Badmovies.org Forum

What movies with downer or unhappy endings that just don't work in you're opinion?
For me it's the original "Nightmare on Elm Street" great movie, s**t ending.

I don't know why, but the only downer/unhappy endings I can think of, I really like...it normally bucks the typical hollywood trend of a cliche'd happy ending, for the better IMO. good question tho'...maybe I'll think of one.

Not even "Sidehackers" comes to mind?

Wicker Man is probably the most famous, but hey that worked - seriously! I will say that I didn't dig the fact that Angelo Pappas died at the end of Point Break, that wasn't necessary.  :bluesad:

But the reason The Wicker Mans ending worked its because it has meaning just like The Great Silence(love that movie) and The Departed. But the downer endings I'm talking about are the ones that are just their for shock value or to set up a crappy sequel.

Blood Relations (1988)
Alison's Birthday (1979)
The Prey (1984)
Huntress: Spirit of the Night (the official year of this one keeps changing for some reason)

Rabbit Proof Fence-
this movie depressed me for days after watching it and from time to time I still think of the troubles endured by those envolved. The fact that it is based on a true story makes it even more depressing. At the end of the movie it goes on to tell how she was seperated from her children and the cycle started all over.
It's amazing how government can step in to 'help' only to tear apart families and create indentured servants.

'Return To The House On Haunted Hill' does this so blatantly, with a scene on a beach at the end of the movie involving 2 characters who havent been in the film up to that point 'finding' the main spooky looking relic the film's based on, washed up on the shore...then it ends. rubbish!

you mean like House of the Dead or House of the Dead 2
both of these made me want to shout yuck-foo after watching them

Those are two are find examples of what I'm talking about.

Troll 2 comes to mind when the song finds the mom being eaten.   Or perhaps Ghoulies. 

what's the horror film that ends with a zombie-like fist punching out of a grave (thereby indicating an obvious sequel is on the cards). I expect there's a few films that do this but Im thinking of one in particular...probably quite an obvious one.

I've made mention that I've been into a lot of Asian cinema lately.  The one downer ending, I mean the one that made me say "Man, that was f@##ed up." was at the end of Dog Bite Dog.
Check it out.  It's a great movie, but the ending just made me feel bad

Ha! That's just like the ending of "The Ruins" - two apparently gay dudes find the Mayan area. (I love the concept of killer plants, but I mostly skimmed through this one.)

Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes, at the end they smash the lamp and the house is apparently destroyed. Then right at the death, we see that the evil has spirit has entered......the cat! Then, in following films there is no explanation of how the house is rebuilt or any follow on from that particular story.  :question:

Actually that's a well done downer ending. I'm talking about ones that make you shout "What's the Point?"

The ending of The Mist, where the guy kills his son and the other escapees seconds before the Army arrives to save the day was depressing, pointless and utterly ruined the movie.

Yes, the MIST!!  Perfect example -- I had heard they were going to change the ending from the short-story, so was expecting more of a conclusion than the open-ended way King ended the written version, but that version just . . . eeewww . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

I've heard a lot of folks praising this film's ending, and normally I love downbeat endings, but I thought this one felt forced, not organic to the picture, and really just laughable. It felt more like the punchline to a stupid joke than an appropriate ending for a movie like this. I personally felt the movie should've ended with the heroes wandering off into the mist and leave it open-ended like that... ya know, like the original story did.

Anyway, I was bothered by the ending of The Departed. I'm actually an ardent lover of Scorsese (Taxi Driver is one of my favorite films of all time), and, like I said, I normally like downbeat endings. But this one felt, again, forced. It seemed awkward, rushed, and muddled to me. To me, it seemed like a lazy way to end the story, and kind of a "f**k you" to the audience.

Bleh.

I had no problem with ending of The Mist. It felt like vintage King.

you think that one's bad; check out Old Boy, I just love Asian cinema...theres nothing like tragedy and guilt.

Hey, I don't mind tragedy and guilt when it has meaning.

*Spoilers ahead*



The Mission (1986) has one of the most downbeat endings I have ever seen in film.  Robert De Niro, a repentant mercenary turned priest, tries to protect the rain forest indians from Portuguese colonists, and is killed. 

Jeremy Irons, a fellow priest who prefers not to fight, shepherds the natives around him through the gunfire...and gets shot down anyway, right before the Dying De Niro's eyes.  The indian children are then left to fend for themselves. 

Very depressing film, although more historically accurate of the time period.   

