10 Horror Movies With Terrifying Surprises
3. Your Adopted Child Is A 33-Year-Old Woman - Orphan
When talking about major surprises served up by horror movies, few things can top finding out that the supposed nine-year-old girl you've adopted is really a 33-year-old woman.
That was the shocker at the core of 2009's Orphan, with the Colemans (Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard) on the receiving end of this jaw-dropper of a discovery.
For Kate and John Coleman, they opt to adopt young Esther after the tragic stillbirth of their third child, and the arrival of Esther soon starts to cause cracks amongst the Colemans and their two other children.
Esther's rampage of misdemeanours see her steal flowers from the grave of the family's lost baby, break her own arm and blame it on Kate, convince everyone that recovering alcoholic Kate has hit the bottle again, try to burn her adoptive older brother alive and then attempt to suffocate him while he's in hospital, and she even tries to seduce her adoptive father John.
By the time the penny drops and Kate discovers that Esther is really 33-year-old Leena Klammer - an Estonian woman suffering from a hormone disorder - it's too late, as her husband has been fatally stabbed by this crazed figure, and she herself ends up in an icy battle to the death with this imposter.