10 Smart Movies With Incredibly Dumb Twists
2. The Twins' Brother Is Also Their Father - Incendies
Denis Villeneuve's Oscar-nominated drama follows two twins, Jeanne and Simon (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette), who travel to the Middle East per their late mother's will in order to track down a brother they never knew they had and a father they believed was dead.
A series of flashbacks throughout the film reveal their mother Nawal's (Lubna Azabal) deeply upsetting past, climaxing with the reveal that the twins' brother is also their father.
As it turns out, Nawal's first son was captured in his youth and turned into an Islamic child soldier, and when Nawal is imprisoned in later life, she's raped by her own son, now going by the name of Abou Tarek (Abdelghafour Elaaziz), resulting in the conception of Jeanne and Simon.
Though Incendies is in many ways a shattering examination of familial turmoil, the incest reveal just feels a little too much like a soap opera contrivance, given the extremely coincidential nature of Nawal being raped by her own son.
It's a testament to both the acting and Villeneuve's direction that this is still a good film, albeit one that gets bogged down in a needlessly salacious, Shyamalan-worthy plot twist in the final reel.