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: 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 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 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' 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 ed 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, 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 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.
