10 Horror Movie Fake Outs We All Fell For
The Mist's shocking ending played us all like a damn fiddle.
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00:00 While horror is frequently dismissed as one of the most predictable and least imaginative
00:04 of all film genres, that's really not true at all, as is proven beyond any doubt by these
00:10 ten movies alone.
00:12 Satisfaction often stems from our expectations being subverted in clever and creative ways,
00:17 and that's certainly what happened in these films, which dared to fake audiences out in
00:22 devilishly deceptive fashion.
00:24 So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with What Culture here with 10 Horror Movie Fake
00:28 Outs We All Fell For.
00:30 10.
00:31 The Cops Arrive at the End in Get Out
00:34 Jordan Peele's masterful, Oscar-winning horror satire Get Out climaxes with embattled black
00:40 man Chris fighting off the racist, brainwash-happy Armitage family, and finally facing off against
00:46 his own ex-girlfriend Rose.
00:48 Despite Rose's attempts to kill him, Chris finds himself unable to strangle her to death,
00:53 and just as he relinquishes his grip on her throat, the sirens of a police car blare out
00:58 behind them both.
01:00 The cops are here, and they're about to stumble upon the sight of a black man knelt over a
01:03 horribly wounded white woman.
01:05 How exactly does anyone expect this situation to go?
01:09 But Peele then cuts to the door of the police car, where the word "airport" is visible.
01:13 As it turns out, this isn't a patrol unit, but Chris's airport police officer pal, Rod.
01:19 Peele so brilliantly exploits our understandably cynical expectations for any situation where
01:24 a black individual is flagged down by the police, only to flip it so ecstatically on
01:28 its head with the revelation that the siren and flashing lights are actually a safe haven
01:33 for Chris.
01:34 9.
01:35 The Double Opening Fake Out in Scream 4
01:38 This sequel begins with two young women being slaughtered by Ghostface in standard Scream
01:43 fashion.
01:44 But as they die their ultra-gory deaths, Wes Craven pulls back to reveal that we're actually
01:48 watching the opening sequence of Stab 6, a sequel in Scream's movie-within-a-movie franchise,
01:55 based on the events of the Scream series itself, no less.
01:58 The real start of Scream 4 involves two friends, played by Anna Paquin and Kristen Bell, watching
02:03 Stab 6 and disparaging the state of contemporary horror movies, before Bell's character suddenly
02:09 stabs Paquin with a knife, and Craven pulls out again to reveal that this is really the
02:13 start of Stab 7.
02:15 Craven then finally proceeds with the movie's actual prologue, as Jenny and Marnie watch
02:21 Stab 7 and are subsequently murdered by the new Ghostface killer.
02:25 Craven went full meta here, and for better or worse, nobody saw either of the fake outs
02:30 coming.
02:31 8.
02:32 Marion Crane is the Protagonist in Psycho
02:35 While it's one of horror cinema's worst-kept secrets these days, you have to respect the
02:39 ambition of Alfred Hitchcock to execute such a daring audience fake out way back in 1960.
02:45 Though Psycho's marketing made it abundantly clear that Janet Leigh would be starring as
02:50 protagonist Marion Crane, this was all part of Hitchcock's master plan to catch audiences
02:55 off guard.
02:57 Just before the film's midway point, Marion is suddenly killed off by the knife-wielding
03:01 killer while taking a shower, completely upending our expectation of where the story is going
03:07 and who the protagonist is.
03:09 At this point, the perspective shifts to Bates Motel owner Norman Bates, and because one
03:13 fake out apparently wasn't enough, Hitchcock then builds up Norman's mother to be the
03:18 killer, only to reveal that it's actually a mentally ill Norman himself.
03:22 As it turns out, Norman has developed an alternate personality in his mind in the vein of his
03:27 mother, who he himself killed many years earlier.
03:30 7.
03:31 Zep is Jigsaw in Saw
03:34 Saw boasts not only one of the most ingenious plot twists in the history of the horror genre,
03:39 but really cinema period.
03:41 And a big part of the twist's success lies in how ingeniously it misdirects viewers with
03:45 a fake out villain reveal.
03:47 In the third act, we learn that the serial killer known as Jigsaw appears to be Zep Hindle,
03:52 an orderly who works at the same hospital as Dr. Gordon.
