20 Horror Movies Everyone Remembers For Just One Scene

7. The Mist - The Ending

The Mist can be put in the same category as The Sixth Sense; it's an all-around great film that only gets remembered for its ending. In Frank Darabont's bone-chilling story of a town under siege from a supernatural mist filled with monsters, there is so much else going on. With its chilling exploration of societal collapse and a bevy of terrific performances, The Mist is one of the best horror flicks of the 2000s, for sure, not to mention one of the most underrated.

As for the ending, it's rough as hell. Several people, led by protagonist David (Thomas Jane), escape the supermarket they were holed up in and drive into the mist, but find no help and run out of gas. David mercy-kills the other passengers - including his young son - and goes outside to be eaten, only to be greeted by the military. If they'd waited 30 more seconds, they'd have been saved. 

Inevitably, something so harrowing is going to overshadow anything else, though it's debatable as to how great this ending actually is. The technical execution and the use of Dead Can Dance's The Host of Seraphim were masterful, but on a thematic level, it seems rather contradictory that some of the few townsfolk who did the right thing suffered the most sadistic fate of all. 

Regardless of where you stand, there is a hell of a lot more to this story than how it ended.