10 Movie Plot Twists That Were Hiding In Plain Sight

Twist: Elijah Price is the villain.

Since we’re discussing M. Night Shyamalan, let’s go ahead and delve into his follow-up to The Sixth Sense, 2000’s Unbreakable, starring Bruce Willis yet again, and Samuel L. Jackson, which has absolutely nothing to do with The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Audiences expected Unbreakable to be another supernatural thriller, but Shyamalan subverted those expectations by giving them instead a low-key superhero origin story.

Willis plays David Dunn, the sole survivor of a train accident who somehow went his whole life without knowing he was indestructible, has superhuman strength, and let’s go ahead and toss in a slight mind-reading ability, cuz why not? After the accident, Dunn finds a cryptic note under his windshield wiper that alludes to his super-powers.

The note also contains the address of a comic book store. Dunn and his son go to the store and meet Elijah Price, played by Jackson, the owner of the store with a rare disorder that makes his bones brittle. Price gives Dunn a juicy, villain-esque monologue about his crackpot theory that if he is so easily breakable, then there has to be someone out there on the other end of the spectrum: someone who is unbreakable.

At the end of the film Dunn discovers that Price has been spending his small fortune from art dealing looking for real-life superhumans, going so far as causing the train crash Dunn was in, as well as many other horrific tragedies.

If it wasn’t obvious from Price’s villainous demeanor, his over-the-top hairstyle and penchant for purple suits, we are also treated to a scene at an art showing where Price’s own mother approaches Dunn and dumps a load of exposition about how the most powerful supervillains are the feeble ones who use their intellect instead of brawn to overpower the superheroes.

Just the overall zealousness of Price and actions such as leaving a note under Dunn’s windshield made him stick out as a sketchy character from the beginning, giving what was supposed to be a shocking reveal seem pretty trite. Maybe Shyamalan should have gone the extra mile and just named Bruce Willis’s character David Dunn-Dunn­-Dunnnnn!!!