10 Horror Movies With Great Villains Twists We Never Saw Coming

Horror movies rely on viewers’ fear of the unknown and their instinct to trust what they perceive on the screen or even off it, and these films did just that. Films heavy on jumpscares attempt to catch audiences off guard, but many horror movies wait until the climax to introduce a game-changing twist or concept. While this is more common in thriller movies, it works perfectly for horror films that have an element of mystery to them. Some of the most shocking horror movie moments that elicit audible gasps from viewers are unexpected twists that make them reassess everything.

One of the most iconic horror movie scenes that changed millennials’ lives, perhaps the worst-kept secret in Hollywood horror cinema, is the final revelation in The Sixth Sense. What Bruce Willis’ character realizes changes the entire story’s experience as viewers try to recall moments of foreshadowing and make sense of everything. Watching a horror movie becomes even more thrilling when such a climactic revelation is about the movie’s villain. Many horror movies that will always be classics feature characters who you’d never guess were actually the villains all along.

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10

Orphan (2009)

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

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Orphan

r

Horror

Thriller

6/10

8.5/10

Release Date

July 24, 2009

Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Orphan is a psychological horror film in which a couple adopt a mysterious 9-year-old girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), only to discover that she is not who she appears to be. Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard star as Kate and John, her adoptive parents.

Cast

Isabelle Fuhrman, Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard

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Runtime

123 minutes

Director

Jaume Collet-Serra

Writers

Jaume Collet-Serra

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Jaume Collet-Serra most recently directed Carry-On, one of the best thriller movies of 2024. Long before that, he had started his career by directing House of Wax and the forgettable sequel Goal II: Living the Dream before breaking through as a director with Orphan, which is also Isabelle Fuhrman’s acting breakout movie. The movie follows a bereaved couple who adopt a 9-year-old orphan, Esther, after they lose their baby.

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While she doesn’t get along with their early adolescent older son, Esther doesn’t seem to struggle to blend into the family. She starts behaving in a few alarming ways, gradually raising suspicions about her innocence. Esther’s erratic behavior drives a wedge between the couple, and it becomes clear that she’s the movie’s villain. It is revealed in the third act that Esther is an adult woman with proportional dwarfism caused by a hormonal deficiency. You never see the revelation coming, and it changes everything about the film up to that point.

9

Happy Death Day (2017)

Directed by Christopher Landon

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Happy Death Day

PG-13

Horror

Mystery

Thriller

6/10

10/10

Release Date

October 13, 2017

Happy Death Day is a horror-comedy film directed by Christopher Landon. Released in 2017, it follows college student Tree Gelbman, played by Jessica Rothe, who is forced to relive the day of her murder repeatedly until she can identify her killer and stop her death. The film blends elements of slasher horror with dark humor, creating a unique entry in the genre.

Cast

Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Rachel Matthews, Billy Slaughter, Charles Aitken, Jimmy Gonzales, Jason Bayle, Rob Mello, Phi Vu, Caleb Spillyards, Laura Clifton, Cariella Smith, Tran Tran, Blaine Kern III, Dane Rhodes, Tenea Intriago, Missy Yager, Rachel Black, Donna DuPlantier, GiGi Erneta, Ramsey Anderson, Brady Lewis

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Runtime

96 minutes

Director

Christopher Landon

Writers

Christopher Landon, Scott Lobdell

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Christopher Landon, who wrote three Paranormal Activity movies and was slated to direct the new Scream movie before leaving that production, wrote and directed the slasher duology Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2U. Both of them follow Theresa “Tree” Gelbman, who gets stuck, in the first movie, in a Groundhog Day-like time loop, and keeps getting murdered on her birthday. She has to figure out the identity of the killer to avoid them, and also learn to become a better person along the way.

The whodunnit format is executed perfectly, as possibilities get eliminated gradually and the stakes consistently ramp up because feasible suspects become personally closer to Tree. Moreover, the fact that there’s an actual serial killer at large makes the mystery even harder to solve. The best part is that Tree inevitably has to introspect to eliminate possible motives, and her character growth is directly linked to the mystery. By the time she figures out it’s her jealous roommate, viewers will feel frustrated along with her, at how many guesses were wrong, but the unexpected twist makes up for that.

