10 WAY Better Endings For Recent Movies
5. The Blind Man Dies For Real - Don't Breathe 2
Don't Breathe 2 wasn't a great sequel, though it gets some credit for boldly attempting to reinvent the Blind Man aka Norman (Stephen Lang) as an anti-hero of-sorts.
A lot of fans questioned the decision to try and make the audience root for Norman given that the first film outed him as a rapist and abuser, and while the sequel doesn't shy away from his terrible past, it makes one fatal misstep when executing his redemptive arc.
Norman spends the film caring for his 11-year-old adopted daughter Phoenix (Madelyn Grace), who is later revealed to be the daughter of meth cooks who wish to get Phoenix back in order to transplant her organs into her dying mother (Fiona O'Shaughnessy).
Basically, Norman is a piece of s**t, but Phoenix's parents are even worse. This comes to a head in the film's finale, where Norman confesses his terrible actions to Phoenix before being mortally wounded by Phoenix's father.
As he appears to die, he remarks to Phoenix that she saved his soul, the implication being that by saving her from her parents he at least somewhat re-balanced the karmic scales for his own monstrous actions.
Yet this idea is unfortunately undone by a post-credits scene which shows Phoenix's father's dog approaching Norman's body and licking his fingers, which move slightly, suggesting that there's still some life left in him yet.
While Norman dying for his sins doesn't let him off the hook for everything he did in the first film, it does feel like a fitting end for a complicated individual.
That the filmmakers couldn't resist but include some last-minute sequel-bait, then, feels like a total slap in the face to any dramatic integrity the ending almost had.