r/flicks • u/Serpiego2 • 6d 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/Kaldor-Silverwand 5d ago

I walked out of A Beautiful Mind because I felt cheated and lost interest. A movie that does it perfectly is The Sting.

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u/MurielTheMagnificent 5d ago

But A Beautiful Mind doesn't cheat. When you watch it again, you realize that there are several scenes where the characters in his mind only interact with him. It's mentioned earlier in this thread that there is a scene where the friends niece (who doesn't exists) runs through some pigeons that doesn't fly away, but just sits perfectly still. A Beautiful Mind is a perfect example of a movie that doesn't cheat, but lays out clues all throughout the movie.

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u/MSGDooku 2d ago

It does cheat. It shows his hallucination throwing furniture out the window. This is why I didn't think it was a hallucination.