The Biggest Movie Plot Twists Of 2022

Few things cause a film to stick in the viewer's mind after they've seen it than a well-executed plot twist. Sometimes it's a new detail at the end of a story that makes one completely reevaluate everything they've witnessed up until this point, like the reveal of who the murderer was or the fact that the protagonist may not have been as reliable a narrator as had previously been assumed. Sometimes the twist happens around the halfway mark and completely changes the dynamic of the film moving forward, such as the surprise death of a major character or an abrupt shift in genre. In some cases, a major twist might even come relatively early on in a film's story, and the surprise has less to do with how this revelation affects the story and is more about some key detail that's been strategically removed from the film's marketing in order to keep overall plot details as obscured as possible.

Considering that M. Night Shyamalan, who is perhaps the patron saint of the movie plot twist, did not have a new film to release in 2022 (though we don't have to wait long, as "Knock at the Cabin" releases early next year), it's still been quite the impressive year for plot twists in cinema. From massive blockbusters to intimate little indie films and everything in between, there've been many shocks and surprises at the movies. Listed below are some of the biggest movie plot twists we've seen this year. 

Fair warning: Spoilers ahead.

If there's one thing that writer/director Robert Eggers loves as much as period authenticity, it's the exploration of prickly family dynamics. This was front and center in his directorial debut, 2016's "The Witch," which depicts a New England family in the 1600s that becomes gradually distrustful and malicious towards one another as they seem to fall under the spell of black magic. Though no family to speak of exists in his 2019 follow-up "The Lighthouse" (aside from the fact that the relationship between that film's leads is similarly thorny), the filmmaker returned to dissect a very different kind of relative aggression with his Viking revenge saga, "The Northman." The new film stars Alexander Skarsgård as Amleth, a former prince whose beloved father is slain by his uncle.

Throughout the film, Amleth recites a mantra that has kept him alive and focused over the years: "I will avenge you, Father. I will save you, Mother. I will kill you, Fjölnir." He poses as a slave in his uncle's domain to gain access and is finally able to reunite with his long-lost mother (Nicole Kidman). Rather than the warm welcome he expected, his mother has little more than contempt for her offspring and reveals that she had begged Fjölnir to kill his brother, who had frequently abused her. This all completely shatters Amleth's worldview, as the principles on which his life and vengeance had been founded are shown to be lies. He still kills his uncle, though.

Writer-director Alex Garland knows a thing or two about some twisty concepts. After gaining recognition for his scripts to several Danny Boyle classics (including "28 Days Later..." and "Sunshine"), he began directing his own work with 2014's "Ex Machina," which explored the morality behind creating AI and human nature on an intimate scale. His next film, 2018's "Annihilation," delved into more cerebral concepts about nature and the ways in which we sow the seeds of our own destruction. In other words, heady stuff. His most recent effort is this year's "Men," which stars Jessie Buckley as a woman taking a holiday in the country while processing the death of her abusive husband.

Any rest or relaxation she might have are short-lived when she finds herself annoyed, then accosted, and eventually attacked by the various men in the small town, all of whom are played by a chameleonic Rory Kinnear. What at first appears to be a clever casting gimmick (highlighting how the different forms of aggression all come from the same source) turns out to be far more literal, as the third act of the film reveals that not only do they all look the same, but they are literally the same entity. This builds to a climactic body horror showcase where each version of Kinnear proceeds to give birth to the next, until finally, the last one takes the form of her late husband, driving the themes of generational abuse home.

If we know anything about the films of Jordan Peele, it's that he's always got some extra tricks up his sleeve. The marketing for his first film, the Oscar-winning "Get Out," did very little to hint at the nefarious machinations of its central family, while the trailers for "Us" refrained from offering any explanation for its creepy doppelgängers beyond unsettling imagery. So when the trailer for "Nope" was released, speculation was expectedly at an all-time high as fans tried to figure out what was really going on under the surface of what appeared to be some kind of alien invasion movie.

