10 Horror Movies With Terrifying Surprises

Those horror efforts with some spine-tingling surprises lurking within them.

By Andrew Pollard /

Throughout the decades, few genres of film have offered up quite as many surprises as the horror realm.

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Whichever particular subgenre of horror you're looking at, there are forever shocks, surprises, twists and turns aplenty - whether that means brutal deaths, killer reveals, or maybe just a fun little nod to long-time fans of a certain IP.

Rather than looking at the all-out major twists of the genre here, it's more about exploring some of those terrifying surprises that maybe weren't as ground-breaking as, say, Norman Bates as 'mother' in Psycho or Malcolm Crowe being dead all along in The Sixth Sense.

Sure, there may be one or two of those big-name movie-closing shockers dotted across this piece, yet for the most part it's about shining a spotlight on some of the less discussed, but truly chilling surprises of horror; those surprises that may instead be used to set the table for a film or tease what could still be to come, rather than bringing a picture to a close.

With that in mind, then, here are ten horror movies that have some genuinely ghastly surprises lurking within them.

10. Standing On A Submerged Corpse - Next Of Kin

Not to be confused with the Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson movie of the same name, 1982's Next of Kin is a spooky Australian horror effort from Tony Williams.

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The main plot of this picture centres on Linda Stevens (Jacki Kerin) as she inherits a posh retirement home following the death of her mother. Once arriving at the swanky-sounding Montclare residence, Linda is haunted by visions and the very real death of some of the home's inhabitants.

For one such resident, he has the rather gnarly surprise of finding a dead body submerged in a bathtub. In this instance, the finder is a chap called Lance and the 'findee' (see: corpse) is an old boy named Mr. Collins.

Entering the bathroom to take a soak of his own, the steam in the room means that Lance doesn't realise there's a body in the tub until he steps in and puts his foot on the head of Mr. Collins. And such a chill-inducing surprise is all of this for poor Lance, the next time we see him he's being treated by the local doctor after having suffered a stroke.

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