8

The Boy (2016)

Directed by William Brent Bell

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The Boy

PG-13

Thriller

Horror

Mystery

Release Date

January 22, 2016

Runtime

97 Minutes

Director

William Brent Bell

The Boy is a psychological horror film directed by William Brent Bell. It stars Lauren Cohan as Greta, a young American woman who is hired to care for a lifelike doll by an elderly couple in an English village. As Greta begins to suspect the doll may be alive, a series of unsettling events challenge her understanding of reality.

Cast

Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans, James Russell, Jim Norton, Diana Hardcastle, Ben Robson, Jett Klyne, Lily Pater

Writers

Stacey Menear

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We all know her as Maggie Greene, a role that The Walking Dead actress reprised after season 11, but Lauren Cohan has been working in the horror genre from even before the AMC zombie apocalypse show began. So, it’s not surprising that her sparse feature film career also includes at least one horror title. Cohan plays an unsuspecting nanny in The Boy, who finds out, after taking the job, that she is to take care of a doll that her employers treat like their son.

The doll, called Brahms after the couple’s son, returns in the sequel Brahms: The Boy II, but that film follows unrelated people haunted by the doll.

It is later revealed that their actual son died 20 years ago as an 8-year-old in a house fire after a girl he was friends with was discovered with her skull bashed in. The nanny is given rules to follow while looking after the doll, but she doesn’t take them seriously until spooked by some inexplicable phenomena and realizes the doll only moves when she isn’t looking. However, it turns out that the boy hadn’t died 20 years ago, and is living as an adult within the house’s walls. This twist left me with my jaw on the floor in shock.

7

Psycho (1960)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

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Psycho

R

Horror

Mystery

Thriller

10/10

13

8.9/10

Release Date

September 8, 1960

In this now-iconic Alfred Hitchcock thriller, a secretary embezzles forty thousand dollars from her employer’s client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel. The place is run by a young man under the domination of his mother — and he soon turns out to be far more threatening than he appeared at first.

Cast

Janet Leigh, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, John Gavin, Vera Miles

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Runtime

109 minutes

Director

Alfred Hitchcock

Writers

Joseph Stefano, Robert Bloch

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Alfred Hitchcock has perhaps had the biggest impact on the horror genre in America than any other director before him. He introduced new camera angles, scoring techniques, blocking methods, and acting-focused writing in his films, which continue to influence filmmakers today. It’s hard to pick his best work, but his most notorious is an easy answer – the 1960 horror film Psycho. That shower scene changed cinema forever by introducing the idea that such a safe space can host brutal violence and the trope of misleading people about who is the film’s protagonist.

Norman Bates is introduced as a soft-spoken gentlemanly motel owner in Psycho, who reveres his mother and respects his customers’ boundaries. His mother sounds ungrateful and overtly suspicious. She doesn’t trust the motel’s guests, and it is heavily implied that she kills female customers Norman interacts with. No one expects to find out that Norman’s mother is long dead, and he dresses up as her and does what he imagines she would. While the explanation for his behavior has aged poorly, Psycho is a classic black-and-white horror movie that still holds up today because the twist is timeless.

6

Us (2019)

Directed by Jordan Peele

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Us

R

Horror

Mystery

Thriller

9/10

10

7.9/10

Release Date

March 22, 2019

Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Us follows the Wilson family; Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), and their children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). When visiting a remote lakeside cabin, the Wilson family is beset by exact doppelgangers of themselves, who quickly disclose that they mean their counterparts harm. The Wilson family is forced to fight for their lives against twisted mirror images of themselves, not realizing that there are more doppelgangers out there.

Cast

Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop

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Runtime

116 Minutes

Director

Jordan Peele

Writers

Jordan Peele

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2019 was one of the best years in movie history, and for modern horror movie buffs, it was a particularly exciting year. Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, and Jordan Peele released their sophomore directorial features that year. Jordan Peele delivered Us, a horror movie that explores the nature and impact of privilege in America. It follows Adelaide Wilson, played by Lupita Nyong’o, a mute woman who lost her ability to speak after going through a harrowing experience at a funhouse years ago as a child when she encountered another girl who looked exactly like her.

I would never have guessed that the doppelgänger wasn’t the villain, and the current Adelaide was actually her Tethered version.

