Global Courant 2023-05-26 21:15:44
Warning: Spoilers ahead for 37 movies. And they’re big spoilers. Consider yourself warned!
Seriously, we’re warning you. (We aren’t kidding around in the headline for this piece!)
OK, this is your absolute last warning….
Now that we’ve taken care of that business, let’s dive into the biggest movie full of twists of all time!
“No, I am your father.” “Soylent Green is people!” “Rosebud.” “What’s in the box?” “I see dead people.”
Those are all lines of dialogue related to some of the most shocking revelations in film history. They might have been the clue to the twist, or perhaps they were the twist itself, but either way, they packed a punch with audiences.
In an interview with Jake Hamilton, The Sixth Sense and Split filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan — the master of twist endings — explained his process to creating an impact. “What you’re left with at the end of the movie should tell you what you saw…. When you stick the landing you’re giving them the keys to say, ‘This is how to interpret everything that you watched,’” he said.
Below, take a look at some of the most memorable film 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
‘Atonement’ (2007)
Image Credit: Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection
Joe Wright’s 2007 film, based on the book of the same name, follows the heartbreaking romance between Keira Knightly’s Cecilia and James McAvoy’s Robbie. A series of misunderstandings cause 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. Still 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 Robbie and Cecilia’s rekindled romance was a lie. An older Briony (now played by Vanessa Redgrave) is being interviewed about her new semi-autobiographical novel Atonement, in which she seeks to give Robbie and Cecilia a happy ending despite the fact that they were never able to reunite. Instead, they both died, separately, during the war, Robbie of septicemia (blood poisoning) at Dunkirk and Cecilia months later during a bombing in London. — HL
