10 More Bleakest Endings In Horror Movies
7. Kill List
In addition to the debut of one of psychological horror's hidden gems, 2011 witnessed one of the most soul-destroying conclusions to a movie that a person could fathom.
A gloriously unsettling slow-burn of the highest order, Kill List follows a British soldier who takes up work as a hitman after returning home from overseas. On paper, the film's premise sounds more like an action-thriller, serving only to compound the levels of shock when it morphs into full-on nightmare territory.
The aforementioned soldier - Neil Maskell's shell-shocked Jay - is tasked with a series of assassinations, eventually revealed to be the plottings of a shadowy cult. After a harrowing pair of murders, he and his partner decide that they want no further part in this twisted scheme but the faceless organisation coerces them into completing the mission by threatening to kill their families.
Kill List's climactic sequence sees Jay captured by the cult and tasked with one final murder: a masked and cloaked figure with whom he engages in a brutal knife fight. The veteran duly triumphs by brutally stabbing his mysterious foe to death, only to make the soul-cleaving discovery that his adversary was actually his wife Shel with their young son Sam strapped to her back.
Utterly gut-wrenching stuff.