Horror fans love a good scare, moreover, horror fans love a good twist. A film that provides a collection of unseemly frights along with an unforeseen conclusion really hits the spot for the average fan. Not all twists are created equally, of course. There are films that stick the landing and others that simply do not. For today’s purposes, we will be looking back on a handful of films that packaged and delivered twists that caught us off guard in the best way possible. Keep in mind, though, that to reveal the nature of the twists outlined below, we will have to reveal spoilers. So, be sure to exercise caution as you continue on, dear reader.
Without further ado, I present to you 10 horror movie twists that still blow my mind.
1) Psycho
Many consider Psycho one of the earliest examples of a slasher picture. This 1960 effort features a stellar core cast, an auteur director in Hitchcock, and a twist that took viewers by surprise in the best possible way.
Psycho finds Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) absconding with a large sum of cash from her workplace with designs on starting over with her secret lover, Sam (John Gavin). As she navigates toward Sam’s home in Fairvale, California, Marion encounters inclement weather and decides to stop off for the night. If only she’d made different lodging arrangements, her story may have ended differently. Instead, Marion stops off at the Bates Motel, a family-owned operation run by the seemingly mild-mannered Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Not long after checking in, Marion dies at the hands of a character most presume to be Norman’s mother. However, when all is revealed, we learn that Norman killed his mom years prior but began impersonating her (and communicating with her) as a way to cope with his guilt. Now, that’s a twist!
2) The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan has made a lucrative career out of realizing feature films with elaborate twists endings that render viewers shocked and amazed. He has never done so quite so successfully as he did with his breakout hit The Sixth Sense. This celebrated feature follows Cole (Haley Joel Osment), a young boy who can see the dead, as he attempts to work through his macabre abilities with child psychologist Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis).
Writer/director Shyamalan establishes a touching relationship between doctor and patient before ultimately pulling the rug out from underneath the audience and revealing that Dr. Crowe is, in fact, one of the dead people that Cole sees. While that might seem like cheating when put so simply, Shyamalan goes to great lengths to set up that conceit, even showing us how Dr. Crowe died, just leaving out any confirmation that he’s actually dead. Well played.
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3) Orphan
There’s something supremely unsettling about killer kids in cinema. Orphan plays on that but adds a unique twist to the proceedings. The film follows Esther (Isabella Fuhrman), an adoptee who is settling in with her new family when her adoptive parents, Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard), begin to question Esther’s true intentions.
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As it turns out, John and Kate are right to question Esther. She’s a murderous con artist who looks like a child but is actually well over 30. The shocked adoptive parents learn of Esther’s deceit when a doctor at the mental institution from which she previously escaped phones to warn them that they are in grave danger. Although the twist seems outlandish, it’s based on a very real condition called hypopituitarism.
4) Saw
A lot of people seem to forget how different Saw is from the barrage of sequels by which it was followed. However, the 2004 original is a far more self-contained effort that gets a little grisly on occasion but unlike its successors, a lot of the violence is implied.
Also differing from some of the films that followed in its wake, the original Saw film features a twist that few saw coming. That’s right, the first series installment ends with the realization that the corpse lying on the floor in the room where the majority of the action unfolds isn’t actually a corpse at all. Instead, the figure on the floor is John Cramer (Tobin Bell), the Jigsaw Killer. Cramer is very much alive and very much enjoying watching his captives, Adam (Leigh Whannell) and Lawrence (Cary Elwes), play the twisted game he dreamt up for them. Quite the criminal mastermind, indeed. No wonder the property spawned a barrage of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs.
5) You’re Next
This harrowing home invasion chiller didn’t perform at the box office, but that’s absolutely no indication of the picture’s quality. You’re Next is a thrilling effort that combines breakneck action sequences with visceral kills. Not to mention Sharni Vinson establishes herself as an unstoppable force in her turn as lead character, Erin.
The picture shows Erin attending a family function with her college professor partner, Crispian (AJ Bowen). Things start off uneventful enough, but when family members begin turning up dead, Erin springs into action, revealing that she has a special set of skills that make her uniquely qualified to defend the dwelling against unwanted visitors. Except it turns out that the violent intruders were actually hired by Crispian and his siblings who wanted their inheritance earlier rather than later and thought removing their parents from the equation was a good way to make that happen. Quite the surprising twist and a stellar example of subverting expectations.
6) Malignant
Say what you will about this one, Malignant is a film that thinks outside of the box and combines elements of the giallo (a term for Italian murder mystery thrillers that peaked in popularity around the late 1970s) and nods to tropes explored in Frank Henenlotter’s unhinged horror thriller Basketcase. With so much going on, it’s no great surprise that this film proved somewhat polarizing, however, if you appreciate the ridiculous, there’s plenty to enjoy about Malignant.
