Sometimes, a movie is considered great as a result of a well executed twist. I remember the first movie i watched that had a ridiculous 360 hand break turn in the plot(The village) i gasped and felt like my head was going to implode because of the big reveal in the end.
However, it is getting more difficult to surprise movie viewers mainly because of the presence of the internet and the fact that people are getting smart and could have studied a film maker’s or studio’s pattern of filmmaking. Therefore, making the twist visible from miles away.
There are dumb plot twists so bad they’ve made a movie unworthy of being watched a second time. Here are 3 of them.
COLLATERAL BEAUTY
It’s a movie that you really want to love but just can’t. When Will Smith loses his daughter to a terrible illness in the film Collateral Beauty, it’s a tragedy that too many parents can relate to. His portrayal of a grieving father is superb and the real reason to see the movie, but the cheerful holiday ghost of Christmas past resolution the movie has as a twist is awful.
When the father bitterly composes letters to Love, Death and Time, the film’s trailer confirms that they come to answer his letters, but in the span of the movie we see that they are actors hired by his coworkers to prevent his company from going bankrupt.
This makes sense and should lead to a realistic resolution, except it doesn’t, because these people truly are Love, Death, and Time. The twist is not only an unbelievable piece of fantasy, but it almost cheapens the message of an otherwise moving film.
THE BOOK OF HENRY
It’s one of the worst-rated films of 2017. The Book of Henry has so many mixed genres and unmet expectations that people actually walked out of the theater before finishing it, and director Colin Trevorrow even left Star Wars: Episode IX.
The Book of Henry looks like one of those precocious kid flicks that makes us all say, “Awww!” We expected Matilda and got a highly inferior version of Rear Window with a pinch of Black Swan.
Not only is the titular child genius a completely unlikable jerk who is treated like a saint, but he is also actually dead throughout the movie. Oh, and he’s instructing his poor motheron how to murder his crush’s abusive father through a book he wrote before he died.
The entire adult cast fail to speak to this young girl about her abuse and every female in the film is thinly drawn, which is enough to ruin the film, but the whole “I was a childhood murder prodigy!” kills it completely
I AM LEGEND
Will Smith’s performance in ‘I Am Legend’ is one of the most memorable in his career, and between his daily routine, commitment to finding a cure and relationship with his beloved dog, it makes the movie worth watching. The film’s twist ending still kind of ruins it, though, and for more reasons than one.
When Smith’s character, Robert Neville, is attempting to save the world, he fails to realize that the Darkseekers are people, too. They prove it to him a few times but none clearer than the ending when the monsters come to rescue the woman he experiments on.
This is the entire point of the 1954 horror novel written by Richard Matheson, and it would have been incredible to have that realization on screen. Nope. Instead, he blows them all up, along with himself, which pretty much ruins the movie.
