10 Horror Movie Plot Twists That Were Totally Pointless
3. The Pale Blue Eye - Landor Is The Murderer
The Pale Blue Eye, a horror-mystery from director Scott Cooper, is another movie that threw in an unnecessary twist in an ill-judged attempt to look smart. In fact, this felt flippant and self-congratulatory more than anything else; once again, a twist just for the sake of it is no good. It has to feel earned and enhance the movie, and this rug-pull did neither.
This one had an awesome premise: detective Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) works with a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling) to solve a series of murders at the military academy where Poe is studying. At first, it looks like the three men were killed by Artemus and Lea (Harry Lawtey and Lucy Boynton), both of whom are using black magic to try to cure Lea's epilepsy. It would've been absolutely fine to leave it there.
But no, instead we get an inorganic and tacked-on twist where it turns out that Landor actually killed the three cadets, as they'd assaulted his daughter and caused her suicide. Turning the main detective character into the villain at the end just didn't work, and it invalidated the rest of the story. It might've worked had Edgar Allan Poe been the protagonist instead, but not in this form.
It's a damn shame, as prior to this twist, The Pale Blue Eye was perfectly solid stuff, with Christian Bale and Harry Melling doing strong work. They really deserved better.