10 Movies That Are Totally Different By The End
These movies ended up in a completely different place from where they started.
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00:00 It's fair to say that most movies let you know precisely what they're about from the
00:03 first few scenes, establishing a style, mood and narrative throughline which endures until
00:08 the end credits roll about two hours later.
00:10 But not all filmmakers are interested in just giving audiences precisely what they expect.
00:15 It's a risky trick to shift genre, reinvent style or just take the story to a wholly unexpected
00:20 realm, which of course threatens to alienate less adventurous punters who may end up feeling
00:24 manipulated.
00:25 But when it works, it really works.
00:28 I'm SciForWhatCulture.com and these are 10 Movies That Are Totally Different by the
00:32 End.
00:33 10.
00:34 From Dusk Till Dawn
00:35 Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn begins as a modest yet pulpy thriller in which two
00:40 criminal brothers, Seth and Richie Gecko, take a family hostage while fleeing to Mexico.
00:44 It's as grimy and foul-mouthed as you'd expect from any Tarantino-penned thriller,
00:48 yet that first half is ultimately just setting the stage for one of the most legendary genre
00:53 shifts in cinema history.
00:55 At the midway point, Rodriguez's film reveals itself to be a secret B-movie, that is, an
00:59 action horror film filled with bloodthirsty vampires and cartoonish supporting characters
01:04 who look like they fell straight out of a comic book.
01:06 By film's end, when Seth and Kate emerge as the only survivors from a night of hilariously
01:10 over-the-top brutality, it couldn't seem much more divorced from the opening sequence
01:14 in which the Geckos hold up a liquor store, no vampires in sight.
01:18 For many movies, such a stark shift would simply tick the audience off, yet in From
01:22 Dust Till Dawn's case, the second half is such an absurdly entertaining, no-holds-barred
01:26 blast that few have ever bothered to complain.
01:29 9.
01:30 Audition
01:31 Takeshi Miike's filmography is so absurdly eclectic, spanning from yakuza thriller to
01:35 war epic to family comedy, that you can't ever be fully sure what you're about to
01:39 see from him until the end credits have actually rolled.
01:42 His 1999 film Audition, for example, begins as a seemingly down-the-line romantic drama
01:47 in which a lonely widower, Shigehara Ayama, holds a series of mock auditions in an attempt
01:52 to find a new wife.
01:53 One gets the sense that Miike thoroughly enjoys toying with the audience throughout the film's
01:57 first act, which is basically played entirely straight as an earnest melodrama.
02:01 Though the object of Shigehara's affection, Asami, certainly acts oddly throughout the
02:05 film, it isn't until the third act that Miike lets loose with a full-on stomach-churning
02:09 horror show.
02:10 Asami, who is revealed to be a jealously deranged psychopath, drugs Shigehara with a paralytic
02:15 agent, tortures him and then uses a wire saw to cut off one of his feet.
02:19 The nightmare scenario only ends when Shigehara's son returns home and kicks Asami down the
02:23 stairs to her death.
02:24 That's quite the escalation from a bereavement dramedy that Miike offered us in the opening
02:29 40 or so minutes.
02:31 8.
02:32 Million Dollar Baby
02:33 When you start watching Million Dollar Baby, it looks like the most typical Clint Eastwood
02:37 movie ever made - a well-crafted, if familiar drama that sends the masses home happy.
02:41 From its very first scenes, we're led to expect a conventional yet robust underdog
02:46 sports tale in which an amateur boxer, Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald, attempts to reach
02:50 the ranks of professional with the help of her grizzled old trainer Frankie Dunn.
02:54 Yet, at the end of the second act, there's a jaw-dropping turn where Maggie is sucker-punched
02:58 from behind by an opponent between rounds and hits her head on a corner stool, breaking
03:02 her neck.
03:03 The rest of the film becomes a devastating drama which, rather than have Maggie recover
03:07 from her injury and return to the ring, segues into a meditation on euthanasia as
03:11 Frankie wrestles with Maggie's request to help her die.
03:15 Ultimately, he complies, ending the film on a heart-wrenching yet brilliantly executed
03:19 down note, which couldn't be further from the Rocky-esque underdog yarn most surely
03:23 expected from the beginning.
03:25 7.
03:26 The Guest
03:27 Adam Wingard's tenacious The Guest was largely sold as a horror film, and in fact,
03:31 one of the very first sights in the movie is of a jack-o'-lantern.
