11 Recent Movie Plot Twists You Never Saw Coming
1. Promising Young Woman - Ryan Is A Bad One
This is a plot twist that's likely to traumatize the audience.
The protagonist of Emerald Fennell's stunning directional debut is Cassie (Carey Mulligan) who, devastated by the r*pe and subsequent suicide of her best friend, has been enacting a campaign of revenge against those responsible. Nonetheless, at the advice of her late friend's mother, she eventually abandons her revenge scheme, tries to move on, and even begins a romance with a very likable doctor named Ryan (Bo Burnham).
Until, in a horrifying twist, it's revealed that Ryan was involved in the sexual assault of Cassie's best friend.
Promising Young Woman does a wonderful job of getting the audience invested in this romance, and before that twist, it was heart-warming to see Cassie healing and moving past her trauma. As such, this was a shattering gut-punch of a revelation.
It's also a great scene that shows the film's wonderful, Oscar-winning screenplay at its best - in a tragically believable way, Ryan refuses to take any responsibility and doesn't even apologize, instead just repeatedly asking Cassie to forgive him and shrugging off what happened.
This is quite arguably the best twist of the 2020s so far, and it's a definitive testament to Emerald Fennell's skill as a writer. It seems a foregone conclusion that her next film will feature yet another shocking rug-pull, though it seems unlikely she'll be able to top the impact of this.