The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A Conceptual Reversal Twist comes as part of a work that lulls the viewer into believing that they are watching one type of story before an abrupt reversal that usually comes at the very end reveals that everything one assumed about what was happening is not the case at all.
The two most famous Conceptual Reversal Twists are those that come at the end of Planet of the Apes (1968) and The Sixth Sense (1999), which offer jolting surprise twists about the protagonist’s conception of the world around them or who they are.
A famous Conceptual Reversal twist is the Deathdream Ending where the protagonist discovers that they have been dead all along or are in the process of dying. This, along with other twists such as that everything that transpired is All a Dream or a Virtual Reality illusion, has become a cliche from overuse.
The success of The Sixth Sense gave the ghost story the seeming need to have to pull last minute twists in every film made since to the point of frequent tedium. Such twists have also been popular in science-fiction works or Psycho-Thrillers that reveal characters are split personalities or imaginary.
The Conceptual Reversal Twist is very similar to the Conceptual Breakthrough Story where the protagonist comes to a new understanding of themselves or the world they live in, although not all Conceptual Breakthrough stories come with a Conceptual Reversal Twist. The crucial difference in the stories listed here it is the audience rather than the protagonist who makes a discovery about what they believe to be true.
An airport psycho-thriller that feels like wannabe Gillian Flynn that has been mounted as a vehicle for the talent-handicapped Sydney Sweeney. The whole plot hangs on a believability stretching mid-film twist revelation
The rapper turned filmmaker Flying Lotus directs a copy of Alien with an amnesiac crewmember of a ship landed on a hostile planet where the crew are hunted by an alien nasty
An effective slow burn film that settles in with the promise of being a standard entry with a babysitter being stalked on Halloween night. However, this proves to turn all your expectations on their head
The Adams Family have become one of the most impressive genre talents in recent years. It has been fascinating watching them explore a dark version of American folk horror – this takes them into the darkest places they have visited yet
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
Quite a good film about a space expedition where the crew members on a mission to Saturn fall into an increasing paranoia and inability to tell what is real due to the drugs used in the hypersleep process
This starts out seeming like it is going to be a regular Backwoods Brutality film about a regular family threatened by hicks before expectations are abruptly turned on their head
An interestingly strange and undeniably different film where two teens break into a house at Christmas time to find a mother who keeps her daughter confined lest the creature inside her get free
A film where you are struggling to find any easy labelling. What it is is an hilariously ultra-violent and over-the-top parody of an action movie that will have your sides splitting
From the pen of Iain Reid who wrote I’m Thinking of Ending Things, an SF film about a man recruited for a space mission and the training of his android replacement. Expectedly, what is going on is shifting and pulls expectation out from under us
An alien body snatchers film conducted with a series of smart whiplash twists and turns – even surprisingly a sense of humour
A film of reality bending conceptual twists about a psychiatrist tending cryogenically frozen prisoners who then wakes to find that he has become one of the prisoners
Robert Rodriguez makes a film with Ben Affleck as a detective dealing with a man who can control others’ minds. However, this develops into a mind twister of considerable reality bending proportions
Film with a literally off-the-wall premise in which Ryan Kwanten is trapped in a rest stop bathroom with a Lovecraftian deity that speaks through a glory hole in the next stall
This starts out seeming like another haunted house film before developing some conceptual reversal twists of the first M. Night Shyamalan-esque order
The Austrian Goodnight Mommy was one of the most effective horror films of recent years. This is the toned-down English-language remake starring Naomi Watts as the mother
Film in which Christina Ricci fears her son is being drawn to a monster in the lake, this hangs around a very contrived twist ending
This is like a version of The Stepford Wives updated to the era of Ex Machina and the modern A.I./android film
Lucky McKee, director of May and The Woman, makes a film about two men meeting at a cabin in the woods where secrets emerge amid psychological tensions between the two
This is a superbly written and directed work of Southern Gothic that consists of three interwoven tales that gradually expose dark family secrets
Slickly produced psycho-thriller that comes mired in controversy, featuring Amy Adams as an agoraphobe who maybe witnesses a murder.
