10 Utterly Devastating Horror Movie Endings You Didn't See Coming
2. In The Mouth Of Madness
John Carpenter is one of the greatest legends of the entire horror genre, and so it is not that surprising that a movie as good as In the Mouth of Madness could fall into relative obscurity against some of his better-known titles. It may not be a mainstream favourite, but Carpenter's 1994 effort is a fantastic play on reality and nihilism.
In a similar way to Night of the Living Dead, you'd be forgiven for thinking a win for the protagonist (in this case, Sam Neill's John Trent) was coming, but that's never what this film was about.
Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and living in the world of an author who could rewrite the world as he saw fit, there was never going to be a win for John, but that still doesn't make it any less devastating when it finally comes.
Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), the godlike author, wrote the world into an epidemic of violence and hysteria, while John could do nothing but sit back in the cinema with a bag of popcorn and a smile, watching the film adaptation of his own life. Realising there was never anything he could have done, this was as happy an ending as he could have hoped for, which is both brilliant and a little depressing.