A movie's ending can make or break its reputation. After all, those final moments are what everything before it has built up to - from the character arcs to the narrative development, by the time a film reaches its denouement all these factors pull together in a final revelation which informs the audience about everything which has gone before. Sometimes a film gets this just right. Following the cinematic maxim of set-up and pay off, they tease the audience with new information relating to plot and character, slowly building up both tension and intrigue until the final reel where everything transforms. Alfred Hitchcock was something of a master in this regard, but there are many other notable examples of this dynamic played out as it should be - the "Rosebud" revelation in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane and the origami unicorn scene which closes Ridley Scott's Blade Runner with wonderfully thought-provoking ambiguity are just two great examples from legendary movies. But sometimes the filmmaker gets it so, so wrong, delivering a final revelation which, far from being the icing on the cake, transforms it into a cinematic mud pie. Here are 10 such movies which were utterly ruined by their atrocious final revelations. Needless to say, we're about to venture deep into SPOILER territory...