This seems a variant on the plot about a cult pursuing a child for their purposes but expectations soon get twisted on their head in interesting ways
A standout work that starts as Riz Ahmed snatches his two boys, fearful of alien body snatchers, before leaving us wondering if this is not all in Ahmed’s mind
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
US soldiers arrive at a chateau in Nazi-occupied France during World War II that appears to be haunted. In a conceptual reversal twist, everything is not what it seems
Film about a psychiatrist dealing with a boy who appears to be able to cause things to happen. All before things get really weird
This highly charged work about race issues received a very mixed critical reception but I liked it for its clever M. Night Shyamalan-esque twistiness that messes with storytelling convention
One of the better in the fad for Artificial Intelligence films we have had since the 2010s with Theo James trying to place his late wife’s consciousness into an android body
Not to be confused with the Joss Whedon film, this starts out seeming like a weepy romantic drama before pulling one of the most absurd M. Night Shyamaalan-esque conceptual twists ever put on screen on us
The biggest box-office hit six weeks in a row in 2020, albeit during Corona lockdown. This gets some extremely creepy effects in that managed to work on a jaded viewer
This has an intriguing set up involving a child with an autoimmune condition that makes him allergic to everyday air and his journey to a sinister medical institute, before a completely WTF twist
A horror anthology with a mordant sense of humour with Clancy Brown doing a great turn as an octogenarian mortuary attendant who tells several stories of the bodies he has tended
Another remake that nobody asked for. The 1990 film is reworked in a script that ditches almost all of the afterlife themes and instead seems to want to be a film about veterans addicted to reality-blurring drugs
Jim Mickle film that starts out as though a police procedural, possibly a supernatural horror film, and then performs an astonishing series of twists to become something else altogether and an absolute must see
Film about a man in his home fearful of demonic forces attacking those around him, this comes with decent atmosphere and at least one highly effective twist
There have been some extremely good films about androids and A.I. in the last few years. This one about an android manservant is so ridiculous it should have been played as a comedy
Pascal Laugier emerged as a most promising director with Martyrs. All of his films hang on improbably contrived twists. This starts out as a home invasion film not unakin to The Strangers but nothing is as it seems
At first glance, this seems a routine alien invasion film. However, this becomes a whole lot more watchable with a mid-film twist that turns what is going on on its head
Two Americans fleeing an armed bank robbery with hostages take refuge at a house that they discover it is haunted. A vy the numbers effort before arriving at a confused twist ending.
Film about children hiding in big old house of secrets following the death of their mother. Filled with all manner of fascinating secrets and twist revelations
The title is misleading – we expect some kind of internet based horror film but the show telescopes down to being no more than a Backwoods Brutality effort. On the other hand, it is not taking itself too seriously and some of the twists become entertainingly absurd
A film with a captivatingly original idea – bank robbers break into a bank vault, only to find they have stirred something supernatural imprisoned there. A film that builds a more than reasonable head of tension before losing it with a weak payoff
This comes with a fascinatingly original premise – man wakes up with complete amnesia and finds that he has the ability to kill anyone within thirty feet of him. The case of a film that holds attention with a captivating and unusual plot and a series of constant whiplash reversals
I was very impressed with director Marcel Sarmiento on the basis of the perversely twisted Deadgirl. Here Sarminento turns his hand to making a ghost story
Akiva Goldsman is the single worst screenwriter in Hollywood with a line of genre atrocities to his name. In his second directorial outing, blow me down if Goldsman doesn’t make a halfway decent film, a cryptic film about a young girl facing unseen monsters amid a possible invasion
Antonio Banderas is a writer with a block, Jonathan Rhys Meyers a sinister stranger who moves in. Lots of tense psychological games between the two begin only for the film to almost immediately blow the premise
A.I. film directed by Ridley Scott’s son. The set-up seems awfully similar to Ex Machina – unfortunately, this sidesteps any of that fascinating questions about A.I. that film dealt in, while the latter half just becomes The Terminator before reaching a frankly unbelievable twist ending that sinks the film
From the director of The Last Exorcism Part II, a title that does nothing to suggest a horror film. All we get is a ghost story that does an M. Night Shyamalan shift into an improbably contrived fugue state drama
