10 WAY Better Endings For Recent Movies
Here's how you fix Army of the Dead's atrocious ending.
How a movie ends is so, so important - it's arguably more crucial than any other part of the film. Get it right and it can massively elevate even a mediocre movie, but screw it up and you can destroy two hours' worth of viewer goodwill.
These 10 movies all concluded in highly divisive fashion which left audiences fervently debating what they'd just seen.
In some cases the climax was simply a deflating end to a good movie, while in others it felt like a major creative misstep and actively damaged the rest of the story.
Then there are those endings that just could've gone a little further and delivered a more satisfying experience overall.
In each case, these films would've all benefitted massively from reworked endings which considered what audiences actually wanted to see, and what best suited the mood of the piece and perhaps also the franchise moving forward.
From films that killed off the wrong character to those that just didn't know when to call it quits, these films could've ended in vastly superior fashion with a few relatively simple changes...
10. Allyson Dies - Halloween Kills
Halloween Kills was a generally disappointing follow-up to 2018's franchise-saving sequel, concluding with a laughably predictable ending that just about everybody saw coming.
Given that Kills was presented as the second film in a new trilogy of Halloween movies, it was incredibly easy to guess that it would end on a downcast cliffhanger - an Empire Strikes Back-esque bummer that set the stage for an emotionally charged "final" showdown in next year's Halloween Ends.
And the most obvious choice was to kill off Laurie's (Jamie Lee Curtis) daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who is indeed brutally stabbed to death by Michael Myers in the final moments of the film.
But if filmmaker David Gordon Green wanted to deliver a truly shocking ending, he would've gone one step further and killed Laurie's granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) instead.
This would've been far more impactful for several reasons - for starters, it would've subverted the passing-of-the-torch expectation in years-later sequels, that the young descendant of the hero is basically guaranteed to survive.
It also would've been the worst possible thing Michael could've done to both Laurie and Karen, to literally kill the youngest member of their bloodline, annihilating their future while teeing up a finale that couldn't be more personal.
On top of this, Karen's death was a genuine bummer because she's shown to be one of the film's most resourceful characters, only to pick up the idiot ball in the final moments and wander off to Judith Myers' old bedroom unaccompanied.
Conversely Allyson is shown to be reckless throughout the film, joining the group that's hunting Michael, and so her demise would seem a lot more plausible.
Imagine if, when Karen is luring Michael out of the house by holding his mask, Michael instead just closes the front door and butches Allyson. Roll credits. Now that is an ending.