Spotlight: My problems with some modern-day thrillers

I watched the Game last night and thought that was a really good example of a good thriller. Everything you needed to know was right in front of you...but the way the film is made makes you paranoid to the extent you're not trusting what you're seeing, so while the ending came out of absolutely nowhere and blew my mind...it still made complete sense, I had just been misdirected.

My favourite twist/ killer reveal ever where I just never saw it coming because the film had deliberately led me away in the wrong direction, was the Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Not strictly a thriller, but more of a horror whodunnit, I thought I knew fairly early on who the killer was. The fact that the film then has a scene just before the killer reveal, seemingly revealing the character who I thought it was...to then show it wasnt them, only showed me just how much Argento duped me. The whole point of the film is perception, and he made me see exactly what he wanted me to see to throw me off the scent!

When a film's twist does this, you hold your hands up, they've done it brilliantly.

One thing I don't like about some thrillers, especially newer ones, is how they cheat in order to have a twist. Like they will want to surprise the audience, but they will do something to cheat, in order for the twist to be more of a surprise.

Like in The Usual Suspects for example, during the flashbacks,

SPOILER

Verbal Kint was hiding from Keyser Soze. But then we find out that they are both the same person. But I felt cheated in the end, since in the flashback it showed them as two different people with one hiding from the other. It would have been better if they just hadn't have shown any flashbacks on that probably.