Badmovies.org Forum

Obligatory: possible spoilers (but I really doubt it for the movies mentioned).

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The NOTLD thread got me to thinking about dark endings for movies.  Was NOTLD the first?  The Thing has a dark, hopeless ending, and Carpenter accomplishes it very well with the mood of the last scene.  From the commentary on the DVD, neither Carpenter nor anyone else on the set knew the ending until they got ready to shoot it.  To the degree they built the hopelessness, I don't think any other ending was possible (and would have been a huge let-down).

In a way, Pulp Fiction has a dark ending.  Even though it actually appears in the middle, you know Vincent's true fate at the end of the film.  I think QT did a good job setting this up as a subtle way into the viewer's head.

Se7en did it, I think in a realistic way (I would have HATED that movie if it ended 'happy').  As uncomfortable as that ending is, it just fits.

My question is what movies/directors have attempted the dark ending and ended up just looking lame?  

Also, what dark endings (or attempts) have come out of nowhere...that is, the dark ending was forced on the viewer, seemingly as a gimmick (or as an attempt to copy Romero)?  What directors have the dark ending as a trademark (good or bad)?

This is not really about dark movies in general, but rather movies that up until their last scene could have ENDED "up" or "down."

NOLTD is hardly the first. Unhappy or ambiguous endings were quite common in the 70''s (Vanishing Point comes to mind). Of course during the late 60's and through the 70's directors had a lot more control than they do now.

Most of the happy endings we get now are because of the studios.

Vanishing Point has a good dark ending with Kowalski doing a kamikazee into the bulldozers. Carpenter's thing is very ambiguous, but i liked it very much because it makes you use your imagination.

8mm, and Memento have pretty dark endings. Million Dollar Baby has a pretty dark ending I think, and Jeepers Creepers. The ending in High Tension was twisted, and dark.

If you really think about the implications of the end of "Dark City", it's very depressing

That's an interesting question, as most films seem to have a "sunny" ending.

For me, a "dark" ending would be one in which the villains win.

"Race with the Devil"
"1984"
etc.

Also, ambiguous endings could possiblely be considered to be "dark."

"The Fearless Vampire Killers"
"Lair of the White Worm"
etc.

I'll try to think up some more.

Crossroads has a dark ending; Britney Spears lives.

Titanic has a dark ending. Oh, wait, I just fell asleep, so everything only seemed dark.

Lets go way back to silent Scandinavian cinema.

Victor Sjostrom was a Swedish director whose films dealt with the beauty of life; and with life comes death. In the film, The Outlaw and His Wife (1918), Sjostrom shows how two people can be happy with each other despite what society thinks (I know, I used a buzzword, but at least it's applicable). A man comes to work on a farm and falls in love with the widow Halla, but when it is discovered that he is an escaped thief, forced into crime by his family's starvation, the two run off into the mountains to live to the end of their days. The movie ends when a small squabble in a tent in the freezing moutains drives one to run away, if only in angst, and fall in the snow. The other comes out and follows her, and in his passion, lays down beside her. The movie cuts (I believe) to the next day where they are still laying side by side, frozen in the ice and snow. What a down ending.

Sjostrom was famous for two things, in his movies: the landscape and unhappy endings. When he came to the United States to work in Hollywood, test audiences disliked his work because of its depressing nature. Studios forced him to change the endings to meet the demands and make them more upbeat, though today, people balk at it. The Wind (1928) is a classic example of this. Working with famed actress Lillian Gish, the original ending of The Wind has Gish wandering off into the windy landscape of the prairies and dying. It was changed, to some chagrin and other's approval, to her hated husband returning to their shack and reconciling with her.

Victor Sjostrom was also an actor. All you Ingmar Bergman fans out there might recognize him from Wild Strawberries (1957). Also a good movie.

Although it's nice and bright when it happens, I would say The Wicker Man has a dark ending.

odinn7 Wrote:
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> Although it's nice and bright when it happens, I
> would say The Wicker Man has a dark ending.
>

Hahahaha, fun times singing around the Wicker Man.