Speaking of Stephen King, I hated that they killed off Scatman Crothers in "The Shining". That seemed to me an unnecessary change from the book, where the character survives to the end (and adopts the kid, as I recall).

And speaking of killing off the black guy, I hated the ending of the original "Night of the Living Dead". Yeah, I know, it's some sort of social commentary. But I still hated it.

And speaking of unnecessary killing off of favorite characters, I really couldn't see the point of killing off Trinity at the end of the "Matrix" trilogy. What was she even doing along for the ride? She seemed to be there for no other purpose except to be killed. I suppose it would have been too much to ask to have her survive and Keanu Reeves die (heroically of course)?

[/quote]

And speaking of unnecessary killing off of favorite characters, I really couldn't see the point of killing off Trinity at the end of the "Matrix" trilogy. What was she even doing along for the ride? She seemed to be there for no other purpose except to be killed. I suppose it would have been too much to ask to have her survive and Keanu Reeves die (heroically of course)?

[/quote]

I was waiitng for her to die.  Especially since when she was killed it took her about 48 minutes to finally croak.

The Great White Hype is one movie I think had a pointless ending.  Hard to call it a downer mostly because it was supposed to be a comedy movie.  Damon Waynes plays an arrogant boxer.  His unscrouplus manager played by Samuel L Jackson gets a white guy-who beat him in amateur boxing to fight him again.  The one guy trains and works hard, while Damon Waynes slacks off from training.  When they finally fight, Damon's character wins the match. He was playing the guy everyone hated through the movie.   Its one of those movies where greedy, immoral people win the victories, while peole trying to work hard and due right get nothing in the end.  I maybe could have handled this one better if not for the fact, as I mentioned earlier this was a comdey. 

The theatrical run of the Decent was a stupid downer ending (as I understand it-I've only seen the director's cut) because it just ends with the woman being startled by the ghost crawler.  The director's cut extended ending version made much more sense and fit in better with the film.   The theatrical ending is bad becasue it didn't follow through enough.

The Descent - utterly pointless ending.

SPOILERS

So we see at the beginning that this woman is disturbed by the death of her husband and son.  This has absolutely nothing to do with anythign you'll see on screen for the next hour.  Then at the end, she kills the only likable character in the whole damned movie, and THEN we're supposed to care that she's nuts and just sitting there hallucinating and waiting to be killed?  I mean, you can't end an action movie with some nonsense like that.  Hell, it would be a lousy ending for a Lifetime movie of the week. :lookingup:

There's no such THING as a Lifetime movie with a bad ending.







Joke.

The Mist.
I felt like shooting myself at the end of that film.

The Earthling. The old guy in that is terminally ill, three months to live or something. They don't really give you any reason to suspect that the test results were actually mixed up or he'll miraculously go into spontaneous remission, but the begining is such a downer that it feels wrong for the ending to be a bummer too, as if the movie hasn't taken us anywhere. Anyway, the old guy is in the Australian outback with the orphaned little Ricky Schroder, telling him the easiest to remember things he can come up with about how to survive and get back to civilization, like very general rules about what's safe to eat and everything. They're by the fire, he's telling the kid a story, they're having a great time (like the old guy has decided not to be so hard on him, trying to force him to memorize all this stuff and be tough and everything, since he dosen't have enough time, the kid's going to have to finish the trip alone). Then, suddenly it's the next day, and Ricky Schroder is crying and PILLING UP A BUNCH OF ROCKS ON THE GUY'S BODY, then walking off alone into the desert, and he looks like he's about five or something. It's like they saw how good he was at crying at the end of The Champ and wrote this whole movie to be equally sad.

Of course, The Yearling is the mother of all sad movies, IMO. You try leaving the baby deer in the woods ONCE, then give up on anything other than BLASTING IT'S FACE OFF IN FRONT OF THE LITTLE BOY WHO LOVES IT? You don't try, say, taking it a little further off into the woods, maybe across the river we latter see the kid fording as he flees into the wilderness in a frenzy of grief? Seems like a whole symbolic agenda here that might work better in print than on screen (Kind of like The Cold Equations; on TV you can always spot some chairs and stuff that they could throw out. In print they tell you that there's nothing to use for ballast and you believe it because you can't see all the crap that's inevitably surpurflous looking in the cockpit). Like, the yearling is that kid's youth or innocence or something, so having it live wouldn't make sybolic sense, or like the whole moral of the story is something that requires the baby deer shooting. Anyway, the middle of that movie's pretty sad too.

