Best Surprise in a movie ****POSIBLE SPOILERS****
 

What movie has the best "holy shit" moment in it or surprise ending?

My first pick would be the ending to The Usual Suspects.

I'll say it before dozens of other TFP'ers say it first:
1) In The Empire Strikes Back when Vader reveals to Luke that he is his father.

2) In The Sixth Sense when you find out that the main character was actually a ghost throughout 95% of the film.

Thanks, now I don't have to see the movie. I'm not sarcastic, I really mean it. Thanks. :)

Yup, this thread needs a spoiler alert in it. :eek:


I would have to say "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas".
My mom took us kids to see this in '82 believing it didn't have any nudity in it.
Boy, were we surprised!
Me and my brother, pleasantly so. :)

Fight Club - When you find out Tyler's actually the narrator.

Fight Club
My Sassy Girl
Usual Suspects

Much the same as some of the others...

Fight Club
Usual Suspects
Sixth Sense

Frailty was fantastic

Yeah, Empire, Fight Club, Sixth Sense, but for comedy I gotta go with Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they go to the castle where the Grail is supposed to be, and whadda ya know, those damn Frenchies are there waving their private parts at you.

Sleepaway camp was pretty disturbing.
Adaptation wasn't really a "holy shit" moment, but the ending was pretty damn funny.

How can you go to see a film with a tilte like this and not think there would be any nudity in it?!

I think that "No Way Out" had a very good twist at the end. "Fallen" had a nice little twist.

I want to second this one. While watching this late at night with some friends, when you hit that mark for the last 20 minutes are so, you get hit with such a "WTF?!" feeling. It's brilliant tho, and it's made itself to be one my favorite movies in recent memory.

Always a pleasure.

Chris: "I haven't been this confused since the end of No Way Out."
*cut to family leaving theater*
Chris: "How does Kevin Costner keep getting work?"

Seriously, how about Dogma, when you find out who God really is?

Memento.

But that movie is filled with "holy shit" moments, eg "Who the fuck is Dodd?!!".

The end of Friday the 13th Jason goes to Hell when Freddy's hand grabs Jason's hockey mask.

That had me, screaming for joy.

The end of Jeepers Creepers. The good guys usually wins not here.

***DOGMA SPOLIER***

Yeah who knew God was a bad Canaidan singer that used to be on Nickelodion.

Without giving spoilers

Vanilla Sky
Fight Club
Usual Suspects
The Life Of David Gale

Good point. I don't know what her thinking was at the time, but my thinking was, "Oh my God!" and then, "Thank you, God!!".

sixth sense and bruce willis is a ghost. shocking.

When Charlton Heston rode along the beach at the ened of "Planet of the Apes" and saw...The Statue of Liberty and fell down and cried...

They Did it...they really did it...

nice surprise - 8 FEMMES - seeing Virginie Ledoyen, Emmaunelle Beart and Catherine Deneuve singing and dancing... just great...

shock - Usual Suspects, Fight Club and Sixth Sense.

for me, the biggest twist of ANY movie, bar none, was the end of Unbreakable. Wow. I have never been so suprised.

Yep, that was damn right incredible, as was the rest of that film.

i'd say sleepaway camp and the original friday the 13th.
it scarred me as a child.

vanilla sky / abre los ojos & frailty weren't big surprises. they gave too many hints during the movie to keep the surprise.
i didn't like the ending of frailty even, great movie, but the ending spoils it for me.

Life of david gale was good, but I wouldnt say I was suprised since I predicted it 10 minutes into the movie... well maybe 20 minutes in..

When I first watched pulp fiction and He shot the dude in the face in the car. That was pretty damn suprising!

Fight club is great.

End of america history X wasn't really expected.

Alot of points in Final Destination, and Final Destination 2 even though you expected something you never really knew what...

Sixth Sense and The others had the same twist but The others was crap so Sixth Sense gets a vote.

Dark city, Similar to the matrix but well... not quite...

I cant for the life of me think of anything better.. I KNOW there are better examples but I'm drawing a blank...

The Crying Game

Ah yeah, Unbreakables ending really shocked me - more so then the Sixth Sense I suppose.

Another movie I just watched that had some good twists was Reindeer Games. Not the best movie out there but good twists nonetheless.

Matrix Reloaded, not really a surprise, but more of a "wtf is going on"

omg!
yes, that one definitely deserves a mention!!

Every Scooby Doo cartoon! :D

"If it wasn't for you meddling kids......."