Another 'Happy yet Dark' ending:  Jean Cocteau's Beauty in the Beast has a great dark ending layered in a happy ending [for those who know the movie, you know what I mean.]

Depends on what exactly you mean by "dark."

"Seven" and "Reservoir Dogs" come to mind.

Brazil and Jacob's Ladder

MIRICAL MILE. Respect it, don't wanna see it agine.
I get enough darkness in the news...what, i want it in my movies? Not as much as i used to...

Oh, and BEWARE : THE BLOB!

If you want one that comes COMPLETELY out of nowhere, check out Fantasy Mission Force. It's a perfectly upbeat and insane kung fu flick (check out the reviews on Teleport City or Unknown Movies if you wanna know how insane)... until the very last scene, where everybody dies graphically. Except for a young Jackie Chan, who had previously been a minor character. It's all worth it, though, for that final line...

I enjoy "dark" movie endings because I'm a pessimist, so they seem much more realistic to me. And sometimes the point a writer/director is trying to make with his film isn't sincere if the movie ends on a happy note.

One of the biggest screw-ups that comes to mind is "Devil's Advocate." *SPOILER ALERT*
If Keanue and his wife hadn't magically come to life in the last few minutes of the film, it would've been a good flick. The writer, however, couldn't stand up for his own convictions and allow the Devil to win, even though he obviously felt sympathy for his particular version of the Devil.

Another film that was ruined for me was "28 Days Later." *SPOILER ALERT, AGAIN*
If you watch the first alternate ending on the "28 Days Later" DVD you'll see a great ending where the male hero dies and his female companions were left to fend for themselves. The ending that was actually tacked onto the end of the film shows all three survivors happy and healthy in a small, secluded paradise cottage (without any real explanation as to how they escaped danger).

Does anyone know of any other movies that were completely destroyed by their stupid, sappy Hollywood happy endings?

I really enjoyed most of The Devil's Own, but I hate the ending.  I think a much better ending would have been Harrison Ford's character getting shot, and the film just ending with Frankie (Brad Pitt) just cruising into the sunset with the missles on that boat.  So, I think this is a pretty good example of a tacked-on happy ending that should have been darker.

Opportunity missed.

Watching the different endings of Swordfish on the DVD made me appreciate the ending more, knowing they could have gone with the more happy ending, which doesn't quite suit.

Also I wish the ending for War of the Worlds was more somber and not so happy, but that's no big news to everyone here.

As for another bleak ending,  I liked Arlington Road.  Very nicely done bleak ending.

dean Wrote:
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>
> As for another bleak ending,  I liked Arlington
> Road.  Very nicely done bleak ending.
>

I watched this one (again) just the other day.  I agree; nicely done ending.

I never thought the end of "The Thing" as hopeless or dark.  I just assumed neither men were actually Things, and that, though they died, they died in the course of defeating a terrible foe.

Just sitting here thinking about it, a lot of Carpenter's horror films end  with the protagonists winning a  battle, but not the war.  That's probably one of the reasons that I like his stuff.  Not that I kick at an all-out "happy" ending, mind you...

I always thought the original ending of Natural Born Killers, where Mickey and Mallory are killed by the guy who helped them break out, worked much better than the one where they get away scot-free. Though I suppose whether either one is a "happy" ending is open to interpretation.

I liked the ending to The Thing very much... two men huddling down in the cold, watching it all end around them.  

Oh, the ending to Brazil.  You HAD to bring that one up.  I watched that movie and said to myself, "nope.  Never, ever watching another Terry Gilliam movie again."  And then I watched 12 Monkeys.

:P

:P

:P

Digging this up because I knew there was a movie I was overlooking that needed to be on this list.

Session 9

If that ending's not dark, I don't know what is.

Odinn,

I didn't even think about the ending of Session 9 when reading this thread.

Thanks for ruining the rest of my day by bringing it up....

How could that ruin your day? The movie was great, you said so yourself. It also was most certainly a dark ending.

Odinn,

Yes, it's a great movie.  I was saying that the ending is dark enough to ruin my day by thinking about it.  Truly disturbing stuff.

Gotcha. It was quite a moving ending the way it all came together.

