10 Most Ridiculously Unearned Movie Twists Of All Time

With The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable director M. Night Shyamalan pulled off an impressive double: two films, two mind massaging twist endings. With his third, Signs, the rascal wrong-stepped the cinema going public by hitting us with a cheeky non payoff. The devil.

Then came The Village, a film full of promise - 19th century inhabitants of an insular village live in fear of monsters in the woods - that is crucially undone by a dopey twist, one that Shyamalan still hasn't really recovered from.

Nobody does wide-eyed intensity quite like Joaquin Phoenix, but even he must have known his director was onto a dud when the film's whole setting is unveiled as being in the present day and the village itself some kind of scientific study. For what point, we are not quite sure. Before the ruse was up, though, the film was a real nail biter, with the red cloaked bird beast making you jump at every turn.

No matter how smart all involved may have thought this was, the film immediately lost its purpose once all was revealed.