27 Movies With Shocking Twist Endings You Won't Recover From

1 | The Wicker Man (1973)

There's no question that 2019's critically acclaimed cult tale Midsommar owes a thing or two to this 1973 horror film (as well as the 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage). In The Wicker Man, police officer Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) investigates the disappearance of a young girl (Geraldine Cowper) from a tight-knit, pagan community on an island off the coast of Scotland. Just when he believes he’s rescued the girl from a planned human sacrifice, Howie realizes that she was merely the bait and he was the target all along. He’s burned to death in a giant wicker structure to ensure a bountiful harvest.

2 | The Sixth Sense (1999)

Sure, this twist is common pop culture knowledge now, but when M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense came out in 1999, it blew audiences' minds. The film topped the box office for several weeks, possibly because everyone wanted to immediately go back and rewatch it to find all the clues that Bruce Willis’ child psychologist Malcolm Crowe is one of the “dead people” his young patient Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) has been claiming he can see and speak to.

3 | Arrival (2016)

In 2016’s Arrival, Amy Adams plays a linguist who’s recruited to help the U.S. government communicate with extraterrestrial crafts hovering just above Earth. By utilizing what she understands about language, Louise Banks is able to receive the message the aliens have come to bring: They’re giving humanity the gift of their method of communication, which enables humans to experience time differently. It’s then revealed that Louise’s “flashbacks” to the childhood of her daughter who died young are actually visions of the future. She begins a relationship with the man (Jeremy Renner) who will father her child at the end of the film, even knowing how tragically it will end.

4 | The Prestige (2006)

Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are magicians locked in a bitter rivalry in this 2006 thriller. Angier (Jackman) becomes obsessed with discovering how Borden (Bale) performs his “Transported Man” trick, creating his own version using a machine made for him by the scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), which creates a copy of Angier every time he steps into it. Angier has drowned who knows how many clones of himself by the time he realizes that the man he knows as “Borden” is actually a set of identical twins, who have been sharing one life in an extremely committed, never-ending magic show.

5 | What Lies Beneath (2000)

When Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) first begins to believe that she’s being haunted by a restless spirit, her husband, Norman (Harrison Ford), expresses skepticism. But as Claire uncovers more and more about the late Madison Elizabeth Frank (Amber Valletta), he changes his tune, admitting to having an affair with her, which led the younger woman to die by suicide in the house he shares with his wife. Surprise, surprise: That’s a lie, too. Norman killed Madison for threatening to expose their relationship, and he tries to stage Claire’s death the same way. Madison avenges her own murder when Norman and Claire run off the road into the lake where Norman dumped Madison's body; her corpse weighs him down so Claire can escape.

RELATED: 8 Movies So Controversial That They Faced Audience Boycotts.

6 | American Psycho (2000)

Late ‘80s Wall Street excess provides the perfect cover for Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), a sociopath obsessed with status and appearance. The 2000 film chronicles Bateman’s killing spree, as he mows through colleagues, sex workers, and unlucky bystanders, but an ambiguous ending hints that those murders were all fantasies, and that Bateman never really killed anyone. Whether he did or not, it’s unsettling enough that he thought through it all in such gory detail. (Can’t fault his taste in music, however.)

7 | Shutter Island (2010)

Martin Scorsese’s 2010 adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s noir-ish novel stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as two U.S. marshals sent out to a remote hospital for the criminally insane to look into a disappeared patient. At least, that’s what DiCaprio’s Daniels believes. Eventually, his doctors come clean. He is actually Andrew Laeddis, a dangerously violent patient, and the “investigation” was all an extreme treatment meant to break him out of his delusion. Its effects are fleeting, however, and Laeddis is led off to be lobotomized in the final scene of the film.

