14 'Surprise' Endings in Thrillers We All Saw Coming

1. Shutter Island (2010)

Leonardo DiCaprio in a creepy asylum on an isolated island? Sign us up for this cliché cruise. It's a fantastic thriller, don't get me wrong, but the plot twist had more signs pointing to it than a highway exit. From the moment DiCaprio's character, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, steps onto the island, we get the feeling he's not just there to investigate a missing patient. His vivid hallucinations and disoriented behavior had audiences whispering, 'I bet he's a patient,' about ten minutes into the film.

2. The Number 23 (2007)

Jim Carrey in a serious thriller role is a surprise. The ending of The Number 23? Not so much. The film tries its best to create a complex, psychological thriller based around, you guessed it, the number 23. Carrey's character Walter becomes obsessed with a book that seems to mirror his life, but as he digs deeper, he uncovers dark truths about himself. The 'surprise' is that he wrote the book, forgotten due to a bout of amnesia. Shocked? We weren't either.

3. The Forgotten (2004)

Remember The Forgotten? Julianne Moore surely wishes she could forget it. She stars as a grieving mother, Telly, who is told that her son, who she believes died in a plane crash, never existed. The film leads us down a path of intrigue – is Telly going mad, or is there a conspiracy afoot? Then, the 'shock' – aliens did it. By the time the extraterrestrial reveal arrived, the audience was more likely rolling their eyes than gasping in surprise.

4. The Village (2004)

M. Night Shyamalan is the reigning king of plot twists, so it's no surprise that one of his films ended up on this list. The Village presents us with an isolated 19th-century community living in fear of the mysterious creatures in the woods around them. It's classic Shyamalan...until it isn't. The 'big reveal' is that the village isn't in the 19th century but the present day, and the elders have been deceiving the community to keep them isolated. The hint-dropping was so heavy-handed, most of us had solved the mystery long before the rather underwhelming reveal.

5. The Life of David Gale (2003)

The Life of David Gale promised a suspenseful story, with Kevin Spacey starring as a death penalty opponent on death row for murder. Spacey's character, Gale, gives journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet ) evidence of his innocence just days before his execution. The movie hints at a grand conspiracy, but when the 'surprise' reveal comes – that Gale orchestrated his own execution to prove a point about the death penalty – it falls flat. It's as if the filmmakers forgot they'd been leaving us breadcrumbs the size of baguettes throughout the movie.

6. Now You See Me (2013)

Now You See Me is an entertaining romp filled with magical hijinks and a likable ensemble cast. But the surprise twist? It vanished faster than a rabbit in a hat. The film sets up a mysterious benefactor for our magician ensemble, with Mark Ruffalo 's FBI agent hot on their trail. However, the reveal that Ruffalo's character was the benefactor all along failed to stun viewers, mainly because there were so few viable suspects introduced. The film ended up pulling back the curtain a little too far on its magic trick, making the ending more Now you've seen it than Now you see me.

7. Secret Window (2004)

Stephen King 's novellas often make for great films, but Secret Window stumbles a bit in the 'surprise' department. Johnny Depp plays a successful writer accused of plagiarism by a menacing stranger. The stranger's hostility escalates until Depp's character Mort realizes the terrifying truth – he himself is the stranger. If you didn't see this coming from a mile away, you might need to get your eyes checked. The split personality trope, combined with a lack of other suspects, makes the twist more foreseeable than sunrise.

8. Hide and Seek (2005)

Following the Secret Window trend, we have another film – Hide and Seek, a psychological horror flick featuring Robert De Niro as a psychologist whose daughter's new imaginary friend turns out to be murderous. Big shocker – De Niro's character is the imaginary friend. A combination of a scarce character pool and an over-reliance on the it was all in the protagonist's head trope made this twist as surprising as a hiccup after chugging a soda.

9. Passengers (2008)

You know something's awry in a suspense movie when even Anne Hathaway 's charm can't save it. She plays a therapist treating plane crash survivors, who one by one, start disappearing. Turns out – gasp – they're already dead, and they've been ghosts all along! If you didn't shout 'I see dead people!' at the screen, you're far more forgiving than most of us. The attempt to recreate the Sixth Sense vibe made the ending twist of Passengers seem as original as a reheated slice of pizza.

10. High Tension (2003)

In this French horror film, two female friends become terrorized by a brutal, murderous man. But wait! The twist is that there is no man. Instead, one of the women is responsible for all the bloodshed. Unfortunately, viewers cottoned on to this fairly early in the film. The breadcrumbs were not just visible; they were practically loaves of bread lining the path to the 'shocking' reveal.

11. The Good Neighbor (2016)

The Good Neighbor centers on two teens who trick their curmudgeonly neighbor into believing his house is haunted to observe his reactions. The film tries to deliver a shocker when it's revealed that the old man knew about the boys ' ploy all along and was merely playing along. Yet, this twist ends up falling flat, because, let's be real, nobody is that scared of creaky floorboards and flickering lights in 2016.

12. The Stepfather (2009)

This thriller, a remake of a 1987 film, revolves around a young man who grows suspicious of his mother's too-perfect new fiancé. Surprise, surprise, the stepfather is a serial killer. The film's attempt at suspense is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the skull. By the time the stepfather's true identity is revealed, the audience is left thinking, 'Well, duh!'

13. Taking Lives (2004)

In Taking Lives, Angelina Jolie plays an FBI profiler hunting a serial killer who assumes the lives of his victims. The twist that the love interest is the killer might have been shocking if the movie hadn't spent so much time highlighting how suspiciously perfect he was. The reveal was more expected than a tax bill in April.

14. The Uninvited (2009)

This film centers around a young woman who returns home from a psychiatric institution only to suspect her father's new girlfriend is not who she seems. The twist that she and her sister unintentionally killed their ill mother, and the girlfriend is innocent, was painfully obvious from the first 'imaginary' conversation between the siblings. It was the kind of surprise you'd expect from a toddler hiding behind see-through curtains during a game of hide and seek.