13 Brilliant Plot Twists That Couldn't Quite Save Terrible Movies
8. Vanilla Sky - Half Of The Movie Is A Dream
The Twist: When David (Tom Cruise) falls for Sofia (Penelope Cruz), his ex, Julie, (Cameron Diaz) gets jealous and tries to kill him in a car crash. Left disfigured, his world begins to fall apart and he begins hallucinating that Julie is in his life instead of Sofia. Recalling something from his visions, David visits the offices for Life Extension and is told that he was placed in a lucid dream after he had killed himself 150 years earlier.
Over time, the dream had since gone wrong. David’s subconscious had been inserted in place of what he wanted to imagine, so he is offered the choice to reset the dream or to wake up. He chooses the latter and upon jumping off a building is told to “open his eyes.”
Why It Almost Saved The Movie: Vanilla Sky is borderline incoherent and features a rare Tom Cruise performance which isn’t very good. Perhaps its only redeeming quality beyond Cameron’s Diaz fearsome acting was the twist.
It helped justify the mess of a plot and gave a reason for us to care about what was happening to David, even if it was too little too late.