10 Film Endings With Disturbing Implications You Totally Missed

Happy endings, of the safe-for-work variety, usually only happen in the movies, which is one of the reasons why cinemas are such effective havens of escapism.

When the credits roll, that's that. Everything is tied up in a neat little package and there's no Monday morning on the horizon threatening to jeopardise the protagonist's new-found inner peace.

Conclusions like this have us leaving the theatre all warm and fuzzy, but there are times when filmmakers have tricked us into feeling this way - those instances where the happily ever after wasn't all it seemed.

From tragic subtexts, to the long-term consequences most viewers just didn't pick up on at the time, Hollywood pulls these stunts all the time, leaving fans thinking that some films aren't so different from real life after all, once the penny has dropped.

Of course, all films are open to interpretation and the glass-half-full crowd will no doubt choose to see only the surface positives every time, but take a closer look at the notes this bunch ended on and you'll realise the sunshine and rainbows were laced with underlying darkness.

When Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle emerges victorious in the final battle against that pimp and his associates, saves the prostitute in distress and is hailed as a hero by the media, you'd be forgiven for thinking all of his problems were in the rearview mirror.

Robert De Niro's damaged war veteran won the day and earned the respect he so craved - that's a happy ending, right? Well, not quite.

Martin Scorsese and writer Paul Schrader have both confirmed that the strange glare Travis emits before the credits roll signifies that he's a ticking time bomb likely to blow the seemingly-happy ending eight ways from Sunday at any minute.

That's the best case scenario for the unhinged cabbie, as the theory that states he died during the final shootout in the brothel has more subscribers than Netflix.

Every sequence which follows is Travis's death dream, in which he imagines a world where everything he deemed wrong has been righted and he's celebrated for his actions.

It cannot be denied, the final stretch of Taxi Driver is rather dream-like, and that overhead shot immediately following the brothel shootout could well represent the protagonist's soul leaving his body.

In reality, you don't magically recover from the horrors of war by turning vigilante and saving the day, and Taxi Driver felt the need to subtly remind us of that at the last minute.