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- Orphan
- Warner Bros. Pictures
Twist endings have always been a part of the horror genre. The groundbreaking Friday the 13th spends its entire runtime building up eventual killer Jason Voorhees, only to reveal his mother was the actual perpetrator. April Fool's Day from 1986 had a twist ending less satisfying to most viewers, as everything that took place in the movie was actually just a big prank.
That said, the following movies all have twist endings that are either satisfying, infamous, or mind-blowing for their time. There are cult films, like 1983's Sleepaway Camp, with endings that still spark discussion and debate to this day; others are more recent additions to the cult oeuvre, like 2021's Malignant, which has an incredibly entertaining twist; even still, there are mainstream horror films like Sunshine or 10 Cloverfield Lane that still manage to pop in a surprise at the end.
Here are some of the most successful - and shocking - twists in underrated horror movies.
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Austin (Emile Hirsch) is working with his father Tommy (Brian Cox), the small-town coroner, when the local sheriff brings in an emergency autopsy. Jane Doe (Olwen Kelly) was found inside a home where multiple homicides took place, but she doesn't fit the scene. Austin sends off his girlfriend and settles in for the night to finish the procedure with his father.
Jane Doe is stranger than anyone could have expected, with strange injuries inside her body that failed to leave any marks on her skin. Her tongue was cut out, and someone put multiple foreign objects into her body.
Additionally, strange occurrences take place while Tommy and Austin work. The radio plays "Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sunshine In)" on its own, and strange shadows start prowling the hallways. These strange happenings get increasingly grotesque and dangerous as the pair gets closer to the truth of Jane Doe's death.
Therein lies the twist: Jane Doe is actually a witch from the Salem Witch Trials who was innocent - until the burial and punishment ritual accidentally turned her into one. As Austin works to free Jane Doe from the curse, he instead bolsters it to continue.
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Kate and John Coleman (Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard) adopt 9-year-old Russian girl Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) after the loss of their third child.
Esther soon begins exhibiting unacceptable and violent behavior towards animals, as well as her new siblings, the couple's 5-year-old daughter, Max (Aryana Engineer), who is deaf, and their 12-year-old son, Daniel (Jimmy Bennett). Esther also displays an uncomfortable knowledge of sex and becomes vindictive toward her new family.
As the family's situation continues to escalate, the twist arrives in the form of Esther's former physician, Dr. Värava (Karel Roden), who explains the orphan is actually Leena Klammer, a 33-year-old woman with dwarfism.
Terrifying twist?- 3
Don't Breathe
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Rocky (Jane Levy) agrees to rob the home of blind Gulf War Veteran Nordstrom (Stephen Lang) to afford a better life for her and her sister.
Rocky, her boyfriend Money (Daniel Zovatto), and Alex (Dylan Minnette) believe they can get into the house under the man's nose and steal a rumored $300,000 cash in his house. According to their source, the money is from a settlement that claimed the life of Nordstrom's daughter.
Once the trio enters the home, they find outwitting the blind man is more difficult than they ever could have anticipated. Eventually, Rocky finds herself in the man's infamous basement.
After his daughter's death, Nordstrom kidnapped Cindy Roberts (Franciska Töröcsik), the woman who killed her in a car accident. He impregnated Cindy with a replacement daughter, but she was killed during the home invasion. In reality, Nordstrom was never the one in danger that night.
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Deborah Logan (Jill Larson) is a widow suffering from Alzheimer's disease and living with her daughter and caregiver, Sarah (Anne Ramsay). In an effort to raise money to assist in her mother's care, Sarah allows a documentary crew to film her mother's struggle with the disease.
The crew immediately begins capturing strange behavior from Deborah that doesn't fit an Alzheimer's diagnosis: She harms herself, attacks others, and speaks in French about snakes.
This film's twist goes fairly deep, but the movie does an excellent job of presenting everything so viewers expect possession. What no one could foresee is that Deborah is possessed by a serial killer who targeted her daughter, Sarah. Deborah found out and took justice into her own hands, burying the killer's corpse in her yard. As revenge, the killer overtakes Deborah's body in an attempt to finish his final crime.
Terrifying twist?This 1983 cult classic kept viewers guessing because the twist was highly taboo at the time, and it continues to be controversial. Angela (Felissa Rose) is a young girl living with her aunt and her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) after a boating accident killed her father and brother.
Angela and Ricky are spending the summer at Camp Arawak, and while there, the shy young girl is subjected to ridicule and inappropriate behavior from the camp staffers. People who have wronged Angela start dropping like flies, while Ricky's friend Paul (Christopher Collet) begins a relationship with her.
The film's twist begins to unravel when Paul and Angela go skinny dipping. On the lookout for the camp's killer, a police officer stumbles upon the pair, seemingly enjoying time on the beach with Paul's head resting in Angela's lap. Angela then stands up, revealing she severed Paul's head - and that she has male genitalia.
