10 Horror Movie Franchises That Wasted Their Perfect Ending

5. One Of The Greatest Depressing Endings Ever - The Descent

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 Dream Warriors Ending
Lionsgate

The caveat here, is that the attention is on the UK cut of Neil Marshall's The Descent.

This 2005 feature focusses on a group of friends whose caving adventure goes array after a) they get lost in said cave, and b) that cave just so happens to be inhabited by flesh-craving crawlers.

While the US version of The Descent ends with Shauna Macdonald's Sarah managing to eventually escape this cave and be the film's sole survivor, the UK cut - which was the original version of the movie - has Sarah's escape merely being a hallucination. In reality, she's stranded in the cave and waiting to become crawler chow.

Not every movie has to have a happy ending, and The Descent is legitimately one of the greatest soul-crushing finales in the history of horror and likely in the history of cinema, period. There's no victory parade, there's no overcoming the odds, there's no besting the bad guy. Nope, The Descent's final moments are a devasting, depressing punch to the gut.

It's just a shame that this misery was made redundant when The Descent Part 2 was released in 2009 and explained how Sarah really did manage to escape from the bleakness of the first film's cave setting.

Senior Writer
Senior Writer

Once described as the Swiss Army Knife of WhatCulture, Andrew can usually be found writing, editing, or presenting on a wide range of topics. As a lifelong wrestling fan, horror obsessive, and comic book nerd, he's been covering those topics professionally as far back as 2010. In addition to his current WhatCulture role of Senior Content Producer, Andrew previously spent nearly a decade as Online Editor and Lead Writer for the world's longest-running genre publication, Starburst Magazine, and his work has also been featured on BBC, TechRadar, Tom's Guide, WhatToWatch, Sportkskeeda, and various other outlets, in addition to being a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic. Between his main dayjob, his role as the lead panel host of Wales Comic Con, and his gig as a pre-match host for Wrexham AFC games, Andrew has also carried out a hugely varied amount of interviews, from the likes of Robert Englund, Kane Hodder, Adrienne Barbeau, Rob Zombie, Katharine Isabelle, Leigh Whannell, Bruce Campbell, and Tony Todd, to Kevin Smith, Ron Perlman, Elijah Wood, Giancarlo Esposito, Simon Pegg, Charlie Cox, the Russo Brothers, and Brian Blessed, to Kevin Conroy, Paul Dini, Tara Strong, Will Friedle, Burt Ward, Andrea Romano, Frank Miller, and Rob Liefeld, to Bret Hart, Sting, Mick Foley, Ricky Starks, Jamie Hayer, Britt Baker, Eric Bischoff, and William Regal, to Mickey Thomas, Joey Jones, Phil Parkinson, Brian Flynn, Denis Smith, Gary Bennett, Karl Connolly, and Bryan Robson - and that's just the tip of an ever-expanding iceberg.