This feels as though the director, frustrated with lack of financing, grabbed a camera and shot a film around his home. This generates a modest creepiness but falls apart at a credibiity-stretching ending
For some reason, The Exorcist is hugely popular in Bollywood horror – this is the fourth in a series of otherwise unrelated films about possession. The film conducts its borrowings not unentertainingly and is boosted by a script that turns what we think is happening on its head with quite a degree of dexterity
This seems to be shaping up to be a modern variant on The Collector in which Dominic Monaghan abducts the object of his desire and locks her in a cage beneath the dog shelter where he works. From there the film starts to twist expectations on their head
For a long time, this effort about a girl experiencing nightmare visions on her family farm doesn’t seem to be doing anything – then gets interesting as it switches to a parallel reality where what happens is mirrored slightly different
For a reasonable part of the runtime, this plays as a wilderness survival drama about a woman abandoned in the woods. Somewhat directionless before being redeemed by its twist ending
An extremely good film that starts out seeming like a standard stalked babysitter effort before everything gets turned on its head with most pleasing results
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
This was made before Ex Machina and has a surprisingly similar plot – although takes it even further in many regards – where a woman journalist goes to interview a tech genius and ends up in a romantic triangle between him and his android creation
James Wan has an exemplary track record in one’s opinion, you think this would extend to anything he produces. Here all we get are series of tired haunted house cliches before a twist ending that makes no real sense
A haunted house film from Andrew Jones, who makes an okay but very low key film – the spookiest it ever gets is a phantom record player. Things are lifted by a modest M. Shyamalan-esque twist
While the title suggests something of the classic The Hitcher, this reminds more of And Soon the Darkness with its image of tourists being stalked in the pastoral French countryside. Ravishingly photographed, creating a strong sense of dis-ease to arrive at a great twist ending
This gives all appearance to being another copy of Insidious – a ghost story with an evil-sounding adjective for a title. The film settles in in predictable ways; then throws the ghost story angle on its head with a surprise SF twist
Imagine a version of Fatal Attraction where the Glenn Close character is the protagonist, this also has an unnerving Repulsion-like quality where what we think is happening keeps blurring and shifting
Solid effort about two girls who venture into a storage facility only to unleash a creature. Filled with reasonable and effective tensions, not to mention a surprise mid-film twist that makes it into something else
British-made film about an astronaut stranded on a world of robots. Made by a team of three people, this produces effects that rival Hollywood productions but is also a solid work of planetary survival that comes with some jaw-dropping mid-film twists
A film from Duffer Brothers creators of tv’s Stranger Things. This is a fallout shelter drama where the Duffers create a strong paranoid mood but kill the film with a ridiculous twist ending
This seems a generic ghost story. The second half has the protagonist’s dead girlfriend trying to stop him seeing another woman and becomes a descent into obsession that works rather well
This asks the question of what happens to the final girl after a slasher film. This is less a slasher film than a work about post-traumatic stress before reaching a jaw-dropping ending
An exceptional time travel film, one of the best to emerge in some time. Adapted from a classic Robert Heinlein story, the pleasure of the film all comes in seeing its twists and turns come together into the most ingenious temporal paradox ever conceived
Ghost story that does an effective job of generating dread and eerieness while also existing in a place that leaves you unsure whether it is all not just occurring inside the lead character’s fraying sanity
Effective and disturbing work about two boys who begin to think that someone else might have taken their mother’s place after she returns in bandages. The film reaches a particularly chill and nasty climax
Bollywood remake of a ghost story that comes with one of the cleverer M. Night Shyamalan conceptual reversal twists
A film ostensibly about alien abductees that has rather pleasurably been construed as a series of wild head-spinning twists that are constantly pulling everything we think we know is going on from under the audience, even if it eventually provides more questions than it ever does answers
Brad Anderson adapts an Edgar Allan Poe story about an asylum where the inmates are posing as the staff. This is lush period piece with an amazing cast line-up – the only surprise is that it did no box-office
A Japanese-made variant on the dream incursion theme of Inception. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is noted for his bafflingly surrealistic horror films but in working in a genre like science-fiction that requires an implied explainability, he makes a far less interesting film
