7 Movie Twists That Are Completely Misunderstood

A twist can make or break a movie. M. Night Shyamalan even made a name for himself by having shocking twists in his early movies. Cheap twists are often included only for their shock value, but the most profound reveals are rarely about the surprise itself. They serve as the ultimate thematic bridge, recontextualizing everything that came before. Too often, viewers get caught in the mechanics of the plot while completely overlooking why the twist is there.

Here, we take a look at some movie twists that are misunderstood, where audiences walked away with other, sometimes misguided ideas than what the movie tried to tell. This list dives into the most misinterpreted endings in cinema to uncover the uncomfortable truths hidden beneath the shock and maybe understand them a bit better. Obviously, spoiler alert for all the movies mentioned here.

'Enemy' (2013)

In Enemy, after a tense psychological game between Adam (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his doppelgänger Anthony, one dies in a car crash while the other assumes his life. In the very final scene, Adam walks into the bedroom to speak to Anthony’s wife, only to find a room-sized tarantula cowering in the corner. Adam sighs with a look of resigned exhaustion rather than terror, and the film ends.

The spider imagery has appeared several times in the film before, often showing a long-legged spider looming in the city. This spider twist, however, is often dismissed as a surrealist shock value moment to tie up all the bizarre spider visuals that came before. However, there are several interpretations. First, the spider represents the web that is relationships and marriage. Despite killing his other self, Adam doesn't find the spider shocking because he has learned nothing, and he will continue to live like his doppelgänger. Other interpretations include that the spider is a visual of his previous trauma, or that the spider represents the sad life that he has to face.

'Iron Man 3' (2013)

Iron Man 3 promises a classic Iron Man villain, The Mandarin, played by Sir Ben Kingsley. He appears as a terrifying terrorist who broadcasts threats to the United States and seemingly orchestrates a series of global bombings. However, when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) finally infiltrates the Mandarin’s compound, he discovers that the terrorist is actually Trevor Slattery, a washed-up actor, and there is no Mandarin, as it was all a plan by the real villain who wanted to exact his revenge on Stark.

This twist remains one of the most divisive moments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, often criticized by fans for desecrating Iron Man’s comic book arch-nemesis. However, it is a clever subversion that puts the film in reality, where usually terror is orchestrated by people in powerful positions, in this case, Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce. By turning a legendary villain into a performance, director Shane Black illustrates that the most dangerous threats aren't people from abroad, but the corporate interests and domestic opportunists who profit from them. Trevor Slattery has become a recurring character in the MCU, appearing in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Wonder Man.

'The Village' (2004)

In The Village, a 19th-century community lives in fear of a mysterious creature in the surrounding woods. When one of the villagers is gravely wounded, the visually impaired Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) is sent to get medicine in town that the people describe as evil. The twist reveals that they actually live in the present day, and the village is a social experiment founded by grieving people who wanted to escape the violence of the modern world.

The film's detractors often hated this twist for ruining the stakes, and it was called anticlimactic and cheap. This criticism stemmed from the film's marketing as a horror film and the high expectations burdened on M. Night Shyamalan, who had become the master of twists by then. The Village has since been reevaluated as one of Shyamalan's best works, and the twist asks audiences to ponder how fear is used as a tool for social control. The elders tried to protect their children from modern evil by creating a world built entirely on a lie, creating violence of their own. Its message resonates deeply in our current world, where fear and control are strong currencies.

'Total Recall' (1990)

Total Recall follows construction worker Douglas Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who visits Rekall to have memories of a Martian vacation implanted, only for the procedure to go haywire. He spends the rest of the film as a secret agent on Mars, eventually activating an ancient alien reactor that creates a breathable atmosphere for the planet. The film ends with Quaid wondering if it's all just a memory implant.

Director Paul Verhoeven deliberately designed the ending to be up to the audience's interpretations. Many viewers take the ending at face value as a triumphant hero’s journey, and want it to be real. After all, Douglas is a regular, working man, just like the audience, who goes to the movies for escapism. But Rekall represents a reality where everything is easily manipulated and created, much like our personas on social media. So it's not just a typical, happy-ending Hollywood adventure film; it goes much deeper into how identity is easily constructed, and how the truth is easily malleable. Whatever interplanetary journey Quaid experienced may not be real at all, but again, it depends on what you believe.

Fight Club (1999)

In Fight Club, a disillusioned man (Edward Norton) starts an underground fight club with the charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). The club evolves into something anarchic and violent in response to consumerist lifestyles. However, there was never a Tyler Durden; he is just another personality of the Narrator. The film ends with the club successfully bombing the city's financial district, while the Narrator shoots himself to kill Tyler.

The film is often mistakenly viewed as a genuine endorsement of Tyler’s alpha male philosophy. Many audiences, particularly men, walked away viewing Tyler as a hero and the bombing as a righteous victory against the system. However, that's just the Brad Pitt effect. In reality, the fight club is a critique of toxic masculinity and how easily disenfranchised men can be radicalized into a cult-like, fascistic mindset. David Fincher clearly shows that the Narrator’s attempt to escape consumerism led him directly into a much more dangerous fanaticism.

'American Psycho' (2000)

American Psycho centers on Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) who has a double life of being an elite investment banker with luxurious lifestyle and also being an envious, violent person. When his murderous spree becomes out of control and increasingly surreal, he later confesses to his lawyer. Instead of immediately reporting him to the police, his lawyer laughs it off and even tells him that one of his supposed victims is alive and well in London, leading Bateman to wonder whether any of his crimes actually occurred.

The common misconception is that it was purely in his head. However, the twist is darker: it doesn't matter if Bateman actually killed those people or not. The film is a satire of 1980s yuppie superficiality, where these men are so interchangeable, and the society is so self-absorbed that Bateman could go on a killing spree and no one would notice. Whether Paul Allen (Jared Leto) is dead or Bateman is just hallucinating is ultimately unimportant; Bateman is trapped in a hell of total anonymity where his confession means nothing. To put it in today's terms, the idea of sigma male that Bateman embodies is a meaningless construct, and the hustle culture that he adopted is only serving capitalism, not him.

'Gone Girl' (2014)

Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) is the missing girl referred to in the title in Gone Girl. The scene of the crime all points to her husband, Nick (Ben Affleck), who seems to barely know his wife and is cheating on her with one of his students. But halfway through the film, it’s revealed that Amy is not the victim but the architect of a brilliant frame-up to destroy her unfaithful husband. She is fed up with keeping up appearances and trying to be the perfect partner for him.

Audiences often debate whether the twist makes the film, and also the book, misogynistic or a feminist fantasy. However, both views, which have valid points, miss the deeper satire. The now-famous conclusion, where they end up back together again, represents a performative marriage. Author Gillian Flynn is showing that Nick and Amy are actually perfect for each other because they are both obsessed with the curated images they project to the world. The difference is that now Amy is in control of the relationship. There's a shift in their power dynamics, and the film shows that both are capable of doing things that other people would not expect of them.