8 | Gone Baby Gone (2007)

Based on another Dennis Lehane book, Gone Baby Gone follows yet another disappearance. Partners Patrick (Casey Affleck) and Angie's (Michelle Monaghan) search for a missing three-year-old is full of twists and turns, but it seems obvious that the drug dealer who employed the girl’s mother (Amy Ryan) has to be involved. But so, it’s revealed, are the police. Months after the girl is presumed to have died, she’s found happy and healthy with the police captain (Morgan Freeman) who helped orchestrate the kidnapping to punish the girl's mother and give the child a better life.

9 | Memento (2000)

This 2000 flick was a breakthrough moment for Christopher Nolan. Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) suffers from anterograde amnesia, meaning that he cannot form new memories. His wife was killed in the attack that gave him his condition, and he’s hellbent on bringing her assailants to justice. To keep to that mission, Leonard tattoos important pieces of information on his body and leaves himself countless clues. Unfortunately for those he’s after, they might also all be lies. Leonard’s wife may have actually died because he accidentally gave her too much insulin, prompting this elaborate false memory. But in a movie populated by characters whose reliability is in question, nothing is for certain.

10 | Saw (2004)

This 2004 body horror nightmare launched a franchise that sees its tenth installment, Saw X, released this year. The original Saw introduces Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), a game-obsessed serial killer who sets his victims against each other. One of the great, mind-blowing moments in the genre takes place when the corpse left locked up in the room with Adam (Leigh Whannell) and Lawrence (Cary Elwes) rises from the floor, revealing that Jigsaw hasn’t been watching his psychological death trap play out from afar. He’s been with them the whole time.

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11 | Psycho (1960)

Psycho has a pretty shocking twist in the first act, but the stabbing death of Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane isn’t the only surprise the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic has in store. It’s discovered that motel proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) had (past tense) a strict and overbearing mother. He took on her personality after he killed her and her lover 10 years prior to Marion renting a room. When Norman “becomes” Mother, he murders the women he’s sexually attracted to, convinced he’s acting out her wishes.

12 | The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

What a cliffhanger. In 1980, the second ever Star Wars film ended with a revelation that audiences would then have to wait three years to see resolved. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) has been training to become a Jedi, like the father he never knew. But his old pal Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness) left out a pretty important detail about Ben's former pupil. Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader (James Earl Jones) when he embraced the dark side, something he’s only too happy to share with his son when the latter is down one hand and trying to keep from falling to his death. Of course, there’s more to the Skywalker soap opera than that, as Luke and Leia (Carrie Fisher) would learn in Return of the Jedi.

13 | Planet of the Apes (1968)

When three astronauts crash land onto a planet that’s run by a race of intelligent, human-like apes, they’re the strange visitors. Humans are still around in this world, only they’re primitive, enslaved, and considered by the apes to be stupid animals. Artifacts from the past human-dominant society remain, but the other shoe doesn’t drop until Taylor (Charlton Heston) and Nova (Linda Harrison) find a piece of the Statue of Liberty—now a ruin—on a beach. The titular planet was Earth all along. In the far future, humanity has essentially destroyed itself, making way for the apes to rule.

14 | Black Swan (2010)

The perfectionism characteristic of the elite ballet world turns claustrophobic and psychedelic in 2010’s Black Swan. Natalie Portman stars as Nina Sayers, a dancer who’s so intent on winning the lead role of the Swan Queen that she starts to lose her grip on reality. Hallucinations twist her rivalry with another dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), and in a mid-opening night struggle, Nina stabs her for preparing to go on in her place. It’s only after Nina executes a flawless final act that the rest of the company realizes that she has actually stabbed herself and is about to die on stage.

15 | Primal Fear (1996)

This 1996 courtroom drama put Edward Norton on the map. He plays Aaron Stampler, a gentle altar boy with a stutter who stands accused of murdering an archbishop. In the process of preparing his defense, his lawyer, Martin Vail (Richard Gere), learns that the archbishop sexually abused Aaron and other boys, and that Aaron developed an alternate personality—the swaggering, remorseless “Roy”—in order to cope. Aaron is acquitted when “Roy” makes a violent appearance in court, but he lets Martin in on his secret afterwards: He faked the disorder to get away with the murder, and sweet “Aaron” is actually the constructed personality.

