10 Movies That Are Totally Different By The End

It's fair to say that most movies let you know precisely what they're about from the first few scenes, establishing a style, mood, and narrative throughline which endures until the end credits roll about two hours later.

But not all filmmakers are interested in just giving audiences precisely what they expect, with some taking this to the extreme of ending the movie in a completely different place from where it began.

It's a risky trick, to shift the genre, reinvent the style, or just take the story to a wholly unexpected realm, which of course threatens to alienate less-adventurous punters who may end up feeling manipulated.

But when it works, it really works.

Audience mileage certainly varies on these 10 movies, which started off as one film and ended up as quite another, but for open-minded viewers keen to have their cinematic preconceptions challenged, they largely made for interesting and unforgettable experiences.

For those who had no idea what was coming, they likely still remember the shock at watching these movies for the first time and seeing the bold, brave, wildly left-field places they ended up...

How It Starts

Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn begins as a modest-yet-pulpy thriller in which two criminal brothers, Seth and Richie Gecko (George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino) take a family (Harvey Keitel, Juliette Lewis, and Ernest Liu) hostage while fleeing to Mexico.

It's as grimy and foul-mouthed as you'd expect from any Tarantino-penned thriller, yet that first half is ultimately just setting the stage for one of the most legendary genre shifts in cinema history.

How It Ends

At the mid-way point, Rodriguez's film reveals itself to be a secret B-movie - that is, an action-horror film filled with bloodthirsty vampires and cartoonish supporting characters who look like they fell straight out of a comic book.

By film's end, when Seth and Kate (Lewis) emerge as the only survivors from a night of hilariously over-the-top brutality, it couldn't seem much more divorced from the opening sequence in which the Geckos hold up a liquor store, no vampires in sight.

For many movies such a stark shift would simply piss the audience off, yet in From Dusk till Dawn's case the second half is such an absurdly entertaining, no-holds-barred blast that few have ever bothered to complain.