5 "It Was All a Dream" Reveals That Worked & 5 That Made Us Angry

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the best and worst examples of movies trying to trick us with a dream sequence. This list reveals major twists from a lot of movies, so a spoiler alert is in effect.

#5: Enraged: “Repo Men” (2010)

In this dystopian thriller with a juicy premise, Jude Law plays Remy, a repo man with a unique function. He doesn’t reclaim cars. He reclaims transplanted organs when their new owners fall behind on their payments. Remy ends up on the run when he receives a new heart transplant and begins a mission to tear down the entire exploitative and violent system he used to represent. And then he wakes up. That’s right. Remy’s entire rebellion against the system was a coma-induced dream stemming from a head injury sustained early in the film. It takes the movie’s promising story and utterly destroys it for a cheap twist.

#5: Helped: “The Descent” (2006)

Sarah is still reeling from the death of her husband and daughter when she joins her friends for a caving adventure in Appalachia. Friendships are tested, betrayals come to light, and several of the women are murdered by carnivorous cave-dwelling creatures. In the last scene, the film reveals that the previous sequence, seeing Sarah climbing out of the cave and into the light, was all a dream. She is still in the cave, and the monsters are closing in. Sarah’s grief is ever-present throughout “The Descent,” and her inability to escape is not just horrific - it’s thematically relevant. In a way, Sarah’s as trapped by her anger and grief as she is by the conditions of the cave, and this is ultimately her undoing.

#4: Enraged: “Wisdom” (1986)

At the height of his Brat Pack fame, Emilio Estevez wrote, directed, and starred in this nihilistic crime thriller about a college graduate named John Wisdom. Disillusioned by capitalism and his inability to find gainful employment, Wisdom and his girlfriend begin robbing banks and using their loot to pay off people’s debts. The whole thing ends with him dying in a hail of bullets. But the movie kills any chance it has at making an impact, if it had any, with a copout of an ending. Wisdom’s bloodied face dissolves to the film’s opening scene, with him seemingly daydreaming in a bathtub. Critics tore apart every aspect of the movie, but the ending put the final nail in the coffin.

#4: Helped: “Jacob’s Ladder” (1990)

From the start, we know something just isn’t right with Jacob Singer. Already, he’s been traumatized by his time in Vietnam, and now he’s having what he hopes are hallucinations of tentacled monsters and other bizarre incidents. The revelation that his platoon was drugged with a psychotropic chemical agent only colors his descent into the surreal. But the final gut punch reveals that the traumatized soldier never left Vietnam. The movie has been his brain’s last flickering gasp as he dies in an Army triage tent. “Jacob’s Ladder” deals with the lingering post-traumatic stress of war. That Jacob literally never left Vietnam makes this one of those rare instances where a dream reveal feels poignant.

#3: Enraged: “Click” (2006)

Adam Sandler stars in this unexpectedly devastating take on “A Christmas Carol.” He plays Michael, a man who discovers a remote control that can disrupt his life’s timeline, allowing him to fast-forward and rewind as he wishes. However, after some truly upsetting developments take place, Michael awakes to find that these events did not come to pass but were merely a warning. While this device works in “A Christmas Carol,” something seems fishy here. “Click” is very much against being able to alter your own timeline, but that’s exactly what Michael gets to do in the end. It all just resets. It would have made a much bigger impact if he had to truly confront the time he sacrificed with the people he loves.

#3: Helped: “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” (1997)

If there’s one thing that moviegoers usually hate, it’s an extended dream sequence. BFFs Romy and Michele get into a characteristically zany fight on the way to their titular reunion and go their separate ways. Well, they go their separate ways to the same reunion. The dream sees the two as their totally cool and professionally successful idealized selves, making their bullies envious and never reconciling their friendship. It works because it completely fits the movie’s distinctive brand of humor. It also serves as an enlightening counterpoint to how sad and unfulfilled all their formerly popular classmates seem to be once they get to the real reunion.

#2: Enraged: “The Devil’s Advocate” (1997)

Keanu Reeves stars as an ambitious lawyer who will stop at nothing to win a case. He comes to realize he’s working at a law firm under the Devil himself. The further he strays from his own moral code, the more spiritually corrupted he becomes. Reeves’ character is nearly dragged to the depths of depravity before he is returned to the courtroom where we first met him. His entire encounter with the Devil has been a vision. The movie isn’t bad. In fact, it has some even wilder plot twists before this, but its unwillingness to decide whether it’s a horror movie or a legal drama is reflected in its pedestrian ending.

#2: Helped: “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984)

For a movie that’s all about a killer who can only claim his victims in their dreams, it’s actually surprising how clear it is what’s real and what’s fake in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” It’s the ending that really shocks you with a dream reveal. Having defeated Freddy Krueger, our final girl, Nancy, gets into a car with all her dead friends, all of them seemingly alive again. It’s as if the previous 90 minutes hadn’t happened. But then, Freddy returns to crash the party. Was he really defeated? Was it all a dream? Is the answer a secret third thing? The truth is we’re not sure, and it makes an already terrifying movie villain feel even more real and dangerous.

#1: Enraged: “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2” (2012)

If there’s one thing you can say about this supernatural juggernaut, it’s that the fans really cared about the characters. Near the end of the final “Twilight” entry, a violent and deadly brawl breaks out between our heroes and the Volturi. It’s a truly epic sequence full of potentially devastating character deaths. Then, the movie pulls one of the most aggravating, audience-insulting dream reveals ever and reveals it was all Alice Cullen’s vision of what could happen if a fight broke out. Fans of the books were probably enraged because they didn't initially deceive the readers into thinking the vision was something that really happened. Meanwhile, the rest of us were probably severely let-down, as the battle scene makes the actual climax feel all the more anticlimactic.

#1: Helped: “Inception” (2010)

Christopher Nolan’s entire heist movie is based on the premise that anything you’re seeing, hearing, or experiencing could be a dream. Because its characters can influence the world around them even when they’re dreaming, “Inception” actually pulls the “it was all a dream” card while we’re in the middle of a dream. It’s almost more noteworthy when something isn’t a dream. The confusion about the nature of reality is also central to its main character’s personal dilemma. Without this constant reminder that the line between dreams and reality can be blurry, the long-discussed open ending wouldn’t be nearly as impactful.

Are you a fan of the dream reveal trope? Tell us in the comments.