RELATED: 6 Old Hollywood Movies You Can't Watch Anywhere Now.

16 | The Mist (2007)

In this 2007 horror flick based on the Stephen King book, a mysterious you-know-what rolls through a town, hiding hideous monsters inside and bringing death with it. David Drayton (Thomas Jane) and his son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), end up on the frontlines, barricaded in a grocery store with other survivors. As the monsters (who most likely entered our dimension through a portal created by the U.S. government) pick off victims, David keeps his son and a small group alive. They're eventually able to escape the grocery store, but there’s nothing they can do to outrun the mist. He convinces the group to let him kill them all—including Billy—sparing them the potentially worse fate coming for them. Mere seconds later, the military arrives, and the mist begins to fade. If only they’d waited.

17 | Split (2016)

M. Night Shyamalan, once considered a master of twist endings, pulls off something unique with Split. The twist is that the film is a sequel, only audiences aren’t let in on that fact until the final scene. James McAvoy stars as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man with dissociative identity disorder who kidnaps three teen girls. He has 23 distinct personalities within him, but the others warn that a 24th is about to manifest. The final identity is the Beast, a superhuman being who wants to purify the world. In a diner, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) watches news coverage of the rescue of one of the girls. He’s the hero of Shyamalan's 2000 superhero deconstruction Unbreakable, and Split is revealed to be the second movie in a trilogy.

18 | The Others (2001)

The haunted house movie is flipped on its head in 2001’s The Others. Paranoid mother Grace (Nicole Kidman) lives on a large estate with her two photosensitive children, waiting for the return of her husband, who they haven’t heard from since World War II ended. Three newly arrived servants are warned that the young boy and girl can’t be exposed to light and that each door must be locked before another is opened. But then doors begin to open of their own accord, and another presence is felt in the house—the new family who have come to take possession of the home. It’s Grace, her children, and the servants who are dead; Grace having taken the lives of her own kids and then herself. Housekeeper Mrs. Mills (Fionnula Flanagan) warns Grace that while they’ve already driven one family away, more will be coming, and that the living and the dead must learn to coexist.

19 | Soylent Green (1973)

In the dystopian future of this 1973 movie, food is no longer organically grown, and a company called Soylent produces the products that keep most of humanity alive. But there’s some sort of conspiracy afoot with their new product, Soylent Green, as men close to the project are being silenced. Police detective Thorn (Charlton Heston) finds his worst fears about the tasty new Soylent variety confirmed when he sees a truck full of its main ingredient—human corpses—arrive at the plant. “Soylent Green is people!” he screams to anyone who’ll listen as he’s dragged away.

20 | Us (2019)

When she was a child, Adelaide had a traumatic meeting with her own doppelgänger. In this 2019 movie, that doppelgänger returns—along with copies of the rest of her family—when Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) is an adult. Called Tethers, these underground people have been planning their uprising for years under the leadership of Red, Adelaide’s copy. She manages to save her family after a showdown with Red, though the Tethers’ overall plan isn’t thwarted. Only Adelaide’s son, Jason (Evan Alex), seems to suspect that his mother is the real Red and has been ever since the Tether replaced her when they first met as children.

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21 | Atonement (2007)

Twist endings aren’t common in love stories, but this 2007 drama has one that will break your heart. The wealthy Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and her housekeeper’s son, Robbie (James McAvoy), are separated when Cecilia’s younger sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan), falsely accuses Robbie of raping their cousin. As she grows up, Briony realizes her mistake and mourns the consequences of it. She apologizes to Robbie and Cecilia and promises to recant her claims to get his conviction overturned. But this scene is her own construct. Robbie and Cecilia both died in World War II, having never been reunited. Briony, now a novelist, writes them the happy ending they were denied.

