10 Terrible Plot Twists From Otherwise Awesome Movies

Signs is a good movie. Fine, the dialogue can be clunky, and Mel Gibson was chronically miscast in the lead, but flaws and all, Signs is still a soulful, suspenseful, and beautifully shot venture from M. Night Shyamalan that takes a refreshingly intimate, character-focused approach to an alien invasion storyline. 

Having said that, it would be difficult to defend the twists in the final act. There are two: firstly, the aliens are susceptible to water. Retrospectively, even if it does make them a bit too easy to defeat, this wasn't really the big problem. The bigger issue is the second twist. 

Protagonist Graham (Gibson), formerly a reverend, lost his faith after his wife died in a car accident, and as she was dying, she mentioned his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) and said "Swing away." When an alien ends up in Graham's farmhouse, Graham uses these words as inspiration, telling Merrill to swing away and fight the alien with a baseball bat. Furthermore, Graham's son Morgan (Rory Culkin) survives the alien's poison gas thanks to his asthma. Graham interprets these events as a divine intervention and regains his faith. 

Err... did a woman really have to die and leave an entire family (including two very young children) devastated just to inspire someone to use a baseball against an intruder? Like some of the other twists on this list, this was a really interesting idea, and it's a shame it wasn't done in a more logical way.