Twist Endings and/or Bad Writing

I recently watched a movie called The Ward (2010), directed by John Carpenter of Halloween fame. The story focuses on a young woman who is committed to a psych ward after she burns down a house. The ward is populated by a bunch of young women, most of whom seem unlikely candidates for commitment to a mental institution, even in 1966. The ward is haunted by the "ghost" of a former inmate who seems determined to murder the rest of the young women. Not a bad idea for a film, but as I watched I kept thinking that the plot was stretching my usually pliable suspension of disbelief out of proportion. Thankfully, I made it to the end of the movie where I found out that [[SPOILER ALERT]] the whole thing was a psychotic episode. The main character suffered from dissociative identity disorder (what they used to call multiple personality) and that the other young women (including the ghostly figure haunting the place) were just other personalities she had created to deal with a traumatic experience. While this gimmick saved the movie from being a complete waste of time, I can only give it 2 out of 4 Fries. Even with this revelation, the movie still felt overly contrived and underwhelming.

I've found myself on at least two other occasions thinking that a movie was badly written, only to have that opinion overturned with the revelation of a twist ending. One was The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan's masterpiece (perhaps his only one) from 1999. As I watched this movie, I remember thinking that I could not believe that the wife presented to us in the first few minutes of this film would have such a total rejection of her husband Malcolm (Bruce Willis) after he experienced such a tragic attack by one of his former patients. I was ready to write off the whole thing as bad writing [[SPOILER ALERTS continue]] until the ring rolled across the floor and we all realized that Malcolm is a ghost and his wife is ignoring him because she can't see him. I then went back through the whole film and realized that everything I saw as a plot hole made perfect sense within that context. I think that's good writing. (4 out of 4 Fries)

I had the same experience a few years later watching the movie Identity (2003). A bunch of strangers end up stranded at a motel in the desert while an insane killer takes them out one by one. The characters are poorly sketched and two-dimensional, and I found myself again thinking, "What bad writing!" Then we discover [[Final SPOILER ALERT]] that as in The Ward, the characters are constructs of a dissociative mind. The whole story is taking place in the mind of the criminal as a way of dealing with his mental instability. While I did not find The Ward to be satisfying, Identity was quite pleasing, after the revelation. (3 out of 4 Fries)

I guess the moral of the story is that if you're watching a movie, and you think, "Boy, this is a poorly written screenplay," give it some time. Maybe a twist ending will save it in the end. Of course, there's always a chance you may have wasted a whole two hours of your life, rather than just 45 minutes.