Your Biggest Surprise in a Movie [Open Spoilers]

Not that any of these is mine, but the sort of thing I mean:

When they turn the old gal around in Psycho and you get a whole face full of rotten flesh.

In Planet of the Apes – the beach scene with the head of the Statue of Liberty

The scene with all the slapping in Chinatown

Learning the identity of Keyser Sose

Learning the key ingredient in Soylent Green

“Luke, I am your father.”

That moment in the Crying Game took a lot of people by surprise.

The last scene in Easy Rider.

Novak’s two-minute monologue in Down With Love, explaining her weasel-clever plan, was surprising.

From Dusk till Dawn, where the movie took an unexpected left turn and cartwheeled into a ditch.

Strangely, the first one that comes to mind - because I wasn’t familiar with the cartoon - was in Aeon Flux.

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The moment she realizes they are all clones that have just been recloned dozens of times over centuries was a great and interesting surprise for me.

When my girlfriend made me see Titanic [shivvers] I actual;ly shrieked “NOOO!” when the old bat dropped the jewel at the end.

Oh. And the biggest was probably L.A. Confidential when Dudley shoots Vincennes. I shouted, “AH! He shot Vincennes!!!”

My friends still laugh at me for that one.

I think you need to warn about spoilers in this thread! But, for me, the biggest surprise in a recent movie was Leslie Burke’s death in Bridge to Terabithia: I mean, this is an American children’s movie, and sympathetic main characters don’t die! (Of course, I didn’t read the book until after seeing the movie).

Kevin Costner’s big secret at the end of No Way Out.

The identity of the killer in Presumed Innocent.

Meshach Taylor getting sliced by the elevator cable in Damien: Omen II.

I’ll second Dudley shooting Vincennes. I jumped.

Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea. I sure didn’t see that coming.

The Sixth Sense. You know the twist by now, I assume. I worked at a video store at the time, and EVERY SINGLE MOVIE GOT SPOILED FOR ME by customers (Se7en, Crying Game, From Dusk…, Usual Suspects, etc.) except that one. That was the only “big secret” movie I actually got to see without even knowing that there *was *a secret. It. Was. Awesome.

I can’t help but wonder if I would have liked all those others better if I hadn’t known their secrets going in…

Sloth in Se7en. I literally jumped out of my seat.

This was mine as well. I remember how shocked the whole theater was…

The face of the little one in the red raincoat in Don’t Look Now was quite a shock.

Yeah, I actually felt my skin spring away from the rest of me, like in a cartoon.

That was mine, too.

Maybe you people can help me think of another situation that I had meant to include in the OP. It’s been in several movies, some more effectively than others, where whatever monster, creature, crazed homicidal maniac, deadly virus, or other entity that usually gets killed off, incinerated, blown to bits, dropped in an acid bath, crushed under a steam roller or otherwise dutifully eliminated by movie’s end, is shown to be continuing as a menace. This device normally flashes the SEQUEL SOON sign for all to see, but in some of the grizzlier movies the end is just left that way to keep you from sleeping well for a while.

Any examples come to mind for you?

Wash. Serenity.

It was just as shocking in the book. I was reading it at work (lunch break) and I gasped. I rarely gasp.

Several scenes in No Country for Old Men were very surprising. The movie’s too recent for open spoilers.

All of Fight Club took me by surprise, since it had been promoted as if it were nothing more than a macho movie about tough guys beating each other up. But when we learned Tyler Durden’s true identity, I was so taken aback that I accidentally snorked a piece of popcorn into my windpipe. That movie nearly killed me. But I had to watch it again anyway.