10 Great Movies That Inadvertently Ruined Cinema

4. The Sixth Sense Inspired Endless "Left-Field Twist" Movies

M. Night Shymalan didn't invent the shocking twist with The Sixth Sense, of course, but he damn near pioneered it as a marketing technique and selling point for motion pictures in general. See, before The Sixth Sense came along, twists weren't advertised by the studios as specific drawing points for you to go see the movie - the reason, obviously, is that twists were supposed to be shocking; you weren't supposed to see them coming.

With The Sixth Sense, audiences were so impressed with the twist that they began clamouring for more. And Hollywood obliged. Which is to say, in the aftermath of The Sixth Sense, Hollywood began to flood theatres with "shocking left-field twist" movies - motion pictures that would market themselves on being built around twists you'd "never see coming."

Leading the parade, of course, was Shyamalan himself, who had no choice but to continue on with a career made from movies with shocking, last minute revelations - predictably, he began to get worse and worse with every one, although has started on the road to redemption with Split. The stench from The Sixth Sense still lingers today, however; these "twist" movies, most of them poor, refuse to die.