10 Bleak Movies With Unexpectedly Happy Endings
8. The Road
It's here that we start seeing traces of the kinds of movies that are going to show up more later down the line: truly bleak films.
Frankly, the only reason that this movie is as far down the list as it is, is because the happy ending this movie has is "happy" with two big bulging quotation marks surrounding it. Sure, our main hero - a young boy who has been travelling a post apocalyptic hellscape with his morally complicated father - gets to go live with a family that is less morally complicated. But the problem is that the world is no less screwed up by the end.
The thing about post apocalypse stories is that they can only end so happily. Because, well, the world is usually still screwed up, and barring a tale that suggests the world deserved to get screwed up, that's going to be something of a downer on folks regardless of the victories earned along the way.
However, if nothing else, our young protagonist is implied to have found a healthier home than that of his father, well intentioned as the man might have been. In the world The Road depicts, that's the happiest ending you can get.