identity disorder whilst awaiting execution for mass murder. However, there's more.
Not only does each motel murder represent Malcolm's personalities, eliminating one another from his mind, but the personality we'd expect to be innocent in all this, nine-year-old Timmy, is actually the most sinister of them all and has masterminded the murders after faking his death. After all, it's always the quiet ones...