30 Movies With the Most Shocking Plot Twists

When a retired detective is hired to follow his old buddy’s wife, Madeleine – who may be in danger of hurting herself – he inadvertently falls in love with her, only to watch her commit suicide by plummeting off of a church’s bell tower. But when he later sees her walking down the street, he discovers she was an actress, hired to cover up the real Madeleine’s murder.

A series of murders apparently committed by the elderly mother of innkeeper Norman Bates turn out to be committed by the mama’s boy himself. Norman actually killed his mother years earlier and has developed a split personality, dressing as his mother to perform his grisly stabbings.

In this neo-noir mystery, Evelyn Mulwray hires private investigator JJ Gittes to investigate her husband’s murder. He uncovers a money-making scheme involving Evelyn’s father. Meanwhile, a mysterious young woman seems to be at the center of it all. In a surprise ending, Gittes realizes that the young woman is not only Evelyn’s sister, but her daughter as well – a child conceived when she was raped by her father.

As Luke Skywalker loses his battle against the villain Darth Vader, who attempts to recruit him to the dark side, our young Jedi gets some shocking news. Vader is actually Luke’s father. This twist has gone down in cinematic history and is now common knowledge even to many who haven’t seen the film.

This mystery thriller follows a con man called Verbal who is being interrogated by U.S. Customs agents after a massive gunfight and fire erupt on a boat full of criminals. Throughout the film, Verbal tells of the exploits of a crime lord named Keyser Soze. When his interrogation is over, the agents let him go, only to realize that he was in fact Keyser Soze.

Detectives Mills and Somerset have been tracking a serial killer (John Doe) whose murder victims represent five of the seven deadly sins. What they don’t know is that when Doe surprisingly turns himself in, he has already committed his final murder: killing Mills’s wife out of envy, prompting Mills to complete the seventh sin by shooting him out of wrath.

When Aaron Stampler, an abused altar boy with a stutter and dissociative identity disorder, is accused of murdering an Archbishop, a hot shot lawyer believes in his innocence and agrees to defend him pro-bono. His client is eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity, but as the two part, Stampler reveals that he killed the man without remorse and faked his disorders.

Throughout this teen slasher flick, it appears as though Sidney’s boyfriend Billy is the killer – until he himself is attacked. A few scenes later, the true scheme comes to light as Billy returns, revealing that he and his best friend Stu staged his stabbing and have been working together the whole time as a murderous duo.

When a self-absorbed investment banker’s younger brother gives him a game ticket for his 48th birthday, he becomes mired in a web of bizarre and damaging events, become ever more paranoid until he finds himself on a rooftop, murders his brother, and jumps off the building in an attempt at suicide. He then finds himself at his birthday party and realizes that it really was an elaborate game.

Detective John Hobbes begins by narrating that he wants to tell you about the time he “almost died.” Hobbes spends most of the film chasing a demon named Azazel that can move from person to person through physical contact, causing its hosts to commit murders. In the final scene, Hobbes kills himself while possessed by Azazel, but the scrappy demon enters a stray cat. The audience then realizes it was Azazel narrating through Hobbes’s voice.

Months after being shot by a former client, child psychologist Malcolm Crowe begins working with a young boy named Cole who can communicate with ghosts. Crowe guides Cole into helping the ghosts finish their business, while also struggling to connect with his wife, who has fallen into depression. The film ends with Crowe realizing that he didn’t survive the shooting. He is simply another ghost that Cole can see, which explains his wife’s malaise.

A nameless narrator, who lives an empty cookie cutter life, befriends a charismatic soap salesman and the two start an underground fighting ring that morphs into a nationwide terrorist organization. The twist comes when the narrator realizes that his friend is simply his split personality – an alternate self that he saw as the perfect man.

A man with anterograde amnesia is tracking down the person who raped and murdered his wife, in order to get revenge. Because he can’t form new memories, he relies on tattoos on his body, polaroids, and written notes. The film contains two big reveals: that the protagonist is being used as a hitman by a corrupt cop, and that he is the one responsible for his own wife’s death.

David Dunn, the sole survivor of a train crash that killed over 100 people, meets a man named Elijah who has brittle bone disease. Elijah suggests that Dunn may have superpowers, and Dunn comes to realize that he has superhuman strength and the ability to see crimes people have committed when he touches them. When he finally shakes Elijah’s hand, he sees that his friend is a criminal mastermind who caused the train accident to find his nemesis – the unbreakable man.

As a young mother with two children waits for her husband to return from the war, she begins seeing strange visitors and experiencing supernatural events leading her to believe that her house is haunted. The shocker, however, is that she and her children are the ghosts. When her husband was killed in the war, she snapped and murdered her children before taking her own life.

As murderer Malcolm Rivers awaits execution, another storyline sees ten strangers, including a young boy, stranded at a motel and mysteriously killed one by one. The plots converge to reveal that Malcolm has dissociative identity disorder, and the strangers are all parts of him. His psychiatrist believes he’s eliminated the murderous personality, however, the final scenes reveal that the killer was the young boy – who is now Malcolm’s main personality.