03:56 At film's end, Zep attempts to kill Gordon in the iconic grotty bathroom where Gordon
04:00 and Adam's deadly game is being played out, only for Adam to catch Zep off guard and beat
04:05 him to death with a toilet tank lid.
04:07 Game over, right?
04:08 Not quite.
04:09 Gordon, who'd just sawn his foot off, then crawls away to summon help for a steel-chained
04:14 Adam, just as Adam searches Zep's corpse and finds a tape.
04:18 The tape reveals that Zep wasn't actually Jigsaw all along, but simply another pawn
04:23 in the game, with Jigsaw's identity then revealed to be John Kramer, one of Gordon's
04:28 terminal cancer patients.
04:30 Zep was simply doing as Jigsaw instructed in order to receive an antidote to the slow-acting
04:34 poison coursing through his own veins, and because this isn't wild enough, the dead
04:39 body that's been laying in the middle of the bathroom since the game started suddenly
04:43 stands up, alive.
04:45 The not-corpse is in fact Kramer himself, who has evidently been observing the entire
04:49 game unfold with a front row seat.
04:51 6.
04:52 Ripley Destroys the Nostromo in Alien
04:56 Ridley Scott's Alien may be a deliberate, methodically-paced sci-fi horror movie for
05:00 the most part, but it certainly gives audiences plenty of bang for their buck during its action-packed
05:05 finale.
05:06 Near the end of the film, Ripley seemingly kills the Xenomorph when she activates the
05:10 Nostromo's self-destruct sequence and evacuates the vessel in an escape shuttle.
05:15 The ship explodes and Ripley prepares to enter stasis for the trek home, but at that moment
05:20 she realises that there's a stowaway on board the shuttle - the damn Xenomorph!
05:24 And so Ripley dons a spacesuit as she prepares to battle with the alien creature once more,
05:29 eventually culminating in the Xeno being blasted out into the cold, uncaring vacuum of space.
05:36 Only then, with the alien threat categorically dealt with, is Ripley able to safely enter
05:40 stasis with the mission's only other survivor, the cruise cat Jones.
05:44 Ripley's scuttling the Nostromo would have been a sufficiently exciting climax for such
05:49 a consistently restrained film, but Scott ultimately decided to go all out with a delirious
05:54 two-pronged finale.
05:56 5.
05:57 The FBI Raids Buffalo Bill's House in The Silence of the Lambs
06:02 The Silence of the Lambs surely earned its Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing for
06:06 one brilliantly executed moment during the movie's climax, when the FBI prepares to raid
06:11 serial killer Buffalo Bill's home, all while Agent Clarice Starling pays a visit to someone
06:16 who knew Bill's first victim.
06:19 As the FBI ring the bell on Bill's home, he goes to answer the door and is greeted by
06:23 Clarice.
06:24 As director Jonathan Demme cuts back and forth between the FBI breaking into an empty house
06:29 and Clarice talking to Buffalo Bill, it's clear that the FBI got the wrong house and
06:33 Clarice has wound up in Bill's company all by herself.
06:37 It's one of cinema's all-time greatest WTF moments, ensuring that most anyone watching
06:43 for the first time takes a sharp, involuntary intake of breath as they process the dangerous
06:48 situation Clarice has found herself in.
06:50 The scene is such an outstanding example of parallel editing that it's regularly shown
06:55 in film schools around the globe.
06:57 If you want to get one over on your audience without making it feel massively cheap, this
07:01 is how you do it.
07:03 4.
07:04 Brahms is a Possessed Doll in The Boy
07:06 2016's The Boy was sold to audiences as yet another possessed doll movie, albeit having
07:13 more in common with Annabelle than, say, the campy theatrics of child's play.
07:17 The story follows Greta, who is hired by a wealthy old couple to act as the nanny for
07:21 Brahms, a porcelain doll serving as a stand-in for their real son of the same name, who apparently
07:27 died in a house fire two decades prior.
07:30 Like Annabelle, we never see Brahms move around on screen, but then the third act delivers
07:34 a wildly unexpected and ludicrously entertaining twist - the doll isn't possessed at all.
07:40 As it turns out, Brahms survived the fire 20 years earlier and has been living in the
07:45 walls of his parents' mansion ever since.
