10 Movie Endings Way Darker Than You Realise

9. Colter Hijacked A Guy's Body - Source Code

King Kong
Summit Entertainment

A surface-level reading of Source Code's ending says that it's a happy one - at least for protagonist Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Stevens eventually learns that he was gravely wounded in action and is being kept on life support to test out the experimental, past-reconstructing Source Code tech.

At film's end, however, one of the officers overseeing the "simulation," Captain Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), agrees to terminate his life support after one final trip back into the Source Code.

While the termination seemingly freezes Colter in time with his love interest Christina (Michelle Monaghan), a moment later the scene un-freezes, revealing that the Source Code wasn't generating simulations but actually creating parallel universes.

And so, Colter is free to live a full life with Christina in this newly created reality, with a fully functioning body no less.

Except, it's important to remember that any time Colter entered the Source Code, he was inserted into the body of a school teacher named Sean Fentress (Frédérick De Grandpré), effectively hijacking it.

And so, though this outcome is a fortuitous one for Colter, he's basically stolen the body of another human being - a fact we're slyly reminded of in the film's ending, when Sean's reflection can be briefly seen in front of Colter.

As if Sean's consciousness being obliterated wasn't bad enough, his family and friends will have to deal with him having no memory of them whatsoever.

One imagines Colter's life got very complicated once the thrill of having a physical body once again wore off.

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Contributor

Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.