Theme: Deathdream Endings

Deathdream Endings are films that arrive at the twist revelation where a series of strange and anomalous events are explained by the protagonist(s)’s discovery that they have been dead all along or are in the process of dying without realising it. These are almost always Conceptual Reversal Twist stories where the protagonist awakens to this discovery at the ending.

The theme was created by Ambrose Bierce’s short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1891) in which a hanged Confederate soldier escapes the noose and flees home only to realise this is a vision being had in the seconds before his neck breaks. The film version was An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961).

The first treatment on film was Outward Bound (1930) in which the passengers on a cruise liner come to the realisation they are dead. The most famous variation on this was The Sixth Sense (1999) with its classic twist ending. Following The Sixth Sense, the twist has been endlessly repeated to the point that it can now be considered a cliche.