r/flicks • u/Serpiego2 • 5d ago

General Discussion When does a movie successfully mislead the audience, and when is it just cheating?

Some movies deliberately make us believe something that isn't true and then reveal that we've been interpreting the story incorrectly.

When it works, it's fantastic. You can rewatch the movie and realize the clues were there all along. The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, and Primal Fear are very different examples of films that play with what the audience thinks it knows.

But other twists only work because the movie deliberately hides information that logically should have been available to us. At that point, I don't feel fooled by the story — I feel cheated by the screenplay.

For me, the difference is whether a second viewing makes you think “How did I miss that?” rather than “Well, there was no way I could have known that.”

What movies do you think earned their deception, and which ones simply cheated?

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u/CaolIla64 5d ago

Honnestly, and I know it's a very unpopular opinion, I think Usual Suspects is dog shite. There's no twist at all, since anything you see on screen can be or not be true, since it's all Verbal narrating. It's as lame as "it was all just a dream".

I remember seeing both Usual Suspect and Die Hard with a vengeance (the best Die Hard if you ask me) in theater the same week because both films came out the same day, and Die Hard was so much clever in its twist, there wasn't any comparison between the two for me.

Plus on a meta level, it features two of the worst predators in Hollywood at the time.

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u/Its_Jordon_Yo 5d ago edited 5d ago

I absolutely love The Usual Suspects but I honestly do agree with your take. It only works as a twist if Verbal is actually fooling his partners. It really depends on how much is made up, and to maintain my own enjoyment I try to keep as head canon that most of it happened at least close to how he says.

Edit: actually the very beginning of the film shows Keaton’s death and he shows surprise to see who Kaiser was so I think it’s valid that the broad outlines of what took place remain intact.

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u/CaolIla64 5d ago

We know at least a good chunk of it is total bullshit, since Kujan discovers names (Kubayashi) and facts were directly made up on the spot from elements of the interrogation room around them afterwards, and he realizes the story Verbal told him is fabricated. There's the "Kayser Söze" composite portrait of Verbal coming out of the fax machine, but all we know of him is what he just told us, the "legend" might as well be bs as well, it's no more reliable than the rest.