10 Weird Movie Plot Twists That Just Don't Work
4. He's Living In A VR Dreamworld - Open Your Eyes/Vanilla Sky
The Set-Up: basically the same in both Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 original, and Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe's 2001 remake: a wealthy playboy suffers a traumatic car accident, wrecking his face and derailing his hedonistic lifestyle. Bit by bit, as he experiences increasingly bizarre happenings, he finds himself losing his mind.
The Twist: it turns out our hero is in fact in stasis, living in a virtual reality simulation modelled on his idealised life. He signed himself up to be cryogenically frozen after his death and killed himself not long after his injury, so all the events since halfway through the movie have been a dream.
Why It Doesn't Work: A bold step in an unexpected direction is one thing, but this is just a bit... silly, isn't it? Sure, it's signposted to a degree; we do hear of the Life Extension company early on. And perhaps the hero's rejection of his fantasy world in some way highlights how our imagined perfect world can never measure up to genuine life experience.
Even so, this eleventh-hour sidestep into science fiction seems an absurd way to conclude what had been a fairly intense and grounded psychological thriller.