![]() ![]() When I set out to write my latest, The Other Family, I knew what would happen on the shocking last page long before I’d even figured out how the story would open. They want to be kept guessing, from the first page of the first chapter to the last page of the last.Ī decade ago, Bookreporter’s senior reviewer Joe Hartlaub wrote about my novel Sleepwalker: “There is a revelation at the end that you will never see coming and that goes off like a hand grenade lobbed into a small room on a quiet summer afternoon.” Ah, the bar was set, and those words rang in my head as a challenge. ![]() They don’t want to figure things out early on and have the story unfold in a predictable manner. Now, three decades into my own career publishing twisty psychological suspense novels, I’m grateful to the authors who inspired me and to my own loyal and smart readership. Browsing library shelves, I gravitated toward modern-day suspense over past-era cozies, but checked out Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd more than once, a sucker for the surprise ending long after I knew what was coming.Įven then, I was studying craft as much as I was being entertained, an aspiring writer in training. Sci-fi novels or films were never my cup of tea back then (or now), but I remain captivated by the chilling final reveal in Planet of the Apes. I remember skidding into the shocking denouement and then promptly backtracking to reread the entire story, looking for clues and marveling at Jackson’s brilliant literary sleight of hand.įrom then on, I was drawn to any author-screenwriters, included-capable of wrapping up a story with a blindside. Shyamalan assembles the tricky plot's jigsaw pieces so seamlessly that the film manages to be even more impressive when you go back to watch it a second time.My obsession with jaw-dropping final twists dates back to an upstate New York middle school classroom in the 1970s, where I first read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery. And when it finally is, it's with a revelation that absolutely no one could see coming at the time: Willis’ character has been dead himself all along. Like the best ghost stories, The Sixth Sense slowly ratchets up the tension until it cries to be released. Bruce Willis is the celebrated child psychologist hired to help the tyke work through his issues. Ten-year-old Haley Joel Osment plays a troubled little kid who claims he can see dead people. But back when this psychological thriller first hit theaters, audiences gasped at how perfectly the director had engineered his trap. Night Shyamalan synonymous with the whiplash twist ending - so much so that as his career went on, it felt like he had painted himself into a creative corner. Watch it: Se7en, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube The list is finally complete … and our nightmares are just about to begin. Doe gives Pitt's Detective Mills a box with the head of his wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) in it. The sadistic psycho nicknamed John Doe (Kevin Spacey, not listed in the film's opening credits because Fincher wanted his big reveal to be a surprise) turns himself in and leads Pitt and Freeman out to the desert, where his last victim awaits. But the psycho saves for last the two best sins - wrath and envy. Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt play a pair of police detectives on the trail of a serial killer whose grisly M.O. ![]() But even before those two jack-in-the-box finales, he'd already honed his trickster's chops with Se7en. "What's in the box?! What's in the box?!” David Fincher, who gave us The Game and Fight Club, is no stranger to messing with audiences’ heads with a fiendish twist ending. ![]()
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