The Worst Plot Twists in the History of American Cinema

The Forgotten (2004)

While movies like "Signs" (another M. Night stinker) end with the totally illogical twist that the aliens who have invaded Earth can be killed by water (our most basic resource), at least aliens weren't the twist themselves. But that is what we are asked to choke down in "The Forgotten," a film that is surprisingly captivating until its awful, convenient ending. The story revolved around a mother, played by Julianne Moore, who loses her son to a plane crash. The problem is, not only does no one believe the child died, including her husband, but they don't even recall him ever existing. Sounds intriguing, no? Too bad the lazy, anticlimactic ending ends up revolving around aliens experimenting on people. And worse yet, if you paid attention to the trailers, this was ruined for you in them. Talk about a major letdown.

No Country for Old Men (2007)

This pill may be a bit harder to swallow considering that many people actually really enjoyed this film, not to mention it took home the Oscar for Best Picture. And it IS a pretty amazing film -- right up to the point where the main protagonist is killed (offscreen, mind you) by someone other than the antagonist, and we are then left scratching our heads while they cut to a final monologue from Tommy Lee Jones' Sheriff Bell character, and the film just sort of...ends. Yes, this was how the novel the film was based on played out as well, but at least in the book, Sheriff Bell was the focus of the story. If that were the case in the film, the ending would have been more tolerable.

Planet of the Apes (2001)

You can't expect a remake of a classic film to be perfect, but come on. They could have done a little better than this. And by a little better, we mean a little less complicated and stupid. Tim Burton goes so far in this remake to try to top the original's ending, that the result is so convoluted that many still don't quite understand what it was going for. In a nutshell, Leo, the main character played by Mark Wahlberg, goes back in time in his spaceship to present day in order to try and stop the apes from enslaving the Earth, only to find that the apes must have gone back even further in time in order to ensure their rule. As Leo lands in Washington, D.C., he is surrounded by ape cops and Thade, the main ape Wahlberg is fighting in the film, is now emulated on the Lincoln Memorial as a sort of Ape-raham Lincoln. "Earth all along" is sounding mighty good right about now.

Diabolique (1996)

In another failed attempt to top an original's twist ending, this time of a 1955 French film by the name "Les Diaboliques," we again get an overly convoluted finale that would have been best to keep simple, considering most hadn't seen the original anyways. Basically, the French version ends with the husband character (who was assumed dead) having faked his death in order to "come back to life," scaring his wife to death in order for he and his mistress to inherit her riches. They are then found out by the detective in the story and thrown in the slammer. Sounds complicated enough, doesn't it? Well, the remake consists of the assumed dead husband character "coming back to life," scaring his wife to what he believes to be her death. His mistress then tells him she had a change of heart and tried to stop him from completing his plan, but was too late. The wife then reveals she is still alive, a fight breaks out between the three of them, and the two women end up drowning him in a pool, just as the detective arrives to arrest the mistress. Phew! Even typing that, we're out of breath.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

How do you make the worst movie of a trilogy by far somehow even more irritating? With a twist ending, of course. This one's so bad that it comes after the credits, too. Yeah, fat chance anyone stuck around for that. After killing several beloved characters off in the film, including team leader, Cyclops, and founder of the X-Men, Professor Xavier, we are treated to a post-credits sequence involving Professor Xavier having telepathically transported his mind inside the body of a coma patient before he croaked and waking up. Yet somehow he talks in his same voice. Was this supposed to excite us for a sequel? It's not like he could put himself back in his old body; it was disintegrated. But, on the plus side, Brett Ratner screwed up this franchise so bad that they brought Bryan Singer back in to fix everything with "X-Men: First Class" and the upcoming "X-Men: Days of Future Past." So there's at least a silver lining with this one.

Swimming Pool (2003)

This film ends in a way that is even cheesy and unsatisfying for TV. It's the story of a British novelist who goes to live at her publisher's home in France in order to work on her latest book. However, soon she is joined by the sexy young daughter of the publisher, and things in this erotic thriller get out of hand, as the girl ends up being a bit of a kook. A murder mystery ensues, only to have the rug pulled out from under us at the end when we find out it was all in the writer's imagination and she was just coming up with a good story for her book. We may as well have just watched the finale of the TV show "Roseanne" instead. At least we wouldn't have wasted as much of our time.

Identity (2003)

This one's similar to the twist in "Swimming Pool," but with another twist. Ew, this already smells of suck. Anyway, ten strangers meet at a hotel, only to start getting killed off one by one. But which of them is responsible for the murders? Our money's on John Cusack, but it turns out that all of these people are just one of ten multiple personalities inside some murderer's crazy head. What?! And the third, worst twist of all is that this is revealed somewhere in the middle of the film, not at the end. And now we have to sit here watching a bunch of characters get knocked off that technically don't even exist. Yeah, sounds like a very productive use of our time.

Color of Night (1994)

She's a he-she. That's the simplest way to sum this up. But where movies like "The Crying Game" and even "Sleepaway Camp" succeed using this device, the twist in "Color of Night" can be seen a mile away. Bruce Willis plays a psychiatrist trying to figure out if his new, gender-confused male patient is a killer. Around the same time, a strikingly similar-looking female character enters the psychiatrist's life, and they begin shagging each other. Could it be that they are the same pers- yes, of course yes. It's clear as freakin' day from the jump.