10 Horror Movie Cliffhangers Nobody Cared About
Nobody gave even a single damn about these horror cliffhanger endings.
With two-part movies seemingly coming back into fashion in recent times, cliffhanger endings which leave the audience hanging until the next installment are apparently all the rage once again.
A well-devised cliffhanger can of course leave viewers anxious and desperate to see the next movie, to find out how the hero's predicament will be resolved and the villain will finally be defeated.
But not all cliffhangers are created equal, and sometimes they just don't hit in the way that the filmmakers intended. Sometimes cliffhangers can't shake a strong whiff of desperation, that they're trying to string viewers along for another movie without a compelling creative impetus to do so.
And that's certainly true of these 10 horror movies, each of which ended by leaving the audience sans-resolution, yet not in a way that proved even remotely satisfying or exciting.
Rather, these cliffhangers felt like the filmmakers ran out of ideas, or were persuaded to rustle up a non-ending for the sake of that ever-precious box office gravy.
Whatever the reason, these cliffhangers certainly didn't have the desired effect of making the audience care - quite the opposite, in fact...
10. Schenk Escapes - Spiral: From The Book Of Saw
The most recent Saw film concludes with the reveal that the new copycat version of Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) targeting loose canon cops is Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella), who rather predictably staged his death earlier in the movie.
In the final scene, Schenk's convoluted master plan finally plays out, with protagonist Detective Zeke Banks' (Chris Rock) corrupt cop father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson) being fatally shot by a SWAT team who mistake him for a gunman.
During the chaos, Schenk makes his escape from the warehouse via elevator, all while Zeke helplessly watches and screams in frustration.
Clearly, the ending was intended to install Schenk as the new Jigsaw moving forward, with a sequel likely revolving around Zeke pursuing him while he continues to torture and kill crooked cops.
Yet even accepting that Spiral released during an especially bleak period of the pandemic, it was still largely rejected by critics and fans alike, who simply weren't interested in Schenk or, it seems, a Saw movie without the presence of Tobin Bell's John Kramer.
With both Spiral and its predecessor Jigsaw both failing to move the series on past Kramer, it's little surprise that the upcoming tenth film, Saw X, is a "midquel" set between the first two movies, in turn allowing Bell despite Kramer dying in Saw III.