.DIRTY MARY,CRAZY LARRY- Whatta bummer!!!
.VANISHING POINT-another road picture...another bummer ending.
.TWO LANE BLACK TOP-and yet another bummer ending for yet another road movie!
.Surprised this one hasn't been mentioned-the 1968 NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD! Dam....he was so close to making it....!Dam!

I LOVE that ending!  It feels perfectly right, and it did shock me when I first saw it. 

The very ending of Doctor Zhivago isn't bad, sort of uplifting, even, showing the dam, the water flowing down it, kind of David Lean's way of saying everything's gotten better, the river is washing away the horrors of the past rampant throughout the film, but that scene right before the end, where



(SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!)



Zhivago tries to get Lara's attention as he's on the bus and sees her on the street in Moscow, and fatally collapses just before he can get to her? Not only a downer but soooo frustrating every time I see it! Maddening! I hate that! Ultimate downer every last time.

I totally agree with Sidehackers being one with a crappy downer ending - and a totally unnecessary one at that!  Hate those...GRRR...   :hatred:

Another one that always gets me is the ending for Turner and Hooch, where










:::SPOILER::: 










Th bad guys kill the dog Hooch that Detective Turner (Tom Hanks) has learned to grow to love and respect.

That ending totally ruined the movie for me, no matter thatr they tried to make it better in the "later end scene", but still, why have that happen to begin with?  Again, GRRR....  :hatred:

Salo: The 120 Days Of Sodom is one of those movies where you hope against hope that goodness and virtue will win the whole way through the movie, but are reminded at the end that evil is tragic not because it merely goes against the nature of righteousness, but because it does so everywhere, all of the time, and it is largely unchecked. But, for the record, it is a great movie that everyone should see just once to drink from its deep well of sadness.

I can't believe I forgot The Girl In Lover's Lane!
http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/The_Girl_in_Lovers_Lane

Everyone?!!No got dang way am I ever showing that piece of s**t to my loved ones..........

"Salo" is one of the few films that physically repulsed me. That takes a lot.  And then you get the ending that makes you want to hop in front of a crosstown bus.  Loads of fun.

The movie that broke my heart when I watched it and left me speechless (imagine that) and crying was "Breaker Morant".  I've wanted to go back and watch that movie time and again, but that ending keeps me from doing it. It makes my chest hurt just thinking about it.

Oh, man! The infamous "Handcock's funeral" scene gets me every time! A classic movie that deserves more respect than it has been getting. Perfect choice for a downer ending movie, as well.

And, yes, Salo pushes the boundaries of what we consider to be morality in film-making, but it is a movie not created in malice or misogyny: it does not take any joy in the acts of abuse that lie within. It is dispassionate in the sadism; that's what makes it tolerable, that's what makes it engrossing, that's what makes it art. It is not a pleasant film, or a film that can possibly endear you to it. But Pasolini was a great director, he created a well-made film, and in my opinion it is by no means the most deplorable movie that has been made.

Every now and again, to look into the sick heart of man, the wounded soul of the victim and the tandem spear of the assailant, to see what the coldest and most beastly of us are capable of, to witness the horror of evil and to have the grotesque facade of hope be shattered before our eyes, is not a bad thing. It reaffirms the good in us, and keeps us ever-fortified against the path of wickedness and hatred that is always set before us.

OK, rant officially over! Sorry!  :smile:

You those are are all good downer ending's that you're talking about, I looking for ones that are completely hollow and profoundly stupid.

Mortuary, first killing off all the best characters, then proceeding to kill all the rest of them just for the sake of being "a horror movie" XP

I could argue that

As you say, SALO is dispassionate and neutral in its depictions of torture and sadism.  So was the source material, but it was intended for sexual arousal.  Sade got a boner writing this stuff for his own masturbatory pleasure while he was imprisoned.  Passolini chose to adapt Sade's pornographic novel literally.  I suspect that you are reading sympathy for the victims into the film; if the film doesn't take joy in degradation, it doesn't criticize it either.  The viewer chooses whether to identify with the victims or the victimizers.  Most of us choose the former, and therefore find the movie repugnant. 

I understand your reaction to it, but I wouldn't say SALO is a must see, or that it reaffirms the good in us.  In fact, I despise it (which is not to say I begrudge it the right to exist). 

It's my least favorite Sade work, because it has the least artistry (it's basically a list of progressive tortures) and doesn't give the reader the opportunity to argue with the author, which is the value of Sade.

