15 Awesome Plot Twists That Totally Saved Awful Movies

7. Eddie & Daniel Are Lovers - The Killing Gene

The Twist: Eddie Argo (Stellan Skarsgard) is pursuing a serial killer who forces their victims to kill someone they love or die themselves, apparently to test the killer's belief that people are inherently selfish.

The killer is in fact Jean Lerner (Selma Blair), a woman who was raped, sexually assaulted with a broken bottle and forced to kill her own mother in a home invasion. She was kidnapping the assailants one by one, and her final victim is Daniel (Ashley Walters), an informant of Argo's.

However, it transpires that Jean was actually targeting Argo himself, as she discovered that he and Daniel were lovers, and as such Argo used his connections to make the case against the attackers go away. Jean tries to force Argo to kill Daniel, but he refuses, offering up his own life instead, at which point Jean kills him and appears to finally realise that not everyone in the world is selfish, before turning herself in.

Why It Saves The Movie: For the most part, this little-seen indie thriller is a lame knock-off of Saw and Se7en, delivering an hour-plus of not particularly interesting torture porn before the twist shows up and knocks audiences for six.

Though the twist relies on most audiences assuming that characters are straight by "default" unless otherwise stated, it was a clever way of messing with viewer expectations, and allowed the movie's themes to piece together in an unexpectedly meaningful way.