The 2010s were a decade full of surprises and twists in movies, from the mystery of Amy Dunne's disappearance to the identity of Shutter Island's 67th patient.
A great twist can come in a lot of different forms, whether it's breaking with a movie genre's formula or playing with the audience's assumptions of what's going on. Filmmakers can build an entire movie around a twist, or simply throw one in at the end as a final sting in the tale. There can be one big twist, or a lot of them along the way. No matter how they're executed, though, twists always make a story more interesting - so we're breaking down the best movie twists of the decade.
Needless to say, this list is absolutely packed with SPOILERS, so if you haven't seen any of these films we recommend skipping past them instead of reading the twist (and then go and watch the movie).
15. Widows
Steve McQueen's 2018 crime thriller Widows has a lot going for it, from a terrifying performance by Daniel Kaluuya as a ruthless mob enforcer, to a tense and climactic heist, but it also has a twist that ties into the title of the movie. Viola Davis plays Veronica, the wife of skilled bank robber Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson), who finds herself facing threats of violence after a heist gone wrong leaves her husband and his entire crew dead. In order to get the money she needs to pay off crime boss and aspiring politician Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), Veronica recruits other widows of Harry's crew to complete one of the heist plans left behind in his notebook. However, as she prepares to pull off the robbery, she makes an unpleasant discovery.
The twist: Harry isn't actually dead. He was collaborating with Manning's opposition in the race for Alderman, and conspired to have his entire crew killed in order to sabotage the robbery and Manning's funding. To make matters worse, he had a baby with another woman and was planning to start over with a new family. After the heist, he demands that Veronica either hand over some of the takings or be killed. Let's just say she chooses a third option.
14. Split
M. Night Shyamalan is the king of the big movie twist, from The Sixth Sense to The Village, so at this point audiences go into his movies looking for the big surprise. Shyamalan made something of a comeback in the 2010s, first with The Visit (which had a twist of its own, if a somewhat predictable one) and then with Split, a horror movie about a trio of girls who are kidnapped by a man called Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), who has an extreme case of multiple personality disorder. Kevin his 23 distinct personalities, and his physiology actually changes slightly every time he shifts to a different personality. However, the biggest change is still to come, as a monstrous new personality called "The Beast" is emerging, and the girls are intended as a sacrifice to The Beast's thirst for blood.
The twist: Up until the final few minutes of Split, it seems that the movie doesn't have a twist. But then, in a diner, a news report about Kevin prompts a waitress to recall a story about another man who was proven to be dangerously insane a few years ago. That man's nickname? "Mr. Glass," says David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the protagonist of Shyamalan's 2000 film Unbreakable. Yes, the twist is that Split is actually a sequel to Unbreakable, and is setting up a third movie where David Dunn will take on both Mr. Glass and The Beast.
13. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
This is one of two movies on this list whose twists are noteworthy not only for how much they surprised the audience, but also for how much they infuriated fans. The Star Wars saga delivered one of the greatest twists in cinematic history in The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader reveals that he is actually Luke Skywalker's father. So, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens introduced young heroine Rey, who had been abandoned on a desert planet by mysterious parents when she was a child, the parallels were obvious. There was much breathless speculation about who Rey's parents might be, with strong odds that she could turn out to be another Skywalker, or perhaps related to some other legacy character. However, Rian Johnson's controversial middle entry Star Wars: The Last Jedi inverted the twist of The Empire Strikes Back with a reveal that might actually be more gutting than "I am your father."
The twist: When Kylo Ren makes his bid for Rey to join him, he forces her to acknowledge the truth: her parents were "nobody." If Kylo is to be believed, they were "filthy junk traders" who sold Rey for drinking money as a child and are dead in a pauper's grave on the same planet they abandoned Rey on. Between her force sensitivity and her relationship with Luke, Rey had been built up as someone special - and she is. But not because of her parentage.
12. Buried
Taking the prize for the nastiest twist on this list is Buried, Rodrigo Cortés' 2010 thriller starring Ryan Reynolds, a coffin, and not much else. Reynolds plays Paul Conroy, a civilian truck driver in Iraq who finds himself buried alive after an ambush. Over the course of 90 minutes, the audience is trapped in the coffin with Paul as he cycles through hope, despair, and desperation, using what little tools he has at his disposal - a cell phone, a lighter, a knife, and a few scant light sources - in an effort to survive and orchestrate his own rescue. He is told by the hostage negotiator working for his release that a man called Mark White was in a similar situation to him a few weeks ago, and was rescued alive. A series of explosions damage the coffin and cause it to start filling with sand, threatening Paul with suffocation - but just in time, the rescuers find the coffin!
