9 Insulting Ways Characters Were Killed Off Between Movies

3. Dawn Commits Suicide - Palindromes

Welcome to the Dollhouse is as extreme as indie black comedy gets, full to the brim with the kind of intentionally abrasive humour that means it would seem incredibly dated watching it for the first time in 2019, but which made it an instant cult-classic back in 1995. The indie focuses on Dawn, a shy, bullied pre-teen whose terrible family life is made worse by her school life.

Her existence is, as it's repeatedly stated, all around terrible, but buried within the film's cynical view of the world is the promise that things will get better for Dawn as she moves into high school and then later college. That's the optimistic dream the film ends on (well, as optimistic as Welcome to the Dollhouse can get), leaving fans to ponder how Dawn's adulthood would turn out.

Flash-forward nine years, however, and fans had to wonder no more, as the spiritual sequel, Palindromes, opens on her funeral. It turns out, after school, Dawn went to college, put on weight, got pregnant and then killed herself. It's the kind of resolution that was perhaps inevitable for someone in this particularly bleak world, but it felt like a needlessly nasty end, extinguishing any of the hope found in the original movie.

The writer and director of both movies, Todd Solondz, apparently realised this as well, and again 10 years later brought Dawn back in Wiener-Dog, with her apparent demise never being explained.