10 Film Directors Who Used The Same Ending Twice
3. The Protagonist Gets A Creepy "Invitation" To A Basement - David Fincher
The Original
David Fincher has repeated two separate endings twice, so he gets his own repeat entry on this list!
Fincher's Zodiac is a sustained exercise in unease, and never more so than during its anxiety-soaked climax, where protagonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) investigates an individual named Bob Vaughn (Charles Fleischer) who may be an associate of the Zodiac Killer - if not the killer himself.
Graysmith awkwardly accepts an invitation to speak with Vaughn at his home where the mood becomes increasingly ominous, especially when Vaughn leads Graysmith down to his dingy basement to sort through possible evidence.
Graysmith quickly becomes convinced somebody else is down there and bolts, but of course, he has to wait for Vaughn to return upstairs and unlock the door for him.
The Repeat
Fincher offers up a similar riff on this idea in his 2011 remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, when Michael Nyqvist (Daniel Craig) is caught sneaking around the grounds of murder suspect Martin Vanger's (Stellan Skarsgård) home, and is as such unable to refuse Vanger's invitation to come inside for a drink.
Unlike Zodiac, though, the outcome is far more perilous for Nyqvist given his suspicions are correct. He ends up led down into Vanger's basement, knocked unconscious, and very nearly killed, saved only by Lisbeth (Rooney Mara).
In both cases the protagonist's obsessiveness got them caught up in a tricky situation which left them terrified in somebody's basement - the only major difference being that one suspected party was innocent while the other was guilty.