The film reveals Angela was actually named Peter at birth, but Peter's aunt didn't want to raise another boy. Instead, she raised him with his dead sister Angela's name and gender.
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The original version of this film, and its twist, were written and directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala and filmed in Austria. Twins Elias and Lukas (Elias and Lukas Schwarz) return home to their mother (Susanne Wuest), who is recovering from facial surgeries.
Mother, her face covered in bandages, demands silence from the 10-year-old twins and lashes out at Elias when he disobeys. Mother never directly addresses Lukas and instead consistently ignores him.
After some discussion, the twins decide this woman is not their real Mother, and they set out to prove this. They tie Mother to her bed and start interrogating her about the location of their real Mother. The twins commit atrocious acts to keep her quiet and eventually take her downstairs to give her one last chance to tell the truth.
Glued to the floor, Mother awakes and reveals to the audience that Lukas died in an accident. Unable to cope with that reality or the memory of his twin's death, Elias sets the house on fire and dies in the blaze, along with Mother. The movie ends with a shot of the three of them reunited at the edge of the field.
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Jamie Ashen (Ryan Kwanten) receives the anonymous gift of a ventriloquist dummy named Billy. Creeped out by the doll, Jamie leaves his wife at home to grab some dinner. He returns home to find her dead and her tongue cut out.
Detective Jim Lipton (Donnie Wahlberg) believes Jamie is the culprit and is out to prove it, following his suspect to his hometown of Raven's Fair.
Once there, Jamie visits his estranged father, Henry (Michael Fairman), and Henry's new wife, Ella (Amber Valletta), and learns about Mary Shaw (Judith Roberts), a ventriloquist who was heckled at a show by a young boy named Michael. Michael disappeared soon after, and his family blamed Mary, ultimately lynching her for the crime.
Just before her death, Mary swore she would eliminate Michael's entire bloodline. She was then buried after her body was converted into a ventriloquist dummy at her own request. Henry claims he saw the puppet Mary Shaw as a boy, but refusing to scream saved him from her wrath.
After surviving his own encounter with Mary Shaw, Jamie returns to his father with Billy. Mary confronts him again, so he throws Billy into the fire. He then learns his father died a long time ago and was converted into a ventriloquist dummy puppeteered by Ella. Ella is the “perfect doll” Mary made before she died and serves as a vessel for her spirit to overtake and kill Jamie.
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The name of this 2016 movie is a clue to its twist, but the film's genius is that viewers are never really sure whether or not it's a misdirect. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) breaks up with her fiancé and leaves the home they share. After a car accident, she awakens in a bunker with two men unknown to her as roommates.
Howard (John Goodman) owns the bunker and the home above it, making all of the rules. Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) has an injured arm and rubs Howard the wrong way, especially after Michelle's arrival.
The men tell Michelle an event occurred that left the outside world dangerous and uninhabitable. Howard's strange and violent actions make Michelle question whether it really is all that bad outside or not. Michelle eventually manages to escape the bunker, only to stumble into a full-blown alien invasion.
Terrifying twist?- 9
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Justine (Garance Marillier) is in her first year of veterinary school at the same university her sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) attends. A lifelong vegetarian, Justine is pushed into partaking in the university's ritual with the rest of her class: being doused in blood before eating a rabbit kidney.
After tasting meat, Justine develops an insatiable hunger for it. Nothing seems to satisfy her until an accident allows her to eat her sister's severed fingertip.
Instead of ostracizing her sister for eating her finger, Alexia covers for Justine and attempts to teach her how to “catch” food. After a series of incidents, Alexia is sent to jail, and Justine goes home.
There, the girls' father reveals to Justine that this is all his fault. He met their mother at the same university and reveals that she's been gradually eating him throughout their relationship.
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The Parker family lost their 16-year-old daughter Alice (Talia Zucker) when she drowned during a holiday in Ararat, Australia. Parents June (Rosie Traynor) and Russell (David Pledger) have a tough time moving on after Alice's death, as does their son, Mathew (Martin Sharpe). Mathew decides to set up cameras around the house to see if he can catch his sister's ghost on camera - which he does.
Throughout the film, the family consults a psychic and has many revelations about their daughter, some of which are hard to swallow. One of these is that Mathew faked all of the footage of his sister's ghost hanging around the family home.
At the end of the film, the audience sees cell phone footage of the unbelievable things Alice saw at Lake Mungo prior to her death. While those images are horrifying, the final twist is that Alice was actually in Mathew's recordings the whole time.
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Malignant reteams director/writer James Wan and actress Annabelle Wallis after 2014's Annabelle. This time, Wallis is Madison, a pregnant woman in an abusive marriage. When it seems she will lose another baby, Madison's husband slams her head against a wall, causing her to bleed.
Madison has a terrible nightmare that her husband is murdered, only to find out that he really was attacked and killed in the night. Madison does, in fact, lose her baby, and she returns home, only to continue having nightmares in which people are murdered by a strange being in a coat.
