Endings are a tricky thing to get right in horror. After ramping up the tension, scares, and story all movie long, the grand finale should pay it all off in a satisfying way. That’s not an easy task. Just ask Stephen King. It’s become such a long-running joke that the prolific author struggles with endings that it became the punchline of his cameo in It Chapter Two.
An ending leaves its audience with a lasting impression of the overall film; a good ending can forgive preceding flaws, and a lousy ending will leave a sour taste in your mouth. That’s a large part of why we love a good twist ending. When it comes to horror, not much is better than the lingering feeling of complete shock once the end credits roll. The best leave their viewers buzzing long after, and the twists become part of pop culture memory. An example: show of hands if you’ve heard the line “Soylent Green is people!” but have never seen 1973’s Soylent Green.
Not all twist endings work, though. The best drop subtle clues throughout the movie, paving the way for a conclusion that fits thematically and narratively. Moreover, the hints can’t be too heavy-handed, to keep the twist from becoming too obvious well in advance of the reveal. We’re celebrating horror’s best twist endings today. The conclusions that pulled the rug out from under us and stick with us even today. These 10 nailed the twist ending.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari offers one of the earliest, if not the first, examples of the twist ending in horror. Relayed mostly through flashbacks, lead character Francis (Friedrich Feher) tells a stranger on a bench of his encounters with the mysterious Dr. Caligari, Cesare the somnambulist, and the murders they commit. Lauded for its German Expressionist style, this silent film is more remembered for its strange surrealism. But its ending packs a punch, too; in the epilogue, Francis is revealed to be a madly insane patient spinning made up stories from the courtyard of the asylum in which he’s incarcerated.
Les Diaboliques
This twisty psychological thriller is set at a boarding school run by the ruthless and cruel Michel Delassalle, though it’s owned by his frail, meek wife, Christina. Christina’s closest friend happens to be Michel’s mistress, Nicole Horner, another school teacher. They bond over Michel’s emotionally abusive ways and devise the perfect murder to rid themselves of him permanently. Only, once the act is done, his body goes missing, and signs of him haunting the school escalate the women’s feelings of fear and paranoia. The twist reveal is that Michel and Nicole were in cahoots from the beginning, faking a haunting to scare Christina to death thanks to her weak heart. They succeed, but they’re caught when a witness overhears their celebrations. The film ends with one final twist; the implication that Christina is indeed still alive and beat her husband at his own game.
Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal classic offered not one but two significant twists. Of course, the first is the shocking early demise of what seemed to be the film’s protagonist, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). That now iconic shower scene against the piercing strings of Bernard Herrmann’s score is forever embedded in the pop culture pantheon. Psycho wasn’t done with the surprises, either. The film presents Norman Bates’ mother as the deranged murderer throughout, proving not to be true. Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) finds Mrs. Bates’ mummified corpse in the cellar during the climax, just before Norman appears in his mother’s clothes. Sweet, shy Norman Bates was the killer all along; or at least, his mother’s persona is, anyway.
The Wicker Man
Police Sergeant Neil Howie, a devout Christian, receives an anonymous letter about a missing girl and travels to the remote island of Summerisle to investigate. He’s immediately put off by the residents’ open reverence of Pagan gods, and his unease only mounts the further he’s drawn into the search for the girl, Rowan. Time is of the essence when he discovers that Rowan is to be sacrificed as part of the May Day celebrations for a better harvest. To Sergeant Howie’s horror, the twist reveal is that Rowan wasn’t missing at all. She was bait to lure Howie to his demise. Howie was the intended sacrifice all along, and the film ends with the imagery of Howie being stuffed inside a giant wicker man and set ablaze. Folk horror has never been the same since.
Angel Heart
The perfect marriage of psychological horror and noir, Angel Heart follows Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke), a private investigator hired by Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to track down missing musician Johnny Favorite. His search leads him to New Orleans, where he finds voodoo, murder, love, and a deal with the devil. He learns that Johnny Favorite sold his soul for fame, then backed out on the deal by murdering and assuming a soldier’s identity. The soldier was then drafted into war, where he suffered injuries and amnesia. With dawning anguish and fear, Angel realizes that he is Johnny Favorite and that Louis Cyphre is a homophone for Lucifer, who’s come to collect the soul he’s owed. What makes this reveal so memorable is its layers of impact. The realization that Angel is Favorite reframes everything, casting it in an even more disturbing light than before. Including the icky fact that Angel slept with his own daughter then discards her most grotesquely. It’s the type of twist that keeps on giving.
