Top 20 Best Movie Plot Twists of the 21st Century (So Far)

the next 80 years have a high bar to clear if they want to contend with these twists welcome to watchmojo.com or 2000 and ranking them based on the surprise factor and narrative satisfaction they provided viewers and while needless to say we will say it anyway spoilers spoilers spoilers number 20 Tina and Buddha are trolls border when we first meet Tina were led to believe much like she does that she was born with a deformity that gave her a Neanderthal esque appearance then she meets Buddha a man with similar features and the two develop a very curious friendship we're instantly dubious of Buda and our suspicions are confirmed when the two have sex though not in any way we've ever seen turns out neither of them is deformed and that they're actually not even human at all but trolls with Tina's real parents having been tortured by humans the twists don't stop there as voodah has been orchestrating a child abduction ring for years as a means of revenge trust us we couldn't make this stuff up number 19 Adelaide is the original red us appearances can be deceiving especially when there's scores of red jumpsuit clad doppelganger slaughtering their look-alikes fortunately for the Wilson family they're able to successfully fend off and kill their counterparts while the rest of the world burns and holds hands they can't hurt you you understand it's only when they're out of harm's way that the Wilson matriarch Adelaide uncovers a long repressed memory turns out that her childhood encounter with her doppelganger red didn't end the way she thought it was red that left Adelaide in the underground to assume her life meaning the Adelaide we've been following this whole time is not the original this recontextualizes everything we've seen and adds another layer to an already somatically rich movie number 18 a cult is behind everything hereditary there have been many horror movies that deal with potential insanity but never one quite so effective as hereditary upon noticing some strange goings-on and he begins to suspect him a level and supernatural element at play only the more assured she becomes the crazier she seems as mental illness runs in her family what are you doing poor does it nope turns out the only thing that runs on her family is an affinity for demonic cults as one led by her late mother orchestrated the seemingly accidental death of her daughter as a means of transferring the demon inside her into the body of her son you are Peyman one of the eight kings of hell yeah this is one screwed-up clan and even more so now that their plan worked thanks for the nightmares everyone number 17 The Maids husband is in the basement parasite it's about halfway through the movie the Kim family has successfully infiltrated the park household and are now reveling in their newfound sense of outward affluence while the parks are away right about now is when we're expecting the plot to take a turn and throw the Kim's for a loop so the twist isn't that it does the twist is how it does as the former maid that the Kim's conspire to get fired returns to reveal her husband hiding out from debt collectors in the park secret bunker unbeknownst to everyone this not only introduces another level literally in pong Joon hos biting social satire but throws the entire second act into a state of bedlam we are not apt to forget ready number 16 ami faked her death gone girl here's another twist that comes around the halfway mark at this point we've watched the likelihood that Nick killed his wife swell and swell with each piece of evidence found to the point that even we're suspicious of him [Music] stay back so imagine our surprise when Amy's seemingly narrates from beyond the grave only to learn nope she's alive and well on the run incognito and ready to let her husband take the fall for a murder that never happened sure Nick was an unfaithful jackass but even we were flabbergasted at the lengths of Amy's duplicity and spitefulness' you know the old expression hell hath no fury like a woman scorned yeah we're pretty sure whoever wrote that was talking about Amy and if I get everything right the world will hate Nick for killing his beautiful pregnant wife number 15 the kidnapping was faked Gone Baby Gone much like protagonist Patrick Kenzie we want nothing more than the locating and safeguarding of kidnapped three-year-old amanda mccready upon following Patrick down a series of fake leads we're led to believe that Amanda was accidentally killed during an exchange between the police and the criminals who purportedly took her our hearts were broken only to learn that she's alive and well in the protection of police Captain Jack Doyle who orchestrated this scheme to get Amanda out of the hands of her neglectful cocaine-addicted mother we just trying to give a little girl her life wasn't your life to give finally it looks like we might get some semblance of a happy ending but Patrick can't walk away reporting Doyle and sending Amanda back into squalor breaking our hearts all over again Jack Doyle is behind bars tonight number 14 the Armitage family is inhabiting black people get out you've heard this story a thousand times white girl has a black boyfriend white girl takes black boyfriend home to meet white family and white family performs involuntary neuro surgery on black boyfriend to put their consciousnesses into his body wait what [Music] well that may be a total me more cliche now in 2017 it was absolutely gobsmacked increae groundskeeper and bingo auction but we never could have guessed this is what was going on or that Chris's girlfriend was in on it even when looking back there were so many signs proving that between this and us Jordan Peele is truly a new master of suspense [Music] number thirteen the characters are personalities identity over the course of this film we're led to believe that detained serial killer Malcolm rivers who suffers from dissociative personality disorder is gonna figure into the events with the main cast at the motel somehow either through flashbacks or alternating timelines and he does figure into it or should we say they figure into him because not only does the motel not exist but every inhabitant of it trying