From jump scares to post-credit teasers, movie fake-outs are everywhere. However,
the most epic endings lull you into a false sense of security
right before the big finale. From classic horror films to twisty crime tales,
these are the most epic endings that no one saw coming. Prepare for spoilers.
Based on the story by Stephen King, The Mist has an ending so horrific that it's become one
of the most notorious horror climaxes of all time. King's original tale ended in a vague fashion: the
survivors of the story drive away with the hope of being rescued, but death is still a possibility.
“We gave it a good shot. Nobody can say we didn’t.”
Frank Darabont's cinematic adaptation, however, goes even darker. The car runs out of gas,
and the five survivors agree that they’d rather not become a monster’s afternoon snack.
Because there are only four bullets left, the main character shoots everyone — including
his young son — and is left despairing, traumatized, and ready to be devoured.
It's an incredibly somber ending ... and then he watches the military roll into town,
slaughter every creature in sight, and rescue all the people they find on the way. If he
could've waited just five more minutes, his friends and son would still be alive.
It's sick, completely unexpected, and an utterly brilliant fake-out.
Joe Wright's vastly underrated period drama, Atonement, is one of the most
heart-wrenching portraits of class division and wartime trauma ever committed to film.
For most of the movie, we follow the miserable aftermath of upper-class Cecilia and her
working-class lover Robbie having their romance interrupted by Cecilia's little sister Briony.
She accuses him of a crime he didn't commit and Robbie is sent off to war, but thankfully there's
a happy ending. He finally reunites with Cecilia, and Briony agrees to confess about her lie
and have the legal record changed. So far, everything seems pretty cheery.
“I’m sorry, could we stop for a moment?”
Except that the ending is a big stinking lie. We see that the satisfying climax
we've just watched was fabricated by an elderly Briony, who is now a famous writer
hoping to rewrite history and atone for her lies. In reality, Robbie died in Dunkirk,
and Cecilia died two months later in a tube station bombing. And now we're all crying.
Hot Fuzz pays loving tribute to Hollywood action movie tropes,
so we probably should've seen this fake ending coming.
Sargeant. Nicholas Angel uncovers the truth about the Neighborhood Watch Association: the town
elders of Sandford are killing anyone who might ruin their chances of winning Village of the Year.
“The greater good.”
“SHUT IT!”
With a little help from a violent swan, he brings the operation leader into custody and everything
seems to be tidily wrapped up. While we're back at the station for a cup of tea, though,
the last remaining villain bursts in and shoots poor Danny. But then, in the ensuing struggle,
he steps on a sea mine and blows himself and the police station up.
For a moment there, we think that Danny died, but the absolute final ending shows Danny
surviving his gunshot wound and leading the Sandford cops with the help of his BFF, Angel.
The surprise endings of the endless Saw sequels have become a bit of a cliché.
But when the first one was released in 2004,
its fake ending genuinely caught people off guard and provided a terrifying climax for horror fans.
Initially, we're given an ending in which the hospital worker Zep is revealed to be
the serial killer all along. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but the reveal does prompt one
of the captives to saw off his own leg so he can crawl out of his prison. Meanwhile,
Adam, the other captive, kills Zep with a toilet tank lid. Good job, everyone! The end.
“Good. Can I go home now?”
The movie's actual ending shows Adam discovering that Zep was actually a victim.
Not only that, but the corpse that's been lying in the middle
of the room the entire movie stands up and reveals himself to be the real killer
before abandoning a stunned Adam in the room alone to die. Talk about a downbeat ending.
Funny Games depicts a family whose vacation comes to a screeching halt when two polite psychopaths,
Peter and Paul, enter their lives to slowly torture and kill them all ... which they do, very
successfully. And by the end of the film, only Ann the mom remains. In a natural and satisfying
conclusion, Ann grabs a shotgun and kills Peter with it, finally grabbing the upper hand.
“You shouldn’t have done that, Ann.”
Except, this is a movie where the villains have complete control over the narrative,
even breaking the fourth, winking at the camera, as if the audience is an accomplice to their
crimes. With that in mind, Funny Games' actual ending sees Paul using a TV remote to rewind the
scene itself, snatch the shotgun before Ann can get it, and go on to enjoy the ending he wants.
“That’s awesome, really. Really.”
The House of the Devil is a throwback film set against the Satanic Panic of the 1980s,
and the characters have plenty of reason to panic. The plot follows Samantha, a college student who
accepts a job as a babysitter only to discover that she's actually been hired to care for a
mysterious older woman. As she investigates the creepy house, Samantha finds herself placed in the
middle of a bizarre Satanic conception ritual, courtesy of the creepy family who hired her.
Samantha manages to escape and find herself a gun, like an absolute boss. But upon realizing
she may now be a vessel for something she'd rather not be, she chooses to shoot herself in the head.
In and of itself, that's a gut-punch of an ending. However,
in the actual final ending, Samantha survives the gunshot wound ... and so does her unborn,
most-definitely-satanic child. It's absolutely chilling.
In 1979's Alien, Ellen Ripley is having a really bad day at
work. She just saw her workmates get turned into a Happy Meal,
and even witnessed one co-worker give birth to a monster via a ruptured chest cavity. So yeah,
it's a relief when Ripley finally makes it out of the whole thing in one piece.