Jacob’s Ladder
After a harrowing stint in the Vietnam War, where many of Jacob Singer’s comrades are killed or injured, the vet finds himself struggling to adjust back to normal in New York City. As disturbing visions and hallucinations increasingly plague him, Jacob’s world is further upended by a conspiracy that results in his surviving platoon members dying in strangely coincidental ways. The end reveals that the film’s events never happened, at least not in the way they’re presented. Jacob (Tim Robbins) and his platoon members were secretly dosed by a drug called the Ladder, which prompted many of them to turn on each other in a hallucinogenic homicidal frenzy. Jacob was caught between life and death, and he finally succumbs and finds peace in death. Jacob’s Ladder, in biblical terms, is the dream meeting place between Earth and Heaven, which essentially spells out the twist upfront; the entire movie is Jacob stuck in limbo. It’s the surreal, haunting imagery and Robbins’ stellar performance that sells it all so well.
The Sixth Sense
“I see dead people.” Those four little words packed a punch, knocking viewers on their butts and kickstarting M. Night Shymalan’s reputation for the art of twist endings. All along, it’d been clear that little Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) sees dead people; they terrorize him. Those four words, however, work as a one-two punch that opens the floodgates of emotion. It’s the moment Cole finally lets Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) in, so he can begin to cope with his abilities and heal. It’s also the necessary seed planted for Malcolm to come to terms with his truth; he never survived the opening scene’s startling gun violence. It’s the type of twist that rewards upon repeat viewings if only to catch Shyamalan’s strict adherence of ghost rules- in any ghost scenes, the air is noticeably colder, red is prominent, and only Cole interacts with them.
Saw
James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s breakout hit saw two strangers awaken in a room with no idea of how they got there. Between them is a corpse holding clues. From there, Saw spins a winding mystery involving a serial killer known as Jigsaw, who tests his victims through deadly games and traps. Eventually revealing how the two men, Lawrence (Carey Elwes) and Adam (Whannell), are tied to the Jigsaw Killer and became his latest targets. The climactic showdown between them and Zep, the man they believe to be the killer, ends with Zep’s death and Gordon crawling out of the room for help after sawing off his foot. Alone with two corpses, Adam discovers that Zep wasn’t the Jigsaw killer at all, but another victim. Cue the bombshell moment; the corpse gets up off the floor, leaving Adam to die with a simple, “Game over.” The Jigsaw Killer was with the men all along, with a front-row seat to their trauma.
Frailty
In Bill Paxton’s feature debut, a family is torn apart by the dad’s claims that he’s been tasked by God and angels to slay demons. Dad (Paxton) waits for visions of wrongdoings from angels on the next target, then ax-murders the target before burying them in the rose garden. His older son Fenton doesn’t believe and is morally opposed to dad’s murderous ways. Young son Adam, however, is far too eager to take up the new family business. Frailty reveals the family history through now adult Fenton (Matthew McConaughey), via confession at the FBI office. After recounting his family’s history of murder, Fenton confesses one last truth; he’s not Fenton at all, but Adam, and he’s carrying on Dad’s work. He’s come to kill the FBI Agent for matricide. It turns out that maybe Dad and Adam weren’t crazy, either. Any traces of Adam’s presence in the FBI office are wiped. His image is obscured in surveillance cameras, and no one seems to have any memory of him at all. Paxton turns his intense psychological thriller into a supernatural one, with one effective ending.
The Mist
An adaptation of any story comes with expectations from fans familiar with the source material, especially if the author happens to be Stephen King. In the Skeleton Crew collection, King’s novella ends on an ambiguous moment of hope with David’s group driving off into the mist toward Hartford. Writer/director Frank Darabont already helmed two King adaptations with The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, setting up the preconceived notion that he’d continue that streak of hope and heart with The Mist. Instead, viewers were in for one doozy of a surprise in The Mist’s final moments. David (Thomas Jane) does escape the grocery store and drive off into the mist with his beloved son and a few other survivors. Their escape vehicle runs out of gas, though, stranding them without a means of a safe escape. Resigned, the group opts for what they think will be a less brutal death, and David uses his gun’s remaining bullets to shoot his friends and son. He exits the car to let the creatures slay him, but the mist suddenly clears and reveals the arrival of the Army, who’ve come to restore order. The film ends on a sobering note with David screaming in agony; had he waited just a few minutes more, they would’ve all been saved.
Darabont delivered one of horror’s all-time most nihilistic twists.