I would even argue that the ending of SALO is not a downer, but the only part of the movie that's remotely uplifting.  There's a tremendous sense of relief that it's finally over, both for the victims and the viewer.

Sorry, I feel as strongly about SALO as you do--but in the opposite vector.

It seems the movie is destined to divide people. All my friends are split down the middle on the film, and we've had more than a few discussions on its merits and flaws. Though I do not share your sentiments, it is a persuasive argument you give and I respect your opinion highly, Rev. Powell. Good show!

And how about Manos: The Hands of Fate? Talk about a hollow ending to that laughable abomination! Everyone's a concubine to The Master! I'm surprised Michael or Torgo or the police or the Make-Out Couple weren't in a diaphanous-robe-induced coma next to the bonfire as well.

The Year My Voice Broke (1987)- this movie is one of my favorites, but the ending is so depressing...

The Proposition (2005)- sad ending, but a happy one wouldn't have worked

Permanent Midnight- this movie really depressed me...

Each of the Ghoulies films I have seen seem to end with a "their will be a sequel" ending.

Yeah Troll 2 confused me, I wondered at first if it was a nightmare the kid was having but still WTF happened at the end.

The end of Siderhackers p**sed me off.

What did that film have to do with sidehacking except 5-10 minutes of stock footage near the start?

I take it back I am glad there was hardly any sidehacking.

There's a Robin Williams film...NO ...WAIT...COME BACK!!! Called Awakenings about a doctor who tries to get his patients out of long term comas. Very bleak ending.

The worst ending I have seen recently (and probably in anything ever) was Dear Zachary, which is made 1000x worse because it is a documentary and actually happened. 

The mist had a very depressing end. While very enjoyable it did catch me totally off guard.

The ending of Cloverfield really got on my nerves.
*SPOILER*
I sat through that pile of turd with it's whinging, cardboard characters only to see them run back into harm's way and die at the end. 
Not that I objected to the actual death - but maybe if it had happened 60 minutes earlier I might have felt a greater sense of satisfaction...  :hatred:

You do know WHY she killed the other girl though right?  I mean, there's a good reason plotwise for it.  (Well, two actually...)

I saw this movie called Benny's Video recently, the whole movie, to me, was just boring at pointless, and the ending sucked ass as well.  I guess you could argue it's a social commentary on how the overload of video images can desensitize us to reality and whatnot, but to me, the point is lost is a dull prodding film that gives no real reason for the protagonist acting the way he does other than being an uncaring amoral piece of s**t.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this though, as this film is also from the guy who wrote and directed Funny Games another in the "Pointless wastes of time" annuals of cinema. 

The end of the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Damn you Donald Sutherland! That movie ending made you want to jump out of a window.

If you want the authentic feel of accidentally backing up your car over your pet dog then watch Grave of the Fireflies [1988]. It's a great movie but man do want rip your heart out of your chest after watching it.

I absolutely hated the ending of the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I hate remakes in general especially remakes of movies which I like, but I was really liking this remake. I did up until what happened to the guy in the gun shop. That was just bad writing. They wasted too much of the movie developing a character which served no purpose. The movie just kills him off. The ending was lame as well.

The zombie films are awful when they become remakes.

Look at day of the dead following on from dawn of the dead but not this remake...

I can not stand any of the remakes. Its rare for me to enjoy a remake unless I hated the orginal even then its hit or miss.

I though the ending for the film was pretty good.  It's sad but it really brings the whole horror's of war full circle.  The only thing I didn't like was that the character's are already dead in the beginning because while the main male character is naive about how bad things really are you just sorta wish that he would survive and become a better person and overall be less naive about things.  No he has to go and die on us so, instead of what would have been a predictable but acceptable and some what good ( I use good in this case VERY VERY loosely) ending, we get a shocker at the start about both of them being dead already. 

Boys Don't Cry.


Bleak.
 :bluesad:

"Funny games" anyone? It got me on a killing mood, but then again, that was exactly what it was meant to achieve.

I LOVED the original; its one of my fav movies... however I haven't seen the one with Tim Roth yet. I actually really enjoyed the ending to Funny Games.

I was going to mention that.  It was totally unforgivable to do that.  Just another example of the lack of knowledge of the craft that troll 2's cast/ scriptwriter had. 

I have watched that ending 3 times now. I am still confused if that was ment to be a nightmare or reality. It was very badly done well most the film was very badly done but the ending was awful.

