10 Terrible Third Acts That Ruined Recent Movies
These dreadful third acts totally sunk these movies.
As important as it is for a movie to open in attention-grabbing fashion, it's arguably even more crucial that it ends right, because how a film wraps up will define the audience's lasting impression of the entire experience. It you screw things up in the final stretch, viewers won't ever forget it, that's for sure.
In recent times, the following 10 movies all botched their third acts, failing to come up with compelling and satisfying ways for their stories to wrap up. Ending any movie in a way that sends the masses home happy isn't easy, for sure, but these films fumbled badly enough as to obliterate all audience goodwill up to that point.
This not only caused genuinely good movies to fall flat, but also left mediocre ones collapsing entirely, going from "watchable" to "never again" in the process. From inane plot twists to lousy set-pieces, infuriating death scenes, and bold subversions that just didn't pay off, these third acts all derailed their respective movies in spectacular fashion.
It just goes to show: no matter how good or fun a movie might be, don't get too comfortable until the end credits roll...
10. Scream VI
Scream VI certainly got a lot right in its first two acts, namely confirming that the series could survive without Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), and offering up the most vicious Ghostface killers in the series to date, while staging their rampage in the fresh locale of New York City.
But Scream movies ultimately live or die on the strength of their finales, and this is where the sixth movie falls down hard.
As intriguing as it was to have three Ghostfaces working in league this time, the revelation that the killers were Detective Bailey (Dermot Mulroney) and his children Quinn (Liana Liberato) and Ethan (Jack Champion) was both flabbergastingly predictable and, with its revenge-fuelled motive, too obviously an echo of Scream 2.
Beyond that, the third act also went hilariously overboard with the plot armour worn by the "Core Four," especially Chad (Mason Gooding), whose survival of a thorough shish-kebabing at the hand of two Ghostfaces wipes out the very notion of stakes which Dewey's (David Arquette) demise in the previous film so savagely established.
At least if this ends up being the final Scream film to feature Melissa Barrera and Jenna Ortega in light of recent events, it gives their story a serviceable enough ending - even if only unintentionally.