10 Amazing Horror Movie Twists That Changed the Entire Film

Whether it’s a ghost story, an alien invasion, or an old-fashioned slasher, there are certain tropes in horror movies that audiences have come to expect. Of course, every once in a while, there’s a film that changes the formula. These groundbreaking horror movies surprise viewers with an amazing plot twist, one that’s often powerful enough to totally transform the entire movie.

A surprising plot twist, whether in the middle or at the end, can be good enough to impact how viewers watch the film. Going back through the story from the beginning and looking at the events through the lens of the twist provides a new understanding of the movie as a whole.

10 No One Is Who They Seem in the Spooky Ghost Movie the Uninvited (2009)

Director: Charles Guard, Thomas Guard

• Metascore: 43
• IMDb: 6.3/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 32%

For the most part, The Uninvited has largely gone under the radar when it comes to paranormal horror movies. It’s about a girl named Anna Ivers (Emily Browning) who is released from a psychiatric institution after 10 months. Anna has horrific nightmares about the fire that claimed the life of her mother. Along with her sister Alex (Arielle Kebbel), the girls become convinced that the live-in nanny, Rachel (Elizabeth Banks), was responsible for the entire accident.

The Uninvited is worth watching not only for its eerie, Gothic atmosphere and solid performance by lead Emily Browning as Anna, but also for its fantastic story, which concludes with a surprising twist. In the end, viewers discover that Anna has symptoms of schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. She imagined that she was seeing her sister Alex the entire movie, likely a result of the horrific explosion that killed her whole family.

9 The Military Saves the Day After All in the Mist (2007)

Director: Frank Darabont

• Metascore: 58
• IMDb: 7.1/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 73%

A fallen tree isn’t the worst thing David Drayton (Thomas Jane) has to deal with after a cataclysmic storm hits his small town in The Mist. The residual mist left in the storm’s wake is crawling with predatory creatures from another dimension. David and his eight-year-old son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), are holed up inside the local grocery store with many others when the mist starts spreading. As a father, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to ensure their survival.

The Mist features one of the most heartbreaking endings in any horror movie. In the end, David, feeling hopeless and uncertain about the future, uses a gun to mercifully kill those who have tagged along with him, including his own son. Seconds later, a military tank drives through the mist and the soldiers kill the creatures. David only needed to wait a little longer for them to be rescued. Because of this ending, every moment David spends with Billy throughout The Mist seems profoundly sad in retrospect.

8 The Murderer Is Attached to the Lead Protagonist’s Body in Malignant

Director: James Wan

• Metascore: 51
• IMDb: 6.2/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 76%

Malignant opens inside the Simion Research Hospital where a team of doctors is trying to control a violent patient named Gabriel. Gabriel can project his thoughts and also has the power to control electricity. Cut to twenty-seven years later, and a pregnant woman named Madison (Annabelle Wallis) is having a difficult time leaving her abusive husband, Derek (Jake Abel). Matters only get worse when Madison has terrifying nightmares about violent murders.

James Wan movies never play it safe, and this definitely holds true in 2021’s Malignant. The horror movie offered one of the biggest surprises of the year. It is revealed in the middle that Gabriel is a parasitic tumorous twin who has taken over Madison’s body to commit murder. All the visions that Madison sees throughout the movie are real actions caused by Gabriel. Once this twist occurs, the movie is a wild, action-packed ride that doesn’t relent until the end.

7 Viewers Are Left Seeing Double at the End of Us

Director: Jordan Peele

• Metascore: 81
• IMDb: 6.8/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

Us is the sophomore effort by Academy Award-winning writer Jordan Peele. In the movie, a woman named Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) travels to a vacation home in Santa Cruz with her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), and their two children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). It’s all fun in the sun at first until a family of lookalikes wearing red show up in their driveway holding weapons.

Are viewers seeing Red or are they seeing Adelaide at the end of Us? That question is purposefully left unanswered by writer/director Jordan Peele. Audiences learn that Red may have been Adelaide all along since the doppelgänger took her place inside a fun house when she was a kid. From that point forward, viewers rethink everything they thought they knew about Adelaide earlier in the movie. In the end, it’s unclear whether Adelaide has bested Red or vice versa.

6 Esther Is Actually an Adult in Orphan

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

• Metascore: 42
• IMDb: 7.0/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 59%

Orphan has dark ghostly overtones and a seemingly creepy child in the lead role. Viewers follow the plight of a couple named Kate (Vera Farmiga) and John (Peter Sarsgaard), who desperately want to adopt a child after they lose their third to a stillbirth. They arrive at St. Mariana’s Home for Girls and meet a quiet, articulate girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman). Unfortunately, Esther isn’t who she seems to be.

Many horror fans think of the twist in Orphan when they think of the movie. It turns out that the adopted little girl from Russia, Esther, isn’t a little girl at all. She’s a sociopathic adult who suffers from a rare condition called hypopituitarism, which affects her hormones and makes her look like a child. Her disorder wouldn’t be creepy in itself, but Esther also dresses like an old Victorian ghost and is a sociopathic murderer. Plus, she tries to seduce her own adoptive “father.” Once the audience learns that Esther is an adult, it’s hard to feel any ounce of sympathy for her earlier in the movie.