The twist: There's just one problem: it's not Paul's coffin that they find, but Mark White's. Mark was never actually rescued, and Paul hasn't been either. The movie ends there, with the certainty that Paul will die a horrible death, and the reveal that the one person he had trusted throughout the movie was lying to him.
11. Knives Out
In Rian Johnson's 2019 murder mystery movie Knives Out, there's an early twist when the question of "whodunit" is apparently solved. Marta (Ana de Armas), a nurse working for wealthy mystery novel author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), accidentally gave him a lethal dose of morphine. To save her from prison and protect her mother from being deported, Harlan killed himself after giving Marta careful instructions that would absolve her of any suspicion. However, a new mystery is introduced when private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is anonymously hired to dig into Harlan's death, and Marta is caught up in a whirlwind of an investigation that reveals there may be more to Harlan's death than it seems.
The twist: The reveal of the "killer" isn't the really big twist of Knives Out. No, it's something a lot more tragic than that: Harlan was never actually given an overdose of morphine, and didn't need to kill himself at all. His conniving nephew, Ransom (Chris Evans), switched the labels on Marta's medicine bottles to try and trick and her into giving Harlan an overdose. However, Marta knocked the bottles over and gave Harlan the correct doses on instinct - only believing afterwards (because of the switched labels) that she'd accidentally poisoned the old man.
10. The Cabin in the Woods
Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods may reveal its twist early on, but it's still easily one of the most memorable of the decade. The story is familiar: a group of young, attractive college students take a trip to a remote cabin in the woods. There they find a basement full of creepy objects, and when one of them interferes with one of the creepy objects, strange and terrible things start to happen to them. What you don't usually see in these sorts of horror movies, however, is a separate plot involving a group of workers in some kind of control room, observing the hapless victims as they careen towards their doom. So, what is going on?
The twist: The cabin in the woods is a set-up - effectively a sacrificial altar where groups of unsuspecting victims are forced to play out ancient roles (which just so happen to align with horror movie stereotypes) in order to satiate a collection of ancient gods who will destroy the world if they don't get their offerings. This means that every possible horror that could attack the cabin - from the zombie redneck torture family to a carnivorous mermaid - has been manufactured in a lab for the express purpose of carrying out the ritual. However, the plan goes awry when two of the survivors figure out something is afoot and descend into the underground facility, unleashing hell on the people trying to have them killed.
9. Iron Man 3
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has adapted plenty of villains from the comics, and put its own twist on a few of them. When Shane Black's Iron Man 3 first introduced Ben Kingsley as classic comic book villain The Mandarin, who was born out of 1960s Yellow Peril stereotypes and anti-Communist sentiment, he appeared to have been effectively reinvented to represent post-9/11 fears of terrorism. A sinister figure who spoke in a strange, drawn-out manner and appeared only on TV screes, the Mandarin seemed like the perfect foil for the brash Tony Stark - himself once a symbol of America's place in the global arms race. However, when Tony went to confront the Mandarin, he didn't find a criminal mastermind waiting for him.
The twist: The so-called "Mandarin" is actually just a drunk English actor called Trevor Slattery, kept happy with a regular supply of drink, drugs, and women. He was given plastic surgery, a Hollywood-style set and costumes in order to create his villainous persona, so that "the Mandarin" could take credit for crimes committed by the movie's real villain: Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). This twist may have kept a portion of Marvel fans enraged for years afterwards, but Kingsley's performance as Trevor is easily one of the highlights of the film.
8. The Book of Eli
In The Hughes Brothers' Mad Max-esque post-apocalyptic action film The Book of Eli, Denzel Washington plays the titular Eli, a lone wanderer in possession of a book that has enormous value - both to those who want to preserve it, and those who want to use it to control others. Eli becomes the target of a warlord called Carnegie (Gary Oldman), who falls into the latter category, and rallies all of his forces against Eli in an effort to retrieve the book - which is actually a copy of the Bible. However, Eli is a skilled fighter and is joined by a young woman from Carnegie's town called Solara (Mila Kunis), who is looking for an escape route. Eli is ultimately forced to surrender the book to Carnegie before reaching sanctuary - but Carnegie won't get much use out of it.