The two of them meet 33 years later when Adelaide, as an adult, goes on vacation with her family. Her doppelgänger has her own family, who all resemble her family, and they call themselves the Tethered. The Tethered characters try to kill their counterparts, but Adelaide is able to escape with her son. I would never have guessed that the doppelgänger wasn’t the villain, and the current Adelaide was actually her Tethered version. She’d replaced the original Adelaide years ago after attacking her, for the privilege of living above ground and having a fulfilling life.

5

The Others (2001)

Directed by Alejandro Amenábar

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The Others

PG-13

Mystery

Thriller

Horror

9.3/10

Release Date

August 10, 2001

Alejandro Amenábar wrote and directed this cult-classic 2001 Horror film starring Nicole Kidman and Fionnula Flanagan. The premise follows a mother and her two young photosensitive children as they attempt to deal with a mysterious and possibly sinister presence in their New Jersey home.

Cast

Nicole Kidman, James Bentley, Alakina Mann, Christopher Eccleston, Fionnula Flanagan

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Runtime

104 minutes

Director

Alejandro Amenábar

Writers

Alejandro Amenábar

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Just a couple of years after M. Night Shyamalan hit audiences with the most spoiled plot twist of all time, it was Nicole Kidman’s turn to play an unsuspecting ghost. However, the two circumstances aren’t nearly as similar as this comparison might suggest because Kidman’s character, Grace, is actually a villain in The Others. Grace lives in a remote house alone with her children and mourns her husband, who died in the war.

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18

After the family spots unwelcome visitors in their house, Grace becomes convinced they’re being haunted. She starts investigating, and to her shock, she realizes that the household help have all been long dead. It doesn’t take her long to realize that she and her children are the ghosts haunting the visitors, who are the current residents of their house. In a moment of hopelessness, Grace had smothered her children to death and killed herself in her grief after she’d learned about her husband’s death. This horrifying and unexpected twist suddenly makes all the inexplicable details fall into place.

4

Scream (1996)

Directed by Wes Craven

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Scream

R

Crime

Horror

Mystery

24

9/10

Release Date

December 20, 1996

Wes Craven flips the horror-slasher genre on its head with the 1996 release of Scream, the first in the long-running franchise. The residents of Woodsboro discover a series of murders are being committed by a dangerous ghost mask-wearing killer with an obsession for classic horror movies. To survive, a group of high school students, a reporter, and a town deputy will have to subvert horror expectations and stay one step ahead of the killer.

Cast

Drew Barrymore, Kevin Patrick Walls, David Booth, Carla Hatley, Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich

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Runtime

111 minutes

Director

Wes Craven

Writers

Kevin Williamson

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Right from his introduction in the first scene of the film, it’s clear that Ghostface is supernaturally fast because he goes from one door to another in next to no time. He runs through the house before claiming his second victim, the presumed protagonist played by Drew Barrymore. Clad in a black shroud and an iconic ghost mask, he terrorizes his victims by catching them unawares even after they have seemingly escaped him. Moreover, the most obvious suspects seem to have an airtight alibi for at least one kill.

There are always multiple people who become Ghostface in the Scream movies, except for Roman Bridger in Scream III, who’s the only solo Ghostface to date.

It would never occur to anyone, but the moment it’s revealed that there are two different Ghostfaces, a lot of his seemingly unnatural abilities become understandable. Billy Loomis and Stu Macher would commonly go to hunt down their victims together and would take turns doing the killing, depending on who wanted to do it more and who had the better opportunity. Ghostface is a horror movie character who helped reshape genre expectations, because he’s a long-running franchise villain who’s simply a placeholder, and is simultaneously his own character.

3

Saw (2004)

Directed by James Wan

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Saw

R

Horror

Mystery

Crime

4/10

13

7.8/10

Release Date

October 29, 2004

Saw is the first installment in the horror franchise directed by James Wan. Released in 2004, the film follows two men who awake shackled in a derelict bathroom, discovering they are part of a sadistic game orchestrated by the enigmatic Jigsaw, requiring them to follow cryptic instructions to survive.

Cast

Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Monica Potter, Ken Leung, Makenzie Vega, Michael Emerson, Shawnee Smith, Dina Meyer, Tobin Bell, Alexandra Bokyun Chun, Mike Butters, Paul Gutrecht, Benito Martinez, Ned Bellamy, Avner Garbi, Hans Raith, Oren Koules

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Runtime

103 minutes

Director

James Wan

Writers

James Wan, Leigh Whannell

Producers

Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg, Oren Koules

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Written by Leigh Whannell, who also plays one of the protagonists in the film, Saw is a great crime movie where the villain wins in the end. However, the nature of the victory changes the life of any first-time Saw viewer. The film follows two men who wake up in a dilapidated bathroom and are given a series of objects and a tape recording each, giving them instructions on what to do if they don’t want to incur horrible personal losses. While they seem to initially be strangers, the characters are slowly revealed to be connected to each other.

