It's Time to Settle This: Which M. Night Shyamalan Movie Has the Best Twist?

The Setup: This fantasy thriller is based on a bedtime story Shyamalan made up for his kids and ultimately ends up being a hot mess. Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a water nymph of sorts who pops up in the pool of grieving apartment super Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti) and tells him that she's there to aid a messianic writer whose eventual book will inspire a future president to make the world a much better place. Once she finds and helps the writer (played by Shyamalan, in one of his many ego-feeding cameos), she tells Cleveland she needs a Symbolist, Guardian, Guild, and Healer to return home, or she'll be attacked by a vicious, wolf-like creature made of grass (see what I meant earlier about "hot mess"?).

The Twist: Cleveland and another tenant initially misjudge which of the residents at the apartment complex are meant to embody those roles, resulting in a bloody skirmish with the creature and some fatal injuries. It turns out that one of the children who lives there has been the real Symbolist all along and helps figure out the right people meant to be in each role by reading clues off of a cereal box so Story can get home safely.

The Verdict: This movie is a disaster from start to finish, rendering the twist (and everything else) ineffective.

The Setup: Mark Wahlberg plays high school science teacher Elliot, who races to save his wife (Zooey Deschanel) and daughter from a mysterious, airborne toxic event sweeping through the northeast that causes whoever inhales to immediately kill themselves in the fastest way possible (resulting in a lot of violent, graphic deaths).

The Twist: The plants decided to band together to wipe out all of the humans because of pollution (yes, PLANTS) by releasing kill-yourself gas into the wind so people can breathe it in. And you thought carbon monoxide was scary . . .

The Verdict: Mass suicides? Very scary. The wind killing people? Not scary. Wahlberg pleading with a tree not to kill him? Not scary. A crazy old woman ranting on her porch about lemonade? Not scary. The Happening quickly devolves into pure camp.

The Setup: OK, OK — this one isn't directed by Shyamalan, but he's responsible for the story and it shows. Five strangers find themselves trapped inside an elevator in an office building, and every time the lights flicker out, someone is viciously attacked in the dark. As tensions (and injuries) rise, they try to figure out who is responsible while Detective Bowden (Chris Messina) desperately attempts to save them on the outside. Finally everyone is picked off except for a mechanic named Tony (Logan Marshall-Green).

The Twist: Except not everyone is actually dead! The old woman in the elevator (Jenny O'Hara) comes back to life and reveals herself to be the devil. The literal devil. As she moves to attack Tony, he confesses that he was the driver behind a hit-and-run five years ago that killed Detective Bowden's family. The confession releases the hold the devil has over him, so the devil disappears and spares Tony's life.

The Verdict: Once you can get past the heavy-handed religious themes and a few hokey scenes, the old woman morphing into the devil is a real shock. Shyamalan might not have directed it, but the story is genuinely chilling.

The Setup: Former priest Graham (Mel Gibson) wakes up one morning to find massive, mysterious symbols in the cornfields of his family farm and soon finds that they're under attack from aliens. It's up to him and his younger brother, a baseball player named Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), to protect Bo's young son and daughter (the latter of whom likes to leave full glasses of water all over their house).

The Twist: With the aliens breathing down their necks, Graham recalls the last words of his wife — her death in a car accident years earlier and was the reason he lost his faith — "Tell Merrill to swing away." Merrill grabs his bat and starts swinging, which knocks one of the water glasses into the aliens. Turns out, water reacts like acid on their skin, and the family is able to drive them out.

The Verdict: For the most part, Signs is a solid movie. That being said, Shyamalan's penchant for clunky, "it's all a part of God's plan"-like themes in his movies never quite land, inducing eye roll after eye roll. The water discovery, though a surprise, also doesn't quite add up: why would these water-averse aliens choose a planet mostly covered in water?

The Setup: A rural, isolated 19th-century village in Pennsylvania is under siege from nameless monsters who live in the surrounding woods. After one of the villagers, Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix), is stabbed by Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a young man who has clear developmental disabilities, the elders decide to send the blind daughter of the chief elder, Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard), to another village to procure the necessary medical supplies.

The Twist: The Village has a two-part twist. First of all, the monsters aren't real! The elders merely told everyone they were to keep anyone from venturing into the woods and leaving the village. Second of all, the elders send a blind girl on a dangerous mission because the movie actually takes place in modern times! When Ivy finally reaches the outskirts of the forest surrounding her village, she stumbles into a park ranger. Turns out the village was founded in the 1970s by people disillusioned by America and is hidden within a wildlife preserve owned by Ivy's extremely wealthy family.