The twist: Eli is actually blind, and his copy of the Bible is in Braille. He has the entire book memorized, and is able to dictate it so that printing presses can start producing new copies. Meanwhile, the Bible in Carnegie's possession is useless to him and his desperate pursuit of it has left him wounded and no longer in control of his people. The Book of Eli is especially fun on a second watch, when you can spot all the clues to Eli's blindness that were left along the way.
7. Us
Jordan Peele's first horror movie, Get Out, was a tough act to follow, but in 2019 he returned with another chilling tale in Us. Lupita Nyong'o plays a woman called Adelaide who heads to the beach with her family at the same vacation spot where she had a traumatic experience in her childhood. Her feelings of unease prove to be well-founded when a mysterious family dressed in red jumpsuits attack the vacation home at night - and these aren't just any home invaders. They're doppelgangers of Adelaide, her husband, and their two children, and they seem to have plans to kill and replace them. We eventually learn that the "Tethered" are some kind of science experiment that have been condemned to live underground and imitate the actions of their above-ground counterparts... but that's not the final twist.
The twist: In a deliciously dark final reveal, we learn that "Adelaide" is actually one of the Tethered. When Adelaide was a child, she stumbled across an entrance to the underground tunnels. There she encountered her doppelganger, who locked her up underground and took her place above ground. Red, the doppelganger who has been coming after Adelaide and her family, is actually the real Adelaide, who organized the uprising of the Tethered in order to take back what was stolen from her.
6. Avengers: Infinity War
After initially announcing Avengers: Infinity War as a two-part event, Marvel Studios went on to carefully rebrand the two halves of this event as standalone stories, all in service of making Infinity War's ending hit that much harder. In this epic team-up of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's many superheroes, galactic bad guy Thanos has plans to collect all six Infinity Stones and use them to wipe out half of all life in the universe. Standing in his way are the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and a few other assorted allies, who fight a war on two fronts: some taking a stand against Thanos' armies in Wakanda, and others fighting the man himself on Titan. Marvel did such a good job of making audiences forget that Infinity War was only the first half of a story that the ending came as one of the biggest shocks of 2018.
The twist: Just when it seems that Thor has successfully killed Thanos, the Mad Titan recovers and snaps the fingers of the Infinity Gauntlet, turning half of all the people in the universe - including many beloved superheroes - into dust. The Avengers are left reeling from the implications of their defeat and then the movie... just ends. It may not have been a traditional twist, but it was definitely a twist on the happy ending with victorious heroes that moviegoers had come to expect from comic book movies.
5. The Handmaiden
South Korean director Park Chan-wook proved himself to be a master of taut, erotic thrillers set in grand properties with his first film of the 2010s, Stoker (which has a great twist of its own). But 2016's The Handmaiden delivered not only one great twist, but several, as it transplanted Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith to a luxurious estate in 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea. There, a girl called Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) is sent to serve as handmaiden to Izumi Hideko (Kim Min-hee), the seemingly fragile niece of the estate's wealthy owner, and the two find themselves developing strong feelings for one another. But from the film's first act, it's revealed that there is more to the situation than meets the eye.
The twist(s): First of all, Sook-hee is actually the daughter of a famous thief, who is collaborating with con-man "Count" Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) to convince Hideko to marry Fujiwara, so that he can have her committed to an insane asylum and keep her enormous inheritance for himself. However, it's later revealed that it's actually Sook-hee who's being conned: Hideko and Fujiwara plan to have her committed to the asylum under Hideko's name, so that Fujiwara will get his fortune and Hideko will be free from her abusive uncle. That's not the last twist, though. After Sook-hee is apparently betrayed and committed, we learn that she and Hideko confessed about their plans to betray one another and then conspired to trick Fujiwara so that they could elope together, free and in love. As for Fujiwara... well, let's just say that Sook-hee and Hideko have their revenge.
4. Gone Girl
Directed by David Fincher and based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl stars Ben Affleck as Nick Dunne, a former magazine writer who dragged his New York born-and-bred wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), back to his home town in Missouri after his career went south. The movie begins on Nick and Amy's fifth wedding anniversary, when Nick returns home to find his wife missing and seems suspiciously calm about it. Affleck pitches his performance as the awkward and frequently unlikable protagonist perfectly, never quite persuading the audience of his innocence despite his repeated protestations that he has no idea what happened to Amy - who maintains a voice in the story via snippets from Amy's diary. It's not until the mid-movie twist that we realize what's really going on might be even more diabolical than murder.
