10 Recent Movies Ruined By Terrible Endings

David Gordon Green's recent Exorcist sequel morphs from a vaguely offensive mediocrity into outright heinous sacrilege in its final ten minutes, when Green assaults the audience with both a needlessly cruel plot twist and some of the laziest fan service this side of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

At the end of the climactic exorcism, the demon asks the parents of possessed girls Angela (Lidya Jewett) and Katherine (Olivia O'Neill) to choose one of them to live and the other to die, with the proviso that failing to choose will cause both of their deaths.

Katherine's father Tony (Norbert Leo Butz) then unsurprisingly chooses his daughter, causing Angela to seemingly start dying. But after a beat, the demon mockingly informs them that the chosen girl will die, not survive, at which point Katherine is dragged to Hell while Angela surges back to life.

Green clearly thought he was being super slick and clever here, but given that the film already makes it abundantly clear how dishonest demons are, it's about as transparent as cling-film. Because that's not off-putting enough, the film then ends on a strangely hopeful montage despite, y'know, just showing us an innocent child being dragged, perhaps inescapably, to Hell.

And the cherry on top? The final moments show Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) - who was blinded by the demon earlier in the movie - being reunited with her estranged daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), giving Blair the opportunity to rock up for a tacked-on 20-second cameo that feels like a hasty reshoot.

All in all, it was the ending that long-suffering fans of the franchise neither wanted nor deserved. Shambolic.

And before we move onto our final entry, if you haven't yet seen Saltburn, MAJOR SPOILERS will follow...