10 Recent Movies Ruined By Terrible Endings

Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman follow-up Saltburn seems to suggest that Fennell's a director who struggles with endings, because much like her generally stellar debut, her sophomore feature stumbles hard in the final stretch.

It feels like the story reaches its natural conclusion when Felix (Jacob Elordi) dies from initially unspecified causes at Oliver's (Barry Keoghan) debauched birthday party.

Fennell finds a perfectly unhinged image on which to end her story, when at Felix's funeral we see an infatuated Oliver quite literally penetrating his freshly dug grave. It's a punchy and memorable leaping-off point which leaves much up in the air about Oliver's feelings for Felix and, ultimately, whether he killed him or not.

But Saltburn unfortunately continues on for another ten-or-so minutes, where the rest of Felix's family are progressively killed off, with Oliver eventually revealing that he masterminded not only all of their deaths, but even orchestrated his initial "chance encounter" with Felix at the start of the movie.

It's just far too tidy and convoluted, especially with the final revelation that Felix's mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike) ended up bequeathing the entire Saltburn estate to Oliver. Stopping short a few scenes earlier and leaving it up to the audience would've been considerably more satisfying.

On the other hand, though, at least the final scene gave us a fully nude Barry Keoghan dancing to Sophie Ellis Bextor's anthemic "Murder on the Dancefloor," so it's certainly not all bad.