I know it isn't the best, but what about "Any Given Sunday"? When you think the coach is about to retire, but instead announces that he basically screwed over his old team by coaching elsewhere and signing the star QB. Priceless, especially with Al Pacino doing it.

Apart from several already mentioned here, I'm gonna throw in:
The Score-More of a twist than a surprise, but the execution was great.
Donnie Darko-You're hand fed where it's going to end up throughout the whole move, but again, it's done so well.
Session 9-I don't think I knew for sure what was actualy going on until a few minutes before they revealed it.

Vader is Lukes father?

Dr Strangelove: Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.


Yeeeeeeehaaaaaawwwww! Yeeeeeeeehawwwwww!

BOOM

Deep blue sea, where samual l jackson gets killed. so out of nowhere its crazy

Scream. Drew Barrymore...

for sure, once u start u gotta watch the whole thing to find out who dun it:D


Infernal Affairs had a cool ending, i thought Tony Leung woulda lived

The end of Raising Cain

The Sixth Sense (allthough it had crossed my mind, as you never see Bruce Willis talking to anyone else but the boy)
Fight Club
The Matrix

That Obscure Object of Desire -
The leading man finally wins/steals his woman. She's with him in the street looking at a window of a shop.
BOOM!
Seperatists blow them up in a random act of terrorism.

I was really shocked at the end of Pay it Forward. The ending kind of pissed me off.

When Travolta turned around and had his gun there I was thinking to myself "Now what moron would have his gun out with his finger on the trigger and pointed at the guy in the back? That guy's going to get shot" Next thing I know, there's a big splotch of red. Was laughing for a good five minutes after that.

ok- in the vein of spoilers- and since I wont see it- someone explain the end to the life of david Gale. please...

Has Jacob's Ladder been mentioned yet? A fucked up little movie but the ending was kind of disappointing even though it was a twist.

Dark City
Memento
Identity
The Matrix
The Life of David Gale.. not a super shocker... but more of a slow surprise
Wild Things... a hot, frumpy Neve Campbell screwed everyone!

The ending to Sleepaway Camp is still embedded in my mind. I am not a spoiler so if you want o know bad enough, hunt down a copy and watch it.

You guys have posted so many but I wont repost. To avoid being redundant I'll name some of my favorites that you guys left out, and shouldn't have forgot!

1. Se7en
2. The Shawshank Redemption(we knew it was going to happen, but I loved the way it happened).
3. American Beauty
4. Resevoir Dogs

and I second the vote for Jacob's Ladder.

Guy Ritchies films

Lock Stock and Two smoking barrels

and

Snatch

Both endings wrapped up so neatly that by the end my reaction was "That was a fucking great ending"

Identity, I wasn't paying close attention, so the killer being the kid totally thre me off,
The Usual Suspects, although you tend to expect twists like that in a Kevin Spacey movie.
The Others, self explanatory.
The sad thing is, most of these movies are only good the first time, because of the twist ending there's no need to keep seeing the movie over and over...

mullholland drive

My faves were:

The Usual Suspects
Fallen ("Oh you forgot, this story is about the time I ALMOST died")
Memento
The Others
Seven

I can usually pick the supposed suprised endings a mile off but there are a couple that I had no idea about. Fallen blew me away. And that planet of the apes one where the earth blows up in the end suprised me heaps. I think it was the second one. Anyone else know?

Had I not read an offhand reference to it while reading a newspaper editorial, (dammit!) it would have been The Sixth Sense. Beyond that I would vote for Memento and one final twist.

That was awesome. I did not see that coming either. That big ole shark just jumps up and snatches the entire body of Samuel. Classic. I just kept looking around and thinking, wtf...he is the marquee name, star of this feature, who's gonna carry it now.

LL Cool J that's who.

-bear

I just remembered the ending to Snatch caught me off guard too.

The Spanish Prisionar
Fight Club
Usual Suspects
The Enigma Code

how about primal fear, when it turns out ed norton is faking it all!

I'll dig up an old one but a good one: The Manchurian Canidate.

Not really a "holy shit" ending but a great twist to it all. A more recent one is "The Shape of Things."

I completely forgot about that. That was a great fucking ending.

And The Usual Suspects is a movie I can watch again but usually I watch it with someone who never saw it before so I can see their reaction.

Besides the above mentioned movies, I thought "Wild Things" had a great twist ending, making Neve Campbell's character into a total bad ass. Of course the scene with her and Denise Richardson getting it on, only made the movie sweeter :)