10 Awesome Movies With Terrible Endings

These movies were going so well to begin with, but then their endings had to happen.

By Gareth Morgan /

No matter what anyone tries to tell you, no film is entirely perfect, folks.

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Even the greatest features ever to land on a cinema screen have their little flaws here and there. But that's what makes them so wonderfully unique, and those imperfections didn't ultimately take anything away from the otherwise superb experience.

The same sadly cannot be said for the following largely brilliant movies, though.

When it comes to these features, the majority of what was thrown at audiences was pretty damn brilliant, with viewers being glued to the unsettling sci-fi journey, epic trilogy conclusion, or colourful action flick they were watching unfold.

Right up to the point the minds behind these features completely dropped the ball during the closing stages.

From that point on, all of the frequently excellent work that came before was somewhat undermined by the terrible way these filmmakers opted to bring their films to an end.

With a less jarring swerve, the ability to know precisely when to actually roll the credits, or a slightly not-as-silly final stretch, these movies could have gone down as some of the finest of their time. But thanks to their dodgy endings, many were just left feeling a bit disappointed by how things turned out.

10. Sunshine - The Bizarre Slasher Conclusion

Bringing together an absolutely stacked cast, led by the magnificent Cillian Murphy, Danny Boyle appeared to be on to an absolute winner throughout his creepy sci-fi voyage known as Sunshine.

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Over the course of the futuristic thriller, viewers follow a team of astronauts on a mission to save their freezing planet by reigniting a Sun that is about to die. 

Things begin to go spectacularly wrong as the team on the Icarus II attempt to intercept the first ship to try this sort of vital mission, Icarus I, with their own transport being damaged, crew members being killed, and all kinds of chaos ensuing as they look to add that ship's bomb to the one they're already carrying. 

Two shots are better than one, after all.

Then it all just gets a little weird.

Leaning way too far into slasher movie territory on the back of a largely slow burn tale of moral dilemmas and the dangers of space travel, it's soon revealed that someone did actually survive that first failed mission. 

Mark Strong's insane Icarus I survivor then proceeds to hunt down the remaining crew members of the Icarus II for much of the disappointing closing stretch, with all that wonderful dread and tension built up by Boyle and writer Alex Garland during the majority of the movie being squandered by this jarring genre-switch late on.

At least that mad, burned-up Pinbacker couldn't keep them from completing the mission, though. So, that's something.

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