10 Incredible Endings To Otherwise Terrible Horror Movies
4. Dead End
For much of its runtime, the 2003 indie Dead End is the story of a lost family arguing.
That's it.
Yes, some of the bickering is mildly diverting, there are a few moments of sub-David Lynchian "late night in middle America" weirdness, and there are a handful of tense set pieces thrown in here and there, But by and large the film follows a small brood including genre stalwarts Ray Wise and Lin Shaye talking their way through a never-ending road trip, and it's the wrong sort of unwatchable as far as horrors go.
Then the ending changes everything.
The film's closing moments reveal that the entire cast died near the opening scenes and are wandering through some sort of purgatory, neither alive or dead, and they don't even know it. It's a devastating and terrifying twist which more than salvages this initially slow and unimpressive genre effort.