11 Recent Movie Plot Twists You Never Saw Coming

You just got Shyamalan'd.

Malignant Annabelle
Warner Bros. Pictures

Many of today's Hollywood movies contain some sort of plot twist, and it's understandable why. Everyone loves a good swerve, and a well-done rug pull will often generate a ton of buzz and raise a film's profile considerably.

For example, 1996's Primal Fear probably wouldn't have lingered in the public consciousness as much were it not for that fantastic plot twist. As solid as that film is, it's ultimately a straightforward legal thriller aside from its ending.

While quite a few recent Hollywood offerings have been let down by bad twists - Don't Worry Darling serving as a great example of this - there are still plenty of writers in the business who know exactly how to craft a good twist, and their movies are all the better for it.

The following 11 movies are some of the best examples of fantastic twists from the past few years. These films range in content and quality, and the twists vary heavily - from surprise villains to shocking "Everything you know is a lie" reveals - but the thing that unites them? They all feature killer plot twists that audiences loved.

11. Run - Diane Isn't Chloe's Mother

Malignant Annabelle
Lionsgate

This swelteringly tense Hulu Original tells the story of Chloe (Kiera Allen), a wheelchair-bound teenager trying to escape from her sinister and over-protective mother, Diane (Sarah Paulson). Run is not only an effective, superbly-acted thrill ride, it also contains an end-of-second-act rug pull - Diane isn't Chloe's mother at all, and she stole her from her birth parents when she was a baby - that shows exactly how to do a thriller plot twist. 

First up, as a good twist ideally should be, it's a hell of a surprise. The film's cleverly edited flashback opening strongly implied that Diane was Chloe's mother, but as it turns out, the baby we saw in the opening was Diane's daughter who died shortly after childbirth. 

Furthermore, startling though it might be, this is a twist that stays on the right side of ridiculous and it also does wonders for the overall movie. This reveal levels up the entire picture and takes it to thrilling new levels of sustained, white-knuckle tension, cementing the Run's place among the best thrillers of the 2020s so far. 

 
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Film Studies graduate, aspiring screenwriter and all-around nerd who, despite being a pretentious cinephile who loves art-house movies, also loves modern blockbusters and would rather watch superhero movies than classic Hollywood films. Once met Tommy Wiseau.