We didn't see it coming and we're betting you didn't either.
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Here are our picks for the Top 10 Plot Twists in Horror Movies.
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For this list, we're looking at the horror movie plot twists
that left our jaws on the floor and kept us coming back to the movies
to discover new ways that the twists were cleverly foreshadowed.
As you may have already figured out this video is filled with spoilers
so proceed at your own risk.
In this 1970s Canadian slasher flick
the residents of a sorority house are plagued by a string of disturbing phone calls.
But things just get worse when several of the residents are found dead
and the killer is behind the obscene calls.
In the film's most iconic scene, a telephone company employee frantically traces
the location of the mysterious caller and eventually discovers
that the calls are coming from inside the sorority house!
It's a terrifying reveal, one that kicks the tension in the film into overdrive
with the revelation that protagonist Jess is far from safe
despite being indoors and under police watch.
In this horror/thriller from "Logan" director James Mangold
a group of strangers find themselves stranded in a secluded motel
and stalked by a mysterious killer.
It's revealed late in the film that almost everything we've been seeing
has been taking place inside the mind of a convicted serial killer.
The "victims" are actually the killer's multiple personalities
and they're being killed off as part of his treatment.
The "it was all a dream/hallucination" twist is honestly a little bit played out
but this version offers an admittedly fresh spin on the well-worn idea, to great effect.
Before it was remade with Nicolas Cage
this 1973 horror film was a darling of British horror cinema.
The film begins when a police detective arrives
at a small town on a secluded island after a local girl goes missing.
But it quickly becomes clear that something is terribly wrong
and that the villagers are part of a dangerous pagan cult.
The detective suspects the girl might have been taken as a human sacrifice, but it's worse.
The girl was never kidnapped and it was all a ploy
to lure him to the island to serve as the sacrifice himself.
The machete-wielding, goalie mask-wearing Jason Voorhees
is without a doubt one of the biggest slasher icons.
But as horror aficionados are fond of pointing out,
he wasn't the primary villain in the first film in the "Friday the 13th" series.
After a number of her fellow camp counsellors are brutally murdered
the film's protagonist Alice discovers that the killer is in fact Mrs. Voorhees,
the mother of a deformed boy who drowned
while the counsellors were... shall we say... distracted.
The revelation that the seemingly kindly old lady in a sweater is a crazed killer
doesn't do much to make Alice's day better.
This infamous horror flick arguably started a whole new subgenre.
While the sequels went on to more gruesome and elaborate gore
the first one keeps it fairly simple.
Two men find themselves chained in a bathroom
with a corpse between them and a hacksaw each.
The only way either of them can escape is to take that hacksaw to their own ankle.
After much bloodshed, it's revealed that Jigsaw
the mysterious killer who orchestrated the whole thing
has been posing as the corpse lying between his two unlucky victims.
Shocking, effective, and oh so twisted.
This spooky, atmospheric horror gem stars
a woman named Grace and her two children
who live in a secluded mansion following World War II.
Grace begins to suspect that her home is haunted.
Turns out she's right
After a series of terrifying encounters with what seem to be spirits
it's revealed that Grace and her children are the ghosts haunting the house
and the visions they've been seeing are the new residents.
It's a clever inversion of the classic haunted house scenario
that caught most cinemagoers completely by surprise.
This trend-setting slasher movie revitalized the genre for a new generation
by injecting a dose of self-aware meta-commentary to liven things up.
This mainly takes the form of the teenage characters
who recognize that the mysterious killer stalking them
is following the traditional rules of slasher films.
Namely, stuff like if you have sex, do drugs or say "I'll be right back",
you'll be the next one to die.
The characters of Billy and Stu turn out to be the killers themselves
making the horror movie awareness of the Ghostfaced-killer
suddenly make a whole lot of sense.
In this cult favorite slasher flick, yet another summer camp becomes
the site for murder and mayhem thanks to an unseen killer.
It sounds a lot like "Friday the 13th"
but the film's shocking twist gives the film its own unique character.
In the closing moments, the killer is revealed to be the quiet, introverted Angela.
And not only that, it's revealed that Angela is biologically male.
The shocking final shot, which shows a naked and maniacally grinning Angela
standing over their final victim is the film's enduring legacy.
The twist is so infamous that it started an entire meme
even if it turned a promising new director into "the twist ending guy".
The film tells the story of a young boy with the ability to see ghosts
which leads to terrifying encounters with the unquiet dead.
Things look to be getting better when he meets a child psychologist
determined to help the boy, to make amends for a previous failure.
In the end, it's revealed that Bruce Willis' Doctor Crowe is a ghost himself
having died after the film's opening scene.
For cinemagoers in 1999, it was one blown mind after another!
Before we reveal our shocking top pick, here are our honorable mentions.
Even before the shocking reveal at the film's climax
Alfred Hitchcock's horror opus already had audiences scared out of their minds.
But that ending just made things worse.
After watching numerous characters seemingly die
audiences were stunned to learn
that the killer was in fact Mrs Bates' soft-spoken son Norman
who had preserved his dead mother's body and taken on her identity.
Even decades after the film's release
the reveal at the end of this legendary film
still remains the most shocking twist ending in the history of horror cinema.
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