Surprise! The Best Movies With a Shocking Monster Twist

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, a movie surprises you with something unexpected. Sometimes it’s the defying of a trope or a shocking death that turns the narrative on its head. Sometimes, however, the film shifts entirely into a different sub-genre, like a monster movie.

A giddy thrill comes over me when I don’t expect to see a monster grace the screen. Like finding some caramel in a chocolate, the unexpected can make a film so exciting to see where it could go next. These are the films where monsters were thrown into the mix as a delightful diversion.

10

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

This might not be much of a twist if you’re familiar with director Guillermo del Toro and his love of monster movies. His version of Pinocchio is far from the kid-friendly fable crafted by Disney, presenting the conception of the living puppet less like a charming fantasy and more like a monster movie with lightning and terror. Pinocchio’s journey also takes him to some dark places, from the fascists that want to pollute his mind to the otherworldly being of Death that deals with his existence.

Although loaded with musical numbers and charming stop-motion animation, this film doesn’t shy away from the darkness of its setting or subject matter. The movie has more in common with something like Frankenstein than it does a sweet fable. What Guillermo del Toro has essentially done is make a PG horror film that families can watch, so revered that it would win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

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Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a stop-motion fantasy that leans more into horror than a Disney-friendly version of the old story.

9

The Lighthouse

Director Robert Eggers helmed what might seem like a psychological historical thriller on the surface of The Lighthouse. Set in the 1890s, Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) takes on a job working at a lighthouse alongside Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe). The longer that Winslow stays, the stranger his time in this bleak setting.

Like most of Robert Eggers’ films, The Lighthouse leans towards the supernatural, featuring some monsters. Wake and Winslow both hallucinate and become entranced by sea monsters and mermaids amid their lighthouse duties. But the real monster turns out to be man, as the two men become aggressive towards each other, with their mental states progressively deteriorating.

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The Lighthouse is a historical horror that explores the strange events that occur when two men are forced to work together on an isolated island.

8

Men

Alex Garland has a surreal take on toxic masculinity in his psychological horror, Men. Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) takes a vacation in an English village to shut out the dark thoughts of her husband, who committed suicide. But the few men she meets on this trip are all played by Rory Kinnear, and they all seem to have something sinister beneath their small-town charms.

Men is a slow-burning, creepy horror film about Harper being spooked by noises outside her window and the lingering presence of the men at her rented home. But the movie goes full-body horror in the final moments, as a monster continuously births different men like a Russian nesting doll of gruesome flesh. While the film goes to some dark places in its foreboding village setting, I doubt those watching it had body-horror birth monster on their bingo card for a movie like this.

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Men is a trippy horror film about one woman being haunted by weird, duplicate men that invade her privacy amid a vacation.

7

Beau is Afraid

Life is a mess of anxiety for the hapless Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), and it only gets worse with the recent death of his mother, Mona Wassermann (Patti LuPone). He’ll have to make the long trek home to attend her funeral. But his journey is anything but ordinary as he finds himself terrified by everyone, from a weird married couple (Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan) to a strange collective living in the woods.

Directed by Ari Aster (Midsommar), Beau Is Afraid goes to some very bizarre places, with situations so odd that the film becomes a comedy (especially for the hilarious background gags). Just when you think the film has shown you everything from nightmarish fantasies to the most awkward of sex scenes, Beau ventures into an attic to discover a giant monster resembling genitals. It’s so unexpected, but in a film like this, that kind of wild turn honestly tracks.

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Beau is Afraid finds a terrified man returning home for a funeral, only to be met with the most terrifying and oddest of detours and revelations.

6

Enemy

Adam Bell’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) dull life as a college professor is thrown off balance when he notices an actor (also Jake Gyllenhaal) who looks exactly like him in a film he rents. When Adam tracks down this actor, he discovers they have vastly different personalities. Curious and envious, Adam digs deeper into the life of his double as the two start bleeding into each other’s lives.

Enemy was directed by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Dune), and it has a trippy, nightmarish quality. Throughout the picture is the lingering presence of spiders, sometimes small ones, believable for reality, and large ones as massive as skyscrapers that feel like hallucinations. Although clearly symbolic, the giant spider that confronts Adam by the end of the film definitely makes this film feel like a monster movie, made extra creepy by the constant questioning of what is real.

