10 Horror Movie Endings That Get Worse The More You Think About It
The longer you sit with these endings, the more they don't feel right...
There is something to be said about a horror director that is committed to a messed-up ending. Ari Aster has given us dark, depressing ends to both of his movies, and the unhinged smile on Dani's face at the end of Midsommar is something that I'll never shake from my brain.
However, while you have to commend the commitment of a filmmaker that pulls off such a bleak end to an already grim movie, it's not something that you always want from your horror movie viewing. Sometimes we want the high-strung, nerve-splitting feature to end on a more rewarding note. After all, we all whoop with joy when Sydney finally gains the upper hand over her assailant at the end of every Scream film.
But there are also movies that want to have their cake and eat it too. They want you to feel good when their horror flick comes to a close, but they also want to keep things open-ended.
And for that reason alone, the movie endings on this list manage to go from either deeply satisfying to deeply depressing or from pretty disturbing already to "OH MY GOD THIS IS HORRIBLE MAKE IT END", in the time it takes for you to switch it off and tuck yourself into bed.
Whether it be the grander implications of the plot, conspiracy theories that change the way you see things or just the simple question of what happens next? These film finales truly do, creep up on you with time.
10. The Invitation - Red Lanterns
The Invitation follows a divorced man Will and his girlfriend Kira on the night they are invited to his ex-wife's dinner party with all their mutual friends, who attempt to induct the pair into their cult-like support group. What begins as an awkward social event though quickly turns sinister when ex-wife Eden and her new husband David attempt to poison the guests.
And while the final act offers up a cathartic end to the contained trauma that our main character Will goes through in the film, the real implications of the cult's wide-reaching plan is anything but pleasing.
Just before the carnage of the final act, we see David, our main antagonist, go off into the garden to light a red lantern. This is something that, at the time, just seems to add atmosphere to the highly unnerving movie we are watching at first. But we get to see the real reason for this lantern lighting in the final few seconds.
Will and Kira have watched their friends die in traumatising fashion and have defeated the cult members and are splayed out on the lawn. However what they believe to have been a personal attack on their group slowly gets put into perspective as the sounds of sirens and screams fill their ears.
We are then treated to the sight of dozens of other red lanterns outside other LA homes... and the movie ends.
What we have interpreted the whole time as a very personal, very intimate dinner party from hell, is actually a city-wide, possibly even country-wide attack. How many lives were lost that night to the cult's crazy ideals? The body count only seems to multiple after switching the movie off and you dwell on the implications.