Mystic River is the story of three Boston friends who grow up to lead disparate lives: Dave, who carries wounds from being abducted by pedophiles as a youth; Sean, a cop on the straight and narrow; and Jimmy, an ex-con store owner whose daughter Katie was just murdered. The tale ends tragically as Jimmy kills Dave, believing he is responsible for Katie’s death, while Sean discovers the real killer just moments too late.

Saw follows two men who are abducted and forced to play twisted games in a room with a corpse lying dead in the middle. When one of the captives finally kills Zep, the person who they believe has been orchestrating the affair, the movie appears to be over. That is, until the corpse wakes up and reveals himself to be very much alive and the true mastermind behind their torment.

This underdog film starts with an ill-tempered old boxing trainer reluctantly agreeing to train a waitress named Maggie. As she works her way to the WBA, she gains a reputation for quick knockouts. Midway through the film however, an opponent’s dirty move paralyzes Maggie and she becomes quadriplegic, undergoes a leg amputation, and bites off her own tongue in an attempt to kill herself, all the while begging her trainer to help her die.

Based loosely on Boston’s real-life Irish mob, the Winter Hill Gang, this crime drama follows an undercover cop (Billy Costigan) who infiltrates a gang while attempting to keep his identity secret from a mole (Colin Sullivan) in the police department. The shocking finale sees Costigan arrest Sullivan, before both men are shot to death.

Sam Bell, the only worker on a lunar base, is nearing the end of his three year stint in space when he begins hallucinating and crashes his rover. The mystery deepens when he awakes in the base with no injuries, then returns to the site of the crash and finds another Sam lying unconscious. It turns out, he is one of thousands of clones of the real Sam Bell, created by Lunar Industries to run the base without needing to be trained.

In this neo-noir psychological thriller, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck investigate the disappearance of a patient at a psychiatric facility who had previously drowned her three children. As Daniels’ own sanity begins to deteriorate, the true story comes to light: he is actually a patient at the facility who killed his wife after she drowned their children, and his partner is his psychiatrist, who is attempting to bring his repressed memories to the surface.

“The Cabin in the Woods” starts as a campy teen horror movie, wherein a group of college students is attacked by a family of zombies. However, the whole scenario is soon revealed to be a bloodletting ritual set up by a top secret organization that must appease ancient gods with the death of innocents in order to prevent world destruction. The two surviving victims, deciding that humanity isn’t worth saving, thwart the ritual and welcome the apocalypse.

While linguist Louise Banks begins deciphering the language of visiting extra-terrestrials, she experiences flashbacks about the life and early death of her daughter. Eventually, Banks begins to understand the nature of time through the alien language and the viewer realizes that her flashbacks are actually premonitions of the future. The film ends with Banks deciding to have the child anyway, knowing that the girl will die of cancer.

When a young Black photographer heads upstate with his white girlfriend to meet her family, he slowly comes to realize he’s the target of their sinister business, which implants the brains of elderly white folks into young, black bodies. When he attempts to escape, he discovers that his girlfriend is in on the ploy and has lured countless others into becoming hosts for the family’s wealthy clients.

This dark film follows a poor family, the Kims, as they swindle their way into working for a rich family, the Parks, in part by framing the current help and getting them fired. Once the family is all employed and taking advantage of the Parks’ wealth, they discover that the previous housekeeper’s husband has been living in a secret bunker under the house. In yet another twist, the Kim family’s patriarch ends up hiding in that same basement while a new family moves in.

This fast-paced movie plays like a panic attack, portraying jewelry store owner and gambling addict Howard Ratner as he takes bigger and bigger risks to pay off his massive debts. Just when he scores big and it appears as though his troubles will be solved, some of the thugs he has angered with his shenanigans end up shooting him dead and robbing his store.

After Harlan Thrombey, a wealthy patriarch, is found dead, every member of his family becomes a suspect. Harlan’s will grants his fortune to his nurse, Marta, but it is revealed that she mixed up his meds and accidentally gave him a fatal dose of morphine, so Harlan slit his own throat to hide her mistake. Detective Benoit Blanc eventually uncovers the truth in another twist: Harlan’s nephew switched out the meds intending for Harlan to die, but Marta recognized the liquids in the mislabeled vials and didn’t actually give him the morphine.

What starts as a stereotypical wedding rom-com takes a dark turn when the protagonist Nyles is shot with a crossbow while attempting to woo Sarah, the sister of the bride, during the reception. He then crawls into a mysterious cave, followed by Sarah, and they both wake up the morning of the wedding, revealing the true plot: Nyles is stuck in an endless time loop, and now Sarah is doomed to the same fate.

This carnival thriller follows the sly drifter Stan Carlisle as he swindles hopeful victims with his psychic act. He eventually teams up with a beautiful psychologist, who holds his earnings and feeds him secret information about his patrons. When Stan finally attempts to cash out, the psychologist double-crosses him, keeping the money and sending Stan to his dreary fate: to become a crazed carnival geek.