Most horror films have the most predictable of endings; the killer kills, the spirit gets exorcised or the evil cult gets what they want and brings whatever to Earth. With that said, there are some fantastic horror films that have the most perfect and unexpected endings you’ll either be scared or shocked, or both in some cases.
With that said, it’s fitting that 31 Days of Horror turns its attention to some of the most perfect horror endings that cinema has to offer.
Saw
A regular staple of our 31 Days of Horror articles so far, the first film in the brutal and over-the-top horror franchise did a lot right, especially with such a limited budget. Set primarily in one location, a dilapidated and abandoned bathroom God knows where, both Adam and Lawrence find themselves trapped and with a limited time to free themselves, lest they be trapped forever along with the dead guy in the middle of the room. The film twists and turns between the two helping each other and finding out they may be more connected than originally thought, as well as fleshing out the mysterious Jigsaw killer and explaining his motives.
At the climax of the film Lawrence takes the hard decision to cut off his foot in an attempt to escape and help his kidnapped wife and child. Crawling away he promises Adam he will return with help, leaving him alone and still chained up. The perfect ending comes in when we see the supposedly dead man in the middle of the room isn’t actually dead, but the perpetrator of the entire scenario, Jigsaw himself. No-one saw this coming and it was a perfect ending which the following films tried their best to capture the same magic, but all fell short.
Related: 31 Days of Horror: 5 Horror Franchises That Declined After The First Film
Psycho
To many Alfred Hitchcock mastered the art of tense and suspenseful horror, and Psycho typifies that. Following the goings on of the mysterious Bates Motel, the film changes pace suddenly when the female protagonist is murdered in that famous shower scene.
Audiences are led to believe it’s Bates’ mother doing the killing, but we’re eventually shown that we couldn’t be any more wrong, when we see her mummified, clothes wearing corpse being kept by Norman. In the final scene of the film, Norman looks at the camera with a chilling stare and creepy smile on his face, ensuring he’d be lingering in our thoughts for years to come.
The Mist
A mysterious mist covers a town in the US, containing supernatural horrors that are preying on the poor inhabitants. Following a father and son as they do their best to survive, taking shelter in a supermarket with a bunch of other survivors, chaos ensues and they’re forced to leave.
Driving as far as they can, the petrol runs out and they’re stuck with a hard choice, take their chances in the mist and end up suffering a painful death, or use the gun they have and take their own lives. They choose the latter, and as we hear the gunshots and count them, the camera goes back to the father and the gun jams… that’s bad enough, but then through the mist we’re shown the US military in all its might, saving the day. The father killed his family and new friends for nothing, leaving him alone with the horror of his actions. One of the few perfect horror endings and a depressing one at that.
Funny Games
It’s not often a director will remake their own foreign language film, but this is exactly what happened when Michael Haneke took his 1997 Austrian language film and remade it for American audiences, and with that, made it possible to depress and shock a whole new group of people.
Following two teenagers as they spend a day taunting and torturing a family of three with their twisted games for their own sick pleasure. The last twenty minutes of the film will pull you all over the place, from making you think the nightmare is over, to questioning if what you saw just happened regarding the child, and then realising none of the three are surviving as we see the two teenagers nonchalantly throw the wife from a small boat into a lake, her hands and legs bound. Landing on a dock and knocking on a new door, the audience realize the two are just going to do the whole thing again to a new family.
The Sixth Sense
The film that started M. Night Shyamalan’s directing and writing career – or at least propelled him into the public eye – is also arguably the most famous twist ending in modern cinematic history, and definitely one of the perfect horror endings.
Bruce Willis is a child psychologist who tries his best to help a young child played by Haley Joel Osment with his supernatural abilities, primarily that he can see dead people. Eventually Willis’ character comes to the realisation his newest patient is telling the truth, and that his abilities are real and not a symptom of an underlying mental issue.
In a twist that shocked the audience and became obvious on a second rewatch, we learn that this supernatural ability is the very thing that allows the two to have a conversation, as Willis’ character has been dead the entire film, a result of the attack suffered in a home invasion earlier in the film.
There are so many horror films and many of them have predictable and boring endings, but these are just five of the many horror endings that are nigh on perfect. What other horror endings would you consider to be perfect?
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