07:47 It was him who was moving the doll throughout the film, offering up an amusingly grounded
07:52 subversion of the typical possessed doll shtick.
07:55 Sadly, 2020's sequel Brahms The Boy 2 effectively retconned this clever upending of expectations
08:01 by revealing that the doll is actually possessed, while the flesh and blood Brahms from this
08:05 movie is bafflingly nowhere to be found.
08:08 3.
08:09 Esther is a Satanic Child in Orphan
08:13 The marketing for 2009's Orphan was centred around the fact that Kate and John Coleman's
08:18 adopted 9-year-old daughter Esther had a secret of some kind.
08:21 "There's something wrong with Esther," the posters told us, and so audiences were
08:25 led to believe that Orphan was basically a contemporary riff on The Omen, with Esther
08:30 being the devilishly inclined spawn of Satan, or something like that, anyway.
08:34 But the film's climactical reveal is that Esther isn't actually a child at all.
08:38 She's a 33-year-old woman suffering from a rare hormone disorder that stunts her growth
08:43 and gives her the appearance of a child, which she also accentuates with elaborate makeup.
08:47 Ultimately, though, Orphan's story is ridiculous.
08:50 It's fundamentally realistic in that there's nothing supernatural about it, as surely nobody
08:55 saw coming.
08:57 Casting a child in the role of Esther and ageing her up for the final stretch was really
09:01 the masterstroke that prevented most people from figuring out what was going on.
09:05 What a ride this movie is.
09:08 Even though Esther dies at the end, we'll get to see more of her later this year with
09:12 the impending release of the prequel Orphan First Kill, with Isabel Firman returning to
09:17 portray the character once again.
09:19 2.
09:20 The Monsters in the Mist in The Mist
09:23 Frank Darabont's terrific adaptation of Stephen King's novella The Mist ends on
09:27 a note that's paradoxically hopeful for humanity and absolutely horrifying on a more
09:32 personal, intimate level.
09:34 In the film's third act, survivor David drives through the mist-strewn city streets
09:39 and catches sight of a gigantic skyscraper-sized six-legged beast, seemingly confirming to
09:44 him that there's no hope for humanity to fend off the alien invasion.
09:49 And so David enters a suicide pact with his fellow survivors, culminating in him shooting
09:54 each of them dead, including his own son Billy.
09:57 But David doesn't have enough bullets to do himself in, and so willingly steps out
10:01 into the mist to be consumed by the monsters, only to see a tank emerge from the mist to
10:06 his absolute confusion.
10:08 A convoy follows the tank, revealing that the army has managed to turn the tide against
10:13 the aliens and successfully repel them, basically making the euthanasia of four people, including
10:18 his son, completely pointless.
10:20 Had they waited two more minutes, they would have all been saved.
10:23 1.
10:24 Samantha Kills Herself in The House of the Devil
10:28 Ty West's expertly crafted 2009 cult horror flick The House of the Devil centres around
10:33 Samantha, a cash-strapped college student who takes a babysitting job only to end up
10:37 facing off against a family who have malevolent designs on her.
10:42 During her first night working at the house, Samantha is drugged and wakes up to find herself
10:46 part of an occult ritual.
10:48 She eventually manages to make a violent escape, all while being chased by the family's deranged
10:52 patriarch, Mr. Ullman.
10:54 The two eventually face off in a graveyard, where Ullman suggests that Samantha is about
10:58 to become the vessel for an entity referred to only as "him", and so rather than shoot
11:03 Ullman, Samantha decides to turn the gun around on herself.
11:07 To Ullman's horror, Samantha shoots herself point blank in the head, and the screen abruptly
11:11 cuts to black.
11:12 For a few seconds, this seems like the movie's emphatic, bleak ending, only for West to serve
11:18 up one final scene.
11:20 In a hospital, we learn that Samantha actually survived her self-inflicted gunshot, just
11:24 as a nurse enters the room, pats her stomach and says "both of you will be fine".
11:29 Through means that are just too damn horrifying to linger on, Samantha is now pregnant with
11:33 what may or may not be the spawn of Satan, because Ty West wanted to ensure everyone
11:38 went home feeling like absolute trash.
11:41 And that concludes our list.
11:42 If you can think of any we missed, then do let us know in the comments below, and while
11:45 you're there don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
11:49 Also head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
11:53 just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
11:55 I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real