5 Those Aren’t Actually the Grandparents in The Visit

Director: M. Night Shaymalan

• Metascore: 55
• IMDb: 6.3/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 68%

Some people only visit their grandparents a handful of times a year. For that reason, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they wouldn’t recognize them. That’s exactly what happens in the 2015 horror thriller, The Visit. Becca (Olivia DeJonge) and Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) plan on spending five days with their grandparents after having never met them before. After witnessing some truly bizarre behavior, the siblings learn that Pop Pop and Nana aren’t exactly who they seem to be.

M. Night Shyamalan is the king of horror movie plot twists. Some of his surprise endings are lackluster, while others are iconic, like the one in The Sixth Sense. However, viewers looking for a more modern title in the director’s repertoire can check out The Visit. The movie is regarded as one of his better films, and the twist ending is actually effective. Pop Pop and Nana are escaped patients from a metal health facility who have killed Becca and Tyler’s real grandparents. Once this truth is revealed, viewers will rewatch the movie and see the weird “grandparents’ in an entirely different light.

4 Barbarian Offers a Big Surprise in the Dark Depths of the Basement

Director: Zach Cregger

• Metascore: 78
• IMDb: 7.0/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Director Zach Cregger takes a page out of Stanley Kubrick’s book by structuring Barbarian into two distinct acts. The first part follows an awkward situation between Keith (Bill Skarsgård) and Tess (Georgina Campbell) who booked the same Airbnb. It’s a meet-cute for a while when they bond over music and wine, but it quickly escalates into a nightmare when Keith gets his head bashed into the wall when they explore the basement.

The second act of Barbarian is when the big twist is revealed. The Airbnb’s homeowner, a self-centered actor named AJ Gilbride (Justin Long), returns with plans to sell the property to pay his legal costs. At this point, viewers learn that the house was previously owned by a sadistic abuser who kept a woman he abducted in the basement. She’s still there all these years later, and due to living in darkness, has become feral and barbaric. The reveal in Barbarian evokes even more concern for Keith and Tess in part one of the movie.

3 Simón and Tomás Are Both Dead in The Orphanage

Director: J.A. Bayona

• Metascore: 74
• IMDb: 7.4/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Laura (Belén Rueda) is excited to revisit the Spanish orphanage where she grew up in the movie The Orphanage. However, her joy over revisiting her childhood quickly turns into a nightmare when her son, Simón (Roger Príncep), goes missing inside the walls. His disappearance comes shortly after he claimed to have made friends with a boy named Tomás (Oscar Casas) who wears a creepy sack mask. It’s been six months, and Laura is still inside the orphanage, contacting the spirits that haunt it in the hopes of reuniting with her son.

Laura plays games with the ghost children throughout The Orphanage, and it’s during one of these games that she learns the truth about Simón. Her son was not actually missing inside the orphanage, but rather, fell from the building’s scaffolding and broke his neck. He is discovered by Laura wearing Tomás’ sack mask at the bottom of the stairs. When the truth is revealed, viewers will rethink everything they learned thus far about Laura’s mental state and Simón’s “imaginary friend.” Simón’s sudden death seems to have affected Laura’s mental state.

2 Jigsaw Has Been in the Game the Whole Time in Saw

Director: James Wan

• Metascore: 46
• IMDb: 7.6/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

There are now 10 movies in the Saw franchise, with an eleventh entry already announced for 2025. It all goes back to the first movie, which follows a series of crimes perpetrated by the Jigsaw killer. Two men named Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell) are locked in a disgusting bathroom with their ankles chained to pipes. There’s a dead body on the ground, and in order to escape, they have to follow the clues set before them.

When Saw first premiered in theaters, viewers’ jaws were on the floor when a blood-covered John Kramer stood up in the middle of the bathroom. The pulse-racing score started playing as viewers discovered that the supposedly dead body was actually alive the entire time and that he was, in fact, the killer behind the jigsaw crimes. He gets up slowly so that the moment really feels like it has gravity. Saw is one of the biggest movies defined by its ending because all the pieces beforehand add up to the conclusion.

1 Sleepaway Camp (1983) Is a Slasher Classic With a Gender Swap

Director: Robert Hiltzik

• Metascore: 58
• IMDb: 6.2/10
• Rotten Tomatoes: 81%

It’s been eight years since the boating accident that claimed the lives of her family. Angela (Felissa Rose) now lives with her aunt and cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) and is trying to move on from the tragedy by attending summer camp at Camp Arawak. Unfortunately, death seems to follow her, because her fellow campers start getting taken out by a killer one by one.

Sleepaway Camp has a surprising ending that seems to come out of nowhere. The main character, Angela, has actually been a boy dressed as a girl the entire time. This moment isn’t played for laughs or shock, but rather, is meant to evoke sympathy from viewers. Angela, whose real name is Peter Baker, was forced to dress like a girl by her aunt after she was orphaned. Because of years of neglect and abuse, she has turned into a ruthless killer. Sleepaway Camp‘s themes of gender identity have largely been debated.