Worst Unhappy/Downer Endings

[Ryantherebel]

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

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

[skuts]

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.

[peter johnson]

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

[WilliamWeird1313]

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.

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.

[Ryantherebel]

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

[Sister Grace]

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

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

[Ryantherebel]

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

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.

[D-Man]

*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.   

[schmendrik]

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

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)?

[WingedSerpent]

[/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.

[Jack]

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.

[WilliamWeird1313]

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.

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







Joke.

[Doggett]

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

[Dave M]

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.

[RCMerchant]

.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!