When it comes to horror movies and thrillers, fans typically expect a twist to happen that shocks the entire audience, flips the story around, and transforms a mediocre horror movie into something special. But there are also plenty of examples where failure is the only option, and the movie and its crew still push head-on with its plot until the credits mercifully roll. Not every movie can be The Sixth Sense with its masterful twist or Jacob’s Ladder with its psychological twist totally upending what the audience believes throughout its run time. There are some twists that just don’t work. Some have to be convoluted, confusing, controlled by aliens, and maybe even take place during the most tragic terrorist attack in American history.
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It’s hard to pin down the worst of horror’s twist endings, but not for the reasons you think. Many of these films are still a fun time despite botching the landing at the end. So when we say it was a tough list to put together, we’re not lying. We even love some of these movies despite the horrible twists. So, scroll down to take in our list of the worst horror movie twists and see if you agree with our choices. Some could be divisive, but you also might find yourself nodding in agreement over the choices.
1) High Tension
For most of its run time, High Tension — original name Switchblade Romance — is a quality slasher film out of France. It’s got the gore and splatter, a premise that seems to be simple and effective, with a killer attacking a family and kidnapping their daughter, Alex, while her lover, Marie, gives chase. They’re not reinventing the wheel when it comes to slasher films.
Then the twist happens and we learn the killer who has been ravaging through the movie, killing indiscriminately, is revealed to be the film’s hero, Marie. She murdered her friend Alex’s entire family, before chasing delusion by trying to rescue her friend from the killer, who ends up killing more people along the way. Worse yet, the big reveal replays all of the movie’s kills and shows that Marie was the perpetrator. She managed to use seemingly superhuman strength to behead Alex’s father with a bookcase, slaughter her family, and take her hostage. It ends with a nod to a better movie in Psycho, and there are still aspects to like here, but don’t expect the resolution to be satisfying.
2) The Devil Inside
The Devil Inside was one of many found footage films after the success of Paranormal Activity. It follows Isabella Rossi and filmmaker Michael Schaefer filming a documentary exploring exorcisms and her mother’s breakdown after committing a triple murder in 1989. This movie is filled to the brim with all the trademarks of found footage films, with the filmmakers discovering Maria was possessed, and has passed her possessions to her daughter, and one of the two priests performing the exorcism.
The demons are real, and Isabella is later rushed to the hospital after one of the priests kills himself. After an unsuccessful visit to the hospital ends with a nurse getting their throat slit, the characters end up fighting in a car and getting into an accident, killing both men and leaving Isabella’s end open. Then a URL appears on the screen and seems to lecture you about solving the issue on the screen, urging viewers to grab more information on the investigation. If you weren’t upset by this turn of events, you just stopped paying attention.
3) Secret Window
The Johnny Depp vehicle crafted from a Stephen King short story runs into trouble with its ending, but it’s not King’s fault for once. The movie changed the original short story ending from Four Past Midnight, producing a movie where the initial twist, revealing Depp’s Mort and John Turturro’s Shooter are split personalities, is undermined by its ending.
The movie maintains this reveal and cultivates tension until an encounter with his ex-wife at the cabin. Amy, played in the film by Maria Bello, arrives and runs into Mort after he’s fully taken over by Shooter. He stabs his wife in the leg and kills her and her lover Ted, burying them under his garden. You’d think there would be a knotted up ending, but Depp is still living there at the home months later, boiling corn and shunned by the locals. It’s less suspension of disbelief than the idea of a murderous split personality.
4) Dead Silence
Puppets are a longtime feature of horror, occupying a special spot alongside cursed toys and haywire machines as horror villains. And Dead Silence has a ton of them, so you’d think it would be great. It’s also sprouting from the mind of Saw creators, James Wan and Leigh Whannell, which at least gives a little confidence.
But the convoluted plot and its twist hamper things, mostly due to a need to take notes for all of the visitors. First, we find out that Mary Shaw was once a ventriloquist who was accused of murdering a young boy. She’s murdered herself by hanging and turned into a doll, but soon returns as a ghost who creates a perfect doll named Ella and possesses it to continue her revenge on the people who killed her.
5) Halloween: Resurrection
The return of Michael Myers after his return in Halloween: H20 immediately undermines that film right from the start. The 2002 release of Halloween: Resurrection ended up being the final chapter for the original Halloween series until Rob Zombie’s unrelated reboot in 2007, and the latest entries that ignore everything after the first Halloween.
The twist also comes right at the start of the movie, with Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode now committed to a sanitarium after the end of the prior film. Where things went south is how H20 had Curtis behead the serial murderer, only it wasn’t really him. Resurrection reveals that she actually beheaded a paramedic whom Myers had switched clothes with before she arrived.
Michael shows up at the sanitarium, chases Laurie to the roof, and then kills her after a struggle before leaving his knife. From there, the movie barely gets any better, but we do eventually get to see Busta Rhymes fight Michael with a broom before electrocuting him to close the movie. Michael survives, of course, but probably wishes he didn’t.
6) Us
I want to stress that Jordan Peele’s Us is a great movie and has a fun premise. The twist regarding Lupita Nyong’o’s Addy and her “tethered” doppelganger Red trading places years earlier is perfect. So once she’s on a trip with her family and Red leads the tethered above ground to murder their doubles, it is a lock.
If only the movie stopped at underground Doppelgangers who rise up and kill their doubles, it’d be perfect, and this entry would be unnecessary. But then we have to place a hat on a hat while entertaining that the government took the lead in creating these Doppelgangers as a form of control. Red, who is the real Adelaide, has been the one to organize and lead the doubles to the surface for murder. Cut out that government conspiracy stuff and it’s arguably a perfect movie.
7) Malignant
Another James Wan entry, but this one is far better than Dead Silence. But it does have a bonkers twist that raises eyebrows, and quickly cements the film as one of those at-home gems released during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The film follows a woman, Madison, who is seemingly targeted by a supernatural killer she sees in her nightmares and loses it in the process. It’s soon revealed that the murder victims are doctors who treated Madison over 20 years before, and surgically removed her parasitic twin from her body. They couldn’t remove everything, so some work is required, but it’s a good piece of work. The killer is revealed as Gabriel, a parasitic twin brother who grew out of Madison’s body and awakened after Madison suffered a head injury. The crazier reveal and surprise is that Madison is the killer we’ve seen the entire film, under the control of Gabriel, bending her body backwards. It’s worth your time to watch, but things just go off the rails with the medical reveal. That said, the fights in the police station and in the holding cell are badass. Watch for those instead of the ending that continues off the rails.
What do you think are the worst horror movie twists? Let us know in the comments!
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