10 Best Sci-Fi Movie Cliffhangers
2. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)
When Phillip Kaufman remade the 50s sci-fi movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978, he took a vastly different approach from the original.
Kaufman turned the campy melodrama of the original into sheer horror in his remake, keeping a focus on gritty direction and visceral sound effects. In many ways the film was a precursor to Carpenter’s version of The Thing with it’s disturbing gore and turning a solid (if not extraordinary) film into one of the best sci-fi horror films ever made.
The plot centres around health inspector, Matthew (Donald Sutherland), and his group of friends, who discover that people are replaced by alien duplicates, who are completely identical, however, lack their counterpart’s human emotion.
Its cliffhanger ending is also one of the best executed twists of all time. After Matthew attempts to destroy the aliens’ home-base, it then cuts to the next day, where Matthew is living his life out normally. Then, when he is approached by his friend, Nancy, he lets out an ear-splitting shriek, revealing that he is in fact an alien duplicate.
The reason why the cliffhanger is so well-executed as, prior to the scream, we genuinely don’t know whether Matthew is a duplicate, or he is faking it, and a lot of this is down to the strength of Sutherland's performance. It’s a really haunting, terrifying anti-happy ending, and works because of how dark and dour it is.