M. Night Shyamalan's Weirdest Twists, Ranked From Unnecessary to Unbelievable

Shyamalan has spent his career yanking the rug out from under audiences, so you’d expect Knock at the Cabin to have a mind-blowing twist. A vacationing family is taken hostage by four strangers who claim the world will end unless they sacrifice one of their own, leaving everyone guessing whether it’s real or just madness. Maybe the invaders are delusional, maybe the apocalypse is a hoax, maybe Dave Bautista rips off a mask to reveal he’s been Bruce Willis all along. But no, the twist is that there is no worthwhile twist—turns out, the world really is ending, making the whole movie feel like a magician dramatically pausing for two hours before pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

Shyamalan crafts Signs as a slow-burn thriller about a grieving family confronting eerie crop circles and an impending alien invasion, layering suspense with his signature brand of existential dread. Throughout the film, he meticulously seeds clues—flashbacks to the dying wife of Graham Hess (Mel Gibson), a seemingly random baseball anecdote, and a child’s peculiar water obsession—all hinting that these small, disconnected moments might hold a greater purpose. Then comes the big reveal: the hyper-intelligent aliens, capable of interstellar travel, are inexplicably vulnerable to water, making Earth the worst possible planet to invade. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a chess grandmaster brooding over a game for hours, only to knock over his own king and claim it was all part of the plan.

Lady in the Water is a whimsical bedtime story awkwardly wedged into a supernatural thriller. Following an apartment superintendent who discovers a mysterious woman in his pool and learns she is part of an ancient prophecy, the film layers intrigue by assigning each quirky tenant a mythical role, suggesting that fate has intricately woven them into a grand, predestined purpose. But when the truth is revealed, it turns out their assigned roles were misinterpreted, forcing a last-minute reshuffling of expectations that feels more like a narrative prank than a satisfying twist. It’s as if the film spent its runtime promising an elegant magic trick, only to clumsily drop the deck of cards and insist that was the trick all along.

Alright, so The Village is basically a super moody thriller in which this small, old-timey community is living in constant fear of monsters lurking in the woods. Everything is all eerie warnings, weird color-coded rules, and elders acting way too suspicious, so you just know something fishy is going on. Then Shyamalan hopes you’re blown away by the reveal of it actually not being the 1800s, but rather modern day, and the “monsters” are just the elders dressing up to keep everyone from leaving. It’s a wild idea that sounds cool, but once you think about it for more than five minutes, it’s kind of like realizing your favorite scary story has a plot hole the size of a barn.

At one point in The Happening, Mark Wahlberg has a full-blown conversation with a plastic plant, trying to reason with it like they’re in a hostage situation. That’s the sort of tension-building filmmaking you can expect from a movie that’s basically a paranoid road trip thriller in which people start randomly killing themselves, and a group of survivors—including Wahlberg as a nervous science teacher—scramble to escape whatever unseen force is causing the chaos. Everything is all eerie deserted towns, cryptic warnings about nature, and people running from the wind, so you just know the twist is going to be completely bonkers. At first, finding out it’s the plants waging war on humanity, releasing airborne toxins that hijack people’s survival instincts and turn them into their own worst enemies, was laughable. But in a world where environmental disasters keep getting weirder, the idea of nature quietly wiping us out without us even realizing it is actually kind of terrifying.

Old sits at a middling Rotten Tomatoes score that would’ve been even worse without an all-time Shyamalan twist, a last-minute reveal that transforms a goofy, sun-soaked thriller about people aging at hyper-speed into something far more sinister. The setup is classic Shyamalan, with cryptic dialogue, eerie medical foreshadowing, and characters throwing out theories ranging from supernatural curses to government experiments, all while their bodies betray them in real time. Then comes the big reveal: the beach isn’t just some random anomaly—it’s a controlled testing ground where a pharmaceutical company fast-forwards human lives to trial experimental drugs in a single day. And sure, it’s wild, but the way Shyamalan unspools the mystery—drip-feeding clues through unnatural dialogue, disorienting time jumps, and the sheer horror of watching life slip away in fast-forward—makes the twist land with an exhilarating mix of shock and awe.