"Nope" does indeed deal with aliens of a sort (or at least one), although calling it an invasion would be charitable. As we follow the Haywood siblings (played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer), we see them attempt to capture legitimate footage of what appears to be a flying saucer that's been seen around their ranch. Around the film's halfway point, however, they make a startling discovery: The circular shape that's been stalking them isn't a vehicle for aliens, but rather an alien being itself, which has been sucking up people and animals for food and has become territorial as a result. This connects to the film's larger ideas about the commodification of spectacle, as our heroes now understand that they're not working to outsmart a race of intelligent beings, but rather to outmaneuver a powerful beast with a ravenous appetite.

Dutch actress and filmmaker Halina Reijn made her English-language directing debut with the timely-to-a-fault black comedy "Bodies Bodies Bodies" that skewers the privileges of youth and the desire for victimhood among those who have it all. The film sees a new couple (played by Amandla Stenberg and Maria Bakalova) who join the former's group of friends for a house party during a hurricane. As they proceed to drink, smoke, and ingest all of the many, many drugs that are scattered around the house, it is proposed that they play the titular game of "Bodies Bodies Bodies," a hide-and-seek-esque affair where they have to determine who the supposed killer is among them.

Things take a turn when they discover one of the two men present (Pete Davidson) is dead with a machete lodged in his neck. The easily rattled group immediately starts pointing fingers and distrusting each other, and as various interpersonal dramas are dredged up, they also start to die one by one. The natural assumption would be that one of them is using the cover of the hurricane to kill off the others, right? Wrong. The film ends with the highly strung-out Stenberg and Bakalova being the only ones left alive, and when they check out Davidson's phone, they find a video showing that he had accidentally committed suicide while attempting a stunt with the machete. Which means that, in their stoned paranoia, the rest of them accidentally killed themselves or each other. Whoops.

It's a pity that most of the discourse surrounding actress Olivia Wilde's second directorial outing (following the critically-acclaimed high school comedy "Booksmart") had less to do with the movie and more to do with the perceived drama between the actors in the film. This is not to say that "Don't Worry Darling" is some misunderstood masterpiece, just that a film should be able to stand on its own merits rather than the supposed squabbles between its creative talent. Set in an idyllic 1950s-era community known as Victory, the film centers on a young housewife named Alice (Florence Pugh) as she begins to suspect that there's something very wrong with the town she lives in.

Compounding her suspicions after witnessing a variety of strange phenomena is that her husband Jack (Harry Styles) and his boss Frank (Chris Pine) regularly gaslight her by dismissing her concerns and emphasizing the perfect world that they get to inhabit. As we learn towards the end, the town's perfection is very much by design: it turns out that Victory is actually a computer simulation in which the housewives are obliviously trapped while the husbands work to afford the service and take care of their bodies in the real world. Though the twist doesn't quite explain all of the bizarre events Alice bore witness to, it does radically change the dynamic between her and her husband, and she ends up killing him in order to escape Victory.

Few franchises have experienced such high highs or such low lows as "Halloween." After John Carpenter's minimalist slasher film became a wildly influential sensation, there have been decades of sequels, reboots, and remakes all attempting to either replicate the original's success or to find a way to build off of it. Your mileage may vary on how successful any of them are, but in 2018 director David Gordon Green introduced a soft reboot (also titled "Halloween") that created a new story while tapping into the enduring legacy of the franchise's two key players: that being the killer Michael Myers, and his perennial victim Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis).

The film was a massive financial success, and quickly spurred the creation of two additional sequels. While "Halloween Kills" mostly trods the same familiar ground as its forebears, this year's "Halloween Ends" goes in a radically different direction, choosing to focus almost exclusively on a new character named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). Despite the film's marketing heavily playing up the final showdown between Michael and Laurie, Green revealed that their big fight at the end was a late addition and that the intention was always to focus on Corey (who is barely seen in the film's trailer). As such, fans were understandably shocked to see that the film mostly devotes itself to his persecution by the residents of Haddonfield for an accidental crime, leading him to let out his rage as a new Michael-esque killer.