to stay alive is each of Malcolm's personalities jockeying for positioning inside his brain why are you talking because you owe one of his personalities while still a whodunit with victims being taken out one by one the plot suddenly takes on a whole new meaning as the stakes are somehow raised while now technically operating at a psychological and neurological level one of the personalities you've met tonight Edward committed those murders four years ago number 12 Esther is an adult orphan between the bad seed and the good Sun we've gotten no shortage of evil children in horror movies so we thought we knew what to expect with orphan sure the posters tagline famously says there's something wrong with Esther and we had no doubt there was obviously there has to be some other explanation she didn't come from an insane asylum how do you know that you thought she came from has never heard of her only we didn't think that thing would be that this ostensible adoptee from hell was actually a 33 year old woman with a hormone disorder that gives her a childlike appearance she has a rare hormone disorder it's called hypopituitarism it causes proportional dwarfism she only looks like a child according to our records Leena Klammer was born in 1976 she's 33 years old up until the reveal orphan was just your typical psychological horror film but then it suddenly became incredibly unnerving and disturbing an equal measure evil kids we can deal with evil adults posing as evil kids we cannot number 11 half of life is killed Avengers infinity war while Marvel had been breaking new ground for ten years by the time it came to release this their 19th film in their Cinematic Universe we were still comfortable with the notion that the good guys win and the bad guys lose of course we knew another Avengers film would come out a year later to wrap up the story but we still didn't anticipate our favorite heroes to lose on such a monumental scale not only does Thanos triumph but he makes good on the promise he made in the beginning of the movie by wiping out half of all life in the universe you're sure we knew he was capable but never in a million years did we think Marvel would go through with it number 10 mr. glass is a supervillain unbreakable they say this one has a surprise ending even by the time M night Shyamalan s unbreakable hit theaters audiences were clued into the probability of there being a twist due to the shocking nature of the sixth senses revelation a year prior yet even with that expectation he was able to surprise us when indestructible man David Dunn survives a train crash with nary a scratch he's indoctrinated into the larger superhero mythology by the brittle boned Elijah price I believe comics are form of history that someone somewhere felt or experienced though it would seem an unconventional friendship is forming Elijah takes on the moniker mr. glass when it's revealed he cause David's train to crash to begin with willing to kill hundreds of people just to find a superhero counterpart to his supervillain persona if that's not a diabolical scheme we don't know what is number nine the ending was a lie atonement said around World War two atonement is aptly named due to the mistake thirteen-year-old Briony makes in falsely accusing her sister Cecilia's lover Robbie of rape after Robbie is imprisoned and subsequently forced to fight an older Brian he finally gets the chance to apologize to Anne eventually reunited Cecilia and Robbie upon realizing our mistake I'm very very sorry terrible distress that I've caught or does she as an elderly Briony explains this scene in her book depicting the events was merely imaginary as both Cecilia and Robbie were killed separately in the war never having gotten their happy ending I was too much for courage to go and see my sister in June 1940 I never made that China development to have both characters go through so much only to have their love squatted over a simple misunderstanding is heartbreaking and we're still not over it my sister and Robbie were never able to have the time together they both so longed for number eight teddy is Andrew ladis shutter island' there are a lot of mysteries in shudder Islands mental hospital for the criminally insane for duly appointed federal marshal Teddy Daniels to uncover where is Andrew latest the killer of Teddy's wife what is the law of four who is patient sixty-seven it turns out that teddy is the answer to these questions as his entire investigation is actually the staff's elaborate play to get Teddy or latest to realize his own insanity and repression you've been here for two years a patient of this institution we were about as floored by this revelation as Teddy who depending on your interpretation of the final line may have repressed it all over again or did he kudos to the movie for being able to deliver a wallop of a twist and leave a little up to interpretation which would be worse don't live is a monster what a die is a good man number seven nonlinear time arrival arrival begins with the daughter of linguist Louise Banks succumbing to disease when alien pods land on earth and attempt to communicate an interspecies war is looming and time is of the essence or is it thanks struggles to decipher the cyclical nature of the alien language only to realize that unlocking it is to see time from a nonlinear perspective so you can see what's to come time it isn't the same today it's nonlinear as she does both she's able to communicate with her future self and figure out how to create an armistice along with this we learned that banks his daughter exists not in the past but in the future and that banks will have her with the knowledge that she will die young and choose the opportunity to love anyway mind blown despite knowing the journey and where it leads I embrace and number six the family is already dead the others gosh it's so hard to tell a novel haunted house story these days but the others managed to flip the script in a way that was both cathartic and unexpected it follows Grace and her two children in the aftermath of world war two who begin to suspect their house is haunted by ghosts when objects move on their own and a strange elderly woman appears that's the number of times I've seen