After investigators find incriminating evidence - and a kidnapped woman - in Madison's home, she's arrested for all of the murders she dreamed.
Of course, the movie has a twist: Madison was adopted, and her birth mother, the woman found in her home, was coerced into giving her up. Madison was born with a conjoined twin named Gabriel, and surgeons successfully separated most of him from their shared body. Unfortunately, they had to close some of Gabriel up inside Madison's skull, and he grew stronger over the years by feasting on her unborn children.
When Madison suffered her head injury, Gabriel awakened and began using her backward-facing body to seek vengeance against those he felt wronged him.
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Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his new girlfriend, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), accept an invitation to the home of his ex-wife, Eden (Tammy Blanchard), and her new husband, David (Michiel Huisman). Will and Eden divorced after the death of their young child, but the dinner party also promises some old friends in attendance.
The gathering is already uncomfortable for Will, but adding to this discomfort is a strange young woman named Sadie (Lindsay Burdge), who is staying with Eden and David. Then, an imposing man named Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch) arrives, and David, citing a home intruder in the area, locks everyone inside the home.
David and Eden reveal they've joined a type of support group to help them heal from their grief, and David forces everyone to watch a video showing a woman dying while their new professed guru, Dr. Joseph (Toby Huss), talks her through it. The video upsets the guests, but David repeatedly tells Will he's overreacting.
After Eden and David try and fail to poison everyone, they, Pruitt, and Sadie begin murdering guests.
The movie eventually reveals Dr. Joseph is really a cult leader, and he convinced his followers to carry out murder-suicide pacts in order to free themselves of grief.
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Audiences went into this 2004 M. Night Shyamalan movie looking for an inevitable twist from the famed writer/director. The ending was, in fact, so unexpected, a lot of people were upset by it and started a backlash against Shyamalan. Even after some time and repeat viewings, the film's ending remains a shocking and disturbing twist.
The small, 19th-century village of Covington, PA, lives in fear of “Those We Don't Speak Of,” humanoid monsters roaming the forest surrounding them. Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a blind woman living in the village ruled by her father, Chief Elder Edward Walker (William Hurt). Ivy is promised to Lucius (Joaquin Phoenix), which angers the developmentally disabled Noah (Adrien Brody), who stabs Lucius in anger.
The Elders send Ivy through the woods to reach the nearby town and get medicine for Noah. When Ivy climbs over the town's wall and meets a park ranger, the movie's twist is revealed: the story set in an eerie 19th-century village actually takes place in modern times.
Ivy's father, Edward Walker, met the other village elders in a support group after all were victims of crimes. Walker bought up a large plot of land and paid off the government to turn a blind eye to his cosplay village, even making it a no-fly zone. Members of the village dress up as Those We Don't Speak Of to keep the other residents from attempting to flee.
Ivy ultimately returns with the medicine, unaware of the 21st-century technology and architecture she couldn't see.
Terrifying twist?- 14
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In 2057, a group of eight astronauts from around the world are on board the Icarus II, en route to set and detonate a bomb in order to restart the Sun. During their voyage, they receive a distress signal from another ship that previously attempted the same mission seven years prior, the Icarus I.
After attempting to intercept the lost ship and recover its payload to double their own chances of success, the crew of the Icarus II endures damage to their craft. They dock with Icarus I and find damage to the ship's mainframe, as well as the remains of the crew, who have been severely burned by sun exposure.
As the crew attempts to repair their ship and release the bomb, the captain of the Icarus I, Pinbacker (Mark Strong), emerges to sabotage their mission. The film reveals Pinbacker lost his mind “talking” to the Sun and thought he was supposed to let humanity die out. He allowed his crew to die for the sake of his own mission and was ready to take out another one in order to complete it.
Another twist in the film comes from Robert Capa (Cillian Murphy), a physicist on the Icarus II's crew. Capa continually dreams about falling into the Sun but eventually realizes these dreams were not just nightmares - they were prophetic: He must actually be consumed by the powerful star in order to detonate the payload in the film's finale.
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This 2003 French slasher still divides audiences with its twist ending decades later. The story centers on Marie (Cécile de France), who is spending the weekend with her friend Alexia (Maïwenn) and her family in order to study for classes.
During the night, an intruder murders Alex's father and starts stalking the rest of the family, as well as Marie. The killer kidnaps Alex, and Maria hides in his truck to follow them.
After more deaths at a gas station, and after the killer runs Marie off the road, the movie reveals Marie herself is the one who killed Alex's family. Marie is actually in love with Alex and killed her family as a result of some undiagnosed psychosis.
While certainly shocking, this twist (which some argue is distasteful for how it depicts gay people and people with mental illnesses) requires suspending one's disbelief, as its logic doesn't hold up on subsequent viewings.
Terrifying twist?