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
A low-budget film about a journalist’s modern-day investigation into a secret village located near Salem, Massachusetts that results in paranoia and suspicious treatment by the locals
Psycho-thriller that plays out like a creaky old deranged relative in the cellar film retooled as a teen romance until an absurd mid-film conceptual twist irredeemably kills the film off
A rare Indian venture into the horror film, this is a haunted house film of modest effect that suddenly becomes a whole lot more watchable when it pulls a major M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist on us
Pascal Laugier returns with this fascinating effort about a small town subject to child abductions by a possible boogieman. A film that is as blatantly manipulative as it is ingenious in its way-out twists and turns where everything we assume is going on at the outset is eventually turned completely on its head
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that is a slow, moody ambiguous single-person drama
Australian effort that seems to follow the path of Aliens/Resident Evil with soldiers venturing into a laboratory of amok monsters before a Philip K. Dick-ian twist on what we think is happening
A classic British ghost story that produces an exceedingly haunted atmosphere at times, although falls apart in a highly contrived M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Pål Sletaune is a Norwegian director who deserves more attention for his reality-bending surrealism. Here mother Noomi Rapace moves into new apartment where ghostly screams come through the baby monitor and she soon finds that she cannot be sure what is real
The film that made Ben Wheatley’s reputation, this starts as a kitchen sink drama about the domestic lives of two hitmen before taking a bizarre left field turn into horror territory
Haunted house film that comes with the novelty of being shot entirely in one take. This delivers some okay but never standout jumps but in the end you appreciate it more for its technical novelty than producing scares
A family try to make it through the woods in the aftermath of a mysterious catastrophe while hunted by something unseen. Sort of a zombie apocalypse film without any zombies where the terrors are psychological
Maybe one of the worst cases of a trailer ruining the film by giving away the big mid-film surprise. The film itself is an absurdly contrived Shutter Island copy that has nothing else up its sleeve beyond its big surprise
Award-winning Darren Aronofsky film about the rivalry between two ballerinas. At heart though, this is no more than a Brian De Palma psycho-thriller with pretensions
Powerful film from Christopher Smith set during the Middle Ages about a group on a journey to a village where a priestess can purportedly raise the dead. The film’s skewering of faith in an unforgettable ending is stunning
John Carpenter returned to the director’s chair after more than a decade but failed to light the world on fire. Carpenter makes what you could call a ghost story version of Girl, Interrupted. The scares are tame and the film is hamstrung by an improbable M. Night Shyamalan twist ending
Martin Scorsese and an impressive A-list cast make a 1940s-styled psycho-thriller about a sinister asylum that soon starts into a series of major reality bending turns
Low-budget UFO/alien abduction film that mostly this just retreads familiar material, although it does evince a certain interesting state of rubber reality about what is happening
David Twohy has shown himself a standout screenwriter and director with the Riddick films but came unstuck with this effort where tourists in Hawaii come to believe their traveling companions are wanted killers. A film killed by far-fetched twists
The Hollywood remake of the South Korean ghost story A Tale of Two Sisters that waters down and reduces the effectiveness of the original to generic shocks
Unique venture into meta-fiction by Wai Ka Fai that creates fascinatingly wound layers of fiction and reality that eventually become so complex that one gets lost
Micheal Bafaro is a justifiably obscure director whose entire career has been built on recycling other horror films. This is his version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is passable until a Sixth Sense-styled twist ending
Rare cinematic treatment of the generation ship story that conducts it with a modest degree of affectiveness. Produced by Paul W.S. Anderson.
A fascinating series of interwoven stories, one of which is set in a religion-dominated dystopian future. An intriguing puzzle that arrives at a surprise left field ending
Pascal Laugier makes one of the most horrific films to emerge from France in the 00s. Scenes of grim torture sit alongside a plot that twists like a pretzel and messes with almost everything we take for granted
A film about a couple who break down on a country road and seek help at a sinister farmhouse, before everything turns into Torture Porn territory. And then things get weird
Thai ghost story about a woman haunted by the ghost of her dead conjoined twin sister. This produces a mix of jumps that fall between the effective and routine but falls apart in a contrived twist ending