While not a formal spoiler episode, Carrie and Rob reveal their top 5 twists. Along the way they discuss kid tantrums and both pick Everybody Wants Some!! along with Rear Window as worth mentioning picks.
The identity of the mysterious Keyser Söze. The specific planet that all those apes live on. Just who are the dead people Haley Joel Osment is able to see. Land an amazing twist ending, and you’ve guaranteed that people will remember your movie for years to come. Just in time for April Fool’s Day, Alternate Ending celebrates our favorite swerves and shocking reveals in movie history.
Tim’s absentee Top 5 Twists explanation:
5. THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)
The granddaddy of all “it was a dream!” twists at the movies – “it’s all a dream!” endings are, of course, much older than cinema, or the English language – would maybe be better off without said twist, which does strange things to the film’s themes. But the finesse with which it carries off, and the shock it gives to the madness of the rest of the film, are not to be denied.
4. OLDBOY (2003)
What could easily be shocking and tawdry just to be shocking and tawdry instead gives this most visceral and stylish of action movies a blast of genuine tragedy, in the most ancient sense: the past muscling its way into the present, and sins coming home to roost.
3. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980)
I think it’s easy to overlook just how staggering and influential it was to put such a surprising reveal into such peppy entertainment. Retroactively turned the franchise into an epic family drama, and influenced God knows how many subsequent films.
2. THE STING (1973)
One of the few times I can name that a massive twist that redefines a whole movie isn’t there just to shock and stun the audience, but because the characters themselves demand no less than a trick on the audience as elaborate as the ones they play on themselves.
1. PSYCHO (1960)
Oh, and also Norman is his mother. But the real shock of Hitchcock’s modernist marvel was in telling us a third of the way through the movie that we were watching a different plot, with a different protagonist, in a different genre than we’d been led to believe this whole time. Made the very act of movie going a little bit less safe and predictable forever after.
Rob
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Fight Club (1999)
Oldboy (2003)
Predestination (2014)
The Usual Suspects (1995)
Carrie
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Memento (2000)
Shutter Island (2010)
Predestination (2014)
Se7en (1995)
Tim
Psycho (1960)
The Sting (1973)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Oldboy (2003)
