10 Most Disturbing Horror Movie Endings

There’s not a lot to recommend about The Skeleton Key, a mid-noughts chiller starring Kate Hudson and set in the sweaty swamps of the Louisiana bayou, outside of some corny scares involving all manner of voodoo rituals and a game pair of supporting turns from John Hurt and Gena Rowlands. It’s probably no surprise that infamous Scream 3/ Ring 2/ Arlington Road scribe Ehren Kruger was behind the flick’s script—obviously he didn’t inherit uncle Freddy’s talent for original scares.

Yes, we know it’s spelt different but come on, it’s very close.

However the film does have a banger of an ending, and it’s a surprisingly brutal conclusion to an otherwise by-the-numbers chiller. After hospice nurse and general good person Caroline has tried to save ailing old man Ben from his wife Violet, it’s revealed that her love interest Luke’s body has already been taken over by Ben, trapping Luke’s consciousness in Ben’s paralysed body.

You see, Violet and her husband are actually voodoo practitioners bent on stealing bodies in order to live another lifetime—which they succeed in doing, leaving poor Caroline trapped in the body of her former charge. It’s a memorably nasty twist on the “I have no mouth and must scream” nightmare, and sticks with the viewer longer than the rest of the forgettable flick.