3. Fake Escape - The Escapist
Before director Rupert Wyatt was a big shot, directing CGI
Planet of the Apes movie sequels, he was back home in England, making prison break dramas with the likes of Brian Cox, and starring every other British actor you've ever seen in anything. That's to say,
The Escapist - if you haven't guessed already - is a movie about a group of convicts who decide to bust out of a maximum security prison. Brian Cox leads the crew, 'cause he needs to get out to save his drug-addicted daughter. And for the most part, this is a really good, intense and exciting movie - that is, until the ending (spoilers ahead, in case you're still reading this for some reason). Having spent the entire movie watching the characters plan the escape and actually escape (there's a dual narrative on show here), the last scene suddenly tells us that the escape didn't happen at all, and that the scenes depicting the break out where the result of Cox's dying hallucination.
What? Why? Not only is that horribly frustrating, but it doesn't improve the story at all - it's clear that from the beginning the movie had no real exit strategy, and the writers just went with a lame twist.