10 Terrible Movies With Awesome Endings
When great endings happen to awful films.
It's depressingly common for otherwise great movies to fall flat at the last hurdle with a deeply terrible ending, in turn compromising the entire experience.
But the other way around? Not so common.
Generally speaking most awful movies remain that way from start to finish, yet every so often they might stumble upon pure brilliance at some point.
It's perhaps rarest for this to be at the end, because if you can't start a story in the right way, why would you end it well either?
Yet these 10 films are all fascinating outliers - bad films that nevertheless served up brilliantly entertaining endings that, honestly, deserved a better movie in front of them.
From dropping a devilish plot twist to finally delivering what the rest of the film should've been, these movies forced audiences to sit through 90-plus minutes of wonky filmmaking before following up with scenes that perked everybody up.
Was it worth sitting through these movies for a riveting climax? Your mileage will unavoidably vary on that, but at the very least these films all left a strong final impression.
10. Meg 2: The Trench
The original Meg wasn't a great movie, but it knew precisely what it was and delivered the goods accordingly - albeit within the confines of a gore-free PG-13 rating.
It performed well enough for Warner Bros. to greenlight a sequel, and when acclaimed horror filmmaker Ben Wheatley (Kill List, In the Earth) was announced to direct, curiosity was stoked to see how his unique sensibilities would translate to a mega-budget blockbuster.
The truth, sadly, is that the majority of Meg 2: The Trench is a strangely dull, low-energy follow-up in which Wheatley gets to flex barely an ounce of his fierce filmmaking muscle.
Even with the eminent charms of lead Jason Statham, far too much time is spent on snoozy human dramas and not enough on, well, the Megs.
That is, until the third act arrives, and the action shifts from the muddy depths of the Mariana Trench to Fun Island - a resort that becomes overrun with Megalodons, quasi-dinosaur creatures called Snappers, and - best of all - a giant freakin' squid.
At this point all manner of mayhem ensues, evoking the vibe of 2010's surprisingly great Piranha 3D - albeit, again, accepting the restrictions of a PG-13 rating.
Meg 2's third act is basically what the entire movie should've been - wanton carnage without all the tiresome chit-chat that bogged down the first hour-plus.