10 Great Cliffhanger Endings From Recent Horror Movies

2. Adelaide/Red's Secret - Us

Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort following this excellent feature Get Out in 2017, Us centres on Adelaide (played by Lupita Nyong’o), who is traumatised by a childhood encounter with an identical copy of herself.

In yet another ill-advised family retreat to an isolated vacation spot, they are soon terrorised by a family of four each resembling copies of each of them, led by Adelaide’s doppelganger Red. We learn that these clones were part of a mysterious underground experiment which abandoned them to live out a subterranean existence.

At the close of the film’s third act, Adelaide finally manages to overpower Red, killing her by breaking her neck, and the family drives off in an ambulance.

In a final shocking twist, however, we get the reveal that the Adelaide we have been following is in fact the clone and that when she met the real Adelaide as a girl, she overpowered her, swapping places to leave her underground instead.

As we see the suspicion that his mother isn’t who she seems start to dawn on her son Jason, the clone Adelaide flashes him a sly smile and the credits roll.

It’s a delightfully ambiguous note, leaving us to question whether the Adelaide raised in the privilege of the outside world and the more feral Red raised underground were ever really that different from one another, their only true separation being the opportunity (or lack thereof) offered by their respective environments.