02/04/2024
What are the best movies with a plot twist?
Pulling off an effective and elaborate plot twist is no easy task — it is rightfully considered one of cinema’s hardest achievements.
And if there’s one rule to follow with twists, it’s to utilise one well. Never should a twist be a surface level shock. It should enhance its pre-established story.
And when legendary Martin Scorsese adapted Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, he produced a twist so genius we were required to re-turn over every single stick and stone.
It’s quite the complicated twist : first let me establish the story. Spoilers Ahead.
Detective Teddy and his partner Chuck are sent to Shutter Island, a mental institution, to investigate the disappearance of escaped convict, Racheal Solando.
It’s later revealed that Teddy’s true reason for taking this case was to hunt down Laeddis, the man who killed his wife in a fire — this is the rabbit hole we’re lead down.
You see, we’re lead to believe the twist is that this institution Teddy investigates is actually evil and corrupt. Everything points to that direction.
But it’s quite the opposite. The twist is that Teddy is in fact Laeddis, a patient in this institution, who shot his wife after she drowned his children.
Teddy? A mental persona. This entire narrative? All in his head to prevent himself from accepting the truth. The past two hours? — All a game designed by doctors to force Laeddis to accept reality.
Only in context of the twist do the puzzle pieces begin fitting themselves together — the signs were here all along.
Perhaps the most fascinating hidden clue was Laeddis’s subconscious aversion to water. It reminds him of his children, and by association, his reality.
In this scene, the woman drinking nothing seems to be a mistake. Only later do we realise Laeddis is blocking it out.
During his multiple dream sequences, he’s constantly surrounded by fire, as to s***f out any memory of water.
It was all planned out. Every small detail was elaborately seeded. You are forced to recalibrate your interpretation of everyone.
Initially, we interpreted Chuck to be a rookie, reluctant detective. On rewatch, he’s a pitying psychiatrist, slotted to keep Teddy safe.
We put Teddy’s unusual behaviour down to him being a determined detective. Only after the revelation do we realise he was just insane.
Even the abundance of off-putting CGI was Scorsese’s way of foreshadowing the fake plot — the only time water looks real is during Laeddis’s reality flashback.
But I digress, because as fascinating as these small Easter Eggs are, they ultimately aren’t what makes a brilliant plot twist.
Because the true genius in this twist, is how Scorsese utilises it to bend the entire meaning of the film.
What was seemingly a detective mystery is moulded into a personal character study. A study into a deteriorating man who creates false narratives in his head, as to block out the gravity of his reality.
And once we realise this feverish, erratic film was a portrait of mental health all along, everything seems to fall into place.
It’s one that enhances and re-contextualises the entire film. Every action, every thought starting from frame one takes on an entirely different meaning.
I mean, that’s some raw genius right there. It’s a true plot twist.
