What Constitutes a Twist in a Movie?

I was perusing through Letterboxd the other night when I came across a list that someone had made about the best twist endings to movies.  While looking through the list, I noticed a couple of movies that I wouldn’t consider to have twist endings.  I might consider them shocking endings to the movies but they aren’t twists.  That got me into a conversation with someone over what constitutes a twist ending and that brings me right here, right now, to write down what I consider to be a twist ending and what I don’t consider a twist ending.  This is going to be slightly detailed but it shouldn’t be too much more than usual.

I’m going to give a warning right now that there will be spoilers ahead for a few movies.  To talk about twist endings, I will need to get specific to movies and their endings.  It helps to better convey the point that I am trying to get across.  If you see the title of a movie and don’t want to be spoiled on that movie, I recommend avoiding this blog entry.  Thank you very much.

This all started with a list.  Within this list, I saw the movie Se7en.  That seemed odd to me.  Se7en does not have a twist ending from what I can tell.  Everything happens naturally, leading to a shocking climax.  But the climax isn’t a twist.  The seeds to the reveal were planted throughout the movie within the plot and dialogue, at least.  This to me means that it was meant only to be shocking rather than a twist.

Now this is a fine line I’m walking here on the border of twist and shocking.  I can, in a way, see how some people would consider a shocking ending to automatically be a twist.  I don’t consider it such for a couple of very simple reasons. 

The first reason is that twist endings usually seem tacked on as a sort of afterthought.  One of the most obvious choices to me is the ending of Planet of the Apes.  Charlton Heston’s character leaves the apes behind and rides a horse along the beach only to discover The Statue of Liberty, and the fact that he has been on Earth the entire time.  This is not a part of the story until the final minutes of the movie and seems added on simply to get a gasp from the audience as they go into the credits.  There is no finesse to the twist.  It is memorable but it is not a part of the plot until that final moment.  This is all similar to the second reason that I have.

A twist ending is not typically influenced by the story.  In this, I mean that nothing about the story other than subtle visual clues, will give away the twist at the end.  The example that I will use here is Final Destination 5.  At the end of the movie, it is revealed that the entire movie is a prequel to the first in the series.  This was hinted at through the movie by seeing characters in slightly older clothes than current wear, and older technology.  Other than those visual hints, nothing in the actual plot of the movie would make anyone think the twist was coming until it did.  When it happens, you could go back and rewatch the movie to see some of the clues but the plot doesn’t hint towards it.

Let’s go back to Se7en now.  The supposed twist in Se7en is that John Doe kills Mills’s wife in a fit of envy to turn Mills into wrath.  By my analysis, this is not a twist because the seeds for this were planted throughout the movie.  The envy portion was built up by the fact that Mills was happy with his wife.  They had a loving relationship.  This was shown to the viewers through the scene in which Somerset goes to Mills’s home.  Also built throughout the movie was the fact that John Doe was playing with Mills as if Mills were his own toy.  The end of a chase scene ends with John Doe holding a gun to Detective Mills’s head only to pull it away and leave.  Mills was being set up as a pawn.  As I said, Mills is wrath.  This was also set up through the movie by showing Det. Mills have angry outbursts.  He attacks a reporter, kicks in a door, and yells a few times.  It all directs you to him being wrath without blatantly pointing it out.  It’s a slow build to a large reveal.  It is not a twist.  It is natural story progression.

As I see it, many movies with what people consider to be twists, don’t actually have twists.  They have complex plots that lead to big reveals but the reveals are natural to the story.  People simply like to classify things into neat little packages when it is never that easy.  Maybe never is too strong a word.  There is black and white.  There are movies with twists and movies that follow a straight line and never veer away from it.  But there is also a large grey area in between in which movies will curve from one trajectory to another without actually being twists.  Not every movie that is complex has a twist, though some people tend to think they do.  It is called growth not a twist.  A surprise at the end of a film isn’t a twist if the seeds were planted and tended to throughout the runtime.  It is storytelling.  Does storytelling need to be so clear cut?