10 Terrible Movies With Awesome Endings
3. Malignant
Up until its final 20-or-so minutes, James Wan's Malignant is about as generic as procedural horror flicks get.
Packed with hilariously lousy writing, wooden acting, and a profound lack of scares, it's bad enough to almost feel like an intentional parody of a terrible horror movie - a read of the film which some indeed cling to.
But the finale pulls one of the hardest narrative and tonal 180s in the genre's recent history, when it's revealed that serial killer Gabriel is actually protagonist Madison's (Annabelle Wallis) parasitic conjoined twin.
Basically, Gabriel was surgically removed from Madison when she was a child, but a small, vestigial part of Gabriel connected to Madison's brain was left behind.
And when Madison's abusive husband shoved her into a wall at the start of the film, the resulting fracture set Gabriel free, letting him take control of Madison's body in order to kill.
This also explains why Gabriel's movements throughout the film are so jerky and unsettlingly awkward looking - being attached to the back of Madison's head, he can only control her from behind, effectively "piloting" her backwards.
It's a totally wild reveal that segues into a ludicrously entertaining sequence where Gabriel again takes control of Madison to embark on a gory massacre throughout a police station.
The majority of the movie is still a shockingly dull piece of work, yet the closing handful of scenes once the twist has been dropped are basically an absurdly enjoyable short film in their own right.