20 Amazing Movie Plot Twists That Never Get Talked About
14. The Grandparents Are Imposters - The Visit
2015's found footage film The Visit was something of a comeback for M. Night Shyamalan; after a full decade's worth of deeply polarising movies centered around wildly silly plot twists, this back-to-basics, low-budget horror romp was a massive breath of fresh air.
It also saw Shyamalan realise that an effective twist doesn't need to be massively shocking for its own sake, and it's far more important that it simply makes sense for the story being told.
The Visit follows two siblings, Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould), who go to stay with their estranged grandparents, only for them to begin exhibiting increasingly unnerving behaviour. But this isn't simply a case of the kids' grandparents being dangerously insane - we ultimately learn that they're actually imposters.
More to the point, they're a pair of escaped mental patients who killed the real grandparents and assumed their identities.
It's not the most outrageous reveal in the world, and some folk even guessed it from the trailers, but it's nevertheless blindingly effective in recontextualising everything that led up to it, and in that respect, it's one of Shyamalan's most smartly deployed twists.