10 So-Called Sad Movie Endings That Are Happier Than You Think

Unhappy endings and horror movies go together like cheese and crackers. So many films in this genre end badly and use their unhappy endings to give viewers one last spook. The Saw franchise is no exception, with only Saw X having a particularly uplifting conclusion. 

The difference with that one is that viewers are aligned with Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and not his victims, so Jigsaw's inevitable victory feels triumphant. Normally, though, Jigsaw and his apprentices are positioned as the antagonists while the various people he's putting through his games are positioned as the good guys. 

Here's the thing though: so many of the characters who end up in Jigsaw's games are appalling people. He's tested a few less-deserving people but they are in the minority, to be frank, and most of Jigsaw's victims aren't actually the good guys at all. This isn't to say that they deserved to die, but many of them should've been serving lengthy jail sentences, put it that way.

Take, for example, Saw VI, in which many corrupt people in the US healthcare system are put through a sadistic game that few of them survive. These people had doomed so many innocent lives with their unethical practices, and it's tricky to feel masses of sympathy for them as a result.

If you look at the Saw movies as stories of bad people receiving karma, they actually feel considerably more upbeat.