10 Recent Movies That Tried Way Too Hard To Be Clever

Everyone loves a good twist in a movie. One that pulls the rug from under us and once those credits roll we restart the movie just to see if nuggets of an Easter Egg were scattered about from the very beginning.

For the sake of spoiler protection, I'm not going to reveal what happens in Serenity. But if you know what's coming you'll appreciate why it's such a dumb twist.

The movie's attempts to portray itself as one thing, and then become another might be seen as intelligent and thought-provoking at a first glance, but without any context or logical steps forward we're left scratching our heads.

One would think a film with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jason Clarke would stir up a compelling narrative and for the first half of the movie it does. Deception and murder plotting are a ripe ingredient within Serenity but once *that twist* is implemented the film takes a bad turn.

It might sound like sour grapes, and Serenity was too clever for the common audience member, but if a film side-steps into video game realities and expects us to just accept it, it's a pretentious movie that wasn't as smart as it thought.