Spoiler alert! ‘Star Wars’, ‘The Sixth Sense’ and 35 Others of the Biggest Twists in Cinema History
Warning: Spoilers ahead for 37 films. And they are big spoilers. Consider yourself warned!
Seriously, we’re warning you. (We’re not kidding in the title of this piece!)
OK, this is your last ever warning….
Now that we’ve dealt with that matter, let’s dive into the greatest movie twists of all time!
“No, I’m your father.” “Soylent Green is the people!” “Rosebud”. “What’s in the box?” “I see dead people.”
These are all lines of dialogue relating to some of the most shocking revelations in cinematic history. They may have been the clue to the twist, or maybe they were the twist itself, but either way they stuck with the audience.
In a interview with Jake Hamilton, The sixth sense AND Divided director M. Night Shyamalan, the master of twists and turns, explained his process for creating impact. “What you are left with at the end of the film should tell you what you saw…. When you attack the landing, you’re giving them the keys to say, ‘This is the way you interpret everything you’ve seen,’” he said.
Below, check out some of the most memorable twists ever.
Written by Patrick Brzeski, Tyler Coates, Ryan Gajewski, James Hibberd, Hilary Lewis, Kimberly Nordyke, Lexy Perez, Christy Piña, Carly Thomas and Etan Vlessing
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“Atonement” (2007)
Image Credit: Focus Features/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Joe Wright’s 2007 film, based on the book of the same name, follows the heartbreaking love story between Keira Knightly’s Cecilia and James McAvoy’s Robbie. A series of misunderstandings leads Cecilia’s sister Briony (played by Saoirse Ronan as a child) to accuse Robbie of rape. He ends up in prison before fighting in World War II. Again viewers see Robbie and Cecilia reunite as Briony tries to apologize to them for what she said. It’s only at the end of the film that viewers realize that the rekindled romance between Robbie and Cecilia was a lie. An elderly Briony (now played by Vanessa Redgrave) is interviewed about her new semi-autobiographical novel Atonement, in which he tries to give Robbie and Cecilia a happy ending despite the fact that they never got to reunite. Instead they both died, separately, during the war, Robbie of septicemia (blood poisoning) at Dunkirk and Cecilia months later during a bombing raid in London. —HL