The worst horror movie twists

• Funny Games (1997)
• High Tension (2003)
• The Mist (2007)
• The Open House (2018)
• The Forgotten (2004)
• The Number 23 (2007)
• “Metalhead” – Black Mirror (2017)
• The Last Exorcism (2010)
• The Last House on the Left (2009)
• Secret Window (2004)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)
• The Happening (2008)
• The Devil Inside (2012)

Some of the best twists in movie history come from the horror genre: Jack Torrance appearing in the photo at the end of The Shining, Adelaide’s sly smile at the end of Us, or when you realize that the dude in that hair piece was Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.

Then again, some of the worst twists come from horror films, as well. The following horror flicks prove that sometimes it’s best to keep things simple.

Funny Games (1997)

Twist: Paul uses a remote control to “rewind” the film, preventing Anna from killing Peter.

The ending of Michael Haneke’s psychological thriller about a pair of psychotic young men named Peter and Paul who terrorize a family can either be seen as a clever critique of audiences’ obsession with violence, or as a big “screw you” to the viewer. As David Rooney of Variety wrote, “the film outstays its welcome and is more than a little too knowing in its manipulation of standard audience expectations for the genre.”

Knowing (2009)

Twist: The coded messages warning of Earth’s destruction are sent by aliens (or possibly angels).

Roger Ebert was one of the few critics who defended this widely panned film. He speculated that so many critics disliked the ending “because it is ‘religious’ or ‘upholds Intelligent Design,’ or is literally a deus ex machina.” Or it could just be that it was bad, turning what began as an interesting supernatural horror into a silly spiritual film.

High Tension (2003)

Twist: Marie was the killer all along.

After first viewing, the big twist at the end of High Tension, in which it’s revealed that Marie was the killer all along, may seem adequately creepy, but as ScreenRant’s Michael Kennedy points out, it doesn’t hold up, because “if the male killer exists only in Marie’s mind, it makes absolutely no sense that the audience would be shown a scene in which he appears to operate entirely independently of where Marie is at the time.”

The Mist (2007)

Twist: David was just moments away from being rescued after killing his son and two other survivors.

It’s not that it’s a bad twist in terms of storytelling—in fact it’s incredibly effective—but the ending of this Frank Darabont film is so gut-wrenching that it leaves audiences with a sick feeling in their stomach long after it’s over. Based on a Stephen King novella, the film actually changed the ending of the original story to make it even darker, which King agreed to. In the book, David and the survivors of the grocery store are driving south through New England when they hear a voice over the radio, giving them hope that they will be saved.

Orphan (2009)

Twist: 9-year-old Esther is in fact a 33-year-old Estonian woman named Leena Klammer.

Despite a modest box-office return, Orphan received mixed reviews from critics, with some praising the ending as a “pretty nifty twist” and others calling it a “laughable late revelation.” Either way, you have to give it credit for putting a new spin on the enfant terrible trope.

Halloween (2018)

Twist: Dr. Sartain orchestrated Michael Myers’ release from prison so that he could study him “in the wild.”

The eleventh instalment in the Halloween series came exactly four decades after the original and is far and away the best sequel, thanks to David Gordon Green’s sure-handed direction and a screenplay that truly understands what made the 1978 slasher so scary in the first place. But one thing that didn’t quite gel with the rest of the film was the big reveal that Michael’s psychiatrist, Dr. Sartain, orchestrated his escape because he’d become obsessed with the killer. With everything we know about the character, and how he’s pure evil, it just wouldn’t make sense to release him back into the wild.

Jigsaw (2017)

Twist: Logan is the new Jigsaw killer, and the events of the film take place 10 years apart.

The Hollywood Reporter called Jigsaw’s “unfathomable” and “gob-smackingly illogical” twist ending an “existential experience.” Sure, in that it makes you question why you wasted precious hours of your life watching such a crappy film, when you could have just re-watched the original.

The Open House (2018)

Twist: Logan escapes the house, only to be killed by the intruder.

The biggest twist in The Open House is that there really are no twists. It’s just an hour and a half of slow-building tension that fizzles out with the main character’s death, leaving you to wonder, “What was the point of all that?” The answer: there was no point.

The Forgotten (2004)

Twist: Telly’s child was abducted by aliens as part of an experiment to test whether or not the bond between mother and son could be broken.

What starts off as a decent psychological thriller about a woman grieving the loss of her son suddenly turns into a bizarre alien abduction film. Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post called it a mix between Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The X-Files, “and one not nearly as smart as either.”

