10 Smart Movies With Incredibly Dumb Twists

9. There's A Secret Society That's Killing Superhumans - Glass

The Life Of David Gale Kevin Spacey
Universal

On one hand, M. Night Shyamalan's conclusion to his Eastrail 177 Trilogy is a smart, knowing rebuke to the superhero genre itself, constantly subverting audience expectations of what a comic book film should be.

For anyone exhausted by $200 million superhero tentpoles, Glass' more modest conception, with a large chunk of the film taking place in the confines of a psychiatric hospital, is actually pretty refreshing.

Even if you hate the fact that Shyamalan kills off all three of his protagonists in the third act - and let's be honest, most of us do - it's easy to appreciate that Shyamalan wanted to deliver a film that deviated from the genre norm.

But this went undeniably too far with the ludicrous third act reveal that Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson) isn't merely a villain, but a member of a secret society which has been suppressing knowledge of superhumans' existence for millennia, even killing them, in order to preserve the balance of the world.

And then she has one of her random mooks kill hero David Dunn (Bruce Willis) in a puddle of water to cap it all off.

It just felt a little too much of a Saturday morning cartoon compared to the rest of the movie which, for its flaws, offered up a thoughtful deconstruction of the modern superhero movie.

Contributor
Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.