In Carnival Of Souls a woman is the only survivor of a car falling from a bridge into a river. She begins to see strange people and being stalked by seemingly undead people. There is a great scene where she loses her sense of hearing for a while. In the end she returns to the the sight of the car crash only to find out she drowned with all of her friends.
In Dead and Buried the main character visits a village full of people who turn out to be undead but seemingly look like normal people. In the end a film is shown to him where he was stabbed in his sleep during his stay in the town having become one of it´s inhabitants forever..
I don´t say it´s exactly the same but I think it works in a similar way.
For the records: I haven’t seen a film from Shyamalan. If someone says “twist ending” I think of the Swiss novelist Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I know: I’m weird.
I would also consider “A Beautiful Mind” such a film, even if the twist doesn’t happen at the end. But for me this film is a perfect example of how to do a perfect twist.
Those sound great… I’m going to have to try to forget the endings and then watch them!
A few years back I looked up a big list of movies that had twists and watched a whole load… that meant I knew there was some kind of a twist coming at some point, but lots of them were still great. The John Cusack film “Identity” was a good little movie with an interesting twist that stood out to me.
I also like movies where the twist comes maybe around halfway, then the consequences of the twist are explored more… I can’t remember exactly, but I seem to remember Moon did something like this, most of the twist was done earlier on.
In TWP I really enjoyed the brief exploration in the wireframe after the twist… I personally would have really liked the twist to have happened halfway through the game, and then got to go back and forth between the wireframe, etc.
Same here. In my playthrough I had the feeling, that after entering the factory the story of the game was told in high speed. (But this is just my point of view and I have to replay TWP.)
It had two twists and was marketed as a compleltly different film. The iconic status of those twists has taken out their momentum but it´s interesting to see what it might have been for audiences in 1960.
Hithcock lead the audiences to believe it was a film about stolen money, and how the Marion Crane character deals with her guilt. Halfway into the film makes what´s supposed to be a short stop at the hotel and after a short talk with the nice Norman Bates she is convinced to turn herself in…and then BAM the main character is killed halfway through the movie (audiences weren´t allowed to enter the movie late, ushers were told to let no one in after a certain point). And then the whole focus of the story shifts to something entirely different.
The second twist is of course that Norman Bates himself is the killer and that the mother is dead. This worked so well because of the nice guy type of persona Anthony Perkins had been asscociated with up to that point, he was really the most unlikely killer there could have been. Of course after that iconic role he ended up being typecast for most of the rest of his career.
So it´s really hard to know how that movie must feel for someone who goes in cold, but the way it was executed for the time was highly unique.
But you know the shower scene and the mummified mother that turns in the chair, and that is enough. There isn´t much else to spoil, all I did was explain why it used to be a spoiler but usually you know that beforehand because those images are so iconic. It does in no way ruin the experience of the movie, though.
And never went to the videostore, yeah that´s fair.
It would be fun for Star Wars Episode 9 if the ending is a big twist and it all turns out that it was just old people in a home hallucinating that they are in a space adventure.
Actually only the shower scene. I’ve tried to avoid anything regarding to Psycho, because I wanted to watch that movie. Well, someday. Maybe. When I’m retired. At least after my death.
In my case: Yes. I watched that film as a kid when my family hasn’t a VHS recorder. (Back then videostores were spooky houses only for adults. Well, at least in my mind…)
And that´s the main point. In 1960 you weren´t supposed to know there even was a shower scene. Now of course it´s so famous we can´t imagine what it must have been for audiences. So if you introduce the movie to someone, say it´s a movie about stolen money.
Folks, since you are talking about which books/movies/stories have twist endings, can I ask you to put spoiler tags at least on the name/title of the book/movie that you are mentioning? It would help a lot, thanks.
Well I don’t think Rod Serling invented twist endings, just that a lot of the stories of the era featured them. Especifically, when I think “twist endings” I think Matheson.
Of course not. The EC comics almost all of twist endings and these are older. And of course The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (1920) has a twist ending. And there is certainly ancient literature with twist endings.
And he wrote many of the very best Twilight Zone episodes!
So yesterday I finally saw The Lego Movie and when it came to the end I really asked myself if @RonGilbert ghostwrote this. At least it would totally be his thing. What a nice idea!
If someone says “twist ending” I think of the 
