What’s not to love about a good shock ending? When you think you’ve predicted the outcome, the twist hits you like the proverbial brick. Some endings stand out more than others, and they’ve gone down to be the best in the industry. Let’s cast our minds back to some of the greatest shock endings.
The Sixth Sense
In probably one of the greatest and most unexpected movie twists, very few saw the ending coming. Haley Joel Osment blew us away with his intelligent performance of a young boy who sees dead people. To further discover that Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) had been dead all along was a jaw-dropping, mind-blowing moment.
Psycho
Creepy motel owner Norman Bates’ (Anthony Perkins) unnerving persona kept us hooked until the very end. The murders and the constant jabbering about his mother further added to the eerie landscape. When we discovered that his mother was dead and he had a split personality, it was the climax of a century. That’s how you make an ending.
Fight Club
The collaboration between Brad Pitt and Edward Norton made everything about the movie memorable, but did we see the ending coming? That would be a negative. Finding out that Tyler Durden was the unnamed narrator’s alter ego was astonishing.
Seven
As two detectives worked their way through a complex spree of seven sin-related murders, little did they know that the remaining sin, wrath, had been saved for one of them. Cue a gruesome package and a perfectly devised murder.
The Others
There was so much empathy to be had for Nicole Kidman’s Grace and her two children as they were harangued in their mansion by ghostly beings. What we didn’t expect was for the trio to be the said ghosts that were trapped in some sort of horrid limbo.
Shutter Island
Scorsese’s mind-bending thriller was a long, slow burn, so it’s to be commended if you made it to the end. If you did, it was worth the wait. In a twist of reality, Teddy Daniels turned out to be Andrew Laeddis, whose murderous actions had sent him insane.
Donnie Darko
When Donnie sacrifices himself to prevent some sort of time loop catastrophe, it leaves us with a great twist, if not an utterly confusing one. It’s been 23 years, and we’re still trying to understand it.
Primal Fear
Edward Norton had us all tricked as the stuttering underdog, Aaron Stampler. The revealing of a split personality and subsequent justification of his violent actions gave us both our twist and our money’s worth. The double twist uncovering his sociopathic manipulation was groundbreaking.
The Wicker Man
Police officer Neil Howie (Nicolas Cage) spends an entire movie searching for a missing young girl from a strange pagan community. When he discovers he was the bait all along and ends up in a big boiling pot, we’re completely shocked.
The Empire Strikes Back
This fan-favorite installment of Star Wars was released over forty years ago yet remains the greatest twist ending of all time. George Lucas filmed another less downbeat ending, which was wholly unnecessary. Imagine finding out that Darth Vader was your Dad.
The Village
It was by no means M. Night Shyamalan’s finest hour, but the ending was hugely unexpected. When a village of Amish-like inhabitants defied anyone to venture beyond the woods, we anticipated bloodthirsty demons or twisted murderers. We didn’t expect them to live in a modern world and fear modern humans. It was weird and simple but highly effective.
Gone Girl
We applaud Amy (Rosamund Pike) for her unexpected and meticulous plan. She framed her husband for her staged murder, revealing the depths of her manipulation and deceit. Genius.
The Departed
Most of the cast had been killed, and we thought there might be hope for mob infiltrator Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon). In those final moments, he’s fully exposed as a rat. Martin Scorsese’s movie is based on the premise that everyone pays for their two-faced nature, so we should have seen it coming, but we didn’t.
Remember Me
They fooled us into thinking it was a dark, romantic movie about two young people falling in love amidst personal family dramas. When the final scene played out in the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, it was the least likely outcome of any. Fans and critics were divided, but the overriding message about embracing the present gave it a standout and evocative twist.
Planet of the Apes
When George Taylor (Charlton Heston) discovers he’s landed on a distant future planet containing highly intelligent apes, it sets a precedent for twist endings. The subsequent eight sequels are a testament to the movie’s success and shocking ending.
The Ring
In this disturbing remake of a Japanese classic, viewers of a videotape have just seven days to make someone else watch the video before the terrifying Samara comes for them. Just as Rachel (Naomi Watts) thinks she’s spared, her resounding silence leaves us with the bleak understanding that Samara just can’t be killed.
Saw
Each of the franchise’s movies offers a surprise twist, but none gives us the shock factor of the original Saw. Who knew the bicycle-cycling mastermind behind it all was lying on the floor? That moment when we saw his limbs moving was utterly freakish. We applaud his patience.
The Shawshank Redemption
Just when we’d prepared for a bitter ending, we discovered Andy Dufresne’s (Tim Robbins) longstanding and elaborate escape plan that set him on his way to freedom. A happy twist is a rarity, so we fully embraced it.
