10 Horror Movie Twists That Pissed Everyone Off
Those swerves that had us all gnawing our knuckles in anger.
By its very nature, the world of horror is one that has more twists and turns than any other genre in cinema. For horror, a large part of hooking its audience is to keep them guessing, to keep them on their toes, and to leave them aghast at the truth behind what has just been witnessed.
When done well, there's nothing as impactful as a good twist. Bruce Willis' Malcolm Crowe being dead all along in The Sixth Sense? Fantastic. Jigsaw having been hiding in plain sight in Saw? Magnificent. Final Destination 5 actually being a prequel to the first Final Destination picture? A truly inspired piece of genius. The Mist's needless loss of loved ones? Soul-crushingly jarring. The truth behind The Skeleton Key? Depressingly brilliant. Scream 3 having the killer being Sidney Prescott's long lost half-brother who had been shunted by his mother... ? Err, not so much so.
In line with that Scream 3 reveal, there are countless horror pictures that have twists that make that look tame by comparison. It's those such twists and films that are in the spotlight here, as we take a closer look at ten swerves that had horror hounds gnawing their knuckles in anger and disbelief.
10. It Was All Staged - April Fool's Day
From Fred Walton, 1986's April Fool's Day ticks a whole array of the usual boxes for an '80s horror picture.
A cast of disposable pretty young things? Check. A weekend vacation setting? Check. A mysterious killer? Check. Garish fashion choices and hairstyles? Double check.
In terms of that setting, it's a remote island owned by Muffy St. John. When Muffy's cousin brings a bunch of his friends over to party, what starts as a few harmless pranks dotted across Muffy's mansion soon becomes far more serious as the dead bodies begin to amass. In fact, Muffy isn't really Muffy at all, for she's been replaced by her demented twin sister Buffy - with the real Muffy's decapitated head found by our protagonists.
The ridiculous twist here, is that everything we'd seen at the mansion was all fake and had all been staged by Muffy - yep, there is no Buffy - as a dress rehearsal for plans to turn her house into a horror resort. Oh, and all of the victims were in on the plan, meaning audiences had totally wasted their time.
Likewise, this same sort of twist left many slapping their foreheads at the end of 2012's Smiley. With our central protagonist having been stalked by the disfigured, murderous Smiley - complete with seeing plenty of her friends slaughtered by this figure - it's revealed that this was all just one big prank and that everybody was still alive.