How about David Cronenberg's Rabid? Frank Moore really sells the near-to-last scene emotionally, and it's pretty affecting the first time you see it. Then to see the lifeless body being gnawed on by a stray dog before being pitched into a garbage truck...there's a dark ending for ya.

The Crazies - they had several chances to stop the bio weapon but fate conspired against them.

You could say that Soylent Green has a dark ending, what with the protagonist being taken away to the factory.

And a complete waste of time and money movie (mistakenly bought on DVD at near full price, lord I was an idiot, no, I haven't let this one go yet!) is The Butterfly Effect.  (Spoiler)  In the end, it's as if Ashton Kutcher's character never lived.  Sure, everyone else got to live happily ever after, but only at the 'sacrifice' of himself.  Then again, the disappearance of ol' Ashton might be a happy ending after all. ;-)

Mickey Rourke's Angel Heart had a nice, dark ending.  When you finally work out who he was searching for, it all comes together.

I consider Cube to have a dark ending.  Sure, the 'developmentally delayed' guy gets out, but the Cube keeps running and running.  I might have to watch it again, I've got it here somewhere...

I've never heard of Session 9.  Should I see it?

~Archivist~

"I've never heard of Session 9. Should I see it?"

Without a doubt. If you like horror that's more than just gore, see it.

"On Her Majesty's Secret Service" comes to mind.

I rather liked Butterfly Effect despite my hatred of Kutcher.

As for Session 9.....yes, go see it now.  It is by far one of the best horror films in 20 years.

The First Power has an ambiguous ending.  Lou Diamond Philips is in the hospital with the lady psychic and then she dreams of him coming out of his slumber as the killer adn then it ends leaving you to wonder what will happen.

Along a similar vein is Fallen.  They tell you the ending at the beginning but of course you don't know it until the end.  The whole cat allowing the evil spirit to continue on was unexpected.

187 also ends on a down note

This one might seem odd but I saw "The Enforcer" with Clint Eastwood a couple of days ago and thought it ended on a down note.

rich andrini Wrote:
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> This one might seem odd but I saw "The Enforcer"
> with Clint Eastwood a couple of days ago and
> thought it ended on a down note.
>

Sure, Tyne Daly died but that was to be expected as all his partners don't do too well once he gets to like them. What do you think was so down about blowing the guy out of the tower? Or did you just think that because of Tyne Daly?

odinn7 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> rich andrini Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > This one might seem odd but I saw "The
> Enforcer"
> > with Clint Eastwood a couple of days ago and
> > thought it ended on a down note.
> >
>
> Sure, Tyne Daly died but that was to be expected
> as all his partners don't do too well once he gets
> to like them. What do you think was so down about
> blowing the guy out of the tower? Or did you just
> think that because of Tyne Daly?
>

Yeah your right his partners not doing well but what I thought was the downer was that Harry and Tyne were the only ones that trying to fight back to get the mayor back meanwhile just about everyone else was going to pay them. Then the helicopter at the end added insult to injury by flying over saying they have the money to pay and while poor Tyne laid dead as well as the mayors comment about Harry getting a award.

Maybe I am thinking to much into it but I felt their was no justice done and it felt like it ended on a sour note.

I havn't read the whole topic so this might have already been mentioned.

The ending of Godzilla (at least the american version) was of victory, but it had a price tag attached to it.

The Return of the Living Dead ending wasn't that promising.

I have to agree with Skaboi and Odinn7 here - Session 9 was a helluva good movie.  

After having watched the 2004 Dawn of the Dead again today, it has a dark ending......getting to the island and then realizing they're f**ked regardless.  

The Grudge.  Gotta love it.  Everybody dies because the evil is just bigger than they are.

I've always felt the ending should depend on the story and its development... I don't think zombie movies should always have bleak endings, nor do I believe action movies should always have "happy" endings where the bad guy always dies. I actually liked the way the following movies ended:

White Men Can't Jump

The Thing (John Carpenter's version)

Animal House

2001

Godzilla: Tokyo SOS

Christine

The Blair Witch Project

Sex and Zen

Godzilla: Final Wars

The Blob (the original version, of course)

i can't really think of any lucio fulci films that end on an up note...