10 Best Movie Twists You Genuinely Never Saw Coming
3. "Borden" Was Identical Twins, Angier Duplicates Himself - The Prestige
The Prestige may not be Christopher Nolan's best film, but it arguably touts the strongest plot twist from any of his movies.
In fairness, Nolan's tightly wound mystery-thriller is pretty much jam-packed with twists, though there's very clearly one above all others that lands with thunderous impact.
Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman star as rival magicians Alfred Borden and Robert Angier, with Borden inventing a mesmerising trick called the Transported Man, whereby he is seemingly able to instantly teleport across the stage.
Angier anguishes over being unable to learn Borden's secret, and so entrusts Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) to build him a device that can duplicate anything placed inside it.
This allows Angier to create his own grim version of the Transported Man, whereby the original Angier drowns in a tank underneath the stage and the "new" Angier takes his place during each performance.
At film's end, we also learn that Borden was actually a persona adopted by a pair of identical twins, one posing as "Borden" and the other his confidante "Fallon."
This is how they pulled off the Transported Man, and when Borden is later hanged after being accused of Angier's drowning murder, that leaves the other Borden twin free to kill Angier and make off into the night.
The Borden twist is actually beautifully simple, and a case of the most obvious solution being the right one, enough that audiences might quickly dismiss it and expect something stranger.
And then on the flip-side, the Angier twist is absolutely bugnuts insane, especially once we see rows of dead Angier duplicates housed in water tanks at the very end.