10 Best "Everything You Know Is A Lie" Moments In Horror Movies
6. The "Corpse" Is Actually Jigsaw - Saw
As much as Saw might boast the most iconic and talked-to-death horror movie plot twist of the last 20 years, it remains one of the genre's finest-ever examples of a character learning something that completely re-frames their predicament.
Saw's protagonist, Adam (writer Leigh Whannell), spends the movie locked in the Grossest Bathroom on Earth at the behest of the unseen serial killer known as Jigsaw - imprisoned alongside a man he's been surveilling and photographing, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes).
A dead body, of a man who shot himself in the head, lies between Adam and Lawrence, and at film's end it appears to be revealed that the Jigsaw killer is Zep (Michael Emerson), an orderly working at Gordon's hospital.
After Gordon makes a grim escape by sawing off his own foot, Adam beats Zep to death when he returns to the bathroom, only to discover a cassette player on his person.
Adam plays the tape, revealing that Zep was simply another participant in Jigsaw's "game," and that he was only doing as Jigsaw instructed in order to receive the antidote to a poison he'd been drugged with.
At that moment, the "corpse" in the middle of the room stands up, revealing it to be the real Jigsaw, who has been hiding in literal plain sight for the entire course of the movie.
More to the point, Jigsaw is one of Gordon's cancer-riddled patients by the name of John Kramer (Tobin Bell), who chose to test those he felt didn't appreciate their lives.
Though Adam makes a fleeting attempt to escape, he's ultimately foiled by Kramer, who seals him inside the bathroom to die, leaving him to ponder the insane particulars of what the hell just happened.