10 Horror Movies Where NOBODY Guessed The Killer

One big problem facing modern horror filmmakers is that the genre's fans are one hell of a savvy bunch, having seen potentially hundreds if not thousands of horror films over the years, and therefore being able to sniff out a killer reveal a mile away.

It's always impressive, then, when a horror film can genuinely pull the wool over our eyes and deliver an unmasking that serves as a genuine shock. And over the many decades of classic horror, these are assuredly the ones that landed with the greatest surprise.

These 10 horror movie killer reveals were guessed by basically nobody, because they so keenly toyed around with viewer expectations, covered their own tracks, and did things audiences simply weren't conditioned to anticipate at the time.

It's a tough trick to pull off without getting into deeply contrived territory or not playing fair with the audience, and so it's little surprise that it's so rare for horror movie killers to be so genuinely unpredictable.

And yet, one way or another, these movies all delivered some of the most jaw-droppingly left-field killer reveals that none of us anticipated...

Scream 3 may be the consensus-worst entry into the franchise, but it still delivers a genuinely jolting killer reveal, when we find out that, for the first time in the series, Ghostface is a solo operator - and more to the point, it's Stab 3 director Roman Bridger (Scott Foley).

There are two reasons why most fans didn't pin the murders on Roman - first off, who could've ever anticipated that Roman would actually be Sidney Prescott's (Neve Campbell) secret half-brother, born to her mother Maureen? Holy retcon, Batman.

And secondly, there's the fact that Roman fakes his death earlier in the movie in a manner so persuasive as to steer all suspicion away from him. 

Gale (Courteney Cox) discovers his "corpse" inside a prop coffin covered in blood with a knife protruding from his chest, and even checks his pulse to confirm that, yes, he's no more.

Except, Roman inexplicably reappears later to reveal that he was the Bad Guy all along - a reveal that's unpredictable precisely because the movie makes it near-impossible to guess through its sheer implausibility.

It's never explained how Roman could exist without a pulse, but there are a few deeply silly options here - he either took a sedative to slow his heart rate down to near-death, used an extremely convincing prop of his own dead body, or Gale simply couldn't find his pulse in her panic.

It's some of the flimsiest writing in any of the Scream movies, but at least served its contrived purpose in preventing fans from figuring out that Roman was the killer.