If you’ve made a pitch in the past ten years, you understand the euphoric sensation when someone says, “I didn’t see that coming!” But working that twist into your narrative in a meaningful way only results in pain and misery. The “twist” is good for pitches, but consider ditching it as soon as outlining phase starts. With most twist ideas, the character arc suddenly hits a brick wall and the character’s growth was largely for nothing. If it’s still workable, it might add a few extra tenths of a point to your IMDB rating. But if you struggle on with it anyway just to give a big “f*ck you” to the audience then you should at least include complimentary lube with your DVD.
I’d like to say it depends. I can’t come up with any good examples off the top of my head, but I think twists can work together with character development. Ending your movie with a twist like “It was a dream the whole time” is stupid, but I feel like mysteries handle twists well. For a mystery, there’s often new twist information towards the end for the final reveal, but the clues and development were still there along the way.