10 Horror Movies That Originally Had A Much Darker Ending
2. The Descent (US Version)
Who could forget the ending to the Descent? After escaping from a monster-infested cave system, protagonist Sarah reaches her car and starts driving to safety, only to be startled by a hallucination of one of her deceased companions (a move EA later copied in the ending to their seminal survival horror, Dead Space).
For American viewers, that's where the story ended. For British audiences, however, there was one final twist of the knife waiting in store.
In the UK version of The Descent, the movie continues after Sarah's hallucination. There, it's revealed that Sarah didn't just imagine seeing her dead companion - she imagined the entire escape. The movie then ends with Sarah imagining her daughter appearing in front of her, as she mentally retreats into fantasy while the monsters close in around her.
The British ending is actually the original one, but in an interview with Vulture director Neil Marshall explained that American test audiences felt that the revelation that Sarah never left the cave was too depressing, leading to it being simply left out of the final cut.
Marshall says in the same interview that the British ending is his preferred one, which certainly tracks. After all, we Brits like our horror like we like our weather - grim, dour and brutally bleak.