Angel Heart’s Twist Ending Is IMMEDIATELY Obvious

Director Alan Parker’s Angel Heart is a deservedly acclaimed horror detective story, but its ending twist is laughably obvious in hindsight. It’s not often that legendary actor Robert De Niro has made a stop over in the realm of horror films, and even rarer that he did so back in the prime of his career. That’s one reason Angel Heart is a treat for genre fans, although that’s far from the only reward the film has to offer those who check it out.

Angel Heart is the rarely attempted combination of film noir with horror, and its success makes one wonder why more people don’t try and make that connection happen. Then again, the fact that Angel Heart was a box office bomb, not even making back its own production budget in theaters, probably didn’t encourage future filmmakers to put their their eggs into the film noir/horror combo basket. Unfortunately, the best movies often aren’t the biggest hits when it comes to finances.

As good as Angel Heart is though, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and a particularly baffling choice – admittedly one first made in the 1978 novel the film is based on – risks cluing in even first time viewers to the story’s big twist. What’s in a name? In this case, everything.

Angel Heart’s Twist Ending Is IMMEDIATELY Obvious

At the end of Angel Heart, it’s revealed that lead character Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke) was actually the man he was pursuing the whole time, Johnny Favorite. The case Harry had been working was a gambit by Robert De Niro’s character Louis Cyphre to defeat the measures Johnny had taken to change his identity and hide his memories to avoid paying up on a deal with Satan and spending eternity in Hell. Cyphre is revealed as having been Satan the whole time, and Harry/Johnny ends things descending on an endless elevator ride, presumably to the underworld.

It’s a cool twist on the surface, but looking back, the Louis Cyphre name might as well be a neon sign saying “De Niro is playing The Devil.” It’s even seen as this in-universe, with Harry/Johnny realizing how dumb he was not to notice earlier. But Louis Cyphre is so close to Lucifer that it’s a wonder every person who’s ever watched the film didn’t immediately guess where the story was going. While that wouldn’t necessarily ruin the movie, and there are other hints to the twist throughout, none are as glaringly obvious, and one wonders why both the film – and again, the book it’s based on – chose to include it. Then again, the name Harry Angel isn’t that subtle either. It’s possible Angel Heart‘s paltry box office take could’ve partially been due to how many people guessed the plot’s twists based just on advance marketing.

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