Twists are ingrained into the DNA of horror movies. The ending of The Sixth Sense is so iconic that the next generation comes out of the womb knowing that Bruce Willis was dead the whole time. Would a Saw movie be a Saw movie without the cued music and dramatic reveal? But of course, you can only watch these films so many times before the magic has dwindled. Even the great Lin Shaye saying, “It’s not the house that’s haunted. It’s your son,” in Insidious loses its mystique after multiple views. If like many horror fans, you already know the twists in A Tale of Two Sisters, Us, The Others, and Orphan, like the back of your hand, you need something more. Step away from the box office with me and enjoy these 13 underrated horror films whose twist endings are unforgettable.
For general horror movie recommendations, check out Underrated Horror Gems of 2022 You May Have Missed.
13 Underrated Horror Movies with Twist Endings
Trigger warning: These spoilers are not for the faint of heart.
13. Dark Circles
After having a baby, a new mom begins seeing a strange apparition in the house. Is it haunted, or is she hallucinating due to sleep deprivation?
Spoiler: It’s the scary movie you’ve seen a thousand times before until it isn’t. The apparition the sleep-deprived new mother keeps seeing is a person secretly living in their home- a squatter. There’s no ghost, and she’s not crazy. It’s a third option I didn’t see coming and is honestly scarier for it.
12. Funny Games (2007)
Two killers descend upon a vacationing family.
Spoiler: Just as the mother finally gets the upper hand, snatching a shotgun and eliminating one of her captors, in the most meta-act on this list, Michael Pitt’s character retrieves a remote and rewinds the scene. This time, he moves the shotgun out of the mom’s reach, and it’s clear there is no hope for this family.
This ending understandably splits audiences, as some find it too over the top, while others see the symbolic meaning.
11. Dumplings
A woman finds eternal youth by eating specially made dumplings.
Spoiler: The dumplings are made from aborted fetuses, but that’s only the beginning. As our main character stops eating the dumplings, she realizes their effect reverses. In a desperate attempt to regain her beauty, the main character makes a dumpling of her own.
10. April Fool’s Day (1986)
A group of classmates stays on an island with their wealthy peer, Muffy St. John. Things take a horrific turn when bodies begin piling up.
Spoiler: During a showdown between one character and the purported killer – none other than Muffy’s evil twin “Buffy,” – the fight leads to the living room where all of the friends who allegedly died throughout the events of the film are sitting around, completely unharmed. No one is dead; it was all an April Fool’s prank.
9. We Need to Do Something
A troubled family is locked in a bathroom together while mysterious havoc rages outside.
Spoiler: While some moments were laughable (the dad whipping the mom with the decapitated snake, for example), the twists hit hard, and you’re guaranteed to remember specific remnants when it’s all over. The little boy dying from the snake bite and the reveal that the daughter messing with witchcraft was to blame for whatever hell is happening outside all build up to a finale where the daughter wakes up in the bathroom all alone.
Eventually, her mother returns, clearly suffering from whatever she’s encountered after managing to escape the bathroom finally. Given her state and urgency to get back inside, it’s clear that after everything, there is no escape, no resolution, nor do we get to see what’s lurking outside. The family that needs to do something is powerless to do anything, and the same as they’ll never see outside this bathroom, neither will we.
8. The Lie
This film was the first in the Welcome to the Blumhouse film series.
After a father/daughter trip goes awry, a swirl of consequences follows. Is it scary? No. Will you remember the ending? Yep!
Spoiler level one: At the beginning of the movie, a father and daughter duo happens across the daughter’s best friend and offers her a ride. After the friend goes missing, the daughter confesses to killing her.
Spoiler level two: Her divorced parents work together to cover up the daughter’s involvement in the murder, but the best friend’s father gets involved. As he gets close to discovering the daughter’s secret, the parents kill him.
Spoiler level three: As the parents are trying to destroy the evidence implicating them in this murder, the friend, who the daughter claimed was dead, walks into the garage. The girls had concocted a scheme to let the friend spend the weekend with her boyfriend, uninhibited by parental inquiry. The friend was okay all along.
The daughter explains she didn’t want to let it go this far, but seeing her parents together again made her so happy. The police close in as the movie draws to a close. The film’s slow pacing pays off in quite a memorable finish.
7. The Dark and The Wicked
A brother and sister visit their ailing parents and encounter a demonic entity.
