There was an old made-for-TV Keanu Reeves movie called The Brotherhood of Justice* that took a big change in “direction” about halfway through. But I think it’s more a sign of general crappiness than of the screenwriter being innovative.
*I watched it because I had the flu, and nothing else was on. Don’t judge me too harshly, I’M the one who has to live with it.
Original or remake?
uh… Lost Highway took a turn for crap after about 10 minutes. I thought I was in for a slow paced creepy Hitchcock and got some crappy skinna-max pseudo porn. Ugh.
Be nice, Cervaise! You gave us a major spoiler and then fail to include the “interesting reaction” of the character. Share please, as I’m unlikely to find let alone watch this film.
Penn & Teller Get Killed
How about the new Planet of the Apes?
This is exactly what i thought of when I read the OP. When I saw it as a teenager, I thought "Why did they have to throw that goddamn depressing ending on there. But, I saw it again more recently, and I thought, “Brilliant!”
She denies having been raped
That’s the first movie I thought of! Totally bizarre ending.
Employee of the Month, which was billed as a comedy, starts out as a darker version of Office Space and ends up in a totally different genre, with the main character
getting killed in a double-cross by his best friend, who is then killed in a triple-cross by the MC’s girlfriend, and then some more people get killed, and it is really pointless and bizarre.
It wasn’t a mismatched ending, but Cellular felt like two different movies spliced together.
Yeah, you’re right, I should have elaborated on that a bit.
[spoiler]The thing is, her attitude toward her sister is extremely ambiguous throughout the film. Her sister is older, but still underage, so it’s more than a little skeevy when she picks up a guy in town who looks to be around twenty. The younger sister is simultaneously creeped out and yet jealous: she knows the older girl is being taken advantage of by an unwholesome man, whose lust for this teenager is pretty gross; and yet she envies her sister’s ability to attract the attention of older men, as she herself is younger and not nearly as physically appealing.
So when the hatchet-wielding psycho appears, and drags her off to the woods, her response is as ambiguous as it was watching her sister getting laid. She knows it’s a horrible thing that’s happening, but she really didn’t like her mother very much and she’s conflicted about her sister, and given the example that’s been set for her, she’s not certain that this isn’t how men are supposed to relate to women, treating them as less-than-human objects. So when the police show up, her assertions about not having been raped are based on a complicated, twisted emotional defensiveness we’ve seen throughout the movie.
I didn’t intend to get into a full analysis of the film; and really, in retrospect, as jarring as the last few minutes are, the whole buildup is completely necessary to the effect. While watching the story, this twist feels like a sudden right turn into new territory, per the OP’s premise, which is why I mentioned it; but thinking about it afterward, the ending was clearly intended from the beginning.
I hope this clarifies things.[/spoiler]
Miracle Mile …it’s more of a mismatched beginning. Starts off as a warm romantic comedy of the sort that’s 70% romantic and 30% comic, and then does an abrupt hairpin turn…go watch the movie if you’ve never seen it and don’t already know the spoiler…
After a very cute rom-com beginning, the male romantic lead, after having overslept and missed the first date, fields a misdialed phone call to a pay phone and it’s a panic-stricken GI saying we just launched nuclear weapons and will be getting return fire in short order. Having been set up for romantic comedy, you expect to be amused by the headless-chicken, sky-is-falling behaviors of the people involved, and that it will turn out that nothing of the sort is actually happening. Or, failing that, that our two main characters will somehow rise to the occasion and save the world. But no, the sky reallly is falling, it’s all real, and it’s not good, not for our romantic couple and not for our species.