10 Alternative Movie Endings Way Better Than What We Got
4. Orphan: The Ambiguous Ending
Jaume Collet-Serra's psychological chiller Orphan caught viewers off guard when its big twist revealed the titular Esther wasn't a troubled nine-year-old girl, but a murderous adult in a child's body.
Unfortunately, it went on to pull an M Night Shyamalan and fail to build on this twist, descending into generic horror territory from there. Esther ends up perishing in a watery grave, sent there by a swift kick from her adoptive mother, Kate.
It's your cliche good-triumphs-over-evil conclusion, but Orphan's alternative ending would have given the audience something to thing about. It skips the final showdown on the icy lake, but still sees Kate rescue Max from Esther. In the next scene, police descend on the house to find Esther back in little girl mode, ready to plead innocence.
Whether her efforts to slip back into her disguise are in vain because of the brutal injuries she's sustained is unclear, but this would have been a more unsettling note to end on, and the fact it challenged viewers to draw their only conclusions is a bonus.