8 Movie Plot Twists So Subtle You Totally Missed Them

2. The Fake Investigation Actually Worked - Shutter Island

The Movie: You wait for one movie where Leonardo DiCaprio has to challenge his reality in a convoluted, yet semi-logical manner and then two come along at once. Typical. A few months before Inception, Martin Scorsese delivered Shutter Island, a '50s noir thriller throwback in which Leo played Teddy, a U.S. Marshall investigating the disappearance of inmate from an island mental asylum, only to discover it's all a game put on by the hospital; he's one of the deluded patients and they're merely indulging his fantasy in the hope that seeing it through to fruition will snap him out of it (ah, post-war America). In the end it looks like it's failed and Teddy's taken off to be lobotomised.

The Twist You Didn't Notice: All of that's where Dennis Lehane's book goes up to, but Scorsese, ever the genius, throws a second, more subtle twist into the final scene. Before being taken away, Teddy muses to his doctor (masquerading as his Deputy Marshall), "Which would be worse - to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?" First time round, it's a nice coda to the film, but on rewatch it paints the ending in an even more depressing light than it already was - Teddy's aware of the situation.

He's still a disturbed individual for sure, but the whole exercise has worked; he's gained clarity on his past and seen his true self, something he actively decides to destroy. Coupled with all the Holocaust imagery seen in the fictitious backstory, the film develops from just a pulpy thriller into a strong morality tale.