10 Movie Plot Twists That Were Hiding In Plain Sight

Sometimes, you really do miss all the signs...

The Prestige
Warner Bros.

Hollywood loves a good plot twist. The good guy was the bad guy all along, the bad guy was the good guy all along, or the good guy and the bad guy are both the same person inside a little boy’s daydream when he’s looking into a snow globe... you get the idea, we've seen it all.

The fun thing is being able to go back and watch a film all over again and pick up on subtle clues the filmmakers left along the way and you’re like, “Well played, fancy director person!”

But then there are times you go back and think to yourself, “Well this is rubbish! How did I fall for that?”

10. The Sixth Sense

The Prestige
Buena Vista Pictures

Twist: Dr. Malcolm Crowe died at the beginning of the movie.

In 1999, M. Night Shyamalan pulled off one of the most memorable plot twists in cinema history, but all along there were clues planted throughout the film transmitting what would be the film’s big reveal in the finale. Haley Joel Osment plays a kid who can talk to dead people, and his name is Cole Sear. Wait a minute. His freaking last name is “See-er”? Okay, gonna let that one pass for now.

Bruce Willis plays Philadelphia’s top child psychologist who comes to aid Cole with what is at first thought to be a phase of antisocial behavior. After Dr. Malcolm Crowe has earned Cole’s trust, the boy reveals to him his big secret: that he has a bunch of naughty magazines under his bed. No? Okay, it’s that he can talk to dead people.

Viewers knew that from the trailer, but the big secret revealed in the final moments is that Dr. Crowe is one of the dead people who communicates with Cole, having died about a year before when he was shot by a former patient in the film’s opening scene. The clues pointing toward Dr. Crowe weigh heavily on visual cues, such as he doesn’t speak to anyone but Cole, you never see him entering or leaving rooms and he is always wearing the same outfit from the night that he died.

The plot twist of The Sixth Sense was such a cultural phenomenon that it affected the way people watched supernatural thrillers, as they were now trained to look for clues, and would end up spoiling the surprises of future films. Like that of the next entry on this list.

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