Best surprise twist ending of all time – The Sting.
Best comedy twist ending – the last episode of the Newhart Show where he wakes up in bed with wife Emily after the strangest dream…
I also always kind of liked the Twilight Zone where the three national guardsmen went missing and they finally discover their names on the memorial for Custer’s comand at Little Big Horn. I think Warren Oates was in that one. Another good one was the old lady who was terrified of Death and lived as a recluse so he couldn’t get her - a young Robert Redford turned out to be the Reaper she allowed in under the guise of a wounded cop.
The twist ending of sixth sense didn’t help me to like this totally boring movie, which to me relied on a Sylvia Brown new age psychic viewpoint for its plot to make any sense at all. The ending, IMHO, did nothing to change the meaning of the rest of the film. Remove it and its still the same dumb movie about a boy psychotherapist for the dead.
Haven’t seen Usual Suspects, but Fight Club should have been nominated for an Oscar. I do agree that the twist ending could have been handled better, but at least it does magnify the meaning(s) of the rest of the movie.
There is a double twist ending in Sliding Doors. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, there are two stories running in parallel. One starts with the protagonist catching a train home and finding her boyfriend in bed with another woman; the other starts with the protagonist narrowly missing a train (therefore having to wait for the next one) and coming home a bit too late to catch her boyfriend in bed with another woman. The stories unfold in such a way that you expect one to end happily and the other to end in tragedy. Not to spoil it too much, but neither story ends up quite the way most viewers will expect.
That was a good one! I did not see it coming at all.
Another TZ episode: The one (I think called “The Martians Are Here” or something like that) with the people at a diner in a snowstorm, weird stuff happening, the one guy eventually tells the counter man he’s from Venus, pops a third arm out to light a cigarette, then the counter guy takes off his hat to reveal a third eye, and says the Martian have already been here for years.
Also TZ: “Eye of the Beholder.” A woman in bandages in the hospital, wanting to be beautiful, we never see the doctors, but when they remove her bandages, we see she is blond, very pretty, but they all scream in horror. **Then ** we see the doctors…with ugly (to us) pig-like faces.
As jayjay mentioned, I think most TZ episodes were only effective upon first viewing.
Someone ruined “The Sixth Sense” for me, but it was still good. Of course when I did see it, I kept telling myself I would have figured it out right away (yeah, right ).
I disagree. There is always something new to pick up from a story, be it in film, word, picture, or song. Just because you know a particular “secret” that should not be known until the end does not spoil the overall effect - unless you are only watching the story for the surprise ending itself. I have a problem with dismissing a classic piece of work, in this case The Twilight Zone television series, as some phenomenon that is useless and ineffective after a one-time viewing, like a tissue perhaps. The actors (in this episode, Agnes Moorehead), writers, directors, etc. have put together a capable tale and succesfully entertained an audience and should not be insulted with a dismissal of their work in any regard. People still attend Hamlet and enjoy it even though they know the ultimate outcome of the story. The Twilight Zone is no less than Shakespeare, I don’t care what any egghead says. It’s a classic in its own right, and not just for its surprise endings.
And why should this story being described in narrative be “absolutely ineffective?” Wasn’t it written as a short story originally? Furthermore, the description above was done, not to compose a short story, but to describe this episode.
That eppy is called “Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?” Quite an good one. “To Serve Man” is one of my favorite TZ eps, along with the William Shatner one with the monkey-man on the airplane.
“Sixth Sense” is a favorite of mine, along with “Unbreakable”.
The best “surprise ending” I’ve seen lately was in Lula on the Bridge. The ending took me by complete surprise for some reason, so much so that I watched the beginning again to see what I didn’t pick up on the first time. It reminded me a lot of the Occurance at Owl Creek once I thought about it…
Well, it’s not as highbrow as The Twilight Zone, but how about the last episode of the sitcom I Married Dora? (Premise: a widowed father of several kids marries his housekeeper, Dora, so she can stay in the United States and watch the young’ums.)
It wasn’t much of a sitcom, really, and when the show was definitely going to be axed, the final episode had the premise that the INS was deporting Dora anyway. The entire family gathers for a tearful farewell at the airport, and the following exchange (paraphrase from memory) occurs–
Dora: I guess this is the end, then? Father: Yes, this is it, it’s over. Dora: Oh, okay. (to camera) Goodbye, everybody!
Then the camera pans back to reveal the soundstage, the audience, and the assorted support crew. They shattered the fourth wall and faded to black.
I’ve heard this a couple of times on the board. I saw this movie, but don’t quite remember all the details. Isn’t the twist that it’s his birthday party, or something like that? Hence the title? I am failing to see why it was a twist, considering the name of the movie. Maybe someone can help jog my memory!~
‘The Game’ tells you what’s really going on from the beginning, that it’s all an elaborate game, it’s just that the movie has you guessing later that it’s NOT a game, so when it does turn out to actually be a game, it’s supposed to be a surprise.
The problem with that movie is there are way too many things that could not have been predicted in real life, it makes it totally unrealistic.
Well here in Australia we’ve just had the final episode of “Survivor”, and let me tell you, that is SOME TWIST ENDING!! Who would have thought that the winner would be
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*Originally posted by Epistaxis *
The awesome ending of Primal Fear.
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Damn straight! Ooh…I wanted to slap someone for that one (and those who have seen it know who I’m talking about). And, now that I think of it, there was an episode “CSI” that had a very similar plot twist.
I always liked that episode of, I think, the Twilight Zone, in which some kind of criminal-in-hiding - I think a former Nazi guard - works in a museum. There’s a painting of a calm, serene scene - I think it was a man fishing from a rowboat in a peaceful, beautiful setting. The Nazi (or whatever he was) desperately dreams of being able to “get into” the painting - not having to hide anymore, just to be able to live a quiet happy life with no more worries that someone will discover his horrible past - and somehow he says the magic words and wishes himself into the painting “fourth from the door in Room A.” Only by the time he gets his wish, the painting has been changed and what is now hanging in its place is a painting of Jews being crammed into a cattle car on its way to an extermination camp.
I’m sure I have a few of the details wrong. Now that I think about it, this might have been remade as part of the Twilight Zone theatrical movie.
Actually, you aren’t that far off. It was an episode of Rod Serling’s later TV series, Night Gallery. In fact, I think it was from the NG pilot. The painting that the Nazi finds he has inadvertently wished himself into isn’t the Monet-like rowboat tranquil scene, but a new painting that had replaced it (unknown to him) – a Roualt-like crucifiction scene.
You’re right, Cal - I remember the painting now that you say it. I don’t know where I got that cattle car image. Maybe from the Twilight Zone movie? But then it was probably a totally different plot. Oh well, the memory gets more and more faulty . . .
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