The twist still sucks royally, but, thanks to the impressive brutality, High Tension ultimately gets a pass. That is, until Aja redeems himself by staging an absurdly and gleefully grisly death involving a chainsaw and a car windshield. The old "the main character is actually the killer" is one of the oldest and lamest tricks in the screenwriting book, and its use in High Tension nearly derails the entire picture by opening up several narrative holes. Once Alex gets kidnapped by the murderer and Marie chases after her, High Tension loses some of its gore but ratchets up the airtight tension, but then a bunch of cops show up out of nowhere, look at surveillance video, and see that it's Marie, not the burly madman we've been seeing all along, who's been doing the slaying.
#Top movies with twist endings imdb serial#
Before the proverbial bed gets shat upon, director/co-writer Alexandre Aja and co-scribe Grégory Levasseur prove themselves to be fearless, imaginative masters of shocking carnage.Īt a pleasant family's getaway cottage, where college friends Marie (Cécile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn) are shacked up for a weekend of studying, a random, greasy serial killer rings the doorbell in the middle of the night and proceeds to graphically terminate Alex's father, mother, and little brother.Īnd it's all genuinely disturbing, shot with artistic sure-handedness and a refreshing yet punishing lack of cut-aways. The extremely hardcore French flick High Tension could arguably rank as one of the top three films of the new millennium if not for its asinine twist. Writers: Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur
Movie: Haute Tension (2003 released in the U.S. Or perhaps Whitta decided to pull the old bait-and-switch at the last second and never bothered to fill in the resulting plot holes, the hollowness of which is unavoidable whenever you re-watch Eli's fights and ponder how a blind man can take on all comers from all sides and angles.
Apparently sightless Eli was aided by the hand of God in all of those brawls and shootouts. As it turns out, humorless road warrior Eli (Washington) is blind the last remaining copy of the King James Bible, which he's been protecting for 30 years, is written in Braille, rendering it useless to Gary Oldman's villain, who wants to use its words to control people. So why the Hughes brothers and writer Gary Whitta had to go and botch the whole thing in the final act is anyone's guess-as long as said guess is of the pissed-off kind. There's a very well-executed one-take action sequence set in and around an isolated house that's under serious attack, a few brutal beatdowns issued to multiple victims courtesy of an especially badass Denzel Washington, and the grimy, apocalyptic western cinematography emits a certain beautiful dirtiness. Written by Matt Barone ( The Book of Eli (2010)įor much of its running time, The Book of Eli, the purported comeback film from Allen and Albert Hughes ( Menace II Society, Dead Presidents), isn't half bad. Spoilers abound, obviously, but, in this case, we’re saving you precious time, not spilling any valuable beans.
#Top movies with twist endings imdb movie#
Cortes shouldn’t feel too bad, however-the film’s wannabe shocker of a reveal is dire, but it’s nowhere near as dreadful as those included in our list of The 10 Worst Movie Twists. Cillian Murphy and Sigourney Weaver headline writer-director Rodrigo Cortes’ flick, which follows a couple of supernatural-debunkers who are determined to prove that a world-famous psychic (played by Robert De Niro) is a fraud.īe warned, though, because once the truth comes out, and Murphy comes face-to-face with De Niro’s capabilities, Red Lights abandons logic and explains its events with a preposterous resolution. Today, there’s a new psychological thriller opening in limited release, called Red Lights, and it’s two-thirds of a solid, creepy exercise in paranormal suspense. There’s nothing worse than realizing that you’ll never get back those 90-plus minutes that a poorly wrapped up movie stole. And we can sympathize with those cyber haters. Filmmakers, and, concurrently, the movies they create, live and die by the always crucial “ending.” You know, the final moments before audience members rise up from their seats and applaud, groan, excitedly provoke heated debates and conversations, or speed home to angrily bombard the IMDb message boards with vitriol.
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