Bleak movies endings are unsettling, not allowing audiences to relax the way a more conventional happy ending would, where the story is tied up in a neat little bow, where the guy gets the girl, and everyone lives happily ever after. By forcing the audience to think about what has just happened, a bleak ending often stays with the viewer much longer than an ordinary ending would, part of the reason why movies such The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight remain so popular. Fortunately, the following movies show that there may be some truth to the saying "every cloud has a silver lining." Death, heartbreak, and despair appear frequently in the following films, along with political crises, family drama, and the end of the world, but every one of them have some sliver of hope embedded within them that makes for an oddly inspiring viewing if you look in the right places. It goes without saying that since the article is about the endings of movies there are some
massive spoilers, so read at your own risk....
10. Fight Club
Fight Club is considered by many to be a bit of a modern classic. Based on the successful novel by Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club is an examination of modern consumerist culture as well as masculinity in the modern age. An unnamed antagonist falls in with soap salesman Tyler Durden and together they start a fight club, where men can take out their frustration by beating each other to a pulp. Eventually, the fight clubs become something bigger, ending up as a terrorist group called Project Mayhem. The film ends with the reveal that the narrator and Tyler Durden are the same person, with Durden having been a projection of the narrator's psyche. The last scene of the film shows Project Mayhem's destruction of major credit card company buildings, destroying financial records and placing everyone on the same level financially. Any movie that ends with the fall of society is a bit of a downer but director David Fincher does his best to make it seem almost a good thing. Much of the movie was spent railing against commercialism and the modern pop advertising culture, and although the film does not give any concrete answers of how to fix societies problems, it does hint that maybe sending everyone back to the stone age might be the best thing to do. Of course the film's stylish execution, helped by Fincher's direction and an ending scene accompanied by The Pixies song Where Is My Mind, make it even more strangely uplifting.