This occurred to me last week (after I'd done my Twilight Zone post), and I figured you guys could help me add to the list:
The Sixth Sense
Planet of the Apes
The Vanishing (original version)
Psycho
Angel Heart
Black Swan
Now, for each of these movies, I can imagine Rod Serling coming in at the end with his patented "half snide/half freaked" narration, "submitting" each protagonist "for your approval"...like "One Harry Angel, a detective who found out that..." or "...astronauts who went looking for life in outer space, and ended up finding..." etc. etc. and always ending, "...in the Twilight Zone."
Tangential point: I found out from IMDB that the studio tried very hard to force David Fincher et al. to shoot a different ending to Se7en, in which Mills and Somerset have to "race to save Tracy's life" (which is very much like what happens at the end of the American version of The Vanishing) -- Except that Brad Pitt (who's got more clout than Kiefer Sutherland) said he refused to do the movie unless they kept the "real" ending. (The compromise was the last narrated line about Ernest Hemingway, which Fincher and Freeman hated but did anyway.) How about that Brad Pitt anyway...what a trooper. I hear he's apparently going out with some actress.
I didn't bother with spoiler warnings because I figure that anyone who hasn't seen these six movies more than once isn't on Horrorthon.
Any others?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Malevolent
2018 ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...
-
I’m sure none of you except for JPX knows that I’m a bit of a germ-a-phobic. It’s annoying, but manageable. Though, since I met JPX and list...
10 comments:
Oooh, what a fun exercise. How about No Way Out? Any of M.Night Shyamalan's films would appear to qualify. The Empire Strikes Back (now I'm reaching)? I need to think about this.
Shutter Island
See, I don't think it's all about the "twist ending." Lots of movies have twist endings. I'm getting at something a bit more vague: movies that actually work like episodes of the Zone.
So Empire Strikes Back doesn't count, nor does No Way Out, because those are action/thrillers; you're not invited to contemplate the mechanics of the twist in advance and the twist doesn't "twist" anything so much as it adds more plotting.
Shutter Island was so bad and the "twist" was so obvious that I'm loath to include it, but I think it qualifies.
Fight Club
Inception would be another and I think Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale could qualify as well. It's those films that give you that ahaaaaaaa moment at the end.
I was going to include Inception, although I guess it depends on how you interpret the ending.
The Mist
Source Code with Jake Gyllenhall - total unsung hero of a flick that I caught On Demand. I hear it actually is being developed into a series, and has a VERY Quantum Leap-y Twilight Zone-y feel. Great mindfuck.
I saw a great half hour edit of Planets of the Apes awhile back. They made the movie appear as a half hour black and white Twilight Zone episode.
I dig this challenge but I haven't come up with anything. I have a hard time thinking about Twilight Zone without it's specific visuals (black-and-white, shot for television).
Post a Comment