Revealed: The formula for a hit movie - and it could explain why Shutter Island, Gone Girl, and Atonement are rated so highly

Some of the most popular films of recent times include Shutter Island, Atonement and Gone Girl.

Now, experts have discovered what makes them such big hits – and it's all to do with plot twists.

Researchers have found that films, TV shows and books with more pivots in tone, character or plot are more likely to have higher ratings or be downloaded more often.

Across a series of studies, researchers used computer science to analyse the language and speech of films, TV shows and novels.

The first study involved 3,713 transcribed movies and found those with the most reversals – for example in the 1999 romcom '10 Things I Hate About You' – received higher marks the equivalent of a 1.4 star rating increase compared to those with the fewest reversals.

Other popular plot twist films include the 1995 thriller The Usual Suspects, and the 1999 Horror The Sixth Sense.

A second study examined 19,339 transcribed TV episodes and came to a similar finding – those with the most reversals had the equivalent of a 0.35 increase in star rating.

These could include the hit 2004 TV show Lost, and the 2005 drama Prison Break.

The third study evaluated 8,663 English-language novels and found those with the highest number of reversals had double the number of downloads compared to those with the fewest.

The researchers, from the University of Toronto and Northeastern University, published their findings in the journal Science Advances.

They wrote: 'While some stories captivate us and achieve lasting acclaim, others bore us and are universally panned.

'Narrative reversals, or turning points in a narrative, have long been theorised as integral to moving narratives forward and creating engaging plots.

'These turning points can be relatively large or small but…they crucially represent events that shift the course of the narrative from positive to negative, or vice-versa.'

As an example they reference Romeo and Juliet, when the pair fall head-over-heels for each other at a masked ball only to realise their love is forbidden by their families.

'We find that stores with more, and more dramatic, turning points are more successful,' they added.

'Our findings shed light on this age-old art form and provide a practical approach to understanding and predicting the impact of storytelling.'

A previous study found that people are more likely to remember happy stories than tales of doom and gloom.

Researchers discovered a listener could mentally reconstruct the episodes of a story retold from someone else's memory of a movie, even if the listener had not seen the film before.

They found when the speaker told a happy story, there was better recall in the listeners.