Spoiler: The brother suddenly leaves, deciding nothing can be done, in an attempt to escape the evil and return to his wife and children. His sister is left behind, and she eventually succumbs to the evil herself. When the brother gets home, he finds his entire family slaughtered. He immediately takes his own life. His family then walks into the kitchen. It was a hallucination caused by the evil entity. Evil won.
6. Triangle
Something is amiss from the very beginning. As our main character boards a boat, something seems off, and as the strange events worsen, the protagonist fights to return to her son.
Spoiler: As was evident from the beginning, our main character is trapped in an ever-repeating time loop. The first time I watched it, I wondered whether the time loop was the twist. I was delighted and horrified that the time loop was the plot, and the twist was much more meaningful.
It’s a personal hell she has trapped herself in to save her son and punish herself for her abusive actions toward him. After seeing herself literally from the outside looking in, abusing her autistic son, she rescues him from herself, only for him to die. A cab driver, who seemingly served as a ferryman between worlds, asks if she wants to try again. And she did – even though all the evidence showed she couldn’t make a difference.
5. You’re Next
As a family gets together in an attempt to mend their broken bonds, they become the victims of a home invasion where people in animal masks begin killing them off one by one.
Spoiler: Our final girl Erin has excellent survival training and sets up traps around the house. She fights back and discovers that her boyfriend and brother are behind the attack. She kills her treacherous boyfriend just as the police finally arrive at the house. The police witness this and shoot Erin. Then, a trap that Erin set for the assailants goes off, killing the officer. The movie closes with the words “You’re Next” on the wall as Erin bleeds out.
4. Would You Rather
A group of strangers is subjected to a game of “Would You Rather” for a large cash prize. The game slowly escalates in torturous intensity, leaving lives in its wake.
Spoiler: As I’m sure you’ve begun to gather from the other items on this list, I am a sucker for horror movies where the protagonists lose. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a happy ending now and again; it just makes the stakes feel higher when there’s no guarantee that a character will walk away unscathed.
This twist works so that our protagonist both wins and loses. After subjecting herself to torment to help her brother, she finally wins the game to go home and find her brother has killed himself. Womp womp, it was all for naught. Ironic, memorable, and gut-wrenching. It completely blindsided me.
But in all seriousness, if you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit their website.
3. Don’t Look Now
A father grieving the loss of his daughter begins seeing a strange figure who bears a striking resemblance to his deceased child.
Spoiler. Okay, this one gives me the giggles. Maybe it’s because of how devastatingly morbid it is; maybe it’s because I would have never guessed it in a thousand years. But the reveal – when it is, in fact, not glimpses of his dead daughter he has been seeing, but a murderous short woman who then ruthlessly murders him – gets me every time. Good luck ever forgetting that ending!
2. Oculus
To me, this film isn’t underrated because it’s one of my all-time favorites. However, because I think this 2013 gem by Mike Flanagan isn’t talked about often enough, I will shamelessly include it here.
A brother and sister reunite as adults and try to obtain proof that a haunted mirror ruined their childhoods.
Spoiler:
Just as Tim engages the kill switch to destroy the mirror once and for all, the Lasser Glass’ mind-warping ways win out. Tim doesn’t see his sister Kaylie standing in front of the mirror, and he impales her instead of the mirror.
In a riveting final shot, Tim is led out of the house by police, yelling, “It wasn’t me; it was the mirror!” This shot is intercut with a similar clip of young Tim crying the same thing as a child after his father’s murder- showing history repeated itself.
The past, present, and future occurring concurrently is a recurring theme we would see again in many Mike Flanagan productions such as The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Club, and The Haunting of Bly Manor.
1. I See You
Strange things begin happening in a house.
Spoiler: this entire movie is one big plot twist. Much like Dark Circles, the beginning of the film presents as a paranormal horror until the movie reveals people are phrogging in the house (hidden squatters who move from one home to another). But that’s only the beginning of the film. As the phroggers learn of infidelity and murder, it all culminates in a shocking conclusion.
If you don’t know how it ends – plot twist – I won’t be spoiling it here today.
From demonic tricks, questionable meals, treachery, heroism, and more, these 13 horror movies with twist endings are bound to leave a lasting imprint on your memory.
Let us know what you think of these choices, or give us your underrated horror movie recommendations in the comments below!