Cracked.com (when they reinvented themselves as a website did they abandon Sylvester the Janitor?) has up a list of their 10 worst twist endings. Fortunately, I haven't seen all of these movies, but I'm happy to agree with the lousiness of Stay, High Tension, Signs, and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. I do want, however, to stick up for two movies on their list.
Secret Window isn't really a narrative thriller as much as it is a sort of goofball tongue-in-cheek one-man-show for Johnny Depp. Maybe it makes more sense in the original Stephen King story, where it's more clear that the story is sort of inventing itself as it goes along, but here I enjoyed the movie's oddball deadpan logic.
The Forgotten is sort of a second-rate X-Files rip-off, but it's hinted visually throughout the movie that there's something stranger going on than a mere Lifetime movie. It doesn't make logical narrative sense, but it makes emotional movie sense, which I think is generally more important, plus it means that we're plunged into a surreal nightmare world with some indelible imagery. Plus, I would say that neither movie's ending is really a 'twist' in the modern M. Night Shyamalan sense of the word, intended to make the audience suddenly gasp before the credits start to roll - both are hinted at far in advance of the ending and seem like logical developments rather than paradigm shifts.
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