20 most jaw-dropping movie plot twists

Charlton Heston's astronaut George Taylor slips through a crack in space and crash-lands on a world where apes are the dominant species. The twist? The planet is actually Earth. "You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." Bryan Singer's crime-noir breakthrough made a star out of Kevin Spacey, thanks in part to his masterful turn as jittery Verbal Kint… aka crime lord Keyser Söze.

A moment that got everybody talking. Bruce Willis's child psychologist forges a relationship with a troubled young boy who "sees dead people". Willis's protagonist is revealed as a ghost himself in the finale in one of the all-time great plot turns.

Mickey Rourke's private eye Harry Angel is tasked with locating missing jazz crooner Johnny Favorite by Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro). His journey into darkness sees him witness a voodoo ceremony, have blood-drenched sex with Lisa Bonet and discover that he, in fact, is the Johnny he's been asked to find.

Shutter Island (2010)

Leonardo DiCaprio's US Marshal heads off to a hospital for the criminally insane in search of escaped resident Rachel Solando. Turns out Leo is actually a patient of Ashecliffe Hospital himself and the movie is an elaborate game hatched by doctors to try and treat him.

Fergus (Stephen Rea) was as surprised as the rest of us in Neil Jordan's psychological thriller when the stunning Dil (Jaye Davidson) revealed that she was trans.

The film that put Christopher Nolan on the map, this in-reverse mystery saw Guy Pearce suffering from short term memory loss as he seeks out the man who killed his wife. The twist? Pearce's Leonard Shelby was responsible for his wife's death and manipulated to kill criminals by Joe Pantoliano's crooked cop.

"You know, we've never formally been introduced..." Q and Moneypenny had been absent for Daniel Craig's first two outings as James Bond, but both returned in style for the franchise's 50th year celebration. Naomie Harris's last-minute Skyfall reveal brilliantly re-contextualised 50 years of screen history and sexual tension between 007 and Miss Moneypenny.

Nicole Kidman led the cast of this creepy haunted house movie, playing a woman with two children unable to come into direct contact with sunlight. Guess what? They're all dead! This is one you can see coming so soon after The Sixth Sense, but a great film nevertheless.

George Sluizer's '80s thriller about a Dutch man whose girlfriend disappears at a gas station climaxed with an almighty final twist. Gene Bervoets's Rex got his coffee spiked and was buried alive, meeting the same fate as his lover who'd vanished three years earlier.

Adrian Lyne's psychological horror film starred Tim Robbins as a Vietnam vet who haunted by traumatic flashbacks and strange hallucinations. The twist? He's lying on his deathbed and life is passing before his very eyes.

"Soylent Green is people!" A second "twist" movie and second iconic line for Charlton Heston. The processed food rations used to sustain the swelling population in 2022 New York are actually human corpses. Grim. What percentage is horsemeat, though?

Stephenie Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg hatched a dramatic new twist for the recent Twilight finale that split fans and critics straight down the middle. The head-ripping ending is actually a premonition from Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene) transferred to Aro (Michael Sheen) to stop him from taking baby Renesmee.