10 Awful Endings That Screwed Great Movies (And What Should Have Happened Instead)

6. The Birds

In The Birds, Hitchcock takes something ordinary and turns it into something terrifying. As more and more birds migrate to the small town of Bodega Bay, the infamous director rackets up the tension all the way to the moment when they attack. People are ravaged by claws and beaks, massacred as they flee for shelter. It's gripping and horrific to watch. What's even more frightening is that we don't know why this is happening. Nature has turned on humanity and no one is safe. The sequence where Tippi Hedren's Melanie Daniels heads in to the upstairs bedroom and is attacked by a swarm of birds is chilling, as is the sequence where the inhabitants of the diner look on in horror at the carnage outside. Hitchcock had one more trick up his sleeve for audiences at the film's UK premiere at the Leicester Square. As they left the cinema, they were greeted by the sound of screeching birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare the wits out of them. An evil genius indeed! But the trouble is, while we don't need a definitive answer behind the sudden onslaught of vicious birds, we do need something of a conclusion to the events of the film and in that, we get nothing. Melanie is rescued from her harrowing attack by Mitch and Lydia and they drive off. The end. The film is over so suddenly we are not only left to wonder what caused the event, but what happened to everyone else at Bodega Bay. An utterly mundane non-ending that undoes some of the magic that came before it. How It Should Have Ended: Melanie, Mitch and Lydia drive through an abandoned Bodega Bay. They observe the devastation of a mass exodus. The town's people have fled and the birds are everywhere. On the roofs, telephone poles, fences... the birds have won. A similar ending as chilling as the original, but a sense of closure, focusing on the entire town, not just our main protagonists.