The climax. The denouement. The epilogue. These three highly satisfying story elements conclude every great tale, and when you’re entrenched in a supernatural thriller, these strategic moments need to be even more heightened to really hit home. Now, there is a fine line between horror films and supernatural thrillers; the main distinction, for the sake of this chilling list, is that these films are low on buckets of blood and gore, and high on suspense.
Here are the undisputed best supernatural thriller final scenes ever committed to celluloid. From modern ghost stories like What Lies Beneath to the reimagining of a cult favorite like Suspiria, these are all classics in their own right. Some of these fine films conclude with twists so twisty that they leave the viewer in shocked knots; others simply close out the film with visually sumptuous, cathartic moments — yet all are laced with a lingering sense of the mystical and otherworldly. This collection investigates the nitty-gritty of these final scenes — ergo, there will be countless spoilers. Unlike many of the characters in these films, you have been warned.
10
‘What Lies Beneath’ (2000)
Stacked with mystery, the elegantly eerie What Lies Beneath is a great example of a well-rounded supernatural thriller, with turns and twists to spare. Robert Zemeckis’ ghost story has plenty of chilling moments, intrigue, and mystery, from start to finish. Its ending is a great example of bringing all the obfuscated plot elements to light in an organic way.
In the film’s final moments, the perennially stellar and gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer, as Claire Spencer, learns that the spirit that has been haranguing her family is none other than one of her husband’s former students, Madison Frank, the smartly cast Amber Valletta. The real danger here is not the specter, but rather her unfaithful, murderous partner, Norman, a frighteningly believable Harrison Ford. The ultimate scene has Claire visiting the grave of Madison, in a snow-covered cemetery. She places a single red rose on her headstone. It’s a hauntingly winsome tableau, and speaks volumes about what it means to live with an actual monster, and how strong one has to be to move on — even in the sometimes icy world we all inhabit.
9
‘Crimson Peak’ (2015)
There are just a handful of filmmakers working today who, when a viewer sees a few frames from one of their films, it’s immediately evident who’s at the helm. Guillermo del Toro is undoubtedly one of these auteurs. His take on the Gothic ghost story Crimson Peak is one for the ages, full of super-rich, sumptuous colors, exuberant costumes, and sly flourishes. This movie boasts a terrific ensemble cast as well, with Mia Wasikowska as Edith, Tom Hiddleston as Thomas, Jessica Chastain as Lucille, and Charlie Hunnam as Dr. Alan McMichael, all delivering solid performances.
The final sequence is a wonder for the senses. Set within a snow storm, Edith faces off against the envious Lucille, not-so-subtly bashing her head in with a shovel. It’s all blinding whites of the storm mingled with frosty crimsons of spilled blood in the ice. Throw in Thomas’ semi-translucent form, and the whole scene resembles a tragic Edwardian painting. A swooping shot delivers the audience back into the mansion where Lucille’s ghost is now “tethered,” as she creepily plays the piano. Ah, classic del Toro.
8
‘The Devil’s Advocate’ (1997)
Taylor Hackford‘s film, The Devil’s Advocate (very clever title, by the way) is mostly remembered for its bold performances, especially by screen icon Al Pacino, having a ball as a John Milton, who is really the devil, masquerading as a lawyer. The oft dumb-founded Keanu Reeves is perfectly cast in the lead role of Kevin Lomax, an ambitious, yet morally-confounded attorney, wrestling with his conscious. The whole movie is a wryly humorous send-up of the evils inherent to certain forms of litigation, rife with religious iconography and symbolism. As a whole, it’s a hell of a ride.
And now, for the closing summation of the film… The last sequence of this supernatural legal thriller finds Kevin in quite the metaphysical pickle: help spawn the Antichrist with his half-sister, Christabella Andreoli (Connie Nielsen), or condemn himself to death. He’s on the metaphorical ledge, a gun to his temple. It’s as high-stakes as it gets. Kevin decides to pull the trigger. The devil rages, hellfire encapsulates them all, and… Whoosh: he wakes up, and realizes that he is actually in the bathroom of the courthouse where it all started. Having learned of his potentially hellish fate, he makes the decision to not represent his guilty client. Redemption! …But not quite. He gives in to “vanity,” as a grinning Pacino resurfaces briefly as a reporter, about to do a cover story featuring Kevin. That Lucifer sure is one pesky devil.