This outlandish effort follows protagonist Madison (Annabelle Wallis) as she comes to the horrifying realization that the random acts of gruesome violence she thinks are just visions are actually firmly rooted in reality. More specifically, Madison has a parasitic twin called Gabriel who lives inside of her, sharing her physical being and her consciousness. The unspeakable brutality she observes stems from Gabriel taking over their body. Although Gabriel was seemingly removed during a surgical procedure, a portion of him remains within Madison. As we mentioned previously, the violent twin angle nods to Basketcase and has a similarly unhinged quality to the giallo pictures of years past. Whether or not you dig this one, it’s impossible to deny that the twist is a complete shock that few saw coming in advance.
7) Frailty
This under-seen effort counts the late, great Bill Paxton as its leading man and director. Though Frailty underperformed at the box office, the flick is well worth seeking out. The picture is dark, gritty, and unpredictable. Not to mention, the big reveal at the end caught many viewers squarely off guard.
Frailty follows the Meiks boys (Matt O’Leary and Jeremy Sumpter play the brothers in their formative years), two young men whose father (Paxton) believes he is taking orders directly from God and slaying demons in human form. We hear the story relayed to FBI Agent Wesley Doyle (Powers Boothe) by a character (Matthew McConaughey) whom we are led to believe is the elder Meiks brother, Fenton. Fenton is the sibling who historically spoke out against his father’s attempts at vigilante justice. However, the final reveal clues us in that the narrator is really Adam, the younger Meiks brother who wholeheartedly believes in his father’s mission. What’s more, we learn that Adam has been carrying on his father’s violent legacy. The final piece of the puzzle is that Adam has relayed the details of the case to Doyle because Doyle is a demon. After we learn that, Adam kills Doyle. The denouement of this film is jarring and unexpected but serves as a perfect conclusion to that by which it is preceded.
8) Barbarian
Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb only to learn that the dwelling is occupied by another short-term tennant, Keith (Bill Skarsgård). Against her better judgment, Tess decides to share the dwelling with Keith. With a setup like that, it seems logical that Keith is the central antagonist with sinister designs on Tess. Except that couldn’t be further from the truth. Keith is as much of a victim in all of this as Tess.
The real antagonist is a gnarly monster called The Mother. The Mother is the child of the home’s rightful owner, a sadistic, depraved creep who has a years-long history of sexual assault, inbreeding, and worse. The film is so well crafted that by the time the audience learns who the real antagonist is, most are completely caught off guard. Writer/director Zach Cregger deliberately delivers what might initially seem like a convoluted narrative to disarm the viewer, allowing the eventual reveal to hit that much harder. If you didn’t assume that Keith was the chief antagonist, you may have assumed disgraced actor AJ (Justin Long) must be. Though AJ is a monster of a different variety, the identity of the real antagonist here comes as a shock to us all.
9) Sisters
Brian De Palma is a cinematic legend with a career trajectory filled with standout efforts. Among his iconic early career efforts is Sisters, the twisted tale of a young woman who holds a dark secret related to her conjoined twin, from whom she was eventually separated.
The proceedings follow Danielle (Margot Kidder) as she embarks on a tryst with Phillip (Lisle Wilson), a contestant she met on a hidden camera game show. The morning after that encounter, Danielle reveals to Phillip that she has a twin sister Dominique, and that today is their birthday. She asks him to pick up a prescription for her. He does so and also stops off for a birthday cake on his way back to Danielle’s apartment. When Phillip returns to the apartment, Dominique kills him. Much of the rest of the film is spent trying to unravel the complex dynamic between Danielle and Dominique. As it turns out, there is no Dominque. Danielle effectively absorbed Dominique’s consciousness when an ill-fated attempt to separate them resulted in Dominique’s death. Quite the surprising conclusion, indeed.
10) The Night House
This jarring effort from Hellraiser (2022) director David Bruckner is a profound meditation on grief. It also features an engaging narrative and a series of twists that few could have foreseen. The setup sees school teacher Beth (Rebecca Hall) grappling with the loss of her husband, Owen (Evan Jonigkeit), who died by suicide. As she attempts to put the pieces of her life back together, she starts to suspect that something is haunting her, perhaps the spirit of her late spouse.
Beth ultimately learns that it isn’t her late husband haunting her, rather than a malevolent entity that latched onto her when she briefly died following a car accident in her adolescence. Beth further discovers that her husband was attempting to stop the force that has long been after her by killing women who look like her in a mirror image of their home hidden in the nearby woods. When his plan to deceive the entity failed, Owen ultimately took his own life. The added contextual clues give the viewer a very different perspective on the proceedings. In the final scene, Beth grapples with the mysterious entity one last time, ultimately resisting the urge to take her life.
There you have it, each of the horror films above blew my mind with a wild twist ending. Which of your favorites made the cut? Let us know in the comments section below!
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