10 Great Horror Movies With Multiple Plot Twists

While mainstream audiences weren't introduced to virtuoso Mike Flanagan until The Haunting of Hill House debuted in 2018, die-hard horror fans have been familiar with the stunning work of the director behind Hush and Midnight Mass since his breath-taking feature length debut, 2011's Absentia.

Absentia's central antagonist is a spectral entity inhabiting a bleak concrete tunnel in front of the house where sisters Callie and Tricia reside. Tricia is in the process of declaring her husband Daniel dead in absentia following his disappearance - she also happens to be pregnant with another man's child.

Considering said disappearance occurred seven years prior, the sisters and the audience get one hell of a shock when Daniel reappears, revealing that he was claimed by the creature. Absentia's monster "trades" with those passing through the tunnel, but entirely on its own terms - one never knows what it will offer up in exchange. The unmasking of the mysterious man who had been depositing animal sacrifices as a desperate son trying to retrieve his father from the creature's clutches constitutes another harrowing twist in itself, but pales in comparison to Absentia's climactic sequence.

After Tricia is abducted by the entity, a desperate Callie offers her own life as a trade, prompting Flanagan to deliver his stunning final curveball. The monster produces Tricia's unborn fetus in exchange - a life for a life - before claiming both sisters in an utterly desolating conclusion.

Not too shabby for a partial allegory of a children's fairytale about three goats and a troll.