10 Movies That Were Great Until Their Final Scene

8. The Village

The Film: M Night Shyamalan's period horror, set in 19th century Pennsylvania, about a small village apparently terrorised by a monster that lives in the surrounding woods. Ivy Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), the blind daughter of one of the village elders, decides to tackle the creature head-on by venturing into the forest to confront it, after hearing that the 'monster' may be a ruse to keep people from leaving the village.

Where It All Goes Wrong: A poorly-handled, ill-advised twist reveals the monster was Adrien Brody in a costume all along and that the villagers are living a 19th century life in a 21st century world, with modern world existing just beyond the forest. The double twist renders everything we've already seen utterly pointless. After Signs, which also ended on a sour note (extraterrestrials, which are apparently made out of bad CGI, can be destroyed by Joaquin Phoenix with a baseball bat and glasses of water left lying around a house by his little sister), The Village marks the moment at which audiences began turning away from Shyamalan, so bad was the ending.