Twist is arguably one of the worst films ever made, at least that’s what I thought when I legally watched the film back in January this year, after which I wrote a harmless review. After being slapped with a spurious DMCA copyright complaint by CTW Anti-Piracy on behalf of Rialto Distribution this week, I thought I’d watch a non-pirated version of the film (again) and pen another non-pirated review. Since I got no reply to my email or Twitter messages to Rialto Distribution, I have no idea what part of my original review CTW and Rialto thought was infringing on their copyright. A copy of Twist‘s poster and an embedding of Twist‘s trailer isn’t copyright infringement but in case these two companies think it is, I have made my very own featured image-slash-poster above, and I have included the trailer below that has been uploaded and therefore approved by the Australian/New Zealand distributor on their own website. It’s interesting to note that Rialto Distribution’s YouTube trailer (which isn’t the full movie for any moron out there) has the comments turned off, which usually means the uploader in question doesn’t want any negative comments of which they expect lots…

After watching this film (legally) for a second time (this time in UHD and HDR which only serves to highlight the terrible aspects of this filmic travesty) I can confirm that Twist is indeed one of the worst films ever made, making recent crapfests such as The Tomorrow War look like cinematic masterpieces by comparison. From the crap writing, direction, and editing to the crappy acting, music, pace, and general tone, everything about this film is shite. Martin Owen’s direction is awful, Rita Ora and Raff Law’s acting is amateur and along with the likes of David Walliams and Keith Lemon, the whole thing has the air of B-movie, straight-to-streaming pish.

You’ve got to give it to the screenwriters Sally Collett, Martin Owen, and John Wrathall. The balls of these writers must be gargantuan; I mean they actually thought Charles Dickens’ masterpiece needed reworking with Oliver now growing up with his mother for part of his childhood and Nancy now a love interest for ol’ Twisty-dick. Odd choices like this is what makes this celluloidal trash the reekiest of garbage. Plus I have no idea, even six months after first watching it, who the target audience is. Adults won’t like Twist because they’re ruining the original novel and kids won’t like Twist because everything from the parkour to most of the music is from their mum and dad’s generation.

I have yet to come across anyone (in physical form or on social media) who enjoyed this god-awful flick in the UK whilst it was distributed by Sky. Now that it’s being distributed by Rialto Distribution on the opposite end of the earth, I urge everyone in Australia, New Zealand, and all of Oceania to avoid this pile of excrement masquerading as a movie. Twist is utterly shit, and I’m not the only one who thought so; on Rotten Tomatoes for example, it has a 16% score! Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent gave it one out of five stars writing: “With its hectic pace and textbook needle drops – The Fratellis’ “Chelsea Dagger” makes an appearance – Twist never really functions as much more than another Guy Ritchie homage”. So how is this mainstream newspaper’s analysis any different to my original review? Other than the fact that I’m not one of the big guys and so can be intimidated and suppressed by a no-merit DMCA complaint.

So has my score for this film changed? No! Because I stand by my reviews. And that’s what these articles are: reviews. Not piracy, not links to illegal material, just some bloody criticism. Criticism and commentary are the very definition of “Fair Use”. Even in Great Britain where CTW Anti-Piracy seem to be located, adding a poster or trailer to a review does not constitute piracy or copyright infringement. We call this “Fair Dealing” and as it states in the gov.uk website under “Exceptions To Copyright”: “Fair dealing for criticism, review or quotation is allowed for any type of copyright work”. So go and…

Twist One Out.

Writing: 1/10

Directing: 1/10

Acting: 1/10

Overall: 1/10