03:35 The establishing scenes, in which a grieving family are visited by David, an apparent army
03:39 buddy of their dead son, set audiences up to anticipate a twisted, seemingly horrifying
03:44 reveal involving David's true identity.
03:47 Yet by Act 3, The Guest slaloms seamlessly into vaguely sci-fi action thriller territory
03:52 when we learn that David was actually a test subject in a military super-soldier experiment
03:56 and is programmed to kill anyone who might compromise his identity.
04:00 What follows is a bloodbath as David mows down anyone who gets in his way, before the
04:04 film morphs again into a slasher flick when David chases remaining family members Anna
04:08 and Luke through a haunted house.
04:10 Hilariously, though, Wingard defies our expectations once more as the film ends with Anna and Luke
04:15 making it to apparent safety, albeit while a presumed dead David resurfaces once more,
04:20 having somehow survived a brutal stab wound and disappears into the night.
04:24 Needless to say, audiences considered many possible endings for The Guest, but a third
04:28 act that weaved between three distinct genres - sci-fi, action and horror - probably wasn't
04:33 on their minds.
04:34 6.
04:35 Miracle Mile
04:37 Colt's 80s thriller Miracle Mile does a frankly magnificent job of luring the audience
04:41 into a false sense of security.
04:43 The first 20-ish minutes introduce us to lead Harry and his love interest Julie without
04:48 even a hint of the horrors awaiting them.
04:50 The establishing scenes are styled in the vein of a corny, cutesy rom-com as Harry and
04:54 Julie meet, quickly fall for one another and agree to meet at a coffee shop after her work
04:59 shift ends, but oh shucks, a power cut means that Harry doesn't wake up on time.
05:04 It sounds like a totally banal misunderstanding on which to hinge a perfectly mediocre indie
05:08 rom-com, and yet writer-director Steve Desjarnet has something else in store altogether.
05:14 As it turns out, Harry answers a payphone at the coffee shop and is informed by the
05:17 person on the other end of the line that nuclear war is apparently set to break out within
05:22 70 minutes.
05:23 At this point, Miracle Mile morphs into a paranoid suspense thriller in which Harry
05:27 attempts to ascertain the truth while making contact with Julie, and as almost polar opposite
05:32 to their adorable date at the start of the movie, it ends with the pair trapped in a
05:35 helicopter that's sinking into La Brea Tar Pits, the very place they met at the start
05:40 of the film.
05:41 With no means of escape, they resign themselves to their fate, their only solace being that
05:45 a direct hit from a nuke would turn them into diamonds.
05:48 Lovely.
05:49 5.
05:50 Kill List
05:51 Ben Wheatley's 2011 crime flick Kill List offers a straightforward yet intriguing premise
05:55 as two former British soldiers, Jay and Gal, take a job to carry out three killings in
06:00 exchange for a hefty payday.
06:02 The weirdness soon enough abounds as it becomes clear there's something more to Jay and
06:06 Gal's mission.
06:07 One of their target thanks them for killing him.
06:09 It isn't until the final 15 minutes that things finally come into focus.
06:13 As the pair prepare to carry out their third hit, they observe a cult ritual in the woods,
06:17 which culminates in a human sacrifice, prompting an alarmed Jay to open fire on the assembled
06:22 crowd.
06:23 Gal is then mortally wounded by the cultists, while Jay is knocked unconscious and wakes
06:27 up in a field where he's stripped, fitted with a mask and told to kill his final target,
06:32 the hunchback who is armed with a knife.
06:34 Jay complies, only to learn that the hunchback was in fact his wife, Chell, and son, Sam,
06:39 hidden under a mask and coat.
06:40 The film then ends ambiguously, with the cult seemingly crowning Jay as their new king.
06:45 For a film that was lastly presented as a gritty, low-budget crime thriller, the sharp
06:49 left turn into folk horror, even with the preceding weirdness leading up to it, was
06:53 a bracingly effective shock.
06:55 4.
06:56 Hancock Hancock starts off as a damn fun time, an
07:00 incredibly silly and puerile comedy in which an alcoholic superhero, John Hancock, causes
07:05 all manner of destruction across LA, before PR specialist Ray Embry steps in to try and
07:09 help rehabilitate his image.
07:11 Though that basic set-up sounds like the recipe for an entertainingly broad comedy, the script,
07:16 co-written by Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan, had something else in mind.
07:19 At the start of the third act, we learn that Ray's wife Mary is also a superhero, and
07:24 more to the point, she and Hancock were previously married, until Hancock lost his memory in
07:28 an accident 80 years earlier and she left him.