7
‘The Dead Zone’ (1983)
What’s a guy to do when he’s got psychic prognosticating powers and sees that the end is indeed nigh? This is the dilemma that Christopher Walken as the aforementioned empath Johnny Smith (ironically, one of Walken’s least weird roles) faces, in macabre master David Cronenberg’s superbly constructed The Dead Zone. The film is based on the Stephen King novel, so you know it’s going to be a creep-fest.
When Johnny touches someone, such as a simple handshake, that’s when his visions kick in (would make any high school reunion quite awkward). At one point, he meets an ascending politician, Greg Stillson, the always-reliable Martin Sheen. Johnny foresees that Stillson is beyond just power-hungry and corrupt; he’s going to bring about the end of the world through nuclear holocaust. Yikes.
Johnny spends the majority of the third act attempting to conjure ways to stop this. Ultimately, he decides to assassinate Stillson himself and be done with it — at an eerily prescient campaign rally. The plan goes awry, and Johnny gets shot in the process — but not before Stillson snatches a freaking baby and uses it as an adorable little shield. Needless to say, his political ambitions are left in ruins (the martyred Johnny clutches his hand, right before he dies, and sees a disgraced Stillson taking his own life). Talk about being in the zone.
6
‘Suspiria’ (2018)
Every once in a while, there comes along a remake that is as good as the original, if not better (in certain contexts). This is the case with Luca Guadagnino’s take on the Dario Argento 1977 masterpiece Suspiria. Guadagnino gets a big assist here from Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, who did all the deliciously haunting music — and from the inclusion of upcoming scream queens Mia Goth as Sara and Chloë Grace Moretz as Patricia. Set against the backdrop of 1970s Berlin, as the country of Germany still reckons with itself over its fascist past, this film has a lot to say about a lot of complex issues. For one, the coven of witches who sadistically rule the dance company that the American Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson, shining her brightest) joins is a direct parallel to the Nazi regime. Naturally, this dance school is headed by Madame Blanc, the perpetually, ethereally eerie Tilda Swinton.
The final sequence of Suspiria stays somewhat close to the original in terms of the plot line, while rejecting the Argento style and color palette (bold, rich reds and purples are replaced with muted, dark grays). The gruesomely glaring difference is that Susie does not defeat the witches, rather she takes over as the HWIC (Head Witch In Charge). While the penultimate scene boasts some of the coolest special FX makeup and disturbing creatures of the whole movie, the final scene is a soft, sad one. Susie visits an elderly holocaust survivor, Dr. Klemperer (also Tilda Swinton!), and mercifully (if brutally) erases his memory of his wife’s actual fate at the hands of the death camp monsters. It’s a morose, yet strangely satisfying ending to a wild tale.
5
‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968)
One of the best movies ever made about metropolitan area encroachment and neighborly paranoia, Roman Polanski’s masterwork Rosemary’s Baby shines on nearly every level. The film manages to keep the tension turned up to 11 for the entirety of its runtime.
With a very real and grounded performance by pixie-cut pioneer Mia Farrow, as the wide-eyed Rosemary Woodhouse, and an at times chilling one by John Cassavetes as the somewhat smarmy Guy, this highly original movie was considered quite groundbreaking when it was released, and still resonates soundly today. The final scene, where Rosemary learns that her baby is the spawn of actual Satan — and her witchy neighbors are all in on it — and her husband is too, mostly just to help his acting career — it feels like this may just be too much for Rosemary to endure. Yet, she acquiesces, in a brilliantly captured series of shots, and gently rocks her baby’s all-black-everything bassinet. Her momma bear instinct is stronger than her revulsion at the sight of Beelzebub’s rugrat. It really makes the viewer think twice about moving into an old Manhattan building…and possibly using protection…
4
‘The Others’ (2001)
The Gothic story told in The Others is a folkloric, exceedingly fun one to watch unfold. Auteur filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar did a lot with the mostly contained location, making every scene creepy and mysterious; every dark corner has the potential to contain something spooky.
