10 Horror Movies Ruined By Disturbing Endings

Stephen King stories are notoriously difficult to adapt, and while 2004’s Secret Window isn’t atrocious, the sinister yet silly nature of its twist ending is largely to blame for its drop in quality.

Johnny Depp plays Mort Rainey, a writer who moves into a cabin after discovering that his wife, Amy, cheated on him with a man named Ted. Subsequently, Mort becomes increasingly unstable because he’s served divorce papers and because he’s harassed by a mysterious man (John Turturro’s Shooter) who accuses Mort of plagiarism.

Eventually, Mort realizes that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder and manifested Shooter to deal with his emotions. He kills Amy and Ted, and months later, he arrogantly undermines the town sheriff’s warning that their bodies will be found.

Compared to the book’s ending – Mort dies, and Amy and Ted survive to contemplate what’s happened – the film’s disturbing finale is cheap and laughably unfulfilling. That’s doubly true since Depp and Turturro – both venerable actors – give over-the-top performances that make it obvious where Secret Window is going long before it shows its hand.

Despite staying true to King’s 1990 novella, Mort’s D.I.D. reveal inherently loses steam because it arrived in a post-Fight Club cinematic world, too.