07:31 Moreover, the closer together Hancock and Mary are, the more mortal they become, and
07:35 in order to maintain their powers, they must again split up.
07:38 And so, Hancock's finale becomes a far more dour and earnest story than the hour of silly
07:43 fun times that preceded it, offering up a mawkish pondering on the nature of god-like
07:47 entities and a thoroughly sappy ending in which Hancock takes leave so that Mary and
07:51 Ray can reconcile.
07:53 3.
07:54 Bone Tomahawk
07:55 S. Craig Zala's Bone Tomahawk is a western quite like no other, despite the fact that
08:00 it seems to be a totally conventional entry at first sight.
08:03 Even with a bloody opening sequence in which two brigands are brutally murdered by a local
08:07 native, Zala's film seems to be operating fully within the tradition of a good old-fashioned
08:12 pulpy western romp.
08:13 At the end of the first act, Sheriff Franklin Hunt forms a rescue party to retrieve a number
08:17 of locals believed to have been kidnapped by troglodytes, that is, a tribe of inbred
08:22 murderous cannibals.
08:24 Even with the troglodytes' nature being clearly described to us so early on, most
08:27 of the movie's remainder plays out as a fairly familiar, albeit well-crafted, western
08:32 journey.
08:33 That is, at least, until we reach Act 3 and Hunt's party finally comes face to face
08:37 with the troglodytes themselves.
08:38 At this point, Bone Tomahawk mutates into a nauseatingly violent horror film in which
08:43 Hunt is forced to witness Deputy Nick be scalped, ripped in half and eaten.
08:47 The remainder of the movie is a glorified slasher joint as Hunt and his fellow survivors
08:51 escape their imprisonment and attempt to murder the troglodyte horde, which they largely do
08:55 in wildly grisly fashion.
08:57 2.
08:58 Sorry to Bother You
09:00 Sorry to Bother You starts off as an apparent workplace satire in the vein of Office Space,
09:04 albeit from the perspective of the Black Experience, as our protagonist Cash gets a job as a telemarketer
09:09 and begins to mask his personality in order to perform better.
09:13 For most of the movie, we observe Cash rising through the company's ranks and, as he becomes
09:17 wealthy, seemingly abandoning his prior pro-worker idealism.
09:21 But writer-director Boots Riley pulls a sharp handbrake turn in Act 3 when Cash attends
09:26 a party held by his company's CEO, Steve Lift, and discovers a group of human-horse
09:31 hybrids shackled up.
09:32 Bet you didn't see that one coming.
09:34 It turns out Lift is using a gene-modifying power to transform his employees into Equisapiens,
09:40 who are stronger and more obedient, and therefore generate more money for the company.
09:44 At film's end, Cash himself begins to sprout three horse-like nostrils and then leads an
09:48 army of revolting Equisapiens to break down the front door of Lift's home.
09:53 Did a single living soul see such an insane shift coming from black comedy to surreal
09:58 fantasy sci-fi?
09:59 1.
10:00 10 Cloverfield Lane Even with the word Cloverfield in the title,
10:05 Paramount and producer JJ Abrams decided to market their spin-off, 10 Cloverfield Lane,
10:09 as a claustrophobic, self-contained thriller largely taking place in a single location.
10:14 And indeed, it kicks off with protagonist Michelle crashing her car and waking up in
10:18 an underground bunker, alongside survivalist Howard and another resident Emmett.
10:23 Howard claims that apocalyptic situation above ground makes it impossible for them to leave
10:27 the compound for a few years, and both Michelle and we as viewers are basically immediately
10:32 distrustful of him.
10:33 Yet 10 Cloverfield Lane veers suddenly off course in the last ten minutes when Michelle
10:37 escapes Howard to the outside world and learns that he was basically sorta right.
10:42 She soon enough spots an alien biomechanical craft in the distance and spends the movie's
10:46 remaining minutes battling a creature which drops from it.
10:49 Even though many expected to see an alien monster at some point in the film, by this
10:52 time it was so close to wrapping up that many had just assumed that 10 Cloverfield Lane
10:56 would indeed be a mere psychological thriller set within the Cloverfield universe.
11:01 It finally shifted gears at the very end, in a move which some criticisers tacked on
11:05 and unnecessary, while others appreciated it as fans of the original Cloverfield.
11:10 And that's the list!
11:11 Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below and any other films
11:14 that you can think of that changed genre half way through.
11:18 Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe and hit that notification
11:22 bell.
11:23 I've been Si for WhatCulture and have a good week.