The Visit is one of Shyamalan’s best movies ever, anchored by an all-time Shyamalan twist that transforms a seemingly lighthearted found-footage horror movie about eccentric grandparents into a full-blown nightmare. From the start, the weird old-people behavior, unsettling house rules, and eerie late-night noises make it clear that something is seriously wrong beneath the surface. I would love to once again feel the shock I felt the first time I encountered this movie’s twist: the “grandparents” aren’t grandparents at all, but escaped mental patients who killed the real couple and have been impersonating them the whole time. It’s an absolutely insane twist, but what makes it so good is how Shyamalan keeps you ever so slightly off-balance the entire movie—one minute you’re laughing at their weird quirks, the next you’re questioning if something’s really wrong, and then suddenly, everything turns horrifying in an instant. It’s Shyamalan at his best, flipping the whole movie on its head in a way that’s both shocking and completely brilliant.

Glass is the culmination of Shyamalan’s best franchise, a grounded yet extraordinary superhero saga filled with some of his greatest twists, bringing together the unbreakable David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the fractured Horde (James McAvoy), and the mastermind Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) in an ultimate showdown. From the start, the film builds toward an epic, city-wide battle, teasing a grand superhero clash while subtly planting the seeds of something far more sinister lurking beneath the surface. When it’s finally revealed that a secret society has been working in the shadows for centuries to suppress super-powered individuals, the entire movie recontextualizes itself—not as a superhero origin story, but as a conspiracy thriller in which the real villains are the ones pulling the strings from the very beginning. It’s a bold and subversive twist, the kind that blindsides you yet feels inevitable in retrospect, proving once again that Shyamalan’s greatest trick isn’t just shocking audiences—it’s making them question everything they thought they knew.

Split is Shyamalan’s most disturbing film, a psychological horror-thriller that traps audiences inside the fractured mind of Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy), a man with 23 personalities, one of whom—the monstrous Beast—is preparing to emerge. The film subtly hints at something larger than Kevin’s disorder, using whispers of his past trauma, his seemingly superhuman resilience, and an eerie sense that his story is part of something much bigger. When Bruce Willis’ David Dunn shows up in the final scene, confirming that Split is secretly a sequel to Unbreakable, the entire film shifts from a self-contained thriller to a groundbreaking expansion of Shyamalan’s own superhero mythology. It’s a masterstroke of storytelling, a twist so unexpected yet seamlessly woven into the narrative that it doesn’t just change Split—it changes the way we see Unbreakable, proving Shyamalan’s ability to surprise is as sharp as ever.

Unbreakable is the foundation of Shyamalan’s best franchise, a meticulously crafted deconstruction of superhero mythology disguised as a psychological thriller. With haunting precision, it follows David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the lone survivor of a catastrophic train crash, as he gradually uncovers his extraordinary abilities under the guidance of the enigmatic Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson). The film masterfully builds tension, transforming seemingly ordinary moments into revelations, all while unraveling a story about fate, power, and belief. By the time David fully embraces his role, the film delivers its stunning twist—Elijah, his supposed mentor, is in fact the orchestrator of countless tragedies, including the train crash itself, all in a desperate bid to find someone like him.

It’s a genius reversal that not only recasts Elijah as a villain but reframes the entire movie as his origin story, making the audience realize they were witnessing the rise of Mr. Glass all along.

The Sixth Sense is the film that launched M. Night Shyamalan into the spotlight, delivering a masterfully crafted thriller with a twist that has endured in popular culture for over two decades. From the opening moments, the film builds an atmosphere of quiet sorrow, following Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) as he tries to help a boy who claims to see ghosts, all while subtly layering in clues that something is deeply wrong. Every seemingly mundane interaction, every lingering silence, and every emotional beat carefully sets the stage for the shocking revelation that Malcolm has been dead the entire time. More than just a jaw-dropping moment, the twist became a cultural touchstone, referenced and parodied endlessly, proving that Shyamalan’s ability to redefine an entire story with a single moment is what makes him one of cinema’s most unforgettable storytellers.