She escapes, climbs into a shuttle, and finally
lets her guard down. Unbunch those shoulders, folks. It's a happy ending!
[screaming]
But in a delightfully cruel twist, there's actually an alien stowaway on board Ripley's
shuttle. Now that Ripley is relaxed and alone, she's all the more vulnerable. Thankfully, Ripley
also happens to be a one-woman, alien-killing machine, and she manages to blast the toothy
life form safely out of the craft so she can kick back with her cat and live to see another day.
It'll take more than one measly alien and one fake ending to defeat Ellen Ripley.
Okay, so all the "Bohemian Rhapsody" headbanging aside, Wayne's World remains the highest grossing
movie based on a Saturday Night Live skit, and also helped to usher in an era of wonderfully
self-aware cinema. Following a narrative that pokes fun at how much of American media
is designed to sell things to people, Wayne's World provides a satisfying set of false endings.
“It’s like people only do things because they get paid. And that’s just really sad.”
First, there's a sad ending where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, with Wayne smiling
through a set of flames as his basement goes up in smoke. Next up is the Scooby Doo ending,
where Benjamin is revealed to be Old Man Withers from the haunted amusement park.
That seems like it might bring the movie to a close,
but then Wayne and Garth opt to finish with the "Mega Happy Ending," where everything is
stupendous for absolutely everyone, and it's air guitar solos and high fives all around.
In a baffling example of movie studios thinking that US audiences are too fragile, The Descent's
fake ending can only be found in the original cut of the movie, which was screened in the UK. It's
a real shame because the OG ending features one of the most brutal fake-outs in cinema history.
After watching her entire friend group get picked off by a set of
super ugly creatures, Sarah finally escapes the cave, makes her way outside,
and sees a hallucination of her recently deceased friend as the screen fades to black.
US audiences had the film finish here to save their delicate souls.
"I knew it. I knew this wasn’t right."
For UK viewers, however, the movie resumes with the harrowing truth: Sarah is still in the cave.
She was simply hallucinating the entire escape.
Worse still, the crawlers can be heard closing in on her as the screen cuts to black.
It's dark, it's brutal, and it's the only way to end the film.
The fake ending of The Usual Suspects is probably one of the most iconic in cinema history.
Back in a time when both director Bryan Singer and star Kevin Spacey were well respected people in
their industry, the film dropped such a bombshell that it was all anyone could talk about for years.
After a suspenseful narrative, Detective Kujan is sure that Dean Keaton is the
murderous crime lord Keyser Soze. Kujan even gets a testimony from Verbal Kint,
a surviving witness with cerebral palsy. There's a certain sense of finality to these scenes,
and that's exactly what makes the results all the more surprising.
“Oh. Gee. Thanks Dave. Bang-up job so far.”
We watch as Kujan slowly realizes that Verbal fabricated his entire deposition.
And that's when we see the man we thought was Verbal slowly losing his signature limp
and flexing his supposedly disabled hand, as the real Keyser Soze exits stage left
and in plain sight. Not a single person saw that ending coming at the time of release,
and we're still talking about that crazy plot twist to this day.
It's difficult to imagine the Snapchat generation quaking in their boots over a cursed VHS tape,
but in 2002, it was still pretty spooky.
Even now, though, The Ring's fake ending remains one of the scariest.
The film draws to a nice, wholesome conclusion with Rachel arranging a proper burial for
a VHS well-dwelling corpse. The burial appears to lift the curse from everyone,
but it turns out that the corpse is a bit of a tease.
“Why did you do that?”
Though Rachel has been spared, the curse still exists for everyone else who's watched the tape,
including Rachel's dopey ex-boyfriend who
watched it a week ago and is now about to die a horrible death.
Rachel races to save the poor guy, but by the time she gets to him, his face is nothing but
a deep fried mess. The real conclusion is where Rachel realizes that she needs to copy the tape
and pass it along to another unsuspecting fool in order for her to save her son. And even though
we're way past the era of VHS tapes, the ending of The Ring still makes us nervous to turn on the TV.
“What about the person we show it to? What happens to them?”
The 1976 adaptation of Stephen King's first novel stunned and horrified
audiences. After all, it's your classic "girl-with-telekinetic-powers-meets-boy,
girl-becomes-prom-queen, girl-massacres-her-entire-class-before-
killing-herself-and-her-abusive-mother" high school romp.
It's intense, to say the least. So when we see the lone survivor, Carrie's friend Sue,
visiting her grave to pay some final respects, it presents a much needed moment of calm.
Despite everything, Sue still feels remorse for how poorly Carrie was treated when she was alive,
and it looks like we're closing out with a somber yet satisfying conclusion.
Except, it's not the finale. Instead, in one final scare, Carrie's hand launches out of her grave and
attacks Sue in what's swiftly revealed to be a dream sequence, teasing the idea of Carrie's
power beyond the grave. Modern audiences may be overly familiar with such tricks, but in 1976, the
ending messed people up. It's one of the greatest jump scares of all time, and Sissy Spacek even
confessed that she used to go to theaters just to watch the audience jump out of their chairs.
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