The mist has hit me the hardest recently on shock factor.

Braveheart.  I thought it was a great movie but the ending just makes it hard to watch the movie again.  I don't know, I can watch the most disgusting slasher films, but I think Gibson's character was so well developed that I hated seeing the way he died . . . even if it was historically semi-accurate.  So great movie, downer ending.

EMBRYO starring Rock Hudson and Babra Carrera,for reasons I have already mentioned in this forum.
THEY had a depressinge ending simply because the movie didn't start to become interesting til a minute or so before the end credits started.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Old Yeller.
I remember crying my eyes out when I watched it as a kid.

I just watched Conan the Barbarian and it has somewhat of a down ending.
He finally gets revenge on Thulsa Doom...but it was a Pyrrhic victory.

Godzilla 1984. I cried more for that monster than I have for any Disney movie since.

The ending of The Invasion.

That gave me a downer. What a load of...

ALIENS 3 - An extremely bleak film ending with one of filmdom's most beloved characters killing herself as a monster bursts out of her chest.  Not exactly a fun time out at the movies.

I love that ending. I thought it was perfect.
Not many characters get that sort of dramatic ending.

Only to be ruined by Alien Resurrection.

I remember it being almost universally panned originally, but it does have a big fanbase now, particularly with the recut version (which I admit I've not seen).

I dunno. It was just to unrelentingly bleak and depressing for me.

That's what makes it soo good. Her final act is to take the last alien out with her. Only to be ruined when they brought her clone back FOR THE SEQUEL!!!!. And how did the clone have alien DNA ?

Any film where Adam Sandler lives at the end is a bit of a downer... :wink:

I hated the ending to the film Fallen.  To me, the whole film was what I call an "Ant vs Sledgehammer" story.  That is, where the antagonists is so powerful, the hero of the film was virtually no chance of defeating it, but just scurries around, not realizing they're facing a hammer before it squashes them in the climax of the film. 

Unlike a tragedy, where the main character is brought down by a fatal flaw they possession the "AvS" films are pretty much just the protagonist being overwhelmed.  To me, it just kind of makes the whole story pointless there was pretty much no way of them winning to begin with.

uhg........Requiem For a Dream. i hate that movie, i LOVE the cinematography but i refuse to watch it again. that movie not only makes me feel like garbage but it also makes me feel dirty like i need to take a shower.

Probably the worst part about that story is how long it went on - into the 1970s as I recall.  It's an impressive feat for a government to treat its aboriginals worse than the US government did, but the Australian government managed it.


I agree.  The ending to Infernal Affairs, what the Departed is based on (actually, it takes elements from all three films in the trilogy), has a much better ending.

Spoiler for it below
Basically, there is no Mark Wahlberg character.  So the undercover criminal is sad about what happens, but simply gets away with it and is a cop at the end.  It's certainly not a happy ending, either, especially not as the undercover cop is an even sadder character in the original film.

I might add I think Infernal Affairs is a better film on just about any level you can name.  It's excellent.

I was going to mention Fallen, but BTM beat me.  So I can only agree.  Stupid ending.  It might have been OK if luck wasn't what made the sledgehammer finally fall.

I hate most of the twist endings horror films have now.  For example, the Friday the 13th ending. 

I feel it is more of a twist when they DON'T have a twist now. 

God, same here.  I remember seeing that in theaters when I was about four or five, and I bawled like a baby. 

Plus, to me, they kind of telegraphed the ending with a scene earlier.  When the good guys plan was revealed I thought, "Wait a sec, what if there's a nearby... oh, there it is."

Course, that wasn't the only flaw in the film, it had a decent premise, but there's just too much that went wrong to save it. 

"Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog", yeah, I count it as a movie... I hate Joss Whedon, he's just a twisted s.o.b., always killing people off.

 "Repo!"... I'm just bawling at end of it. It's really easy to get me down, though. I can't stand to watch movies where bad things happen. Heck, even "Deck the Halls" gets me down... all those bad things happen to the one dude.... what a bummer.

Oh, I think someone already mentioned it, but I should mention the Departed as well. It's like they couldn't come up with an ending...

The Mist had a really unhappy ending. That's pretty much why it failed. Most horror films these days think they're pretty bold with the unhappy endings, but it just seems like an "it was all a dream"-type waste of time to a general audience I guess.

Have you met Circus ?

I sense an evil clown territorial fight coming up. Break out the seltzer bottle, boys!

Circus Vs Pennywise