3. The Village Ripped Off A Young Adult Novel Called Running Out Of Time
The Village was probably the film that had people questioning what the heck M. Night Shyamalan thought he was playing it, given that his twists were getting worse and worse with every film, and his writing in general was hovering merely a notch above "literate." The plot of
The Village, then, concerns a closed off community in the year 1800s, who don't venture out of the bounds of their settlement, mainly because they're scared of monsters and stuff. The movie culminates in a scene where a young blind girl is sent out into the world to get some medicine, and it's revealed (wait for it) that, oh my God, it's actually the present day and the village elders were lying all along! A pretty naff plot twist, albeit one that had been used years before in a young adult novel called
Running Out Of Time (where, granted, it probably would have been more shocking, given that a teenager was likely reading it). And the plot is exactly the same: a young girl in the 1800s ventures outside of her remote village to track down some medicine, only to discover that (wait for it)... it's the present day! So M. Night Shyamalan can't even come up with his
own naff plot twists? Blah.