When the closing moments turn the entire film on its head.
There’s nothing more important to a film than how it ends – get it right and it puts a neat cherry on top of an already great film, but put it this way and it can undo all the hard work that went into it.
The final scene of a film is often used to introduce new information that drastically redefines the context of the entire story, and this is perhaps never more common than in the horror genre.
Absolutely horrible loves pulling the rug out in the final moments, providing viewers with vital last-minute information that offers a whole new perspective on everything they’ve just seen.
At their best, these moments will make you want to immediately rewatch the film with this closing revelation in mind, given how radically it changes the meaning of, well, everything. And at the very least, they’ll make you rethink the whole experience for better or worse, that the story and characters weren’t quite what you expected.
It’s a risky ploy that doesn’t always work—and sometimes studios just ignore its sequel effects anyway—but when it works, Really projects…
10. Final destination 5
Final Destination 5 was definitely one of the best entries in the franchise, but what turned a solid horror sequel into something truly memorable was its game-changing final scene.
As Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) and Molly (Emma Bell) seemingly cheat death and board a plane at the end of the film, it is suddenly revealed that they boarded Volée Airlines Flight 180 – the doomed flight from the original final destination.
Basically, although audiences have reasonably assumed that the film is set in the present, it is actually a secret prequel set in the year 2000.
And while it wasn’t exactly a shock that Sam and Molly were claimed by Death at the end of the movie, since that’s basically the outcome of most of the Final Destination movies, the return to the first movie was a genuine shaky rug.
Considering this marked the end of the original run of Final Destination films – although a sixth film is currently in the works – it was incredibly fitting, if unexpected, that its climax would bring everything full circle.
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