10 Best Slasher Horror Movie Fakeout Endings

5. Halloween (1978)

Halloween 1978
Universal

If discussing the slasher subgenre, no movie has ever been as influential as John Carpenter's Halloween.

Often cited - alongside 1974's Black Christmas - as the godfather of the slasher, the success of Halloween saw countless filmmakers attempt to replicate the utter gold captured by Carpenter in that first venture to Haddonfield. And as part of that original Halloween picture, horror hounds were given a fantastic fakeout ending that lulled is all into thinking that Michael Myers had been thwarted.

Having escaped the Smith's Grove Sanitarium where he'd been housed since the age of five, the now-21-year-old Michael sliced 'n' diced his way through plentiful victims across the '78 Halloween. With the erratic Sam Loomis hot on his tail across this movie, the conclusion of Halloween sees the Shape take a second-floor fall after being shot by Loomis.

Here, Laurie Strode - who had just done battle with Michael - is assured that the boogeyman is dead, and that all is once again well. Well, as well it can be when a bunch of your friends have just been killed, of course.

The audience gets to see Myers' lifeless body laid out on the front garden of the Wallace house, with evil defeated. Upon revisiting that shot, it's then revealed that this 'lifeless' body has vanished, as Laurie, Loomis and the audience are left to ponder where the murderous Michael Myers will resurface.

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