20 Recent Movie Endings Nobody Can Agree On
11. Hokum
Damian McCarthy's new horror film Hokum is such a bleak piece of work that most seemingly assumed it was teeing up a downer ending, and yet, the big surprise is that it has a shockingly happy denouement.
For one, our troubled author protagonist Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) not only survives the events of the movie, he ends the story in a far better place than he started.
By the time the end credits roll, he appears to have triumphed over his guilt for a childhood incident in which he accidentally shot his mother dead, now resolved to be a more open-minded and optimistic person, even ending his new novel on a more hopeful note.
It's an ending so unexpectedly upbeat that it left some viewers unsure what to think, though there's also a strong argument to be made that this ending was entirely earned by McCarthy, and dealing a grim fate to such a downtrodden character risked coming off excessively mean.