8. Peeta Has Been Brainwashed - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1
The Twist: Catching Fire came with one of the most unexpected gut-punch twists of 2013, not only revealing the whole movie had been a complicated Rebel plot, but that Katniss' home state, Distinct 12, had been burnt to the ground. Mockingjay Part 1 had no hope of matching that, although it did its absolute best. After being rescued from the Capitol, it's revealed the foppish vertex of the central love triangle, Peeta, has been brainwashed by the evil Empire - once reunited, he immediately tries to crush Katniss' wind-pipe. Gotta love modern family films. Why It's So Dumb: The twist is going to work for one half of the audience and utterly fail with the other. If you're a teenager, then it's the best thing ever, like having Tyler Durden, Keyser Söze and Darth Vader delivered all in one go. If you've got anything more than a passing knowledge of film, however, it's obvious Peeta and Katniss aren't about to get it on from the moment Gale muses how easy the escape was. At no point in the history of film has that led to anything good. What makes this especially dumb is that, thanks to the finically-brilliant-yet-creative-vapid decision to split the final book in two, this mid-story divergence becomes a whopping big cliff-hanger. In print this happens, but the audience isn't left with a year to mull over how cack-handed it is - that whole "the movie's story has been a secret scheme" was the exact same twist the previous movie pulled
