10 Lame Movie Twists That Ruined Great Endings
8. Defeated By Water - Signs
Early in his career, M. Night Shyamalan made it clear that he was the king of twist endings. The big surprise reveals in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable were shocking but realistic conclusions that left audiences haunted. However, time has revealed a different narrative for the director who was once hailed as a successor of Spielberg, one that saw him make terrible mistakes like that one he made in Signs.
The film showed a lot of real promise, mixing intimate family drama with the grandeur and mystique of science fiction. It focused on Graham, played by a pre-drunken tirade Mel Gibson, a former priest who left the church after his wife died in a car crash. He, his two children, and his developmentally arrested young brother, are holed up together in his farmhouse when Earth is beset by an alien invasion, forcing them to confront their personal tragedies amidst a global one.
In the final acts of the film, the aliens abruptly halt their invasion and evacuate Earth, leaving behind the few stragglers who were captured. One of these remaining aliens manages to invade the farmhouse and kidnaps Graham's son, at which point the aliens' mysterious disappearance is explained: they are allergic to water. This came right as the film had let its slowly built drama explode into action and immediately killed any semblance of tension or suspense the movie had.