10 Dumb Movies With Genius Plot Twists
3. The Twist Is That There's No Twist - Saw V
After the first Saw movie dropped a totally mind-melting plot twist - that the Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell) had been laying in the middle of the grotty bathroom all along - every subsequent movie found itself duty-bound to rustle up its own shocking, twisty climax.
By the time Saw V was gearing up for release, the series' penchant for barmy shocks had worn thin, though when the marketing for the fifth film boasted, "You won't believe how it ends," fans were desperate to see what the filmmakers had up their sleeves.
The answer, quite ingeniously, was not much at all.
You see, Saw V's elegantly simple twist is that there isn't one - audiences are left waiting for a big rug-pull that never comes, and then the film just...ends.
The fact that the villainous Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is the last man standing isn't a surprise to anyone and so doesn't count as a twist - after all, the bad guy won in all four prior movies.
It's as though the filmmakers realised the series had taken the whole twist trope too far, and rather than half-ass a contrived reveal out of nowhere, they brilliantly decided not to play ball, which in of itself was genuinely unexpected.
True to the film's marketing, audiences couldn't believe how it ended, no matter that the rest of the film was by far the most boring and forgettable entry into the entire franchise.