them seen the young woman the most turns out grace was right there are ghosts in the house only the ghosts are her and her two children after she murdered them before committing suicide we know the woman went mad smothered her two children and then shot herself what they perceived to be ghosts are actually the living inhabitants of the home and the elderly woman a medium looking to expunge them number five the military arrives the mist by the time we reach the end of the mist our characters have been put through the proverbial wringer by a whole slew of interdimensional creatures after escaping the grocery store in search of rescue our five remaining survivors are left helpless when their car runs out of gas with monstrous sounds closing in main protagonist David Drayton opts to spare the other passengers an agonizing death by shooting each of them in the head one bullet short he exits the vehicle to meet his fate only to realize the sounds were that of the military gaining control of the situation as he's rescued he realizes he killed the others including his own son for nothing jeez what a gut punch number four duplicates the prestige in this film of dueling magicians there are no lengths one wouldn't go to undermine the other both are ingenious with a trick up their sleeve the one is decidedly more complex than the other when Hugh Jackman's NGR drowns to death Christian Bale's Borden is framed for murder and executed for it however and G R is still alive well one of them anyway as he found a way to clone himself each show before drowning in a pool Jos twin NGO thinks he's won it's revealed that Borden is still alive - well one of them as Borden was an identity shared by two identical twins - assistant tricks in his box the one who came back out Borden gets his revenge and we get two twists for the price of one she's sacrificed Robert that's the price of a good trick number three the dead body is jigsaw saw as the Saw movies progressed while regressing in quality it became almost an obligatory cliche that they'd all have a twist ending but that was only because the twist in the first movie was so good after seemingly surviving jigsaws game by killing their captors Depp's afraid but hemorrhaging dr. Gordon crawls away to get a chained atom help by Clint clean thinking he's safe Adam catches his breath while the seemingly dead body that's been on the floor for hours suddenly starts to rise our jaws drop along with Adams when we realized that Zep was just an involuntary pawn for the real jigsaw who was mere feet away the whole time Adam screams in terror as jigsaw slams the door shut leaving him to die number 2 Leonard killed his wife memento Leonard Shelby is a man suffering from anterograde amnesia and thus unable to create new memories looking to avenge the death of his wife when the two of them were assaulted Leonard resorts to leaving Clues for himself in the form of Polaroids and tattoos to aid in his investigation from here memento is unique in that many of the scenes play reverse chronologically and we were allowed to uncover what God is here to begin with we found him you killed him but you didn't remember much like shutter island' Leonard learns that his wife survived their attack and was killed later when Leonard accidentally gave her an overdose of her medication having forgotten he'd already given it to her Sammy didn't have a wife it was your wife who had diabetes doomed to forget again Leonard will continue to repress his mistake forevermore do I lie to myself to be happy in your case teddy yes I will so many of these movies are watch again immediately after to make sure you've caught everything movies you know to me well that's how I felt about momento at least our top pick probably wouldn't fall into that category due to the nature of the twist but hey to each their own it is a pretty epic twist so let's look through some shocking honorable mentions before we name the best plot twist of the 21st century so far Sarah is still in the cave the descent worry-free is breeding Equus epeans sorry to bother you so you making half-human half-horse things so you can make more money yeah basically you eye is blind the Book of Eli and Casas [Music] I can be like Vic is covering up the crime searching baby I don't want you calling anyone mommy's gonna take care of everything Sophie's death was staged The Illusionist everything you have seen is an illusion before we continue be sure to subscribe to our Channel and bring the bell to get notified about our latest videos you have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them if you're on your phone make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications number one Mito is Oda Sue's daughter old boy after being kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years oh dae-su is suddenly released without explanation incensed he sets off on a revenge mission to uncover who kidnapped him to begin with and track down his long-lost daughter along his journey he's aided and tended to by the young Mito with whom he falls in love and sleeps with a whole lot of octopus eating and ass-kicking later de su identifies the villain as an old classmate of his Lee Woojin whose sister committed suicide when de su publicized that she and mu Jean were committing incest [Music] Woojin reveals his elaborate revenge scheme which included dae-su sleeping with Mito who is actually his daughter horrified by the truth dae-su cuts out his own tongue do you agree with our picks check out this other recent clip from WatchMojo and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos

Channel: WatchMojo.com

Views: 979,122

Rating: 4.8919663 out of 5

Keywords: Movies, Drama, best plot twists, best movie plot twists, best plot twists 21st century, best plot twists of the century, twist endings, best twist endings, best twist movie endings, unexpected endings, expected twists, best movie twist, shocking endings, surprising endings, us, hereditary, gone girl, parasite, get out, identity, avenger: infinity war, tony stark, mcu, robert downey jr., marvel, shutter island, the prestige, memento, saw, the others, watchmojo, mojo, list, Top 20

Id: Ax1Cy9sh7_M

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Sat May 30 2020