10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Get Worse The More You Think About Them

From George Lucas to David Cronenberg, the science-fiction genre has something for everyone -- whether it's the endless stream of Minions content your gran showcases over Christmas, the Batman and Joker movies your keyboard warrior brother swears are the epitome of high culture, or the big box of foreign cinema deep cuts your uncle has on VHS.

Sci-fi movies come in all shapes and sizes, and unlike some of their generic cousins and counterparts (looking at you, horror) there's not an expectation from audiences as to how things are going to pan out. With such a malleable form at their fingertips, directors are free to play it their own way, which often means pulling the rug out from under us long after we've left the cinema.

Some endings seem happy, upbeat or positive on the surface; others seem bad but, you know, not that bad. But a little thought will give the lie to our presumptions. Yes, let's put our thinking caps on and dig down into 10 movie endings whose implications only make things seem worse and worse and worse.

Brought to the screen by writer Patrick Aison and writer-director Dan Trachtenberg, recent Predator flick Prey is set in 1719, and follows the trials of Naru (Amber Midthunder), a young female member of the Native American Comanche tribe struggling to be recognised as a hunter. Her opposite, and the star of the show, is the colloquially named Feral Predator, a subspecies of Yautja who wields primitive weaponry, with a penchant for savagery over stealth.

While the bad guy is a welcome addition to the canon -- especially given the slightly silly giant monster hounds of 2018's The Predator -- the forest hunting setup slips into a familiar groove, and by the end of the film the alien is defeated and what remains of the tribe are free to live on.

The film's reliance on the tried and tested formula, however, doesn't always land the same and here leaves the Comanches in a distinctly different position from many of the modern heroes who have faced the Yautja in the other films. Though it ends on an upbeat note, with Naru taking her place as the new War Chief, these events have huge ramifications for the survival of the Comanche. Half the tribe is dead, including most of the young, breeding men, and Naru is taking them out of their territory and into pastures new, where there are European invaders armed with rifles, muskets and heavy artillery...