The greatest fear is said to be the unknown. Give people everything, and they may be shocked. But give them a little, and they can be scared out of their wits as their minds fill in the blanks with the worst. It’s been one of horror film's best fear-inducing tactics since Cat People freaked people out with a bus in the 1940s.
It can also lead to interesting twist endings. These horror films made people think there was some nasty monster, ghost, ghoul, or other threat waiting in the wings, only for them to be misleading or not real at all. Watch out for spoilers.
5 The Village
Between M. Night Shymalan’s peak with The Sixth Sense, and his nadir with The Last Airbender, was The Village. It got mixed reviews at the time, with some people liking it, and some people hating it. Set in the past, the film follows the villagers as they’re threatened by creatures known simply as ‘Those We Don’t Speak Of’. Anyone who tries leaving their village falls victim to the monsters.
Only it turns out they’re not monsters. They’re the village elders in disguise trying to keep the status quo. Because, once the villagers make it out of the forest, they (and the audience) realize it’s not the distant past after all. It’s modern day. The elders were terrorizing their neighbors to uphold their 18th Century lifestyle.
4 Night Of The Demon (1957)
Also known as Curse of the Demon, this Franco-British film is a nice murder mystery with horror elements. It tells the story of an American psychologist who travels to the UK to investigate a satanic cult involved with at least one death. It’s left ambiguous whether the cult actually has demonic powers, if they’re actively threatening people, or simply their luck running out. Except the film got bogged down in a conflict between producer Hal E. Chester and director Jaques Tourneur.
Chester wanted to show the demon on-screen, Tourneur didn’t. Lead actor Dana Andrews and Chester’s co-writer Charles Bennett also supported Tourneur’s side. But in the end, the film gained its titular demon of sorts in the form of a vision of a cheap, Chinese-looking dragon creature. Only the cult leader sees it before he suffers a more ordinary fate at the wheels of a train. Was it real? Was it a delusion? The ending remains ambiguous, though it would’ve been sweeter without the vision there at all.
3 Goodnight Mommy
This Austrian domestic horror flick is a good example of misdirection. Twin boys Elias and Lukas welcome their mother back after she has reconstructive surgery on her face. Except her behavior seems off to them. She keeps the kids indoors, doesn’t allow friends to visit, is physically abusive towards Elias and ignores Lukas. The twins suspect she’s a stranger in disguise. So, they tie her down and torture her, demanding she tells them where their real mother is.
The twist is that she is their real mom, and that Lukas is the fake. He’s merely a hallucination borne from Elias’ trauma after the real Lukas passed away in a swimming accident. Her lashing out at him was out of her own frustration with Lukas’ passing. She begs Elias to see past his delusion, but his paranoia (and thus Lukas) win out and spell her doom.
2 The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari
Proof that this narrative trick is as old as the hills, this German film is a silent classic from over a century ago. In it, a man called Francis relates how he found out how Dr Caligari, the owner of a traveling carnival, has been using hypnotism to control a sleepwalker called Cesare to do his bidding. On his orders, Cesare would kill anyone who got in Caligari’s way.
But the sinister somnambulist falls in love with Francis’ fiancée Jane. This exposes Caligari’s plot and Francis leads a mob to his location. They find out Caligari was the director at an insane asylum, and Cesare was one of the inmates. Caligari gets convicted and locked up…except he doesn’t. The whole film was Francis’ delusion, and he himself is one of the asylum’s patients alongside Jane and an awake and alert Cesare. While Caligari does turn out to be the asylum director, he’s not the one who's mad.
1 April Fools’ Day
Halloween, Friday the 13th, Black Christmas…the year’s running out of holidays for slasher films. So, might as well do one about April Fools’ Day. This 1986 film follows a group of teenagers partying at an estate on an island to celebrate Spring Break. Muffy, the daughter of the estate’s owner, has filled the places with pranks and other tricks. It’s all in good fun until some of them start disappearing, and others turn up dead. The phone lines are cut and there’s no way back to the mainland.
It’s up to Kit and Rob, two of the teens, to figure out what’s attacking them and killing their friends. The clue’s in the title: there is no killer. No one got killed either. It was all just a prank pulled by Kit’s friends. The ‘killer’ was just Muffy in disguise as her psychotic twin ‘Buffy’. The film even teases a real kill when another person pops up with a razor, only to reveal that’s also a gag. No one kills, no one dies. April Fools!