A lot of horror movies have twists. These twists usually answer the questions such as, “Who did it?/”How did they do it?”/ and “What were their motives?” Generally, us horror fiends can figure out the so called “twist” within the first few minutes.
1. Sleepaway Camp
If you are a hardcore horror fiend, you have to watch this movie! Sure, it’s really just a cheesy rip-off of Friday the 13th, but it has the most shocking revelation I have ever seen in a slasher. I’m not even going to ruin it for you, because you just have to see it. I don’t know whether I found it more disturbing or hysterical to watch. Either way, you guys are going to be surprised to what you end up seeing. (*Be warned for some obscene full frontal nudity)
2. The Sixth Sense
Before M. Night Shyamalan became known for his “surprise” endings, he made this movie that shocked almost every moviegoer. When I had guessed the ending of this movie in the movie theatres, all of my friends who were with me swore that they would never see a movie with me again. (The reason why I guessed it was that I had seen an “Are you Afraid of the Dark?” episode exactly like the ending of the movie.) After finding out that Bruce Willis was really dead all along, it sent everyone racing to their friends and family raving about the ending. (and probably ruining it as well.) Out of all the twists on this list, this movie had the most clever one.
3. Psycho
No matter what age you are, Psycho has probably affected you in some way or form. Maybe it gave you the fear of taking showers, maybe it gave you the fear of checking into motels by yourself, or maybe it just gave you nightmares to see Norman Bates dressed as “Mother” wielding a sharp butcher knife. (Although if you watch the 1998 remake with Vince Vaughn dressed as “Mother,” you’ll probably pee yourself from laughing so hard.) This Alfred Hitchcock classic is probably the most important choice on this list, for it was the catalyst for the now trendy twist ending
4. Identity
This movie had me guessing to the very end. It didn’t have just one twist, it had many. This movie had me thinking so hard, I was squinting. When we find out that all of the characters of the movie who are stuck in the hotel were really just personalities of a man on death row, I felt so stupid, because all of the hints were there. Then finding out that it was little Timmy killing everyone off, well that was just the icing on the cake. This mystery flick is so well done, and after watching it over and over again, I still pick up on hints that I didn’t get on the first viewing. It’s hard to believe the same man who wrote the infamous Jack Frost (the slasher not the Michael Keaton one, although both equally horrific) wrote this gem.
5. What Lies Beneath
I honestly didn’t see the twist in this supernatural film coming. If they hadn’t cast Harrison “I always play the hero” Ford as the bad guy, I would have gotten the ending so much faster. When the audience is revealed that Mr. Norman Spencer (Harrison Ford) really did kill the girl that had been haunting Michelle Pfeiffer, it was shocking. I remember jumping out of my seat, after seeing the “411” on the phone. I never felt like such a moron before in my entire life.
6. Frailty
I didn’t know what to expect from this movie, but after watching it, I was floored. There were two very big twists in the film. The one with Matthew McConaughey’s character actually being the other brother, was a dead giveaway, but the twist that got me was that the overly religious “demon” killer, (played by Bill Paxton) was actually right all along. Here I thought, he was just some psycho killing innocent people.
7. Saw
Saw was a clever horror film, but what made it even more clever was the climax. When the audience is revealed that Jigsaw was really the “dead” guy sprawled on the grimy bathroom floor, it made everyone gasp and chuckle, for they knew they had been had. (Except for the so-called smart asses who claimed to know it was him all along.)
8. High Tension
I’m not going to lie to you. I have mixed feelings about the twist ending in this film, which is why it’s so low on the list, because yes, it was a clever twist that got me, (with the exception of some obvious plot holes) but I really didn’t think the movie needed the twist.
It was scarier having some random psychopath off people than a girl with a split personality disorder. Great twist, but unnecessary.
9. Halloween 2
This is probably the only movie on the list that did not have the twist near the end of the film. In this surprisingly well done sequel, viewers are revealed that their heroine, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was adopted when she was little and is really the sister of the ruthless psycho path, Michael Myers.
The same man who has been so intent of killing in most of the films. This is a huge twist, because it surprised us horror geeks like the whole “Darth Vader being Luke Skywalker’s father” twist surprised everyone else.
10. Campfire Tales
I never thought I would be shocked at the ending of a straight to DVD horror anthology film, but with this one, I was. The idea may now be done to death because of inferior flicks like Dead End and Soul Survivors, but Campfire Tales was the only film with this sort of ending, that left me gaping.
In the film, we are watching four friends gathered around a fire telling campfire tales after getting into a car accident. It turns out at the end of the movie, the car accident was actually quite fatal, all of the friends are dead, the people in the ghost stories were really people involved with the car accident, and the whole fire gathering was a manifestation of one of the dying victims in a comatose state. Trippy, eh?
