10 Ludicrous Movie Plot Twists

Oh, the art of the plot twist. Surprising the audience, if done right, can be one of the most satisfying parts of a story. A good twist can redefine the whole narrative or at least absorb you further into a film that you hope will have some more surprises.

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A bad plot twist, however, can go so far as to ruin an otherwise decent film. Whether lazy, illogical, or just plain desperate and dumb, bad plot twists can be as memorable as good ones for entirely different reasons. As you may imagine, there are spoilers ahead! If you read the title of a film still on your watchlist, you might want to skip ahead.

This article will contain spoilers for each entry.

‘The Village’ (2004)

If there’s one thing M. Night Shyamalan is known for, it’s for his plot twists: albeit, the further his career went on, the more they broke the audience’s suspension of disbelief. The Village starts as a pretty okay mystery thriller about a 19th-century rural village being stalked by strange monsters. But then, the Shyamalan twist came along and brought it all down.

It’s revealed that the movie is actually set in modern times and that the village is, in fact, a professor’s experiment. The monsters, of course, are only people in disguise. The twist raises more questions than it can answer, and it sucks all the fun out of the film.

‘Serenity’ (2019)

The plot of Steven Knight‘s Serenity is set off by the ex-wife of a fish boat captain, who asks him to murder her abusive new husband, Frank (Jason Clarke), sparking an interesting moral dilemma. The film sounds intriguing enough, and with a star-studded cast including Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in the leading roles, it was a recipe for success.

Unfortunately, the final twist is so ridiculous that it’s more likely to provoke laughs than gasps. It turns out that Dill, the captain, was actually the protagonist of a videogame created by his son to escape Frank’s abuse. The phrase “That came out of nowhere” takes on a whole new meaning with Serenity.

‘Hancock’ (2008)

Hancock stars Will Smith as the needy, drunken, erratic superhero title character who tends to cause million-dollar losses in collateral damage, so he’s forced to employ a PR expert played by Jason Bateman. Charlize Theron plays the PR agent’s wife, Mary, and she’s at the center of the plot twist that derails the movie.

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It’s suddenly revealed that Mary is Hancock’s ex-wife, also an immortal being with superpowers. But for some reason, being in close physical proximity weakens their powers, which caused Hancock to get hospitalized and lose his memories 80 years prior. What could have been a fun action superhero dramedy thus becomes a ridiculous campfest.

‘Remember Me’ (2010)

Remember Me, starring Robert Pattinson as Tyler amid the Twilight craze, starts as a somewhat serviceable but forgettable romantic drama about two profoundly scarred characters who fall in love through a twist of fate.

It’s not until the third act that the film truly becomes memorable, but for the wrong reasons. When Tyler visits his father’s office, it’s abruptly shown that the office is in one of the Twin Towers and that the date is September 11th of, 2001. Tyler dies in the subsequent attack, which most audiences took as a revolting exploitation of a national tragedy.

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ (2022)

The sequel to 2016’s Doctor Strange saw the return of director Sam Raimi to the superhero genre, which earned it the love of many MCU fans. However, one thing that’s not quite as beloved is how the movie treated some of Marvel’s strongest heroes.

During their universe-hopping journey to stop Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) come across the Illuminati, a secret organization comprised of some of that universe’s mightiest heroes. But when Scarlet Witch arrives, she proceeds to butcher them all easily, which most fans saw as lazy and disrespectful.

‘The Good Liar’ (2019)

Bill Condon‘s The Good Liar, about a professional con artist called Roy (Ian McKellen) who finds it tougher than expected to steal a widow’s fortune, is a movie full of ridiculous plot twists that seem to come out of the blue.

The worst of these comes at the start of the film’s third act. The widow, played by Helen Mirren, reveals that she has been toying with Roy all along. Her illogical plan stems from a thirst for revenge since Roy sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Good twists leave small crumbs for audience members to pick up on the way, and they are founded on clear, logical guidelines. The Good Liar fails to pull the rug from under viewers because it never put that rug there, to begin with.

‘Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ (2018)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a charming and fun movie, partly because it felt like a simple and self-contained adventure in the wizarding world of Harry Potter. But then it was revealed that the big bad guy behind everything was Gellert Grindelwald, and the second movie lost almost everything that made the first one enjoyable.

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The movie felt padded out enough as it was, but when Grindelwald (played by Johnny Depp) tells Ezra Miller‘s Credence that he’s a Dumbledore, fans knew they were in for a series of ridiculous cash grabs with this franchise.

‘Now You See Me’ (2013)

Yet another instance of a film that started serviceably but turned ridiculous with its final twist, Now You See Me shows an FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo) chasing down a team of magicians who use their shows to rob the bank accounts of rich people and gift that money to their audience.

During the majority of it, Now You See Me is an entertaining story with far-fetched but fun twists. And then, Ruffalo’s character turns out to be the mastermind magician behind the team’s latest heist. It’s a ridiculous revelation that generates countless plot holes, retroactively making everything that came before worse.

‘Glass’ (2019)

When audiences discovered at the end of M. Night Shyamalan’s Split that it was a surprise sequel to the director’s 2000 movie Unbreakable, and when a third and final installment to close everything off was announced, the prospect of such a trilogy was beyond exciting. Unfortunately, Glass failed to live up to expectations.

The screenplay is full of issues, not least of which is the laughable final twist. The three lead characters are killed, and then the secondary characters release the CCTV footage of their encounter to the public. The ending is anticlimactic and ridiculous, if only because no one would be dumb enough to think that the CCTV stunt could work in our modern world.

‘Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker’ (2019)

The first two movies of Disney‘s Star Wars sequel trilogy were divisive but overall well received. The final installment in the series, on the other hand, was a massive disappointment.

The film starts by revealing—in the title crawl, of all moments!—that Emperor Palpatine has returned from the dead. How? To quote Oscar Isaac‘s Poe Dameron, “somehow.” The twist is ludicrous and insulting not only because of how lazily it’s delivered but because it cheapens both the sacrifice of Darth Vader in Episode VIand the Emperor’s arc throughout the saga.

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