10 Sequels That Ruined Great Movie Endings

4. The Descent Part 2

The Descent Ending
Lionsgate

Neil Marshall's The Descent has one of the spookiest horror endings ever. After fighting for her life in a cave full of monsters, lead Sarah claws her way to freedom and flags down a car. After a jump scare though, it's revealed that she never escaped at all, and hallucinated the victory. Instead, she's still stuck deep in the cave, with only an imagined vision of her dead daughter to comfort her, as the monsters close in.

Sadly, that ending was only included in the UK cut of the film, and the US received the 'happier' version where Sarah actually does escape. The general consensus was that the UK cut was the intended edition of the movie... but all that changed when a sequel was greenlit and brought Sarah back.

This new movie confirms the escape as canon, and then contrives a reason to put Sarah back into the cave, to endure another round of pain and suffering. It retreads everything from the original, bringing back characters just to kill them off again, and overall diluting the power that the original ending held for more of the same.

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Josh has over 11 years of experience as a published writer, having worked nine of those years as a full-time content producer at WhatCulture. In that period he has created hundreds of articles, videos and podcast episodes for multiple WhatCulture channels, specialising in gaming, horror and film & TV. He now primarily works as a senior content producer and presenter on WhatCulture Gaming where he co-hosts the WhatCulture Gaming Podcast, a top 3 UK most listened to gaming podcast that he co-created in 2018. Over the years he has reviewed several high-profile gaming releases, covered industry events with on-site reporting, opined on breaking news, and even kicked off his interviewing career by chatting to childhood hero, Tommy Wiseau.