The Number 23 (2007)

Twist: Finkle is Einhorn? No, Walter Sparrow is Topsy Kretts.

Jim Carrey took a dark turn with this psychological horror film about an animal control officer (not to be confused with pet detective) named Walter Sparrow who becomes obsessed with the number 23 after reading a self-published book, written by a mysterious author named Topsy Kretts, that’s eerily similar to his own life. You can guess the plot twist from that description alone.

Twist: Evan travels back in time to when he was in his mother’s womb and uses the umbilical cord to strangle himself.

In the theatrical release of The Butterfly Effect, in the end, Evan and Kayleigh are seen bumping into each other on the street but going their separate ways. However, the director’s cut contained a much darker ending, in which Evan goes all the way back in time to the start of his life and ends it before it can even begin. Talk about a bleak ending. No wonder it was changed.

Old (2021)

Twist: The people on the beach are unwitting participants in a clinical trial for new medical drugs.

The best thing to come out of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film was the “beach that makes you old” meme. Seriously, “it was all one big experiment” is almost as tired a cliché as “it was all a dream.”

“Metalhead” – Black Mirror (2017)

Twist: Bella risked her life for a teddy bear.

It’s technically a TV series, but then again all Black Mirror episodes are practically movies (or in this case, a short film of 41 minutes). Drawing on such classic horror films as Duel, Jaws, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Shining, “Metalhead” creates a tense and bleak atmosphere, but the final twist “is perhaps a little too cute,” according to David Sims of The Atlantic.

The Last Exorcism (2010)

Twist: There is in fact a demon inside Nell, but the rest is unclear.

Many audience members were left scratching their heads at the end of this found-footage horror film about an evangelical minister who agrees to let a documentary crew film his last exorcism. Not all movies have to wrap things up with a neat little bow, but they shouldn’t leave you saying, “Wait, what just happened?” For example, what exactly were Pastor Manley and his followers doing, why did Cotton confront the demon baby, and what was Caleb’s role in all of it?

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Twist: Unlike the protagonist in the original, Mari lives.

As brutal as it was, the violent revenge plot of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) worked because Mari Collingwood was killed, prompting her parents to go after her attackers. But in the 2009 remake, the writers allow Mari to survive. It’s a happier ending, of course, but one that doesn’t have the same impact as the original film.

Secret Window (2004)

Twist: John Shooter is a figment of Mort Rainey’s imagination.

With some exceptions, there’s nothing less interesting than a twist where it turns out that a character never even existed. In Secret Window, the psychotic stalker who had been tormenting Mort Rainey for plagiarizing his work turns out to be a product of Rainey’s dissociative identity disorder. Up until the big reveal, Secret Window is a solid, if unexceptional, Stephen King adaptation, but all the tension evaporates when you find out that it’s all in Rainey’s head.

Psycho (1998)

Twist: Norman has a split personality and dresses up as his mother to kill women.

Gus Van Sant’s 1998 take on the Alfred Hitchcock classic is proof that a good plot twist can easily turn bad if not handled properly. In the 1960 film, the big reveal that Norman had been keeping his mother’s mummified body in the house and wearing her clothes sent chills down audiences’ spines. In the 1998 version, it just came across as cheesy and laughable. Of course, it also didn’t help that audiences could see it coming from a mile away.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Twist: After Vilmer dies, a man named Rothman explains to Jenny that the events of the film, as well as other major events around the world, were orchestrated by an Illuminati-like group to induce a “spiritual experience.”

To say that the ending of the fourth (and worst) instalment of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre comes out of left field would be an understatement. It comes from a different planet altogether, turning an already bad movie into a ridiculous one. But hey, at least you get to see Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger before they were household names.

The Happening (2008)

Twist: Plants are causing people to kill themselves around the country.

Stay away from the ferns! The Happening is such a disaster from beginning to end that no amount of twists and turns could save it, least of all the realization that it was the plants all along that had been causing people to take their own life. With movies such as The Sixth Sense and The Village, M. Night Shyamalan became synonymous with twist endings, but the only thing audiences felt when the credits rolled on this dud was relief.

The Devil Inside (2012)

Rotten Tomatoes said that The Devil Inside has “one of the worst endings in recent memory,” and we’d have to agree. The low-budget horror film ends abruptly, and a title card urges viewers to seek more information about the ongoing investigation of the Rossi family online. Yeah, that’s just what audiences want at the end of a film: homework.