Unsolved Movie Mysteries: Rewindable Endings and Cerebral Twists

There is a scary movie with a crazy twist and if you rewind it it shows what actually happened. Does this sound familiar? I can't remember the name of it. Many movies have mind-bending twists that play with the audience's perception, but one film that comes close in terms of a rewindable narrative is the 1982 John Carpenter film, The Thing. Spoiler alert: In the beginning, when the Norwegians are chasing the dog, a translation of a Norwegian phrase hints at what is about to occur later in the film.

Calling all language enthusiasts

Are you fluent in Norwegian? One of the Norwegians shouts out something in Norwegian, which translates to:

“The Thing is coming.”

Is it "Irreversible"?

Could it be “Irreversible” by Gaspar Noe? The film is presented in reverse chronological order, so maybe that’s the movie you’re searching for.

Evil Dead II

Another film with a cunning setup for its ending is Evil Dead II. SPOILER ALERT: Going through the missing pages of the Necronomicon, Ash (Bruce Campbell) has a strange sensation. A particular page shows a picture of a guy in front of an ancient castle. The inscriptions detail a prophesied hero who fell from the sky in ancient times to rid the world of evil.

What happens at the end? Ash is sucked into the portal along with the evil and winds up falling from the sky in ancient times. This blow the head off a flying demon and the knights all stare in wonder, hailing “he who has come from the sky to deliver us from the terror of the Deadites!” As it very quickly dawns on Ash what’s happening, the scene begins to zoom out, and we are then shown the exact image as depicted in the Necronomicon. It is, of course, Ash who is “the chosen one” - and he's not exactly happy about it.

The Sixth Sense

One of the most famous examples of a movie that uses this type of retrospective storytelling is The Sixth Sense (1999). When the secret/twist ending is revealed, the main character reflects back on prior scenes which we see again. Unlike the actual rewinding of footage, this does make sense both to that character and the audience. Other films that use this technique include The Butterfly Effect and Memento.