The Verdict: I'll never understand who was able to convince Brody to sign onto this ridiculous role fresh off of his Oscar win for The Pianist, but I digress. This twist, though definitely shocking and out of left field, gets a few points knocked off its score simply because the cheap "gotcha" moment Shyamalan is going for makes the rest of the film feel like a pointless waste of time. It definitely makes more sense than The Happening, though.

The Setup: Kevin (James McAvoy), a man with dissociative identity disorder struggling to keep all 23 (that's right, 23) of his wildly different personalities in check. Unfortunately for him and the teen girls he kidnaps (Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jessica Sula), three of his unpredictable, vindictive "alters" take control: Patricia (a strict, pious British woman), Dennis (a pervert with OCD), and Hedwig (an energetic 9-year-old boy). The girls are taken to an underground bunker of some kind and are repeatedly told by the alters that they'll serve as "sacred food" for Kevin's 24th and final personality, known as "The Beast."

The Twist: Like The Village, Split has a multilayered twist. First, The Beast is real; when Kevin enters into the mindset of The Beast, his physicality actually changes (he's more muscular, his veins are glowing a light green, and he looks much taller), and he eats two of the girls alive. Second, the movie ends with a cameo from Unbreakable's David Dunn, linking those cinematic universes and confirming that The Beast is supernatural.

The Verdict: There is a lot going on in this movie, and one ending would be much stronger than the unnecessary two-part twist. Still, the Unbreakable connection is definitely a game changer, and the shock of both of the aforementioned moments serve as a perfectly fine conclusion to an enjoyable creepfest.

The Setup: In Unbreakable, Shyamalan's follow-up to The Sixth Sense, Bruce Willis plays Philadelphia security guard David Dunn, who is the sole survivor of a train crash that kills the remaining 130 passengers. The only one who seems to fully recognize this miraculous anomaly, however, is Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a wheelchair-bound comic-book store owner who's struggled all his life with a rare disease that makes his bones extremely fragile. Obsessed with the superhero vs. villain ideologies found in his beloved comic books, he's convinced that David is "unbreakable," his own opposite extreme. Through a newfound bond with Elijah, David discovers he has powers other than inhuman strength (he can tell if a person has committed a crime through touch) and tracks down bad guys.

The Twist: Although some argue the twist is learning that David's only weakness is water (which he discovers after being pushed into a pool by an attacker), the most devastating moment is when Elijah, seemingly harmless and fragile, reveals himself to be the one behind all of the horrific terrorist attacks. Among other events, he caused David's train crash, convinced he could suss out his physical opposite, a real-life superhero, this way. The real kicker is that in doing so, he himself becomes the villain of the story (called "Mr. Glass").

The Verdict: This twist is truly surprising thanks to great performances from Willis and Jackson, who make the hero vs. villain dichotomy way less obvious than it could've been throughout the film.

The Setup: Preteens Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) go on a solo visit to meet their estranged grandparents for the first time because their mom (Kathryn Hahn) hasn't spoken to her folks in over a decade due to a blowout argument. Becca, an aspiring filmmaker, documents their trip with her camera (including her grandmother's bizarre nightly habit of walking around dazed, vomiting, and clawing at the walls while butt-naked), and soon she and her brother begin to suspect something is wrong.

The Twist: The Nana and Pop Pop Becca and Tyler have been staying with all week are actually two patients from the mental hospital where their real grandparents were counselors. They escaped and murdered the OG grandparents so that Fake Nana (who drowned her own children) could get the chance to be a grandmother.

The Verdict: After a long string of doozies, Shyamalan finally hit gold in 2015 with The Visit. The found-footage film keeps things gloriously simple for once, resulting in a truly terrifying and gruesome twist.

The Setup: Bruce Willis is dour child psychologist Malcolm Crowe, tasked with helping Cole (Haley Joel Osment), who claims he sees and converses with dead people who have no idea that they're actually dead.

The Twist: Malcolm is one of them! He's been dead all along. Rough.

The Verdict: This is, far and away, Shyamalan's best work. The surprise legitimately caught audiences off guard and became so iconic that a whole slew of other films (Silent Hill, The Uninvited, The Others) attempted to replicate its success with similar "they've been dead the whole time!" plot twists.