Written by Ehren Kruger and directed by Mark Pellington, Arlington Road follows terrorism expert Michael Faraday, a college professor whose wife has been killed in a domestic attack. Faraday is now raising his teen son by himself while trying to move forward with his new girlfriend. A new family arrives in the neighborhood and, at first, the Langs seem perfect — at least until their true intentions start to become apparent. Per the Rotten Tomatoes synopsis:
Widowed when his FBI agent wife is killed by an extremist group, college professor Michael Faraday (Jeff Bridges) becomes obsessed with the culture of these groups – especially when his new all-American neighbors, Oliver (Tim Robbins) and Cheryl Lang (Joan Cusack), start acting suspiciously. With each twist, the mystery deepens and questions loom as to whether Faraday is consumed by fear and driven by paranoia, or whether a lethal conspiracy has been born on Arlington Road.
Released in the summer of 1999, Arlington Road capitalized on Americans’ blossoming fear of militia movements. Though the film isn’t based on real-life events, it does eerily reflect an extremist culture that we’d already seen in cults like the Branch Davidians, and which had been brought to light by domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh.
‘Arlington Road’ Features a Final Plot Twist That’ll Leave You Shaking

Arlington Road features a final act that partly hews to genre tropes, including a chase preceding a big reveal. But what makes this thriller stand out from the rest is that it dares to end things on a very bleak note. Pellington and Kruger could have agreed to tweak the ending and make things a bit friendlier in terms of the story resolution, but the film goes all the way in presenting the darkest possible outcome.
We won’t spoil this one for you, as the plot twist is a big part of why the film works, and that final reveal delivers a gut-punch that proves we were always in the grasp of deeply charismatic villains (Cusack in particular is amazing). You’ll be left shaking as you re-evaluate how close you are to your new neighbor and what you really know about them.
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