The grand finale of The Others left many an audience member in pleasant shock. Granted, the concept of the film is pretty brilliant in its own right (the light-averse people who think they are being haunted are the actual ghosts), but the way it all comes to light really grips the viewer. After the current inhabitants have a seance, Grace (Nicole Kidman) realizes that in her past state of sheer misery, after the loss of her husband, she killed her little ones and then took her own life. She clutches her tykes in a near-still, perfectly-(barely)-lit tableau. Then, the curtains come off the windows, and the kids can now scamper in the sunlight. It’s an uplifting metaphor for dealing with one’s personal trauma.
3
‘The Sixth Sense’ (1999)
As Nate Bargatze dryly said is his Netflix special, regarding the end of The Sixth Sense, “If you don’t know by now…I don’t know what to tell you.” Indeed, the thing that everyone remembers most about this amazing M. Night Shyamalan film is the stunning twist ending: little Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is able to see Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) because he’s also, quite dead. This, however, is the penultimate sequence of the movie…
What often may be overlooked, is the actual, final scene, which begins with a sweeping, street-level POV shot, that winds through a bunch of cars sitting in traffic. It involves Cole and his hard-working mother, Lynn Sear (Toni Collette, once again showing off her deftness at accents), and contains some of the best acting one will ever see from a person in third grade. When Lynn, with great difficulty, finally accepts the fact that her son can commune with the dead, and truly hears him when he tells her that her mom is proud of her, “every day,” it’s a heart-wrenching, incredibly touching moment. This strangely heartwarming scene caps off the film in a really poignant way.
2
‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999)
Known for bringing the found-footage format to the masses, and for being The Godfather of said sub-category of film (and for largely being responsible for spawning hundreds of dreadful copies), The Blair Witch Project was a revolutionary work of art (and marketing) when it came out in 1999. Made with a budget of roughly 35k, filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s ultra-low-budget indie earned nearly 250 million dollars worldwide; pretty much a producer’s dream.
The film does a great job of creating tension with very little in terms of production and effects (…regarding the latter, there are none). Overall, it’s a great little movie, with a bunch of spine-tingling moments throughout — but the true final scene is absolutely terrifying. Heather Donahue (playing herself) and Michael Williams (playing himself) find an abandoned house. They hear the voice of their long-lost buddy Josh (Joshua Leonard), and dash in to ostensibly help him. Mike races into the basement, but when Heather gets down there, Mike is now just facing the wall (a direct reference to an earlier legend about a child serial killer). The camera falls to the ground and records all this at a slanted angle. Its simplicity is so clever, and real, that this spooky image is indelibly seared into the viewer’s mind.
1
‘The Skeleton Key’ (2005)
Sometimes an entire movie can feel like a set-up for the final twist. This can backfire, in the case of a film that has a flimsy premise (looking in your direction, Serenity — the whole movie was just a “video game”). Not the case in the slightest, with the phenomenally executed The Skeleton Key. Director Iain Softley takes the audience on a mysterious journey through the outskirts of the New Orleans bayou that keeps raising more and more questions while simultaneously scaring the stuffing out of the lead, Kate Hudson, as Caroline Ellis, and the entire audience.
The premise is simple enough: a hospice worker comes to a dilapidated plantation home to care for an elderly couple (the wonderful Gena Rowlands as Violet Devereaux and John Hurt as Ben Devereaux), only to become embroiled in a mystery packed with hoodoo terrors (after using a skeleton key to gain entry into secret rooms, of course). Caroline is aided in her quest to get to the truth by the estate lawyer, Luke Marshall (Peter Sarsgaard). Nothing too revolutionary here so far. However, the final scene reveals Violet’s delightfully evil plot to have herself and Ben swap bodies with the youthful Caroline and Luke. A parting shot of a painting on the wall reveals that it’s an African-American couple, Mama Cecile and Papa Justify, who have really been swapping bodies with white folk since the time of slavery. It’s a tremendously gratifying ending all around, performed with winking, jubilant panache.
