10 Horror Movies Ruined Entirely By One Scene

Though Steven Spielberg was instrumental in found footage film Paranormal Activity getting picked up by Paramount and enjoying a hugely successful theatrical box office run, Spielberg's involvement did also have a compromising effect on the end product.

Paramount paid $215,000 to spruce up director Oren Peli's $15,000 film in post-production, and this included spending $4,000 on a new ending recommended by Spielberg himself.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker felt that the original finale didn't offer a big enough "payoff," and so at the director's behest, Peli shot a new ending where a possessed Katie (Katie Featherston) kills her partner Micah (Micah Sloat) and throws his corpse towards the camera, before Katie's face morphs demonically and the film suddenly cuts to black.

It was a corny, generic sequel-bait ending complete with some truly woeful CGI for Katie's face-morph, and proved infinitely inferior to Peli's first ending.

Peli originally ended the film with the police entering the house and discovering Katie with a bloody knife, having killed Micah.

At that moment, Katie would return to her regular self, but just as she approaches the police, the demon would slam the attic door, startling one of the cops and causing him to accidentally shoot Katie dead.

That's a far more jolting and effective ending, and would've ensured that Paranormal Activity's legacy endured as a fascinating one-off rather than a franchise that very quickly ran itself into the ground.