22 | Seven (1995)

In 1995’s Seven, detectives David Mills (Brad Pitt) and William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) investigate a serial killing spree inspired by the seven deadly sins. They find and catch their John Doe (Kevin Spacey), but not soon enough to prevent all seven murders. Doe promises to take them to the last two victims and then to plead guilty. Somerset and Mills follow his instructions, leading them to an unmarked box, which contains the severed head of Mills’ pregnant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), signifying envy. A distraught Mills shoots Doe—an act of wrath—completing the cycle.

23 | Chinatown (1974)

Jack Nicholson stars in this 1974 noir, playing J.J. Gittes, a detective who uncovers a city-wide conspiracy after he’s hired to follow one man, Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling). The man's wife, Evelyn Cross Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), seems to be filling the "femme fatale" role in the film: She goes from key source to suspect when her husband is found drowned. Then Evelyn’s father, Noah Cross (John Huston), orders Jake to find Hollis Mulwray’s missing “mistress,” which he does... in Evelyn’s home. Evelyn eventually confesses that Katherine (Belinda Palmer) is both her sister and her daughter; her father raped her when she was a child. Cross is the driving force behind the scam and the murder, and the completely innocent Evelyn dies trying to protect her daughter from him.

24 | Remember Me (2010)

Remember Me appears at first glance to be a pretty standard romantic drama. Robert Pattinson's Tyler and Emilie de Ravin's Ally both have tragedies in their past and complicated relationships with their fathers, but as they fall in love, they start to face their individual issues. Unfortunately, one of them is not long for this world. A final, almost universally reviled, out-of-nowhere twist reveals that Tyler dies waiting alone in the World Trade Center office of his father on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

25 | Orphan (2009)

A grieving couple (Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard) who recently lost a child adopt a young girl from Russia named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) in this 2009 thriller. Only it seems that there's more to Esther's story than they were initially told—like maybe she's a violent psychopath trying to kill off her adoptive siblings and mother and seduce her new dad. Eventually, the Colemans get some information that explains a lot: Esther isn't actually nine; She's a 33-year-old woman with dwarfism and a prolific serial killer, to boot. Shockingly, the 2022 prequel, Orphan: First Kill, manages to match—if not surpass—the original's campy reveal.

26 | Coco (2017)

In Pixar's Coco, a young boy named Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez) aspires to be a musician like his great-great-grandfather, a man his family won't speak of since he abandoned his wife and child. Miguel comes to believe that his ancestor is Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt), a musical legend, and by playing his guitar on the Day of the Dead, Miguel can interact with all the deceased who are visiting the living. He soon ventures to the Land of the Dead and meets Héctor (Gael García Bernal), a skeleton who agrees to help Miguel meet Ernesto in exchange for Miguel ensuring that he'll be remembered in the Land of the Living. But Miguel comes to discover that Héctor is his great-great-grandfather, not Ernesto, and that Ernesto murdered Héctor in cold blood, when he, the main songwriter, decided to leave their double act. In the end, there's not a dry eye in the house when Miguel saves the memory of Héctor by playing his song "Remember Me" to his elderly great-grandmother Coco (Ana Ofelia Murguía)—Héctor's daughter, who he never intended to leave.

27 | Last Christmas (2019)

There's something strange about Tom (Henry Golding), the handsome stranger Kate (Emilia Clarke) meets in London around Christmas time: he disappears for long stretches of time, nobody at the shelter where he claims to volunteer knows him, and he doesn't have a phone. Still, the messy aspiring singer falls in love with him anyway, and his generosity and unusual perspective have a positive impact on her life. Strong foundation for a long-term relationship, right? Wrong. Er, well, half-wrong. Last Christmas reveals that Tom has been dead for over a year and that it's his heart Kate received in a transplant. So in that sense, they'll always be together.