I thought it'd end smarter.

Unbelievable.

You know what they say about a woman scorned?

I was about to write "just kidding", but I think that's the punchline of this movie, and what makes the conclusion so satisfying.

At the end, Mike's babbling about how much worse Margaret is than himself, and I believe that he believes it. Hell, maybe even she believes it, but the time she spends imagining that she's done something unforgivable has...(maybe this isn't the right word) "immunized" her against that sort of guilt?

Plus, the way Margaret frames the events -- that Mike effectively raped and robbed her, and made her believe that she'd killed an innocent man -- that's not exactly a mouthful of Tang.

Added to this, she doesn't strike me as someone with a particularly active social life. I'm sure she believed that her bond with Mike was very meaningful in some way. To overhear the boys debriefing with one another (the way that boys do), revealing details about her as if they were part of some kind of ridiculous joke...I don't think murder is particularly unbelievable.

"Beg for your life or I'm going to kill you."

The way Crouse delivers that line is absolutely chilling and absolutely right. She is in control now, and he's going to do what she wants or that's the end. There's no way for him to talk his way out. In fact, I think she would've shot him anyway; she probably knew he'd never beg.

And beg he does not. Instead he tells the author of a self-help guide to compulsive behaviour that she kept coming back to him "like a dog to its own vomit".

What an ending.

I think the complaints about it have two origins.

First, as a society we've become junkies for plot twists. It seems we're always alert for some (nearly obligatory) out-of-left-field, "Gee I never saw that coming" style story backflip. For any thriller this is true. For a movie about con men? Forget it.

The passage of time is another factor. Things were different back then. Plot twists were used, sure, but now it seems films are being green lit and made on the backs of implausible endings -- built around them effectively -- and marketing campaigns never fail to use asinine blurbs like, "A plot twist you'll never see coming!"

I'm sure.

Now, whenever we guess an ending in advance, we feel compelled to broadcast to others that we "saw it coming a mile away" -- in other words, we're too intelligent to get snookered by a movie. As if that's the main goal -- to give us that adrenaline rush that can come from a well executed surprise.

Today, when people watch this movie, no doubt they've heard about it being one of the ultimate movies about con games, a classic, great twist, etc. Unfortunately they've absorbed decades' worth of inferior psych-thrillers and can't recognize this one for what it is -- they're too fixated on whether the ending delivers the requisite rush. Forget plausibility, forget character, forget the previous hour and half.

House of Games is a fascinating film because it's populated by fascinating characters who say and do fascinating things. There are no false notes, and the ending isn't some cheap parlour trick. Thank heavens.

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