Everyone loves a great plot twist – it leaves your jaw on the floor and your brain scrambling to piece together the clues. Movies like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense virtually made the “Twist Ending” a subgenre of its own in the 90s.Â
While The Usual Suspects is remembered for its twist, it’s also a great one-last-job heist thriller with a superb cast, which makes it worth a re-watch even if you know the ending.
So if you love movies like The Usual Suspects let’s get the gang back together and head on out…
10 Twisty Movies Like The Usual Suspects
1) The Prestige (2006)
In 19th-century London, two magicians go to war with each other after a tragic accident kills one of their wives. One is hellbent on perfecting an impossible trick, and the other is determined to learn his secrets…
Christopher Nolan shows how good he is at telling a cracking story in The Prestige, capably assisted by charismatic turns from Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, and Michael Caine.Â
Nolan revels in playing the role of the magician, masterfully distracting the viewer’s attention from the clues until the final gut-wrenching secret is revealed.
2) Ronin (1998)
Ronin shows that not all movies like The Usual Suspects need a twist to be utterly riveting entertainment. A group of mercenaries are brought together to steal a mysterious briefcase. They soon find out there’s a traitor in their midst…
Robert De Niro heads the cast in this refreshingly old-school action thriller that’s packed with car chases, shoot-outs, twists, turns, and double-crosses.
Veteran director John Frankenheimer delights in putting together a shady bunch of characters together on a job and letting the viewer try figuring out which one’s the villain…
3) DĂ©jĂ vu (2006)
After a terrorist attack on a ferry, a special agent is given access to time-bending technology to help him catch the maniac responsible. Can he catch the bomber before he strikes again?
Director Tony Scott brings his slick visuals to this suspenseful thriller and Denzel Washington gives it plenty of star wattage, backed up by familiar faces like Val Kilmer and Jim Caviezel.
Fans of movies like The Usual Suspects will have fun trying to guess the twist, although it may be a little too obvious for the twist-ending veterans out there…
4) Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995)
This offbeat thriller also tells the tale of a former criminal trying to go straight who is dragged back into his old ways. A malevolent crime boss needs a favor, and our hero puts together a crew of old faces to help him. But what seems like a simple task goes hideously wrong…
Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead was unfairly written off as a Pulp Fiction rip off, which is a shame because it’s a far more soulful affair with a leftfield cast including Christopher Lloyd and Steve Buscemi.
For all its quirky character beats it has a genuine sense of longing and regret that lingers long beyond the closing credits.
5) Identity (2003)
A serial killer awaits execution while ten strangers are trapped in a motel during a rainstorm. As the unwilling guests start dying, could the two things be connected?
James Mangold’s Identity is like a horror-inflected Agatha Christie mystery, with plenty of dark plot twists and violent deaths for good measure.
The final twist isn’t quite as good as the set-up deserves, but Identity is still a ludicrously entertaining film that deserves its place on this list of movies like The Usual Suspects.
6) Inside Man (2006)
Masked robbers take control of a New York bank, holding the patrons and employees hostage. A detective negotiates with the gang leader, but his job is made harder when the bank’s founder hires an independent fixer to get things moving…
Spike Lee directs this clever heist thriller which subverts the viewer’s expectations of what the villains are trying to achieve. He keeps the audience guessing all the way up to the audacious final twist.
Denzel Washington and Clive Owen excel in their game of cat-and-mouse, while Jodie Foster muscles in as the ruthless fixer.
7) Source Code (2011)
An army pilot is drafted into a special program to locate a bomb on a train through the memory of a man who died in the explosion, and each visit he only has eight minutes to locate the device before it goes off…
Like a sci-fi thriller version of Groundhog Day, director Duncan Jones keeps the plot turns coming as Jake Gyllenhaal’s hero explores the various scenarios before delivering a sucker-punch ending.
Movies like The Usual Suspects and Source Code prove that films with twist endings are just as much fun to watch again to pick up all the clues.
8) Shutter Island (2010)
Two U.S Marshalls travel to a hospital for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of a patient. The staff are unhelpful and the head psychiatrist secretive – what are they trying to hide?
Martin Scorsese enjoys himself with this dark psychological thriller, imbuing the fairly generic mystery with an ominous atmosphere and a few good scares.
Shutter Island is high-caliber pulp, elevated by the hand of a master director and a superb cast headed by Leonardo Di Caprio. It will keep you on the edge of your seat all the way up to the final twist.
9) Predestination (2014)
A Temporal Agent known as The Bartender is sent on one last job through time to capture the criminal who has so far eluded him…
The Spierig Brothers blew people’s minds with Predestination, a brain-twisting future-noir that traps the viewer in a bewildering time loop. Ethan Hawke is great as the time-hopping sleuth.
Bold and convoluted, you’ll enjoy trying to get your head around Predestination if you love grappling with movies like The Usual Suspects.
10) Memento (2000)
We return to Christopher Nolan with Memento, which follows a man who is unable to store new memories. That doesn’t stop him from trying to find his wife’s killer, tattooing important clues on his body…
Memento is an ingenious puzzle box thriller that announced Nolan as a major talent. Unlike some of his later films, the twists and turns come with a dose of dark humor. Guy Pearce is superb as the amnesiac amateur detective.
While Memento may not have the rug-pulling last reel twist of movies like The Usual Suspects, the final scenes cause you to re-evaluate everything that has gone before.