8 Best Misdirections In Horror Movies

The horror genre is a special place, laced in a multitude of different subgenres, styles, tones, and never-ending franchises.

While some would argue that horror is all about the scares, others would argue it's about the tension, and others would argue it's about finding an engaging, disturbing antagonist. And then there's the appreciation of a good ol' case of misdirection.

Many a filmmaker has loved nothing more than taking their audience on a certain path, only to hit a major fork in the road that completely flips on its head what we'd come to believe was true about the movie. Call it a plot twist, call it a swerve, call it a calculating, head-spinning trick of wizardry - but here we're simply going to label it as misdirection in its finest form.

Of course, misdirection can come in different forms, yet the overarching objective of such a change in direction is one designed to keep an audience on its toes, to keep a narrative interesting, and to hit home in a major, major way.

With that in mind, here then are eight prime examples of horror misdirection at its glorious best.

For 99% of Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist, the human race is on the cusp of extinction as a plethora of gnarly creatures from another dimension cause chaos, carnage, and cataclysmic catastrophe.

In a film headed up by one-time Punisher, Thomas Jane, the key protagonists at the centre of this story are in an unrelenting, tension-laced battle for survival - and wherever they turn, nefarious beasts lie waiting in the ominous mist that has now engulfed this small town setting.

As The Mist races to its close, with death now inevitable, Jane's David Drayton agrees to kill the rest of his inner circle as that's deemed by all involved to be a better option than the painful, torturous death that awaits once these alt-dimension creatures get a-hold of people.

One by one, David puts his few remaining bullets in his three friends and then has to do the heart-breaking same thing to his eight-year-old son. And just like that, as David offers himself up to be devoured by these alien beasts, with his gun still warm but now empty of bullets, the mist clears and the US Army step out of the smoke to proclaim that this clinical threat has now been contained.

So, not only did the human race not end up being exterminated, but David Drayton and the audience are hit with the gut-punch reality that David, his son, and their friends were all mere seconds away from being rescued.