The characters decide to put their differences aside and investigate the corpse in the middle of the room so they can figure a way out. It’s clear that they’ve been caught by the Jigsaw Killer, who’s watching them. In the final scene, the corpse shockingly stands up and reveals himself to be John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer. This insane twist introduces audiences to the meticulous mind of Kramer, who had made it impossible for him to intervene once things were set in motion because he’s that confident in his ability to read people.

2

Get Out (2017)

Directed by Jordan Peele

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Get Out

R

Horror

Mystery

Thriller

7/10

15

7.3/10

Release Date

February 24, 2017

Jordan Peele made his directorial Horror debut with Get Out, a terrifying Psychological Horror film starring Daniel Kaluuya. In the 2017 release, Chris Washington heads to Upstate New York to meet the family of his girlfriend, Rose. What follows is a horrifying ordeal for the anxious photographer.

Cast

Lyle Brocato, LaKeith Stanfield, Caleb Landry Jones, Betty Gabriel, Allison Williams, Marcus Henderson, Erika Alexander, Bradley Whitford, Jeronimo Spinx, Catherine Keener, Daniel Kaluuya

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Runtime

1 hour, 44 minutes

Director

Jordan Peele

Writers

Jordan Peele

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Jordan Peele, known for his series of skits with Keegan-Michael Key, as the comedy duo Key & Peele, broke through in Hollywood as a horror director with Get Out, arguably the best horror movie in the past 10 years. Based on the collective anxieties about systemic racism in the USA, it uses a reference to the country’s history of slavery to tackle the issue. Get Out follows Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris on a trip to his girlfriend’s house, where he meets considerably racist relatives during a social gathering.

It’s nigh impossible to predict she’s in on her family’s plan to kidnap Chris to be their personal servant.

Allison Williams, as his girlfriend, is so convincing in her role of being a supportive partner, that it’s almost impossible to predict she’s in on her family’s plan to kidnap Chris to be their personal servant. Peele masterfully uses this misdirection to voice a growing concern in today’s world about hidden conservative attitudes in people who present open-minded personas. The amount of mistrust in the country is so bad that one can never be sure if even the helpful and likable neighbor is secretly a racist.

1

Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)

Directed by Halina Reijn

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Bodies Bodies Bodies

R

Comedy

Horror

Thriller

7/10

8/10

Release Date

August 5, 2022

Bodies Bodies Bodies is a comedy/horror/thriller from 2 AM. When Bee (Maria Bakalova) travels to a hurricane party with her girlfriend Sophie (Amanda Stenberg), they find themselves surrounded by affluent 20-somethings with very different world views. When the party finally kicks off amidst the coming storm, the debauchery leads to a game of “Bodies Bodies Bodies.” However, when a power outage occurs during the game, and a murder occurs in its stead, the party takes a turn for the deadly.

Cast

Pete Davidson, Maria Bakalova, Rachel Sennott, Chase Sui Wonders, Amandla Stenberg, Lee Pace, Myha’la Herrold

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Runtime

95 minutes

Director

Halina Reijn

Writers

Sarah DeLappe, Kristen Roupenian

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The best horror movies address contemporary cultural norms and collective sources of fear. So, Bodies Bodies Bodies exploring its Gen Z characters’ paranoia about each other, feels like a commentary on the generation’s growing mistrust in a world where people are chronically online and frequently encounter misinformation. These characters are supposed to be close friends, but don’t have any faith in each other, and all secretly resent each other, based on the personas they project online.

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When one of them, played by Pete Davidson, is found stabbed with a sword, the group, despite initially trying, fails to present a united front and attack each other. The claustrophobic slasher seems impossible to solve as probable suspects all have alibis and get killed nonetheless. Who would have guessed that filming a TikTok is what led to Davidson’s character’s death when he failed to juggle a sword? Bodies Bodies Bodies possibly features the best villain twist, in that there isn’t one. The real villain is their obsession with social media, and inability to ground themselves in reality.

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Category: Entertainment