10 Horror Movies That Originally Had A Much Darker Ending
7. 1408
From one Stephen King movie to another, 1408 is a decent enough yarn that tells the tale of Mike Enslin, a paranormal investigator who, following his daughter's death, desperately investigates reported supernatural sightings in the hopes of finding proof of the afterlife.
In the movie's original ending, Enslin - having spent most of the movie trapped in the eponymous, haunted room 1408 - burns it down to free the ghosts trapped there, before making a last-minute escape alongside a recording of his deceased daughter's voice talking to him from the other side. This discovery allows Enslin to move on with his life, and also repairs his relationship with his wife in true Hollywood fashion.
The ending shown to test audiences, however, was much more bittersweet. In this version of the film, Mike dies in the fire he started, but achieves a victory of sorts when the fire both frees the ghosts trapped in Room 1408 and allows him to join his daughter in the afterlife - a fact made explicitly clear when his ghost walks towards his daughter's voice in the final shot of the movie.
Honestly, it's hard to see why test audiences were so down on this ending. The horror genre is the wrong place to look for unreservedly happy endings and, as Alan Wake recently reminded us, the heroes in a horror story seldom win without great sacrifice.