Warning! Spoilers for every film listed.
More so than many other genres, horror movies are particularly reliant on their endings to make an impression, with the best of them able to save otherwise mediocre films. Finding a good way to tie off a narrative is especially important for horror movies, which thrive off the gradual buildup of terror that comes to a climax over time. Horror movie endings can be tragic, or, in rare instances, happy, but they’re generally better the more shocking they are.
With that in mind, the famous twist endings of M. Night Shyamalan present some great contenders for horror movie endings that save their respective films. In other cases, a heightened sense of focus that comes with a finale can dial up the excitement of a scary movie without necessarily needing a complex narrative surprise. However they may accomplish it, many horror movies are quite reliant on their final moments to leave a lasting impression, being otherwise unassuming films.
10 The Visit
One of M. Night’s better twists
The Visit was seen by many as something of a return to form by M. Night Shymalan, who, up until the film’s 2015 release, had largely allowed his horror roots to fall by the wayside. The movie follows two young siblings, Becca and Tyler, who arrange to visit their grandparents for a week away from home. Becca and Tyler aren’t very familiar with their estranged relatives, and they’re soon subjected to some terrifying behavior by their old hosts.
As the chilling events of the kids’ fateful stay unfold, they call their mother in a panic, only to learn that the odd couple the two had been staying with aren’t their grandparents at all. What follows is a mad bid for survival as the two imposters realize their facade is up, torturing their young captives with impunity. While The Visit ultimately has a happy ending, its disturbing twist is one of Shyamalan’s best.
9 Sleepaway Camp
A standard slasher made legendary by its ending
As far as slasher premises go, Sleepaway Camp isn’t an especially creative one. A lonely, misunderstood girl at a summer camp struggles to fit in with her peers, only to become surrounded by a series of grisly murders perpetrated by an unknown killer stalking the campgrounds. It might be surprising to learn Sleepaway Camp is considered such an iconic horror movie from that logline alone, but what truly propels the film into legendary status is its shocking twist ending.
Earlier, it is mentioned that the troubled Angela’s little brother died in a tragic boating accident, one Angela herself only barely managed to survive. The astonishing conclusion of the film reveals that not only was Angela the camp’s feral murderer, but she was actually her brother, Peter, living as his sister following the tragedy, with the real Angela being the one who died. The disturbing final shot of Angela/Peter standing stark naked, screeching with a vacant expression, is one of the most iconic images in slasher movie history, making up for the so-so premise up until that point.
8 The Mist
A creature feature that ends on a dour note
As far as Stephen King movie adaptations go, The Mist is one of the better films to take one of the author’s most creative premises and run away with it. Set in a small town, The Mist describes a group of strangers’ desperate bid to survive hold up in a grocery store after a mysterious fog containing otherworldly monsters descends upon their town, killing all who get lost in it. What might’ve been a by-the-numbers creature feature is brought to new heights by its utter downer of an ending, which sets a precedent for one of the bleakest in horror movie history.
The ending of The Mist actually changes the source material, making for a more fascinating, but far more dour note to cap the film off on. When his vehicle runs out of gas after trying to mount an escape through the mist, protagonist David makes the decision to mercy kill his fellow survivors, including his son, rather than allow them to be ravaged by the ferocious monsters of the mist. Only moments later, David is bailed out by the military, who have mounted a response against the creatures, meaning that his hasty actions were in vain.
7 Split
Carried by James McAvoy’s unleashed acting skill
Another M. Night Shyamalan movie to be completely carried by its ending, Split presents an odd case for a horror movie. The film posits James McAvoy as a dissociative identity disorder system who kidnaps three teen girls, imprisoning them in a secretive underground facility. The girls have to navigate the various alters of McAvoy’s character, being especially wary of the “The Beast”, a savage secret personality with an appetite for human blood. Split is an ok horror thriller that becomes far more noteworthy for its bombastic ending.
In the film’s final moments, it’s revealed that Split is a stealth sequel to Shyamalan’s earlier film Unbreakable, in which a criminal with a rare condition rendering his physical body fragile, Mr. Glass, comes into contact with David Dunn, a man with latent super strength. Dunn reappears in a cameo at the end of Split, connecting the two films in a shared universe that would be further explored in the sequel, Glass. Even if this idea of a Shyamalan superhero universe didn’t pan out great, Split’s unforgettable final reveal still colors it favorably in memory.
6 Death Proof
Doesn’t fire on all cylinders until later
Released as part of the double feature Grindhouse alongside Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, Death Proof is Tarantino’s take on a slasher movie. Rather than brandish a knife, the film’s horror villain Stuntman Mike, played by Kurt Russell, uses a “death proof” stunt car as his weapon of choice, running down hapless victims in a spree of vehicular manslaughter. As exciting as the premise sounds, the majority of the film sadly suffers from pacing issues, with Stuntman Mike’s victims being few and far between.