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Enemy follows a teacher being haunted by the presence of an actor who looks exactly like him but with a far different personality.

5

The Suicide Squad

As the unofficial start of James Gunn’s DCU, The Suicide Squad takes a giddy and gritty approach to Task Force X. An ensemble of anti-heroes, ranging from the eccentric Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) to the nationalistic Peacemaker (John Cena), are sent on a mission to a South American island nation. What starts as a mission to destroy an anti-American government with secret technology becomes an intimidating battle against the towering monster, Starro.

The Suicide Squad gets rather wild with the directions it takes, from Harley Quinn’s lingering relationship doubts to the mommy issues of Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian). But the film quickly turns towards the monstrous when the massive Starro breaks out of the Jötunheim lab, prompting one Task Force X observer to remark, “We got a kaiju!” The film was already a lot of fun up to this climax, but the presence of a giant monster is like a cherry on top of this deliciously clever comic book movie.

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The Suicide Squad features the anti-heroes of Task Force X assigned to stop an anti-American force and the giant monster Starro.

4

Malignant

James Wan’s Malignant starts with Madison Mitchell (Annabelle Wallis) being haunted by nightmares of murders that occur in reality. She might be the only one capable of tracking down a serial killer who continues to brutalize. But the more she and those around her investigate, the more they discover a dark secret about Madison.

Malignant shifts gears almost entirely in its third act, from a psychological horror to a grotesque mixture of body horror and action. The big twist is that Madison has a twin living inside her body that emerges from behind her head, taking complete control of her body as she goes on a killing spree as a backward monster. It’s one of my favorite monster movie twists simply because of how unexpected and gonzo it becomes that you must see it to believe it.

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Malignant follows a mysterious string of murders witnessed by one woman who turns out to have a dark connection to this serial killer.

3

Sorry To Bother You

Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You isn’t your average darkly comedic capitalism satire. The film follows the rise of Cassius (LaKeith Stanfield), a black man who rises from the lower ranks of a telemarketer to a higher-paid position at WorryFree. He can get that far by using his white voice (provided by David Cross), but only uncovers further strangeness when interacting with the corrupt CEO and furious unions.

The ultimate conspiracy that Cassius discovers is WorryFree’s plot to create obedient workers by transforming them into the half-horse hybrids referred to as Equisapiens. It’s pretty surreal that Cassius learns of this development and witnesses these monsters in action. Sorry To Bother You was already pretty hilarious for its overt critique of race and employment, but it’s all the wilder with its twist of fulfillment center horse slaves.

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Sorry To Bother You is a darkly comedic take on capitalism and race relations amid an absurd premise involving black people using white voices and human-horse hybrids.

2

From Dusk Till Dawn

Directed by Robert Rodriguez and written by Quentin Tarantino, From Dusk Till Dawn starts off as a rousing crime picture. George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino play two fugitive robbers who take a family hostage. They take the hostages into Mexico and wait for their contact at a strip club.

But, surprise, the strip club turns out to be a lair of vampires! When a fight breaks out, the fangs come out, and a bloody massacre threatens the robbers and the family. The only thing more impressive than the gory vampire effects is the impressive cast for this horror-twist romp, which includes Harvey Keitel, Fred Williamson, Salma Hayek, and special effects legend Tom Savini.

1

Sinners

For roughly the first hour of Sinners, the movie seems like a stirring historical drama. Set in 1930s Mississippi, brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) have returned to set up their own club for black folks. They hire talent, acquire a location from some racists, and struggle to make their first night a big success with the community, ranging from the musical prodigy Sammie (Miles Caton) to the eccentric Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo).

The night turns dark when the Irish vampire Remmick (Jack O’Connell) happens upon this bar. Soon, the few souls trapped inside will have to fight their way out as vampires threaten to overtake the community. Although the vampires arrive late, they’re thematically appropriate for highlighting the infiltration and diminishing of culture, making this monster twist one of the best for its brutality and brilliance.

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Sinners is a historical tale of two brothers starting up a club, only for it to eventually become the target of vampires in the dangerous American South.

The only thing more thrilling than a monster spooking you is when you expect it least. These types of films offer great surprises in how they pull back the curtain to reveal that there really is a monster in the darkness. Sometimes it’s scary and other times hilarious, but always interesting for the revelation of monsters big and small.