The twist: Not only is Amy not dead, she orchestrated her own disappearance. The picture she has been painting of her and Nick's marriage in her diaries is carefully calculated to convince the police of his guilt, so that he will be sent to prison and executed for her murder. The whole plot is an act of revenge against Nick for cheating on her after all the sacrifices she made for him. Things only get better after the twist, however, as Nick starts to play Amy's game in an effort to win her back and save his own life, proving that these two might be meant for each other after all.
3. Arrival
In Denis Villeneuve's cerebral science fiction film Arrival, twelve alien spaceships arrive on Earth, looking vaguely threatening but not apparently attempting to conquer the planet. Louise Banks (Amy Adams), a linguist, and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), a physicist, are recruited to attempt to communicate with the aliens, who speak by using some manner of alien ink to create strange circles. As Louise works to figure out what the aliens are saying and how to respond to them, we see flashbacks of her with her daughter, who died from a terminal illness. Tensions around the world rise when the aliens mention a "weapon" they are attempting to pass on, and international teams cease communication in preparation for a possible war. However, Louise pays a final visit to the aliens, and finally understands what they've really been trying to tell her.
The twist: Louise's flashbacks aren't flashbacks at all - they're premonitions of the daughter she will one day have with Ian. In teaching her their non-linear language, the aliens have been reshaping her mind so that she can perceive time the same way that they do. 3,000 years in the future, the aliens will need humanity to save them, but first they must pass on the tool (or "weapon") that will allow that to happen. Even knowing the pain that lies ahead, Louise knows that she will still decide to have her daughter rather than never get to meet her at all.
2. Shutter Island
2010 was a great year for Leonardo DiCaprio, who not only starred in the mind-bending Inception, but also blew audiences' minds with the twist of Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island is ostensibly about two U.S. Marshals, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) who travel to a hospital for the criminally insane in order to investigate the disappearance of a patient, Rachel Solando, who murdered her children. However, Teddy finds that the staff at the hospital are hostile and appear to be hiding things, leading him to suspect that some kind of conspiracy is afoot. It turns out that he's right - though not in the way he thought.
The twist: "Teddy Daniels" is not a U.S. Marshal at all, but a patient called Andrew Laeddis, who is being subjected to experimental treatment in an effort to make him confront the fact that he murdered his wife. Chuck is not a U.S. Marshal either, but a doctor at the hospital who was tasked with posing as "Teddy's" partner. There's one final twist at the end of Shutter Island, when it appears that the experiment has failed and Andrew is taken away to be lobotomized. However, Sheehan realizes that Andrew is merely faking his continued mental illness, because he'd rather die as a good man than live as a monster.
1. Predestination
Predestination, directed by The Spierig Brothers and based on Robert A. Heinlein's short story "All Your Zombies," is effectively a thought experiment made into a movie. It has a twist in the same way that an infinity symbol has a twist. Ethan Hawke plays a time traveling agent whose job it is to prevent crimes before they happen. In particular, he has been tasked with hunting down a terrorist called the Fizzle Bomber, who in 1975 sets off a bomb that will kill 11,000 people in New York City. The plan to stop the Fizzle Bomber involves Hawke's character going back in time and posing as a barkeep in order to strike up a conversation with a man called John.
John reveals that he was actually born a girl, dumped as a baby at an orphanage and named Jane. While in college, Jane met a mysterious man who got her pregnant and then rudely disappeared. During the difficult birth, doctors discovered that Jane had both male and female sex organs, and gave her a hysterectomy while also reconstructing her male organs. As if that wasn't devastating enough, Jane's baby was stolen two weeks after the birth. She was forced to reinvent herself as John, whose miserable life led him to be drinking in that very bar. After hearing this story, the Barkeep offers to take John back in time so that he can kill the man who fathered his baby and ruined his life.
The twist: John, Jane, Jane's baby, the Barkeep, and the Fizzle Bomber are all the same person. They are their own mother and father, and at the end of the movie John kills his future self after discovering that he is the Fizzle Bomber - which in turn sets him on the path to becoming the Fizzle Bomber. John is an entirely closed loop, responsible for his own birth and his own death. It's hard to beat a twist as mind-bending as that.