It’s only in the last third of the film that things truly come online with an actual exciting car chase, as Stuntman Mike relentlessly pursues his latest batch of targets. The satisfying final sequence ends with Mike’s would-be victims turning the tables on him, chasing him down with their own car only to pull him from the wreckage for further punishment. It’s quite the supervision of expectations to see a slasher movie villain suddenly get his comeuppance, but the welcome change of pace for the genre is par for the course for Tarantino’s revenge exploitation sensibilities.
5 Identity
Typical horror tropes saved by a dramatic ending
Riding the fine line between mystery thriller and straight-up horror, Identity is nothing impressive before the big reveal of its twist ending. Taking inspiration from Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit And Then There Were None, the movie establishes a similar premise, following ten strangers sharing an isolated hotel in remote rural Nevada. Before long, they begin being picked off one-by-one, prompting a hasty investigation for the culprit before there’s nobody left alive.
Identity pulls a similar trick to Split, relying on a villain with dissociative identity disorder to sow confusion in the cast. Along the way, the film falls prey to plenty of tropes in both horror movies and murder mysteries that don’t do it any favors, with especially foolish decisions being made by many of the characters. However, the eventual reveal that the murderer was actually the most unsuspecting victim, the young boy Timmy, is a fantastic sucker punch that more than makes up for Identity‘s previous shortcomings.
4 Scanners
Goes all-out in a sudden burst of energy at the end
One of the works of David Cronenberg, famous for his body horror scenes, Scanners is a decidedly uneven viewing experience. The film centers around the prospect of the titular “Scanners”, people with rare psychic abilities. When a weapons manufacturer begins reaching out to various Scanners for their own nefarious purposes, a single psychic wages war against them. This prompts the company, ConSec, to release their own on-retainer Scanner as a response, leading to a paralyzing war for supremacy.
While Scanners‘ head-explosion scenes are still well-remembered, the narrative itself takes a long time to get going, with a gradual, plodding pace that takes a long time for the war between ConSec and the rebellious Revok to come to fruition. The film suddenly perks up towards the ending, however, in which it’s revealed that Revok and the protagonist, Cameron, are estranged brothers, made into the most powerful Scanners ever thanks to the tampering of their father. The two engage in a deadly telepathic duel, saving the movie’s methodical pace with a brilliantly spectacular finale.
3 The Vanishing
Relies on its ending to be effective
Sometimes, horror movies aren’t so much made up for by their ending as much as they rely on their final moments to properly convey their themes and terror. The Vanishing is a prime example of this, a Dutch psychological thriller with a downer ending indicative of its entire theme of despair. The movie centers around a young couple, Rex and Saskia, traveling to France on a vacation. Their holiday soon turns into a nightmare for Rex when Saskia suddenly vanishes out of his sight, leading him to fall into the depths of despair in search of answers.
Early on, The Vanishing makes no mystery out of the culprit behind Saskia’s disappearance, explaining the motives of the psychopathic Raymond in-depth. In the film’s last moments, Raymond contacts Rex and offers to reveal the truth, leading to Rex’s search for answers leaving him buried alive, just like his lover. This brutally depressing conclusion is paramount to the entire film’s experience, and The Vanishing wouldn’t be nearly as impactful without it.
2 Life
Takes its horror to another level as its runtime depletes
For the most part, 2017’s Life stands as a decent combination of a rip-off of Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing. The science fiction horror feature revolves around the discovery of an alien form of life that is delivered to the International Space Station by an unmanned probe, nicknamed “Calvin” by a naming contest back on Earth. While Calvin begins life as a simple biological oddity, it soon evolves and balloons out of control, brutalizing the workforce of the claustrophobic space station.
Life borrows very heavily from its obvious inspirations, presenting unoriginal ideas like alien infections and creatures hiding in the vents of a spaceship. That being said, the final gambit by the survivors of Calvin’s wrath makes for a deliciously horrifying predicament. The astronauts attempt to trap Calvin in one escape pod and launch him into space while returning to Earth in the other, only for the situation to be switched, with the lone, screaming Miranda sent hurtling into oblivion while Calvin ends up on Earth, ready to continue his rampage.
1 The Human Race
Goes from odd to spectacular at the last minute
A seldom-seen gem of the 2010s, The Human Race is an odd film with an utterly unpredictable ending that makes up for its many weaknesses. The movie follows a group of eighty strangers who suddenly wake up in a strange institutional realm, told by a disembodied voice that they must race one another to the death, instantly dying if they step on the grass or are lapped twice by another person. Sure enough, disobeying these magical rules causes the abductees’ heads to explode, prompting a desperate bid to be the last one standing.
In the end, the sole survivor of the battle royale is the one-legged Eddie, who survives a desperate attempt by another racer to push him into the grass by balancing on his crutches. Winning the race, Eddie is congratulated, only to be told he’ll be moving forward into another contest, this time against a flying alien creature. Cracking his neck, Eddie steps into the ring, making for an unbelievably cool ending to an otherwise awkward and unfocused science fiction survival horror movie.
