10 Best Movie Twists You Genuinely Never Saw Coming
9. Malcolm Was Dead The Whole Time - The Sixth Sense
The "he was dead the whole time!" twist has absolutely been done to death these days, but M. Night Shyamalan delivered the definitive iteration of it in The Sixth Sense, as led to six Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.
The supernatural thriller's establishing scene depicts child psychologist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) being shot and wounded by a former patient (Donnie Wahlberg).
The rest of the story unfolds, with Malcolm becoming close with his new patient Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), a young boy who can communicate with the dead.
But at film's end, Malcolm realises that he himself is dead, having died from his gunshot wound at the very start of the movie.
For the bulk of the story, Malcolm has been a ghost but entirely unaware of this fact, and who with Cole's help is finally able to say goodbye to his widow Anna (Olivia Williams) and "move on" from this world.
This is one of those great twists that's just meticulously executed from start to finish and makes revisiting the film again a real joy.
That fans are still discovering sneaky foreshadowing to the big reveal almost 25 years later is a real testament to Shyamalan's genius - genius he's been straining to recapture ever since.