One of the smaller TV Christmas specials here was "The Haunting Of Radcliffe House", aka Altar, in which an artist's ghost in an old house starts to take over the father of a family moving in, and the kids see the ghost of the artist's ritually murdered wife, and things escalate a bit to the point where...
... they successfully stop the ritual being reenacted.
But then the ghosts possess the parents completely.
Er... so... they wanted to recreate the ritual but have it go wrong, even though they tried their level best to get the kids out of the way and make sure the ritual worked?
Sounds like inconsistent planning on the ghosts' part to get another scare.
Having a twist is one thing. Having it make no sense is another.
Running RPGs has made me want villainous plans that you can follow.
How could you make this twist "fair"? There was one hint that the ritual leading to death might have been an accident, but there were plenty of other inconsistent scare tactics in there too. It needed to underline that. And maybe not make the killer ritual seem like such a priority.
Best reasoning I can think of is from an episode of Buffy, where the ghosts are locked into repeating the pattern that leads to murder and suicide, but by possessing Buffy and Angel they can break it as their hosts can survive the fight. So the ghosts want to be free of the ritual but can't until someone breaks it? In that case, sucks to be the modern family, but at least nobody else will suffer...
Anyway, short version, don't break the rules you established just to get a "boo!" twist. Because the audience will "boo!" you right back.
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