The Crying Game tops list of Greatest Movie Twists (Spoilers ahoy!) (1 Viewer)

[Steve Christou]

The Crying Game topped a survey of greatest movie twists of all time, listed in a newspaper today, here's the top 10.

01) The Crying Game (1992)
02) The Usual Suspects (1995)
03) Psycho (1960)
04) Seven (1995)
05) The Sixth Sense (1999)
06) Fight Club (1999)
07) The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
08) The Game (1997)
09) The Others (2001)
10) Memento (2000)

hmmmm I remember The Crying Game being a genuine shocker, first time I saw it I didn't expect 'that', even though everyone then was talking about a 'surprise'. The 1993 Oscar nominations gave the game away for people who still hadn't seen it.
The Sixth Sense I sussed it out from all the reviews and plotlines so I worked out what the twist might be, ditto The Others.
Missing from the list is Planet of the Apes (1968), my favorite plot twist of all time.

What do you think should be no.1 or missing from the list?

 

[Al B. C]

"No Way Out"

Had me all the way to the end.

 

[Patrick Sun]

I've amended the thread title so that "spoilers" can be discussed without members just stumbling into this thread and getting a film's twist ruined for them.

 

[Haggai]

There are lots of twists and turns in The Sting, one of my all-time favorites. It's not really just one particular big twist, a la Sixth Sense, but a whole series of them that keep getting bigger as it builds to the climax.

 

[John Watson]

I didn't have the 6th sense, but the Crying Game was obvious to me. Must've been the music . The soundtrack should have featured "Lola" by the Kinks tho

I had to watch Usual Suspects several times before I got all of it.

Some of Charade came quickly, because I used to be a philatelist.

 

[Shane Gralaw]

I was also not surprised at the twist in the Crying Game. It was pretty obvious throughout the film that the bar where they spend so much time is a gay bar.

And when Nicole Kidman's character meets her husband in the fog in The Others, I knew something was up, and given the spate of "the lead characters don't know they are dead" films floating about around the time of that film's release, (including the director's previous film) it wasn't too hard to guess.

Now Seven, I didn't see coming AT ALL. I figured that it would be a more conventional Hollywood pic, but NO.

 

[BrettB]

No Planet of the Apes?

What have you done for me lately?

 

[Shane Gralaw]

I never could figure out why the astronauts in Planet of the Apes couldn't recognize the Earth's moon or the constellations. You would think astronauts would be a little more knowledgeable about such things.

 

[Max Leung]

*insert clever line about budget cutbacks at NASA*

What, no mention of Evil Dead 2?

 

[Matt Pelham]

The Sixth Sense is deserving of it's spot, I remember being just stunned into submission by the ending.

 

[Steve Christou]

Or that the apes were speaking in perfect English! Oh what a giveaway!

The sci-fi thriller Impostor (2002), starring Gary Sinise, had an interesting twilight zoneish double twist to it's tale... Sinise plays a scientist who is suddenly suspected of being a dangerous enemy alien, shocked and confused he goes on the run, his friends turn against him, his wife isn't sure what to believe...

 

[Haggai]

I also enjoyed The Spanish Prisoner, which could certainly fall into this category. Almost every detail in that movie turns out to be part of a plot twist of one kind or another.

 

[Robert Anthony]

I don't see how Usual Suspects is at number 2. That should be number 1.

and if THAT'S not, Empire Strikes Back should be. Honestly, NO one saw that coming, and it's become almost legendary since. The only other twist I can think of that comes close to that kind of pop culture reference saturation is...Keyser Soze.

Planet of the Apes SHOULD be on there, somewhere. Definitely moreso than "The Game" or even "The Others."

 

[Jeff Gatie]

I too figured out The Crying Game about 15 minutes in. Absolutely no surprise. I was sucked in and completely fooled by The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects and POTA, but (unlike Eddie Murphy) I can spot a cross-gender person a mile away (must be my urban upbringing.).

I also was not fooled by The Others and Fight Club (saw it first on DVD and noticed the flashes of Tyler Durden and freeze framed them, after I saw that the twist was obvious).

 

[Greg Thomas]

What about "Identity"? I had no clue what was happening until the end.

My top 3 would be...

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Usual Suspects
3. Crying Game

 

[andrew markworthy]

I'm honestly not making this up, but I worked out the 'surprise' in every single one of those movies (with the exception of Psycho, but I found out about 'Mother' from a documentary by accident). Not because I'm clever, but because they were all advertised as having a really clever surprise. Without that info, I'd genuinely have been taken in by the plot, but as soon as anyone tells me that there's an unexpected twist I'm looking for it.

And where's Citizen Kane?

 

[Haggai]

Doesn't sound like much, so I assume there's more to it than that. Anyone care to spoil it for me, behind the appropriate spoiler tags, of course?

 

[TedE]

Haggai,

In a nutshell:

All the characters have the same birthday because they are all multiple personalities belonging to a single person. The twist is that all the action you are seeing onscreen is just a mental patient's imagination as psychologists try to get rid of some of his personalities by "killing them off" inside his head.


There is another sort of twist at the end, but IMHO it actually ruined (cheapened?)what had been a pretty cool film up to that point.

 

[Haggai]

Hmm, that sounds...strange. Thanks for the spoiler, TedE!

 

[Sean Campbell]

But according to the dialogue, there is no moon ( wonder what happened to it? ). And the constellations may have moved slightly over the course of 2000 years, disguising their true location.

As regards The Sixth Sense, I was unfortunate enough to work out the twist within the first 10 mins and therefore the impact was lost on me.